Church and Infertility: Ask a Pastor

I’m so excited to bring today’s post to you.  Several weeks ago, I reached out to pastors who had experience with infertility.  I wanted to get their unique perspectives on the church and infertility.  I had the distinct privilege of chatting with three pastors- each with different backgrounds and stories.  This is a VERY LONG post, but I hope you’ll take the time to read it and learn from their wisdom and experience.

The Pastors

Shawn Kennedy (SK) is the lead pastor at Existence Church in San Diego, California.  I first learned about his infertility and adoption story in an article online.  He was gracious enough to share his story with me via a phone interview, and I was moved by the prayer he prayed for me at the end of our conversation.  I edited some of his responses for length.

Elizabeth Hagan (EH) blogs at Preacher on the Plaza, where she has written about her own infertility story.  She’s the interim pastor at Federated Church in Weatherford, Oklahoma.  She also serves as Ambassador for Social Advocacy for Feed the Children.  She was kind enough to answer my questions via email.

Rick Vasquez (RV) is the pastor of Skyview Presbyterian Church in Centennial, Colorado.  He’s a personal friend of the pastor who interviewed my husband and I about our own infertility story.  I appreciated his willingness to share his story via email.

The Questions

Q.  What do you say to people who are struggling with their faith during infertility?

SK: I have learned through this journey [that] it’s not as much as what I say to them as it is being with them. And to position our lives to listen well. And I think to listen well is to love well, to honor well, and to remind them that their story matters.

…I usually express gratitude that they’ve been willing to share their story, and remind them of the bigger picture. That the foundation of the struggle is [the question] “Can I trust God?”…It’s a really struggle when you desire and dream your whole life for something that you feel like is crumbling before your eyes. And I just try to gently and very humbly remind them that not only can God be trusted, but ultimately, Scripture is really clear…that when we pray, we pray to OUR Father in Heaven. He’s our heavenly Father who does care for us. Who does love us. And is intimately aware of this moment right now. I usually just take time to remind them of God’s promises (Romans 8:28). 

I’ll take them through Psalm 23 to remind them that the overarching promise of Scripture [is that God] is with them. And then I’ll ask them if they mind mind if I pray, that regardless of questions I cannot answer, that they would have an awareness of God’s presence… and that the awareness would start to flood their hearts in new and fresh ways, and that they could take a step to trust him just one day at a time.

I’ve learned the first step is a posture of just listening. …It’s a portrait of what Jesus Christ does for us. Hebrews 4 says We do not have a great high priest you cannot empathize or sympathize with our weakness. We serve a God who sent his son and Jesus knew what it was like to experience great grief and great pain and to be in a very lonely garden and say “If you wouldn’t mind taking this cup away from me, I’d be really glad that you did that.”

EH: I [struggled] too. You are not alone. To live in a very fertile world and to have the desire to parent (which is a natural God given desire) and then not be able to without a road of intense hardship is difficult. It is very easy to feel like God has abandoned you or forgot you. Or loves your pregnant friends more than you.

Don’t beat yourself up about these feelings. Be honest about them. Share your faith struggles with somebody who can handle them (and not everybody can!). Stay close to people who are dealing with pain, especially older women. Let them be your teachers even if they have never been through infertility or child loss themselves. Talk about suffering with them. Read the book of Job, even together. Let God be with you in the pain to the degree that this is possible for you. For, this will be your way out.

RV: When my 2nd wife and I had to pay lots of money to get pregnant, I had an opportunity to process with my wife about these matters. Having another child was not as big a deal for me, since I had had four already but there were a couple of things Kathleen and I talked about. Before pregnancy, when the opportunity presented itself, I talked about the nature of the Christian life as a life of cross bearing. To talk about suffering as “the normal Christian” life helped but candidly only a little. I don’t fault Kathleen. Not everyone takes this kind of suffering well. Not every Christian knows how to suffer with with faith and hope.

After Kathleen became pregnant, again, when the time presented itself, I addressed the issue of Kathleen’s hopes and where her joy was placed. It was placed in the little guy in utero. I had gone through a death in my life. So, I brought up to her that I was concerned for her, given the fact that God some times takes children in infancy. My concern for her was to continue to entrust her baby to the Lord. I reminded her that no one has a guarantee on any thing in this life. My first wife died at 38. My older brother’s wife lost three 3 children, who never made it to the 9 months. My concern for her was to remind her that life and death in God’s hands totally. We can act and live wisely but in the end, God is in charge. His mercy in his son Jesus is proof that he is in the process of making all things new but the final death of death is still a future event.

Q.  What would you say to people who struggle with attending church during infertility because of the emphasis on family?

