Loved

We are in the full swing of the holiday season! Choirs sing “Joy to the World”! Shoppers gleefully cram bags full of half-priced treasures into bulging car trunks and rush back into the malls to find more bargains! Decorations are hung, the air is crisp and everyone is filled with the anticipation of glad reunions with family and friends in the coming weeks.

Yet your heart is still broken. Your womb is still empty. Your world is still wrapped in infertility.

Christmas is supposed to be a time when we lay aside the heaviness of the year and celebrate family and friends. For the woman struggling with infertility, it can be the hardest time to celebrate. You really are grateful to God for the gift of His Son, but it’s hard to see pictures of mangers and babies, even if the baby is Baby Jesus. While everyone around you basks in the glow of the love of friends and family, infertility can cause you to feel alone and even sometimes unloved.

If infertility has caused you to feel unloved today, please open the pages of God’s Word today and find Ephesians 3:16-19. As you read its message, envision the writer, Paul, wrapped in chains in a prison cell, but freer than any of his captors. Hear his raspy voice, alive with passion as he locks eyes with you, looks deep into the hurt your heart carries and says to you “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

Can you hear his chains rattling as this impassioned apostle’s gestures grow more animated? And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (NIV)

Oh, hurting friend! I wish you could know how much God loves you! It’s so easy to be convinced that God has forgotten you when you have cried out for a baby for so long, yet you’re still not pregnant. The holidays seem to intensify your struggle and make you so much more sensitive to the hurt. If the enemy whispers in your ear that God doesn’t love you, remember he is the Father of lies. If he--the Father of lies--says you are unloved, that is proof positive that you are cherished and desired!

In quite a paradoxical way, I believe God can even use your infertility to show you how much He loves you. The desire you have for a child is so great. You want nothing more than to have a child to love and nurture, and to see yourself in your child’s eyes. Your greatest wish is to provide for a child and teach a child all the great lessons of life. God, your Father, has the same great desires for you, His child. He wants nothing more than to have such a relationship with you. He so wants to love and nurture you, and to see Himself in you. He wants to provide for you and to teach you. Can you see the parallels? Let these truths show you the love God has for you. You are loved and desired by God, just as a child of your own is loved and desired by your own heart, even before conception.

His love for you is wide and long and high and deep. His love surpasses knowledge! It’s so massive, it’s mind boggling and literally incomprehensible! How could we possibly understand a love that is willing to sacrifice a Child on our behalf? God’s love for you is boundless, endless, measureless, exhaustless. He understands your desire for a child and feels the same. His love for you is overwhelming--even in the midst of infertility.