A Lion's Roar

I’m not sure I want to walk down this path for a second time this day, but I was asked to by a friend.

There was a line in a song we sang at church this morning about the lion roaring. We passed on to the next line and I stopped singing. The lion might be roaring, said the heart in me, but we are not giving it space and we are not listening. It’s just a line in a song. Nice words, maybe. But we were not stopping to listen to the lion’s roar.

I think there should be a ban on men with children preaching about barren women. Maybe there should be a ban too on women with children speaking about barrenness. See, they are not qualified.

Isaiah 54 begins ‘Sing, barren woman, you who never bore a child; burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labour; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband,” says the Lord.’

The preacher  began speaking and I knew I had to say something. I didn’t particularly want to say something mostly because I knew I would start crying and I hate crying before an audience.

‘You want to know about barren women?’ I asked. I pointed to myself, ‘ Here is one.’ There seems to be something almost insulting to faith to have a barren woman in a faith-filled church. It doesn’t sit right. God is a God of miracles, right? So where is the baby? Where was the faith to conceive the baby and bring it to birth?

The tears came, as I knew they would as I explained about discovering early on in our marriage that we couldn’t have children. The verse from Isaiah was spoken over us so many times. And | stubbornly burst into song and I waited for the child to come.

My husband and I walked the path of fertility treatment. Once a month, we dropped everything to drive out to Aberdeen for procedures that became increasingly more obtrusive. We climbed aboard a rollercoaster of hopeful highs followed by downright miserable despair.

Twice I conceived and twice I miscarried. Meanwhile, babies were popping out, left, right and centre for other couples. I did not hide. I didn’t crawl under a blanket and give church a miss. Did not the sunlight and the rain fall on the wicked and the righteous alike? The question, ‘Why me?’ always came out as, ’Why not me?’  We live in a broken world, in a spiritual war zone and people get caught in the crossfire. That is how I understood it. We have this idea that we are entitled to certain things. We have a right. But I don’t think we do. Not really. Things just happen. Bad things happen to good people. Christians are not immune.

There came a time, in the shuttling back and forth to Aberdeen, when God said, ‘Stop!’

Let’s be clear here, I didn’t give up and lose faith. I obeyed His ‘Stop!’ There is a stubbornness about people. They want something and they keep pressing and pressing and doing endless damage to a heart and a soul. We place all of our hopes on one thing, a child perhaps, and it doesn’t happen. Much as I read about Hannah and her prayers, she did not comfort me. My story didn’t have her ending.

Then I gave birth. Not to a child.

I conceived and gave birth to a poem.

Creativity is in us all. We are made in the image of God. Creativity is God’s DNA inside us. I never had children. Not like Hannah. It was never a lack of faith, like some folks insisted. It was simply that my children were something other than seven pounds of flesh and bone dressed in a baby grow.

Poetry is what I create. Words strung together that speak a message to a hungry heart. Some poems come easily. They write themselves and my part is to hold the pen. Other poems are not so easy. There is a kind of labour needed and strained pushing to bring it to birth.

God does not leave His children barren.

I don’t see myself as barren. Not really. I don’t have children and it hurts a lot that I will never be the mother of the bride or the bridegroom. I will never sing a lullaby to a grandchild. But you know what? You are probably never going to write a poem that stirs like my poems do. You are never going to spend hours hunting down the right word, the one that fits. You are probably never going to spend a weekday afternoon planning a creative writing workshop at the weekend. Some of you might. Some of you might juggle motherhood with writing poetry.

I am at peace with who I have become and with what God has given me to do. Motherhood is not my gift. I am Go's poet and it is enough.

And you? Are you at peace too?

And the lion's roar? It's in each of us as we share our storries.