Trusting God with Your Barrenness

After months of hoping, praying, trying to become pregnant, Heather DeJesus-Yates was sitting with her obstetrician who told her it was time to see a fertility specialist. My heart sank. I just was disoriented. I couldn't even kind of figure out, how did we get here?

How did this happen? And that was the beginning for us of this conversation that I had no context for. I had never considered infertility. Not really.

I had never imagined the word barren in my story. I don't think any women really do sit in the chapter of, well, what if we do go down this road? This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com.

What does it look like for a husband and wife to begin to imagine a future for themselves as an infertile couple? We're going to talk more with Heather DeJesus-Yates about that today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. I got married when I was 23. Mary Ann was 25. And I don't think I realized it at the time, but we hadn't been married long when Mary Ann was ready to be a mama. She was ready for us to get pregnant. And we'd been attempting to get pregnant for more than a year, and it had not happened. And I think the classical definition of infertility is if you're having unprotected relations and you're not pregnant within a year, that you're at least momentarily infertile.

Whether you're permanently infertile, nobody knows, but you fall into that category of infertility. I remember being on a trip with her. We were driving up to see my parents from our home in Tulsa to where they lived in Kansas City. And this was the first time I was aware of the longing in my wife's heart because she was crying and mad at God because why would God give her a desire, a strong desire for a good thing, and then withhold it from her?

And I'm, at this point, 24 years old. I don't have a good answer to that question. And what did you feel, Bob? Was that a struggle for you?

I was a happy-go-lucky, it'll happen when it happens, you know, roll with the punches, whatever kind of guy. I was not feeling it the way that she was feeling it. I was a little blindsided by the depth of emotion that she was going through, but I remember it and remember how profoundly deep this was in her. And recognizing that as a husband, I needed to be in tune with that, understanding that, seeking the Lord with her in that. It was a significant moment, and I think I recognized then something I heard Dennis Rainey say for years.

He said, this is one of those questions I want to ask God when you get to heaven, is why would you put in the heart of a woman in particular a desire to be a mom and then not grant that desire biologically for her? And that's part of what we're going to tackle as we dive into this today, and we've got a friend who's joining us to help us navigate this conversation. Heather DeJesus-Yates joins us. Welcome to Family Life Today. Oh, this is such a privilege.

I'm so excited. We are thrilled to have you here. You've written a book called A Mother of Thousands that is part memoir, but it's also a challenge to every woman to recognize that God has more for you than you may have recognized God has for you.

Yes. It flows from my personal journey and the winding road that my husband and I walked through with infertility, and that became a journey through adoption as well as fostering, and the awakening that God did in my own soul and the pivot of my eyes and my vision from the small story that I was tempted to be consumed with of pregnancy into the bigger story that he was telling through that shadow. Through what pregnancy points us to as believers.

And Heather, this is a topic if women have an experience, they know someone who's gone through this or who has lost a baby or who has struggled with infertility, and it is gut-wrenching and painful. Walk us through your journey and your story. Well, I was 30 when I met my husband. I'm also a year and a half, almost two years older than my husband. And we met when I was 30, got married.

Actually, I had just turned 31. And so I was thinking a lot about having a kid. I was looking at a clock and thinking we don't have a lot of time to just wait around and enjoy being married for a whole long time. But because we'd been single for so long and we had been praying for God to bring us a spouse and we had been faithful in that journey that we were so excited to be married, we knew we wanted to give it some time to just be able to be with each other and enjoy marriage and let that really root solid in our experience before we added children.

And so it wasn't a huge conversation right when we got married, but it was before we got married. And I had worked in adoption law, and I had actually already had some really wonderful experiences with adoption and practice that I knew I wanted to adopt someday. And I told my husband at the time when we were in courtship, I said, I'd love to adopt someday. And I said, but you know, I'd also love to have biological children as well. And he said, yeah, adoption's great. That's fun.

That's fine for someday. But yeah, you know, he wasn't as passionate about it as I was. But we were on the same page. We were on the same page with wanting children. And we had actually done the family life resource preparing for marriage. That was our premarital counseling tool over 12 years ago, and it's still the best one we've ever found.