EH: Stay at home. Do something makes you feel good about yourself. Last Mother’s Day I was in between churches so I didn’t have to attend. Instead of going to services, I went to a class at the gym, ate lunch with a good friend and then took myself shopping for a Mother’s Day gift.

RV: It would be important to meet with them personally and face-to-face during their times of sorrow and even despair. It would be important to connect them as much as possible with other fellow suffers but not to create a subgroup unto themselves. Infertility is a very heavy sorrow, but God does wish to use sufferers for the sake of his kingdom. Sufferers are able to sympathize in a way that others can’t. But sufferers need shepherding, lest they sink into despair or bitterness or even self-pity. I would want these families to know that I love them and our church loves them and has made them a part of a larger family, of which they are important contributors. So, the emphasis on the family can’t be cast out but we who have children need to raise our level of awareness to infertile sufferers around when making an appropriate emphasis on the family.

Q.  How do you acknowledge or address infertility in your own congregation? How can pastors address infertility from the pulpit?

EH: When people ask me why I don’t have children, I tell them. Or in small groups of women if this is something that comes up, I share. But if they don’t, this isn’t something I publicly talk about in my pastoral role. If I’m a crying mess about my own heartbreak, I’m not doing my job as a pastor which is to shepherd and lead others.

I don’t believe it is the role of a pastor to “throw up” their struggles on the congregation. Rather, this is what counselors, friends and family members are for. In being a pastor that doesn’t share the ins-and-outs of my infertility with the congregations I’ve served, it has given me an outlet to remember that I’m not as much of a failure as my body makes me feel.

This does not mean that my own struggles with infertility and child loss have not enriched and informed my own preaching and teaching. For example, over the years, I’ve preached during Advent while going through IVF. I’ve lead a baby funeral after just having my own miscarriage. I’ve even preached on Easter when I was convinced God didn’t love me. These experiences have helped me be more in tune with where most people in the church are at one point or another: unsure of God’s presence and fighting to have some kind of faith. I believe my struggles with infertility have benefited my congregations, even if they didn’t know the specific reason.

RV: When I first started in vocational ministry (full-time Christian ministry) I knew only intellectually of infertility. My first wife and I waited for four years before getting pregnant. In our third year, she had surgery for endometriosis. The doctor told her that it would likely reoccur and the best long-term solution was to get pregnant. We had waited three years by then and we thought that “now was a good as time as ever” to get going to having kids. Melinda conceived and continued to conceive. Infertility was not an issue … at that time. After our fourth child, we decided to stop having kids and I have a vasectomy. Done.

But God was not done. About 16 months later, Melinda discovered a lump on her breast and it turned out to be Stage 3 cancer of a rare sort. Basically, it was a very chemically resistant and stubborn cancer, which took her life shortly after the 3rd birthday of our 4th child.

Fast forward. I married Kathleen 18 months later and I told her that reversing the vasectomy would not be a problem. But what I did not know was that every year after the vasectomy, the chances of a successful reversal goes down about 20%. It has been 4 years since so my chances were not good. I had two reversals. The second one took but the motility was very low and we resorted to IVM (In-vitro maturation) and IVF. We did get pregnant with IVM. And then again with IVF. Kathleen and I now have 4.

In the time between my second marriage and the successful vasectomy, there were four years. Four years of Mother’s Days, Father’s Days and lots of baby showers. Eventually Kathleen couldn’t bring herself to attend baby showers. She strongly disliked Father’s Days and Mother’s Days were the worse of all. Our childlessness was central to all that.

As a pastor, I have never addressed infertility directly from the pulpit but I have made, since my marriage to Kathleen, many references to our church on those special family days, such as, “These days are happy days for many … but not for all. We need to be mindful that Mother’s Days are hard for some women, perhaps more women than you might realize. For those women Mother’s Day is the hardest days of the church calendar.”

I have also mentioned mentioned that such hurts (which is an understatement for an infertile couple) are not unlike the hurts of other situations: like various kinds of singleness, physical disabilities, early widowhood, regrets over the on going effects of bad choices. While infertility is not same as the above, they are all hard in their own respective ways and to the person who is suffering, it is nevertheless a real gnawing pain.

Yet our standing with God and the joy of God’s presence is never to attained without suffering. The suffering of Jesus is proof that God intends all his people to go though suffering, too. Jesus suffered from injustice. That is never in dispute. But Jesus also suffered just by being born human. His very humanity was the very occasion for his humiliation. Jesus came to show us how to connect with God intimately … through suffering. Paul echoes these sentiments in Philippians 3:10.

