A Wife Loved Like The Church

I started reading through Psalm. It seemed the most emotional, the area that I connected to the most. I would read, I would cry. I spent a lot of time yelling at God. Questioning who He really was, how He could call Himself good and faithful, compassionate and loving, when He allowed His daughter to suffer. For the first time in my life, I poured it all out. I bared all before my King; I exposed my inner most being.

I couldn’t understand why He had told others “yes” and me “no”. What sin had I committed, what had I done wrong to deserve this? Where was I to go from here? How could I recover?

The only thing I knew to do was read and pray. I poured over my bible every day. I tried finding a promise in everything. I started searching for the promise of children, the promise that God would make my womb fruitful. I found nothing. Nothing that spoke to my soul, nothing that gave me assurance of becoming a mother. I did find that God was good, in everything. The world could be stripped away, but God was still good. I could be killed, but God was still good. That’s all I ever found.

“O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way? How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand? Turn and answer me, O Lord my God! Restore the sparkle to my eyes, or I will die. Don’t let my enemies gloat, saying, “We have defeated him!” Don’t let them rejoice at my downfall. But I trust in your unfailing love. I will rejoice because you have rescued me. I will sing to the Lord because he is good to me.” Psalm 13.

Somewhere around the end of January, beginning of February 2007, I realized that God never promised me children. It slowly began to dawn on me that I might never have children. This was a tough blow. I had been holding on for so long to the idea that God being good equalled me having a child. Then, when I seemed to really be sinking lower and lower, the true attacks came.

I don’t know where people stand on their beliefs on being attacked by Satan, but I know it’s real. Every day, for over two months, I cried out to God. Every day, His response was “Wait. Know that I am good.” Every day, Satan’s response was “Give up, just end it now.” I went into a depression. I can vividly remember walking down the hall at work, plotting my own suicide. I had all the details planned out; where, when, how. I dwelled on death, a lot. I wanted to be free from this world and all it’s hurts. The pain seemed entirely too big for me to handle and God just didn’t seem to care. 

I slowly began telling my friends what happened. I did a pretty good job, in my mind, of acting like I trusted God, that I was ok, that everything was fine. At at first, I really think it was. 

Then on January 3, 2007, my dog passed away. Judah was so much like my own child; my childhood dog, my best of friends. Just like with my miscarriage, I knew it was coming, but when it happened nothing prepared me for how much pain would follow. He passed away on a Wednesday night and I couldn’t go to work for the next two days. I was doing my best just to hang on, just to get out of bed and know that despite loosing a baby and my best companion within 3 weeks of each other, God was still good. I understood the logic, I understood it because this is what I was told, but I didn’t feel it, I didn’t believe it.

Later that week, my friend, Jessica, announced her pregnancy. That made three. Three girlfriends from church were pregnant. Three women would go on to have children, and mine was taken away far, far too soon. 

I got mad. Not at these women, not at the people around me, but at God. Why me? Why me? What lesson was God trying to teach me? Was it necessary to cause so much pain in order to show me? Was God still good? I didn’t know. I couldn’t say that He was. All I knew was that His word gave truth, and His word said He was good. 

So I began to read.