We use it for other couples all the time. But that really helped us flesh out whatever our expectations were around building our family and around having children and adopting. So we were married about a year, a year and a half. We had told ourselves, you know, we can wait maybe a couple of years and then maybe start trying to have a family. So we had waited a year and a half, and I came back to him and I said, do you still want to wait like a full two years or, you know, maybe a year and a half is enough? And he was like, well, you know, and we prayed about it.

And we were like, oh, just a few more months. And we had a lot going on just in our lives and vocation and home. And ultimately, we trusted God with that. And we had prayed too, if we're missing something, overrule us. You know, we're not trying to be willful and rebellious and self-focused.

We really want what God wants for us no matter what. And so the two-year mark came, and with joy, we both began to move forward into preparing for a family. And like you said, infertility, a traditional definition is the failure to conceive after 12 months of effort.

And the months went on. We did have a couple times where we thought we were expecting and we were really excited, and then it just wasn't the case. And so after that first year, I went back for my physical and was hoping that this physical was the one where we were doing the ultrasound and preparing for a very different conversation.

And it wasn't. And I thought, maybe I've missed something. Maybe in all the articles I've read, the statistics I've read, my doctor's going to tell me, actually, it's not a big deal, and here's the next thing, and it's not a problem at all.

You just have to do this or that, and everything's going to be fine. And so I didn't have my husband go with me or anything. And so when the end of the conversation landed with, yeah, you need to see a specialist.

You need to go in and see someone who specializes in fertility. My heart sank. I just was disoriented. I couldn't even kind of figure out, how did we get here?

How did this happen? And so I stumbled out to the car, I called my husband, and I told him, I said, well, the next step is actually for us to see a specialist. And I don't remember what he said. It was probably something positive because he's a half glass full kind of guy. But I remember I had tears just floating over my face, wishing that I would have had him go with me so he could drive. But that was the beginning for us of this conversation that I had no context for. I had never considered infertility.

Not really. I had never imagined the word barren in my story. I don't think any women really do sit in the chapter of, well, what if we do go down this road? And I think we don't put ourselves in stories that we don't want to happen for these maybe magical fears that we have.

If I think about it, it'll happen. So this recommendation that you move to a specialist, are you still thinking, well, okay, they'll be able to diagnose what's going on and fix things. Right. That was certainly my husband's perspective. He was like, check the box, get the number, let's set the appointment, let's go do this, what do we need to do? And that was helpful for me to keep it that clean and that clear and not get, you know, in the bog of emotion.

I was just moving around in kind of a shock. And so I did, I set up the appointment, went to the appointment, and the staff were wonderful. They were caring people and they sketched out for us what our options were and what those paths could look like.

And encouraged us to reach out to some people who had experienced each of those paths to find out what that was like and kind of put some skin on it. And so we left and we made plans to start the IUI journey, which is the interuterine insemination. So it required a little bit of medication. It wasn't as intensive as IVF as far as medication is concerned. But you don't know your body.

You don't know how things are going to react. So there was some anxiety around that. But that was our first efforts was IUI. And we did two rounds of that. And honestly, you know, I stepped into that starting to get hopeful again, thinking, well, surely this will work now.

You know, surely this is what we needed and it'll just be really quick. And thought it would take the first time and it didn't. And then thought, well, you know, he does up to three rounds.

So maybe the second round is it. And the second time came. And so then I thought, well, third one's a charm.

This has got to be it. And then he called, the doctor called and said, we're not going to do that third round because we're pretty suspicious. You have endometriosis and we really recommend you having surgery because it's not going to make a difference for you if we keep pursuing this path. And that was another heartbreak. Just, you know, here I was, a women's ministry director at our church. I was over women's and moms ministries. I was doing a lot for women who were expecting and to have this feel like a dead end road. And now I'm going into surgery.

And what does this mean? Heather, what an emotional roller coaster. And I was medicated. Oh, hormonally. I was hormonally medicated. So I don't know if the hormones made me any crazier than I already was.

I didn't really need a lot of help at that point. And where was God in this? What were you feeling? I certainly wondered.

Yeah, I certainly wondered. And I had had a few points in my journey and I shared this in the first book that I wrote that really tells more of my faith journey. I had hit some crisis of faith moments, you know, where I, all that I thought I knew of God met suffering and then got to hear his voice in truth and in love and in stability and giving me assurances of his presence. And so this was this was one of those moments where I had to meet him again and I had to reframe how I was experiencing him and seeing him and align it with what is true about him and not let the pain and the suffering shape him into something less than he is. What did your prayer sound like?

