The Birds and the Bees, Babies and Me
My new article at Christianity Today on childlessness
I’ve written a handful of times over the years about my infertility and childlessness. But when Christianity Today asked me to write a longer reflection on the subject for their March/April print issue, I realized that it had been a while since I’d done so, and that I’d never written a feature-length article on this subject. I eagerly said yes and spent a few weeks last fall writing, revising, editing—and praying over my words.
I felt the Lord’s grace over my writing, and then when I saw the illustrations in progress, I felt that grace once again. It is a gift as a writer to work with a team—editor, proofreaders, artists, publication. It’s kind of like making a child—it’s a team effort, and there are a lot of ways things can go wrong—and a lot of ways in which God’s grace hovers over and in and through it all, no matter the outcome.
I am giving a bit of an excerpt from my essay here, but I hope you will click on this gift link and read the whole article. Thank you, friends. You, too, a gift of grace when you honor me by reading my words.
I spent a lot of time thinking about the birds and the bees while growing up. I was raised in a rural community as the child and grandchild of farmers. I helped oversee the births of kittens, chickens, rabbits, and one horse. Later, as a college student, I worked at a farm that bred and trained show horses. At times, I was called on to assist in the breeding of mares, the collection of semen from stallions for use in artificial insemination, and the castration of colts. On the farm, we had no doubts about how and when a new life began because we spent so much time trying to facilitate, manage, and control it. The facts of life were all around us every day.
The barn housed one stallion, a stunning steel-gray Arabian. He’d been brought to the farm with hopes he’d sire more progeny from his coveted lineage, but alas, he turned out to be sterile. He didn’t know it though, and whenever a mare was led past his stall, he’d prance about with flared nostrils, arched neck, and flourishing tail. As his past and present owners battled out their legal and financial claims, his fate remained in limbo. Once, I got to exercise him by galloping through the wooded trails that wound around the outskirts of the farm. It was the most exhilarating ride of my life. Like most stallions, he had to be turned out alone and housed in a stall set apart lest he be constantly worked up by the other horses. His was a lonely life.
Like other animals, human beings are subject to nature’s laws. In the realm of mere nature, reproduction is a biological, mechanical, and utilitarian affair. Yet when it comes to human reproduction, so much more than science, biology, and nature are involved. Being made in God’s own likeness and image, humans are more than natural beings. To bear or not to bear a child is a matter that touches on all that it means to be human: not just our biology but also our personal desires, drives, hopes, expectations, and fears—all these wrapped up in our social and familial contexts, traditions, and assumptions.
Again, here’s the link to the rest of the article.
Thank you, Karen, for this beautiful article and making it available to us. We have so many couples in our church struggling with infertility. I was beginning to think it was something in the water here in Radford. So many aching hearts looking for answers. I had no idea of its prevalence, only the heartache in young men and women with empty arms. How do we minister to them (without the clichés)? Anyway, thank you for sharing your heart.
Karen, my parents were not supposed to have children. When they were tested for the cause of their infertility, and it was established that it was a male issue, without medical treatment, they were told, children were not in their future, but they declined treatment. So, the four children my parents ended up having were all unforeseen gifts.
I, and my siblings, grew up knowing this. My parents' story made the struggles that the patriarchs in Genesis had with fertility entirely understandable to me as a child. We knew several elderly couples who never had children - one such couple was the elderly pastor, whom I have mentioned as beneficially influencing my spiritual development, and his wife. To us, childless couples, and singles, were just another part of the community of God - as children with our parents, we used to regularly visit one such couple when they became too fragile to come to church, and then, when the wife passed away, visit the widower left behind, until he passed away.
It has been a concern of mine for a while that the lifelong childless and the lifelong singles are being forgotten in their declining years by churches. I have tried to show care and friendship to those I knew, but in the past couple of years, declining health and energy has made that more difficult. I know what it is to wonder what my declining years will look like without children, although some of the health problems I've had recently make it seem as if I may already be approaching that point (all the physicians have been staring at me in concern and saying I shouldn't be having such problems already at my age). Thank you for speaking out about the need for care of the childless - I hope many heed your words and act with care towards those without children in their communities.