Then God Remembered Rachel

When you are trying to have a baby and it's not happening, you want answers. If you are a spiritual person (and even if you aren't) you will eventually get around to asking God, "Yo, God! What up!? What's takin' so long?" (Okay, maybe you throw in some of the more formal "thee's and thou's". But the Lord and I are BFF's so we hang like that.)

Since my BFF is notoriously tight lipped in the absence of flaming foliage, I did what most people dealing with infertility do. I scanned the Bible for every verse on infertility, pregnancy and miraculous birth I could find in search of a clue.

The one of the first ones I found was in the book of Genesis. Chapter 30, verses 22 and 23. To give you a quick Sunday School refresher. Rachel and Leah were the two wives of Jacob. God blessed Leah with many sons but for a long time Rachel could not conceive. She was so desperate to have a child that she even offered her maid Bilhah as a surrogate. But adopting Bilhah's children as her own didn't really fill the need. She was still a woman without a child. But then something happened.

"Then God remembered Rachel..."

When I first read that verse, something shook loose inside me. I realized something that I had been feeling but couldn't put my finger on it. It's something I think all couples... but especially the women feel when they try to get pregnant but can't.

You feel forgotten.

But the thing is you don't feel forgotten by your parents who remind you how nice it would be to have a grandchild. You don't feel forgotten by family members who want to know when you two are going to have kids. You don't feel forgotten by your friends who invite you to all the baby showers and first birthday parties. You certainly don't feel forgotten by your gynecologist who reminds you (as mine did when we first started trying) "don't wait too long." And your spouse hasn't forgotten (how could he with you yelling at him to remember to pick up another box of Ovulation predictor pee sticks on his way home?)

No. You feel forgotten by GOD.

The Creator of Life has forgotten that you wanted in on the Miracle Factory. It's like He got so busy He overlooked you when He was sprinkling the Baby Dust on all your friends. You keep thinking He's going to come back your way but He never does. You watch your friends kids learn to walk and talk. Next thing you know they are enrolled in kindergarten. Heck, some of my cousin's have kids in Junior High!

And I feel... Forgotten. By. God.

So I read that verse as a promise in a way. That somehow... some way... eventually God will remember me.