My prayer continued to be the same. And it started in my 20s when I was single and I saw my family just shrinking from death and divorce. I was working in a law practice and had found out about another loss in my family. And I went and I sat at a park and I swung on the swings and I said, God, you know that my longing is for family. You know that my longing is to be married and to have children and to have a big family where we can grow and pass down stories of your faithfulness.

And I just feel like you're taking them away. And the dream of being married and having children, it just seems to be getting farther and farther the older that I get. And a prayer was put into my heart. Pray that I would grow your family in quality and in quantity. And that became my prayer. Father, I pray you would grow my family in quality and in quantity. And when we got married, that was our prayer.

Grow us in quality and in quantity. And so during this time, I kept bringing that prayer back to him. Father, you've been faithful to grow me in quantity with a husband. You've been growing us in quality, growing in our faith in you. But I feel like I need to push further in this prayer.

And it was during this infertility journey that I felt like he shifted that prayer and he said, that is my heart. That is my heart. You grow my family in quality and in quantity. This is what I want for my family. I want them to grow and you grow my family.

I'll grow yours. And I didn't feel like it was a quid pro quo that he was promising me children. But I did believe that God was giving me a vision for something bigger than the story I was wanting him to sit in with me. That I was wanting him to just give me a baby and he was wanting to give me more than that. He was wanting to rescue me from a small story and help me see this bigger family and this bigger dream that he had for his kingdom. And for me in it, if I would be willing to trust him. Yet at that point, I mean, you didn't know.

I had no idea. We're looking back a little bit, but in that moment, you're wrestling. Now you sort of have clarity, but take us through, because that didn't happen in one prayer or one day in a park. It was a long journey. Keep going.

Yeah. So, you know, where was God in this? I felt like he was calling me to trust him with no answers.

Trust him with no baby, trust him with no solutions as far as I saw them. And I didn't share that with a lot of people because it felt kind of trite. You know, it felt like, oh, this is a Jesus answer, but there's nothing really here about it.

She's denying her pain. I felt incredible pain and I had lots of grief and lots of sorrow going on that I was getting out with God and with my husband. But went into surgery, came out of surgery, was back again expecting this to fix all of our problems. It was reproductively. And they said that after that kind of surgery, you're most fertile for those next six months.

This is going to be the time that you would conceive if you did it all. And so we had hope again that this is going to happen. And right out of the gates, again, we thought, oh, maybe this is happening. We had some signs of it and then there weren't, you know, then it was shut down again. And I was tracking along at this time with some family members and one of them got pregnant immediately and had other friends getting pregnant. And so, you know, it's just like when you want something, then you see everybody else has it.

It was kind of that dynamic going on too. So we went through the six months with no baby and we came back to the table of, okay, now what? And my husband and I, again, back to that adoption, the story before we got married, I knew that God had put that desire in my heart and my husband was open to it, but I did not want to do anything unless it was a joy overflowing his heart.

This wasn't something that I wanted to sell my husband on. You know, this is something I had seen and heard wisdom enough to know to wait until my husband was 100% on board, excited about it, because I didn't want any resentment to be there down the road. And so I'm so grateful for that wisdom that was passed down to me because it was a huge help for our family, for our marriage. But during that time, we came back even to the table to consider IVF. And so ironically, within the same month, April of 2013, we had two appointments scheduled. We had one appointment with an adoption agency scheduled to be able to find out for our region what do next steps look like for us down that road. And then we also had an appointment scheduled with the infertility specialist to consider IVF.

And so we went into the adoption agency meeting feeling pretty confident that this is probably going to be a really positive experience and we'll get a lot of good information. And it actually ended up being horrible. It was a horrible experience, just very hard on our souls to be in that room.

A lot of the families that were in there already had biological children. The language just pinged all over us. It was a very – we had sensitive hearts going into it. We were tenderhearted. We were wounded.

We were vulnerable. And so it was just – it was a very hard environment to be in talking so loosely about adding children to your family. And, oh, we've already got two kids.

