Bear with me, because I’m not sure where we’re going to go this morning.

As I sit here, Montego’s head is resting on my foot, Shane & Shane’s Psalms album is playing on iTunes, and our gorgeous hardwood floors are bathed in light.

I want to tell you something, because I don’t want it to ever be misunderstood: Though I sometimes get bogged down in the World. Though sometimes I question the utter seeming unfairness of our situation, most of the time, most of my days, most of the hours in my days, I am filled with a grateful heart. I am often utterly overwhelmed by His goodness.

I spent more than a decade walking outside of His will. And He restored me. I was, in every way, the lost son who squandered his inheritance, but whom was welcomed back by his father and restored to his rightful place. He squandered his inheritance, everything that he was owed, and then he got it all back! Talk about something not making sense. But as I’ve heard Jon Acuff say, God’s grace is severe. Prodigal, though we mean it today to mean lost, actually translates to extravagant. It was the father in that story who was prodigal. His grace was extravagant. (Read Tim Keller’s book The Prodigal God.)

Restoration. I cannot bring home the power in these words enough: Redemption. Restoration. Reconciliation.

I have seen Romans 8:28 played out in my life more times than I can count. He has already taken the troubles and pain of my life and used them for His good. For my own good. He has given PURPOSE to my past and my sin.

I don’t say that we may never have children to bring pity or to feel sorry for myself. I say it because I don’t know the future and it is something that could come to pass. But I say it because I want you to understand that I understand that reality and that I harbor no (lasting) bitterness over it. When I pray for His will over my will it is because I MEAN it. And this is something that I have to remind myself of daily.

The goodness that he has poured out over my life is beyond measure. It Is Beyond Measure. This morning I woke up in a huge white bed with crisp cotton sheets in an air-conditioned room in a house with doors that lock. Laying next to me was the man whose paths were directed to meet mine at JUST the right moment in our lives.

Sometimes when I hear stories of Aaron’s upbringing, I am amazed that he is the man that he is. He forgives easily, laughs quickly, angers slowly. He has more patience that I have ever had in my entire life.

And sometimes I am moved to tears, because I see in him today, in 2010, the covering of my mother’s prayers. Prayers that she prayed fervently at night in the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s that God would place a hand of protection over her daughter’s husband, wherever and whomever he may be. I see Romans 8:28 come to life in my husband’s life.

We were wandering heathens and yet He protected us!

Infertility is not His will. I am not broken and beleaguered by a decaying world because it is His will. He has not caused this to happen to us. He mourns with us. I don’t always understand that, but I believe it. When we lost our baby, He mourned with us, as One who understands, first hand, what that felt like.

Do I believe that he could open my womb with the pass of His hand? Yes. Do I understand why He hasn’t? No.

The Bible tells me that He has prepared for me, in advance, GOOD WORKS, and he is waiting for me to go and do them.

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10).

If you’re a regular church goer, or follow Christian circles online, you’ve likely heard the story of Zac Smith. In May 2010, at the age of 33, Zac Smith passed away of colon cancer. A father, a husband, a church staffer, he was afflicted, and ultimately taken Home because of that sickness.

In March, he recorded this video:

When I first saw this, a few weeks after it was shown at his home church, I was stopped in my tracks by the words: God cannot give me a bad gift.

A few weeks ago one of EBC’s teaching pastors used Zac’s video in his message on Psalm 84. It was a powerful message, and I think Zac’s video brought comfort and conviction to the several thousand people who saw it for the first time that weekend. Now that is a gift. To live a life that points so strongly toward the One who gives it.

As Zac said: I do not know why I have cancer, but I know that God is in charge.

God cannot give me a bad gift.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (Matthew 7: 7-11)

I do not understand why Aaron and I, with the resoruces we have, with our love for each other and for children, with our love for the Lord and our desire to raise up Godly men and women to love Him and serve Him, are without children on this day.

In my more self-pitying moments I feel like He has removed His blessing from us. His command — be fruitful and multiply — is impossible for us on this day. Scripture says blessed is the man whose quiver is full of arrows. Why would He withhold blessing from us who love Him?

And I am so grateful for beleivers who are not afraid to rebuke me in those dark moments.

Yesterday, a friend wrote this:

God has NOT removed His hand from your situation.  It does not make sense now, and it is more painful than it should be, but in the end (and there WILL be an end Praise God) you WILL see His mighty hand. You WILL understand why it all had to be, you WILL praise Him for the path He has chosen to take you, if you are willing to give it all to Him. If you are willing to tell Him it can be done His way. And if you trust Him enough to do His will in your life.

I have heard Him whisper: Don’t you trust Me?

And my heart cries out Yes, Lord, yes! Why wouldn’t I trust you?

As Peter said to Christ, “Oh Lord, to whom would we go??!”

Romans 8 is one of my most favorite chapters in one of my most favorite books in the Bible. (If you’re allowed to have favorites?)

On my flight to Atlanta back in April, I read it over and over and made many scribbled notes in my notebook, one of which was this: The enemy wants me to believe that You withhold, but that is a LIE.

Most people know verse 28 — He will work all things for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose. But if you stop reading there, you will miss it.

Paul goes on to say, “So what shall we say in response to this?” And then he hits us with some of the most powerful scripture in the Bible:

If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

I have to stop and reread that. I wrote that day, “Why would He who gave up His own son not also then give us, graciously, all things? Why would He withhold from me when He’s already given me His son?”

Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-39)

YES. And in my notebook I wrote, “Nothing nothing nothing can separate us from the love of God. No hardship. No famine. No poverty. NO INFERTILITY. No, in all these things we are already more than conquerors!”

Lord, nothing in this world makes more sense to me than You. I cannot see this world without You in it.

Renew in me a clean heart. Restore in me a clean spirit. Help me with my unbelief.

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faith, infertility, jesus