The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast

Kaley Olson:
Hi friends, thanks for tuning into the Proverbs 31 Ministries podcast, where we share biblical truth for any girl in any season. I'm your host Kaley Olson, and I'm here with my cohost, Meredith Brock.

Meredith Brock:
Well, hi Kaley, I am so excited to record with you today because over the next three weeks on our podcasts, we're doing something we've never done before, tackling the subject that we've never tackled before, and I am really, really excited about it. We'll be releasing three episodes, covering infertility, miscarriage, infant loss and postpartum. Our goal with this series is to meet you where you're at. If you're currently experiencing this or have walked through this in the past, or maybe you have a friend who's walking through it, we want to point you to scripture and ultimately point you to the hope we have in Christ in times of suffering and confusion and heartache.

Kaley Olson:
Yeah, absolutely. That's really the heartbeat of why we do what we do here at Proverbs. As we know so many people come to us as a resource for the struggles that they're facing. So we're excited that the series can be a resource for women who are in the middle of that season right now. Meredith, we're not doing this alone, we've got —

Meredith Brock:
That's right.

Kaley Olson:
Two incredible ladies are here to help guide our time together over the next three weeks. You guys are going to love them. One, you already know, her name is Wendy Blight, and she currently works with us at Proverbs 31 as our online Bible studies Biblical Content Specialists. You guys might also know her from First 5 back in the day, or because she's been on the podcast or because she's the author of a few books and Bible studies. Wendy, you do a lot, but you're here today because you're a biblical expert and you're going to guide our time together as we process these hard topics, and really point us to the hope that we find in God's Word.

And you guys, if you want to connect with Wendy on Instagram, you can do that @WBlight or just search Wendy Blight, I'm sure her name will come up. Then I'm so excited to introduce a new friend; her name is Rachael Elmore. Welcome, Rachael.

Rachael Elmore:
Thank you.

Kaley Olson:
Rachael, I'm so glad you're here. I looked up all of your titles on your website and I just picked one, and the one that I went with was licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor Supervisor. Wow. Meredith, she's got a longer title than you do.

Meredith Brock:
I think so.

Kaley Olson:
That's amazing. But with 17 years of experience in the counseling world, and you've got several areas of expertise. But one thing that I love about what I've learned about you is that your passion is to help mamas with the tools they need to be emotionally healthy, whether they're walking through infertility, miscarriage or dealing with postpartum depression. So, you share a lot of helpful tips on your Instagram over @theauthoredtherapist, and I'm so excited that you're going to be here today to speak into this content as well. So, thank you so much [crosstalk 00:02:59]

Rachael Elmore:
Thank you so much. I'm so excited to get to be here with you guys and hang out and talk about all of these really important topics together.

Kaley Olson:
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Well, Meredith and I, as we were getting into planning around this series, we realized that when we're approaching a topic like today's topic of infertility, we know that in a 45-minute episode, there's only so much that we can cover because there's so much to be covered in this, and we can't do it all. But where do we want to start, and where are the women that are listening to right now who are walking through infertility? What are they struggling with and what do they need to know?

I think it would be really helpful to know, Rachel first, let's talk to you. We know infertility is common among women. I know that I was a woman who struggled with infertility for about two years, but how common is it, actually?

Rachael Elmore:
It's pretty common. In fact, I was reviewing the numbers and it was just surprising that it's 20% of couples. So, when you're sitting in a baby dedication at church and you look around, you know that 20% of couples, at least, even some of them on the stage, but at some point have experienced infertility. So we know that this is not uncommon by any means. I mean, it's far more common than getting a speeding ticket if we look at it with those numbers. So, it's very common, and so we know it's something that's really important to talk about.

Kaley Olson:
Yeah, absolutely.

Meredith Brock:
Yeah. I'll be honest. I didn't realize it was 20%. That's a lot, y'all, and just to think about how rarely, I feel like at least in the circles I am, it's really not talked about much because it feels maybe a little embarrassing for some folks, and like, "Why can't this work for me?" And so, I'm so glad we're talking about it today. This isn't a new struggle, it's been happening for centuries since humans have been around. What's really interesting to me is when we look at scripture, I am vaguely remembering —I'm not a biblical scholar— but there's quite a few stories of infertility in scripture. So Wendy, share a little bit about what we see in scripture and how often we see this in scripture.

Wendy Blight:
Yeah. Well, you're right. I don't think about it very much because it's scattered throughout, but yeah, it's not a new thing. It's called a different word, it's called barrenness or being barren in the Bible, but it's the same thing, that inability to have a baby. It's honestly been around since Genesis, the very beginning. What's interesting about it is, though back in those days, that was a woman's primary role, that's what she was valued for, her ability to have children and most especially to have a male child, to carry on the legacy of the family, to work in the farms and the fields.