We just want to add another one. And, whew, that was just a hard space. And then finding out statistics and weights and then all of the hurdles we would have to clear. It had been a long time since I practiced adoption law and a lot of things had changed. And so just looking at the road ahead, it felt daunting and it felt long and it felt overwhelming. And lots of steps along the way just require a lot of you that – just a lot of things to consider. And so we left there and we went through a Chick-fil-A drive-through and I ordered all the French fries.

I mean all of them. Because that cures everything. That was how I was handling some of my pain during that season. So I ate all the French fries that night and then we went back home and we tabled that. And then we had the other appointment for IVF that I just had assumed, well, this is not going to go well.

And it's going to be super clear we're supposed to go back to adoption. And we went to that and it was actually a wonderful appointment. It was very pleasant. It was not as scary as I thought it would be. It was very informative, very encouraging, very hopeful. And so here it was not what I thought. I thought this was going to be our off-ramp from infertility treatment and on-ramp into adoption.

And the data and the experiences were really not making the path very clear. And so my husband and I, we decided to table the issue for two weeks and not talk about it at all. I'm guessing it was the talk of every day, right, before that? Every room, every space, every meal. To not talk about it was the most uncomfortable thing because we were just consumed with that conversation.

Our family, our friends, people would ask. And so when we went into the two-week holding pattern to not talk about it, to just give ourselves the space to talk about everything but that issue, God knew that I probably would not obey our boundaries well. And so he took Jonathan far away to a river in the middle of the country that had no cell phone service at all with some of his friends for half of that two-week period.

And so he was out there on the middle of a river in a boat between two men that he's known for years for a good part of our two-week window. Meanwhile, for me, every single day, everywhere I went, even though I wouldn't bring up the conversation, the conversation was steered to adoption in some way. I would hear something, see something, someone would bring something up, and I wouldn't even bring it up, and it would be about adoption. And so that was happening for me every single day. And for him, without me knowing, it was happening for him too.

Even out on that boat in between those two men, they're sitting there fishing, and the one guy in the back shows his cell phone and says, hey, look at this. This is my son. And Jonathan said, your son? You're an empty nester.

What are you talking about? He's like, well, we're adopting him from Haiti. Isn't he beautiful? And then the guy at the front of the boat that my husband had known forever, he said, you don't know this, but I'm adopted.

That is so awesome. And Jonathan said, I'm out of the boat. He was like, everything in me was wanting to jump out of the boat. He's like, I was surrounded, literally surrounded. And so when he came home from his trip, I was sitting there trying to hold my hands and not, you know, blurt out everything that had been happening to me for two weeks. But he came home from his trip, and he's unpacking, and he's telling me about the drive.

And so I'm waiting and waiting and waiting. And finally he says, well, he says, I know one thing. He said, God's called us to adopt.

And I said, hooray. And I think for me, it wasn't just that it was because we're going to adopt. It was that God has been faithful.

Look at what God has done. He has given us direction. We were so torn. We had no idea.

We could not trust the road signs. The experiences we were having were telling us conflicting things, and he has overridden everything and made it simple for simple people. Heather, I want to go back to that cycle that you were in that some of our listeners are in right now. That is the cycle of a month of hopefulness and longing and expectation and then disappointment and grieving that happens month after month after month when you're thinking, I want to be a mom.

We want to be parents. Maybe this is the month. We think this is the month. Maybe there are those signs and then all of a sudden you have your period and you go, okay, this wasn't the month, and you're in tears again and wondering, how long do we go through this? How do you counsel a woman today who's in that moment to handle the hope and the grief and the emotional cycle that she's in?

Yeah. Well, and I get those women, and they sit in my basement with me on a couch and we cry and we grieve and we cry out like David did, how long, O Lord? How long, O Lord? And I think that's a big thing that if I could go back to Heather back in those months when it was just up and down, up and down, whiplash of the soul, just really having a hard time orienting where do I put my hope? Where do I hang this thing because this thing's falling off the rack every month, and seeing that I can hang my hope on a God who weeps. He weeps with me. I don't have to hold my tears back.

I don't have to be a woman of this rock-solid faith that just believes he's good even when everything around me feels bad. And I think just creating that space for someone to really hate it and to say and to help her put language to it, I hate this. So you're helping her lament.

Yes, yes, and I think we need that. I mean, even in the Old Testament, it says call the wailing women, and those women are to train up other women in wailing. And I feel like, man, if we wailed better, if we wailed more.

