Learning to trust God through infertility

Ironically, it was the birth of my first baby that started my journey of trusting God through infertility.

Shortly after we welcomed a healthy boy into the world with great delight, I experienced a severe post-partum hemorrhage in which I lost so much blood, so fast, that after almost three hours of surgery I was unable to breathe on my own and woke up in ICU on a respirator. Not the birth story I had expected. I was grateful to have made it through alive.

My body healed (or so I thought), and the trauma began to fade. I got into a good routine with my son and I was loving motherhood. A year passed, and my husband and I started to think about growing our little family. After actively trying to fall pregnant for about six months, nothing happened. I sought the help of my gynecologist and for the next six months we tried some basic fertility treatments. Still nothing happened.

Community isolation

Well-meaning relatives and friends (as well as complete strangers!) kept asking us when we were having a second baby. Their eyes would scan my stomach for a baby bump. Their comments made the waiting and monthly disappointments all the worse. My mood would suddenly shift mid-conversation and I would spend the rest of the day subdued.

I was tempted to avoid certain social settings because I didn’t have the heart to explain our situation. Church became hard because I didn’t want to look at other families with multiple children and feel sad all over again.

Trusting God through infertility felt hard.

Saved, but not as blessed as other women?

I stayed a believer; I kept on praying. But trusting God through infertility felt hard. I started to feel like a second-class Christian; saved, but not as blessed as other women. No one else I knew had had a birth experience remotely like mine or had struggled to fall pregnant. I felt isolated and alone. Did God love me less than his other children?

I wondered at the seeming injustice of God: why did he give babies to homeless drug addicts or abusive parents or people who didn’t want a baby, and not to me? I started to wonder whether I was in fact a phenomenally bad mother and God was cutting his losses by giving me infertility. Was my infertility punishment for sin or poor performance?

My suffering revealed that I misunderstood God’s blessing to be a material or physical reward for obedience to him. This clashed with evidence I perceived from the real world, where other people who I wrongly thought were less worthy than me were being rewarded. I was confused and angry, and so very, very tired of trying. Like metal in a furnace, trusting God through infertility was the heat that brought to the surface of my heart all its impurities—wrong thinking about God, about blessing, about suffering, and about myself.

My wrong thinking was rooted out

Some months later the gynecologist referred me to a fertility specialist—and we got the news that I would not be able to conceive naturally again. But over the next two years, we worked and saved extremely hard to be able to begin in vitro fertilisation (IVF), and still nothing happened. There are no guarantees with IVF. As good as a doctor may be, it is still God’s decision whether an embryo attaches and develops.

I began to learn how God is an ever present help in times of trouble.

Yet despite persistent infertility, God was so good to me. Throughout this journey, I was part of an incredible Bible study group. The women in the group prayed for each other, challenged each other, and supported each other. 

I began to learn how God is an ever present help in times of trouble (Psalm 46:1). He really cares about the details of our lives. He is not removed from our day-to-day situations, or only concerned about our eternal salvation. I learned how to pray—really pray, not only with perseverance but also by remembering God’s promises back to him. I was taught to see the lies that had crept into my thinking, confess them, ask God’s forgiveness, and destroy them with God’s truth, the sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17).

Renewed vision of God’s blessing

I was not a second-class citizen of heaven after all! God loved me so much that he sent his Son to die for me so that I could have eternal life (John 3:16). What further proof of love could I need? 

God was not punishing me with infertility. Jesus took the punishment for our sin when he died on the cross for us (Romans 3:21-31). Rather, my infertility was evidence of a world broken by sin and under God’s curse (Genesis 3). I came to see that being taught to trust God through infertility was also God’s hard mercy, a discipline or training in righteousness because he loves me and delights in me (Proverbs 3:12). 

I also learned that real blessing is knowing the Lord. Just look at Jesus’ sermon on the mount in Matthew 5:1-12: not once does Jesus refer to people with material things as blessed. All the blessings are spiritual qualities. So I was already blessed, and blessed abundantly.

Trusting God through infertility

Somewhere along the line, something shifted for me. I didn’t stop being sad, but I grew more dependent. I made a conscious decision that I would continue to follow God whether or not he took away my infertility. My anger diminished and I began to love the sweet dependence on God he was growing in me. It’s not that I stopped being sad or disappointed every time I found out I was not pregnant. I took my grief to him, and I learned how to lament. I started to see a bigger purpose in my suffering and stopped resenting God’s decisions for my life, trusting that he knew far more what was good for me than I did. Even if that meant pain. My eyes opened to others who were suffering and I reached out to them. 

I began to understand a little better what Paul meant when he said he could rejoice in his suffering (Colossians 1:24). It is not about being happy that you’re going through something horrible. Rather, it is delighting in the new level of intimacy with God that suffering can bring, and glorifying him by continuing to praise him.

A better foundation

At last, after years of trying, rounds of IVF, and a number of failed embryo transfers, I became pregnant with our daughter. Finally getting a “yes” from our doctor was surreal after so many “no’s”. 

Almost ten years later, I am so grateful to God for that season of infertility. There is a part of me that cannot believe I just wrote that. But it is true. It was a very hard season, and it felt like it went on forever. I was also blindsided by further sorrow when we lost our third baby in a miscarriage a year after our daughter was born. I had truly thought my suffering was over. This time my belief in God was built on a stronger foundation and I was able to deal with my sorrow and disappointment in a more trusting way.

I would be lying if I said I don’t still bear the scars of those years of trial. But God has used his Son’s scars for good, and I trust he’ll do the same with mine.

Originally published by TGC Africa. Republished with permission.

Natalie Mayer (not pictured above) is part of St. Stephens Bible Church in Cape Town, South Africa. She is a wife, homeschooling mother of two, and editor. Natalie delights in serving her church and wider church community as a biblical counselor.