Missing Motherhood: The Barren Woman in the Church
By Kellye Carmack
A few minutes before church started, I sat down to review my Sunday school lesson for the class I was teaching. I heard a noise outside the room as two little boys popped their heads through the open door. One held a small bouquet of flowers, the other a card made from construction paper. They ran to me with giggles and grins. “Happy Mother’s Day!” They gave me hugs as they handed me the sweet homemade gifts. After they left, I sat down and let the tears spill out. Overcome with emotion, I took deep breaths and let myself enjoy the unexpected blessing while still holding the grief of loss. The two boys wishing me a happy Mother’s Day were not my children. They belonged to a friend who was waiting outside the Sunday school room. After years of trying, my husband and I were still childless, and I was dragging myself through another Mother’s Day without children. I left that day feeling both the grief of my empty womb and the love of God through His people.
For the last six years we have cycled through infertility, to pregnancy, to and miscarriage over and over again. These have been hard years in which the grief has stretched out slowly as one month after another we go through the cycle of hope and disappointment.
Sometimes church can be a hard place for women who experience infertility and miscarriages. We just don’t fit in the normal profession of life that everyone else is in, and that can be isolating. While some families are having their second and third children, we still pray and wait for our first. It can be hard as we sit through another baby announcement or attend another baby shower. I recently shared with a friend that I feel as if it’s Christmas morning and I’m watching my Heavenly Father give everyone a gift except me. Sometimes church can make the grief of barrenness rise to the surface where we feel it more keenly.
Church can also be a place where we find much comfort in our grief. God has used our church family to fill in some of the emptiness from our lack of children. It’s been received through different means like prayer, hugs, and encouraging words. Mainly, though, that comfort has come through relationships. In his book Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer” (Bonhoeffer, 19). The people of our church have strengthened us just by being a part of our lives. As they have folded us into their families our own family has multiplied even without the addition of children.
I’m aware that many of you reading this may not have the same experience at your own church. Perhaps your struggle with infertility or miscarriages has been overlooked and your pain has been minimized. Rather than comfort and prayers, you have received pithy sayings and insensitive rebukes to have more faith. Know that God is not indifferent to the barren woman. He mentions her often throughout His Word (1 Samuel 1, Psalm 113). He sees her longing and sadness. While He may delay in giving her children, He has not denied her the riches of His grace through His word, His people, and His presence.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, HarperCollins Publishers, page 19.
Kellye Carmack is the Women’s Ministry Director for Practical Shepherding. She has an undergraduate degree in Biblical Studies and a master’s degree in Biblical Counseling. She served as a missionary in Western Europe for two years helping to share the hope of Christ with women in difficult situations. While in seminary, she met her husband Craig and they are both on staff at their church in Louisville, KY. She loves helping women discover the unique ways God has gifted them to serve the church.