Fertility & Faith

I was raised in the Southern Baptist church where all things are divinely intended at all times. The slogan of my home church could have been "God doesn't make mistakes." No pregnancy is an accident, and if you can't have a child, it's because God has said, "Not yet."

As a child, that all made sense, but as an adult breaching 2 years of TTC, that's a hard pill to swallow. That's not just because our family hasn't had the baby we so desperately want. Faith would be so easy if it were just people who want babies not having them.

The disgusting pill comes in the form of headlines like "Couple charged in the torture of their 13 children," or "Mother threatened to cut her kids' throats."

These are real examples that have been in the news in the past 3 months. And they don't stop. Parents torturing, threatening, and killing their children grace the headlines on a regular basis, and it just seems unfair that these terrible people have been blessed with so many children that they then abuse when we want to love just one (maybe two).

And I want to be clear. My mother taught me that "fair is a four-letter word, and it starts with /f/ too."

I know life isn't fair. And I know that, even in the most liberal retellings of religion, God doesn't give you every little thing that you want. 

But my churches taught me that God is just. That God is kind. And it feels like, currently, He is neither. 

Every day, I read forums and Facebook threads from women who desperately want a child. They pray for a child.They beg God for a child and in the meantime, people who don't want children and/or will abuse those given to them have plenty. And that's when I start wondering about a God that would allow that kind of pain on all fronts.

Is it more likely that fertility and therefore pregnancy is determined at random or by scientific means than by a [supposedly] benevolent higher being?

I'm not saying I'm giving up on God. I'm just saying that it's very hard keeping the faith in the midst of all of this.

How do you keep the faith? Or has infertility broken you?