So without singling out infertility but referring to it in the context of suffering in general, my hope to encourage all sufferers to walk with the Lord and to draw from the Lord who comforts them in their particular suffering to comfort others who are suffer in other ways (2 Corinthians 1).

Q.  How can the church in general better serve infertile couples?

SK:  By creating space for hurting people. And [not just for] those are struggling with infertility. Many people (not everyone) who are struggling with infertility are very similar to people who are struggling with other things as well. They don’t want to feel like they are a spotted leopard. They would rather be a part of the community and realize that yes, they are hurting, yes they are going through this. There’s other people along on their different journeys and they’re going through grief as well.

[I’d ask churches] “How are you creating space inside of small groups and other groups for people to feel vulnerable, to share their story?” Shame keeps a lot of people in the dark, and isolation starts to reap havoc on the soul. There are times in which you want to provide very targeted groups and if you have been aware of multiple people that are in your church I think it’s part of a discovery, because you never know. Maybe out of the misery might come someone’s ministry. So coming alongside of them and having them actually maybe lead something very specifically that could create deeper awareness. I think for every pastor the greater question is, “How do you start to help the people who are part of your church family understand, appreciate in deeper ways the subject of grief?” And too often, I think, we have a very impoverished theology around grief and trials. A lot of folks in our church encounter significant challenges and the thought is that we’re just going to get through it. There is great truth to moving into new seasons of life, but you never get through that.

For instance, someone in our church family had a little baby boy who lived less than three days. I was in the ICU with them, holding this little frail body. We cried and weeped out loud and it was just devastating. Now it’s been six months and the husband asked me and some other to write a letter to the little baby boy. He wanted to give it to his wife because his wife really felt in some ways like, “I wonder if anyone still remembers him?” It doesn’t matter how many kids they have, where they move, what they do. This child, this ache and pain of their hearts, will always be a part of their story. How that will be used, I’m not entirely sure. But you don’t just get over that. It does get through you, and it does change you. The question is, “Are you able and willing to fully embrace that?” Until you can fully embrace the idea that grief is a journey, I don’t think we move toward greater healing.

The other thing I would say is that God typically uses people to heal other people. It’s part of the way he seems to work. One of the things that we do in our local church is gather a robust team as it relates to counseling. I have a network of six counseling firms in San Diego, and whenever there’s a particular situation that goes beyond my ability of being able to assist, and they need to spend some more time targeted in this area, I direct people to them. I think one of those robust team members should be a marriage and family therapist who specializes in grief.

If a pastor has been through infertility like I have, then be vulnerable. Be the first to share. It’s interesting how God seems to use that to open up people’s lives and have them say, “I think he’s trustworthy with my own brokenness. I’m going to share my story, too.”

EH: The church can stop saying stupid stuff like, “Everything happens for a reason” or “If you just pray harder. . . “ or “In God’s time . . .” These cliches are of no help to infertile women, or anyone going through a time of intense suffering for that matter.

Pastors need to do a better job of creating a climate of authenticity in church life. I mean, everybody is going through something. It could be infertility. It could be something else. We need to be able to talk to each other and abide with each other through the good times and the bad. Pastors set the tone for this kind of communal life.

RV: You have done a wonderful thing by creating this website. I have been so moved to read the stories of so many silent sufferers. My heart truly has ached as I have read the stories of such lovely people. The church can help first by knowing of the many suffering couples that are all around them.

Q.  Do you have any resources (books, websites, etc.) you recommend?

SK: The book that really helped us is Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free by Tullian Tchividjian. It talks about the grand reality of suffering and pain and brokenness in Job’s story. The main point is that ultimately, God is forming and shaping us even inside of the pain. My wife and I read through it together, slowly. It really centers around the subject of grief.  Sometimes I’ll also take people through Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero.

EH: The resources I have to share deal with a theology of suffering. One of my favorite books on this topic is Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor. She has a lot of powerful things to say about how the “dark” times of life aren’t necessarily bad or full of God’s judgment on us, but rather an opportunity to more fully understand who God is!

I’m also a fan of Richard Lischer’s book, Stations of the Heart. Dr. Lischer was one of my professors in seminary and lost his son to cancer while his wife was pregnant with her first child. It’s one of the most real books I’ve ever read on grief and the forms it takes.

And Anne Lamott’s book, Stitches: A Handbook of Meaning, Hope and Repair is one of the best books I’ve read about what it means to walk with another person through suffering. Anne Lamott simply tells it like it is!

PHEW!  If you made it this far, thank you for reading the entire post!  I have no doubt you’ve been blessed and encouraged by reading this.  Please leave a comment below to let the pastors know you appreciate them.  

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