Healing a Barren Heart

This week is infertility awareness week. I personally know quite a few women who have struggled with this for various lengths of time, and my heart hurts for them. This is one reason I asked my friend, Jasmin Howell, to write a chapter for my book on her own journey with infertility. Below is an excerpt from that chapter, and I pray her story will be an encouragement to you.
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All my life I had believed that God was good, and my life experiences up to that point had seemed to confirm my belief.

Mine had been a life of relative ease and happiness. In that context, it was easy to believe God’s Word and trust Him. Now, however, my faith was being put to the test. Suddenly, I found that all my belief and trust hinged on one question that I kept asking over and over: Is He good to me? Could I still believe He loved me when He seemed to be callously withholding the single greatest desire of my heart [having a child], while forcing me to watch as He generously poured out abundant blessings on the women around me? This seemed unbearably cruel.

I began wallowing in hopelessness and indulging in self-pity, while finding it harder and harder to pray. Meanwhile, my Bible lay unopened.

I honestly tried to rejoice with those who were rejoicing, though I was mourning inside, but pain battered my heart with every baby shower I attended and every piece of conception advice I received from a well-meaning friend (“Have you tried such-and-such?”). I was feeling unloved and unchosen, and my empty womb was my evidence. The roots of these thoughts continued to grow in strength until I could no longer remember what the seed had been. 

The temptation was intense to completely withdraw—from God, my church, my husband, my friends and family. I began closing myself off from the Lord’s comfort and letting my grief swallow me instead. My heart, previously so tender and responsive to the working of the Lord, now grew cold and hard as I kept asking, Is He good to me? To my eyes, all the evidence seemed to say no. 

I didn’t even realize I was asking the wrong question.

When I did manage to open my Bible, I kept stumbling across verses about the blessings of motherhood, birth, and family. These only discouraged me further, none more so than Psalm 127:3, “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.” Through the broken lens of my hurt and anger, the implications of this verse seemed so harsh: The Lord gave children to those He wanted to reward, to those who were deserving, but somehow, my husband and I had been . . . what, disqualified? 

Now, not only was I grieving, but I was angry. The darkness I was descending into scared me, but I had no idea what to do about it. Those roots had their tendrils wrapped around my heart, and I couldn’t disentangle myself.

The Uprooting

I am so thankful for the Lord’s grace and mercy. Despite my unrighteous, self-centered anger, He was working to gently draw me back to Himself. And in a single moment, one very early morning in December of that year, my heart began to melt. 

The night before had been one of the worst of my life. I had been up late and, in a scene reminiscent of Genesis 30:1–2, was furiously venting to my husband in much the same way Rachel exploded at her husband Jacob, saying “Give me children, or I shall die!” Like a too-full pot boiling over, my anger suddenly overflowed in a scalding torrent. I spewed out terrible things that night. Afterward, I cried myself to sleep, feeling utterly hopeless and lost. My husband was at a loss too. He grieved for me and prayed for me but knew he could not fix this. 

The next morning, in the very early hours, I climbed out of bed and padded to the dark living room, watching as the gas fireplace flickered in the darkness like the tiny spark of faith still burning in me. The anger of the night before had turned to shame and sorrow. I didn’t want to be like this. I desperately wanted to be free from the oppression I felt in my spirit, but I didn’t know how.

In Romans 8:26, the apostle Paul explains how the Holy Spirit “helps us in our weakness.” When we don’t know what to pray for, “the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” My spirit burdened and weary, I had truly had come to the end of myself. I certainly did not know how to pray or what to ask for, but in my weakness and uncertainty, I opened my Bible for the first time in months to Proverbs and began reading in chapter 30, as it was the thirtieth day of the month. I can see clearly now how the Spirit guided me to this chapter, both for my freedom and His glory. 

My eyes settled on two verses that changed my life drastically:

There are three things that are never satisfied, four never say, “Enough!”: the grave, the barren womb, the earth that is not satisfied with water—and the fire never says, “Enough!” (Proverbs 30:15–16, nkjv, emphasis mine).

This passage speaks of four things that can never be filled: Hades, or the world of the dead; the barren womb, which cannot host life; the parched desert, whose thirst can never be quenched; and the rampant fire, which consumes everything in its path, always hungry for more. The Hebrew word translated here as barren is synonymous with prison restraints and oppression.

I had been feeling so unloved and lonely, so captivated by the lie that I was rejected, an outcast whose prayers went unheard. But as I read this verse, I had instant understanding as only God can give, and I saw the significance of the verse, as though a veil had been lifted from my eyes.

The phrase “the barren womb” seemed to leap off the page, just as I also saw that it was surrounded by three other concepts: hell, a desert, and a consuming fire. As I read the passage again, the Lord helped me see so clearly: The yawning pit of my empty womb could rob me of abundant life, put me in chains, burn up my joy, and give the devil a foothold in my life—if I let it.

Oh, the great love of the Lord! In His lovingkindness, He brought me to this verse to pierce the darkness with the light of truth and turn my feet to another path. I now saw the seed of the lie that had been planted months ago—that I was unloved and rejected—and how I had allowed it to grow into my sinful anger. And in a moment of great compassion, God snatched up the lie by the roots and threw it into the flames of hell where it belonged. Undeniable truth filled its place: I was so deeply loved, with the kind of love a parent shows when he urgently warns his child not to put her hand into a fire. Coming across that verse wasn’t a cozy hug, and it didn’t give me warm fuzzies. It startled me and grabbed my attention with the seriousness of its consequences. It sharply changed my focus and led me to safety. 

And you know what? My anger left, along with the lie. The tangible presence of the Holy Spirit and the comfort of the Word were a healing balm. My once-barren heart began to grow new life, as the Lord planted seeds of truth in place of the lies I had entertained. He showed me that even what seems like a barren place still holds great potential for beauty in His hands:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus; it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. (Isaiah 35:1-2)

Now I knew with certainty that I was not alone, that the Lord wanted to use my journey of infertility for a purpose, and that He had a plan to give hope and bring forth beauty even within these present hardships. He would not harm me through these circumstances but was with me in them, though He had not removed me from them for purposes far beyond my comprehension (Jeremiah 29:11).

– Jasmin Howell

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Jasmin is wife to Mike and mom to their precious adopted son Declan. And, miraculously in January 2020 they found out they are expecting after 13 years of marriage! Jasmin wears many hats along with wife and mama – she’s is a writer, a singer, a realtor, a teacher, a quilter, a sweater-lover, and all-round fun person to be around. You can follow along on her journey through her Instagram.

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