Like Hannah. Yes, if we wailed, if we brought our lament to God, she took it to the temple. If we bring our grief to God, it's this offering of I want to be yielded to you, but this is killing me. And that is what's happening. There's a death of self.

There's a death of will there. And I hear both of you saying don't do this on your own. No. Don't go through this cycle and this process on your own. You need some women alongside you who will be the wailing women with you and go through this journey with you. And that is not my nature. It is not my nature to experience vulnerability with another woman. I have my own issues, my own story. Like a lot of us, we have our wounds and those moments where we kind of feel like I'll never be able to trust my heart in this context. And so for me to come into a space with another woman and share with her this vulnerable grief, this doubt that I have of God's goodness, especially if I'm carrying this sense of failure, you know, failure to conceive. I failed. You know, that's a heavy weight.

My personality doesn't wear that well. And so to come into a vulnerable position with another woman and say, I feel like a failure and I am angry and I'm embarrassed that I'm angry. I feel like a Christian woman is not allowed to be angry. I feel like I'm wanting to control something and yet I'm wanting to be a woman who yields. And I don't even know where to put my hope anymore.

And I say that Jesus resurrects dead things and yet this feels like it's too powerful for him. And so to have a space with another person that I can be that open with in the beginning didn't feel safe. And it didn't feel like they could handle my declarations of doubt in a mature way that they would still trust that I was secure in who God was, but I was in that place a dark night of the soul, I guess you could say. And what are the things as a friend that we shouldn't say in that moment as we're listening to our friend lament who's struggling with it? As I respond, what are the things you would coach us saying?

Don't say this because sometimes we don't know what to say or how to help our friend who is going through infertility or has lost a child or has had a miscarriage. One of the beautiful things that Jesus offers us is empathy, that he sits in our skin. He feels it with us.

He says he's the high priest and that he is who mediates between us and God and he came to be human, to feel the heaviness of what we feel and that he was tempted in every way and yet he didn't sin. And so he can sit with us in that struggle, but I think the real gift that the body of Christ gives us is it embodies that incarnation of God, that Christ in the body, that we get to sit in our skin together. That when you come and you just sit with me in that pain and you listen, you attune to my emotion and you reflect it and you say, you are so disappointed right now, aren't you? I think what our listeners need to hear us recognizing is what I started to recognize as a young husband watching my wife grieve this.

The pain of this is real. The questions are questions that we won't get answered on this side of heaven. We've got to learn to be okay with not knowing the purposes of God in some of these situations. And ultimately, this is a question of do we trust him with the story he's writing or do we say if his story is not our story, we reject him because we're committed to our story and not to his story. And I will just tell you, pursuing your story and rejecting God is not the path to liberation and freedom and joy.

It's a path of destruction that you put yourself on. Ultimately, you have to get to a place where you say, even though I don't understand what's going on here, even though this is contrary to the longings of my own heart and soul, I will trust God. I think of Job, whose wife came to him and said, with all of the stuff that's going on in our lives, why don't you just curse God and die?

And he said, though he slay me, still will I trust him. And Heather, we're offering to our listeners this week your book, which is called A Mother of Thousands from Baron to Revolutionary. I'm thinking of listeners who are tuned in and they go, this is not my story, but I know someone. I have a friend at church or someone in the office who is in the middle of this difficult journey, who needs to hear from God on this. Get a copy of Heather's book, A Mother of Thousands, and give it to your friend as a gift. We are making it available this week to those of you who can support the Ministry of Family Life with a donation. We depend on those donations to be able to continue the work of this daily program. Your support is making these kinds of conversations possible for hundreds of thousands of people every day who tune in to listen to Family Life Today on their local radio station, via podcast, on our app. Wherever they find us, you make that possible when you support the Ministry of Family Life today. So if you can help with the donation, be sure to ask for a copy of Heather DeJesus Yates' book, A Mother of Thousands from Baron to Revolutionary. It's our thank you gift to you when you support the work of Family Life Today. You can do that online at FamilyLifeToday.com, or you can donate by calling 1-800-FL-TODAY. 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word Today. Now tomorrow, we're going to continue to follow Heather DeJesus Yates on the journey God took her on from infertility ultimately to adoption. We'll hear more about that tomorrow.

Hope you can tune in for that. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back tomorrow for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas. A crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.