When God Hurts Your Feelings

Crazy title, I know. This post is written from a very raw spot that God is continuing to heal. I thought the wound had been healed, but over the last month, He has shown me that the complete healing hasn't come...maybe it never will.

I think about Joseph being thrown in jail, about Job losing everything, about John the Baptist preparing the way for Christ and then losing his life. These stories make me realize that my story doesn't even compare. But on some level, I think their feelings must've been hurt. They must've wondered why God's plan was unfolding the way that it was.

A couple of weeks ago the theme in our Bible study was "You have to move past your devastation with God". This surfaced all types of emotions, one being infertility. If one more person tells me that when people adopt, they end up getting pregnant, I just might cry. We've adopted three times and we're not pregnant. We've been "unprotected" for 15 years (okay, that's too much information...so sorry). God has chosen to create our family in a different way and deep down, I'm okay with that. Deep down, I believe in the sovereignty of God and I know that the three children living in our house were ordained as ours from the beginning of time. Their adoption stories are some of the best around and I love to share them with anyone that's willing to listen.

And so I'm okay until someone who doesn't even want to be pregnant gets pregnant and says, "We weren't even trying". Or I find out that a 14 year old girl is pregnant. Or when I read a verse in the Bible that says, God closed her womb. Honestly, that hurts my feelings. I don't understand why God closed my womb and continues to allow this place of infertility to be a wound that continually gets opened. I thought I was over this...honestly, I don't want to go back to the newborn stage...it was hard!!!! But sometimes I just wonder, why God? I cannot listen to the song Blessings by Laura Story and not cry. In many ways I guess our infertility is a disappointment in our lives. But yet that very disappointment gave us three wonderful and beautiful blessings!

And so...the healing begins again. For whatever reason, the Lord has allowed this place of deep hurt and longing to surface again. Seriously, I'll be 40 next year and Derek will be 45. We don't need a newborn and we're not praying for one. I am counting my blessings...naming them one by one, because I know they are straight from God's hands.

They didn't come easy and they didn't come cheap. They came with lots of paperwork and lots of anxiety. They came with tears as we tried to adjust to 3 children under 3 wondering if we had completely lost our minds and if maybe we were infertile for a reason. :) But "stinky Satan" as Elizabeth would say would like to steal my joy and make me focus on what others have and what I don't. It's jealousy and envy...it's sin! And I am determined not to linger in the sin or stay in the pit.

This is the life God chose for our family and it's a good life. Let the healing begin...again.

Philippians 3

¹⁰ I want to know Christ better. I want to know the power that raised him from the dead. I want to share in his sufferings. I want to become like him by sharing in his death. ¹¹ Then by God's grace I will rise from the dead. ¹² I have not yet received all of those things. I have not yet been made perfect. But I move on to take hold of what Christ Jesus took hold of me for.¹³ Brothers and sisters, I don't consider that I have taken hold of it yet. But here is the one thing I do. I forget what is behind me. I push hard toward what is ahead of me. ¹⁴ I move on toward the goal to win the prize. God has appointed me to win it. The heavenly prize is Christ Jesus himself.