Shannon Costello

Sometimes my faith gets thin and I break through the crust and find myself in danger of falling, falling…

I have a tendency to imagine conversations with people.  They are generally not healthy conversations.  This one was the standard “have-you-considered-adoption” conversation (not intended to be offensive, of course, and not really considered offensive- I think it is a “let’s solve your problem” question as opposed to a “weep with those who weep” response which, as you can tell from my biased labeling, is what I wish I were better at doing for others, just listening to people…but I’m not going to go off the deep end over that- I’ll find something else :)).  Anyway, this was one of those break-through moments, when I shock myself with the strength and bitterness of my own reaction:  Don’t you realize that God doesn’t want everybody to have children?  (small sob appended here)

In case my meaning isn’t coming through here, I spoke as if God deliberately withholds children from some people just to do it, without any concern as to that person’s feelings on the matter…that God doesn’t care and behaves arbitrarily with individuals, like we are mere pawns on a chess board, easily sacrificed and scarcely missed- even those who are His. In those moments I feel like God has somehow betrayed me and I hurt. Whoa!  Talk about being dreadfully (sinfully?) wrong…

I lose perspective…so focused on what God hasn’t given me that I ignore what He has given.  Peter writes that we “through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation [there's a gift to think about and contrast with that of a child] that is ready to be revealed in the last time.  In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  These have come so that your faith- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire- may be proved genuine…”

I’ve been thinking about that candy store analogy- a father denies his child a certain piece of candy and she looks back after it longingly, but he has something better for her at the back of the store.  This helped me when I was unmarried and still looking, but it is not so useful now, I think because it is such a hopeful analogy- it assume God does in fact have a spouse in mind for a given individual.  It doesn’t always work that way.  And it has to be ok that it doesn’t if I am to have a healthy relationship with God.  The analogy may also assume that God withholds some things because they are bad for you.  It is not reasonable for me to assume that I have no children because I would make a bad mother or because I sinned by being on birth control (or something unrelated).  It is reasonable to assume that this is a testing of my faith (boy oh boy is it!) intended to develop perseverance, to fit me to handle being in the presence of God for eternity.