So, in that time, in biblical times, that they couldn't conceive, it brought great shame on the woman, as well as her family. The Old Testament has at least six stories that are common names that you know when people talk about scripture, and they either took desperate measures to manipulate their circumstances so they could have a child, even when God had promised them a child— that would be Abraham and Sarah, the best example — to where they let their husbands sleep with another woman so that they could have a child.

But they also cry out to God, and that's another, we're going to just talk about two examples today. But they do things, they get desperate, they do things because a lot of times in that day, the society attributed their infertility to a flaw, a sin or a wrong. That shame that was brought on them, and they were even mocked. We're going to talk about Hannah, who was mocked for not being able to have a baby. So, first, in the story of Sarah and Abraham. Sarah, I alluded to the fact, God had made a promise that they were going to have a child, and Sarah just couldn't wait anymore. So she arranged for her husband, Abraham, to sleep with her maid servant, and her name was Hagar.

And she did that because she didn't trust God that the baby would come, so she wanted to manipulate circumstances and make it happen. So it's a very sad story because when Hagar became pregnant, all of a sudden, Sarah began to resent her, and was cruel to her. The reason I'm going a little more into that story is because it's a picture I want us to remember. Hagar ran away pregnant into the wilderness, and she was devastated and afraid and alone, but God came to her. It says in scripture, he found her, he called her by name. He ministered to her. He gave her promises and he sent her back to be with Abraham and Sarah.

And the beauty in this story is, at the end of the story, Hagar gave God a name, the very first woman, she gave God a name called El Roi, the God who sees me. That is what I want us to cling too, as we move on. But I want to also tell you about Hannah because Hannah was a little different story. She also could not conceive a baby, and she wanted one so desperately. She prayed, she prayed, she cried out to God, and finally she went to the temple and she just threw herself down and she prayed desperately, and God came to her, met her there through a priest named Eli.

So both of these stories are so beautiful because these women ... the word scripture used for Hannah is, she was crushed in spirit. I mean, it's so beautiful to just know that's how broken she was, but they provide this hope that God showed up in different ways in these stories because he saw them, and so as we begin the conversation for the next three episodes, I want us to remember these stories that God sees us and hears us, and he knows us by name and he's with us.

Kaley Olson:
Wendy, that's so good. I think the biggest struggle that I know I experienced when I walked through infertility was the whole waiting game and not knowing like, "Is this month going to be the month, and how long is this going to take?" And what you said a minute ago about these stories of women in the Old Testament, often maybe going into manipulating in their circumstances out of desperation. I don't think that was what I would have called what I was doing, in my own flesh and sinful nature, trying to manipulate my circumstances to get the outcome that I wanted. But I think for anybody who's walking through the struggle right now, waiting is really, really hard because you never know when that is actually going to happen.

And Rachael, I would love for you to be able to speak to maybe this time trap that we find ourselves in, as we're in this cycle of infertility, when our mind and our flesh wants to go and try to manipulate or control, what are the things that we can do to wait well mentally and not go there whenever we're in the season of waiting?

Rachael Elmore:
Oh, what a question, Kaley! But what an important thing for us to be talking about. I've once heard someone say that infertility was the most painful and most expensive roller coaster ride she ever got on. And she was like, "I don't like roller coasters, Rachel." I think I'll never forget that moment as long as I live, because it was such a powerful, tearful representation of what she was experiencing. She didn't want to wait and be on this ride, but she felt very called to be a mom.

I just want to really quite honor that, that waiting stinks, guys. It's not fun. We don't enjoy it in our flesh. We don't enjoy it even, I think, when we're super close to the Lord, we don't like waiting, and waiting on something that we feel is our biological and spiritual calling just stinks. I guess I just would want anyone that's going through infertility or has experienced infertility or loving on somebody with infertility, I would just want them to hear that first, that I hear that, I see that, we see that, and I'm sorry if you're going through that or have gone through that.

I know for myself, when I went through some short infertility for a couple of years, I remember I went to 13 baby showers in one year, and every time somebody else got pregnant, it was hard because it really was the ultimate thief of joy for me, because of the fact I felt like I couldn't be happy for all of my dear friends and family members that were getting pregnant, and here I didn't know if that ever was going to happen for me.

So, just to encourage everyone that's listening that if you feel that way, most every woman I've ever talked to has said those things in herself that way. So I just would want to encourage that, but it is a good question. How do we wait well? And it's a hard pill to swallow, but I usually eventually talk to women about how do we make some goals while still trying to get pregnant? How do we make some non-baby related goals? I don't ever want women to hear that cliche of “well, it'll happen when you stop trying, the moment you file the adoption papers, that's when you're going to get pregnant.”

Women that are infertile really don't like hearing that, they get really frustrated typically. If we've said those things, it's understandable, we're trying to help, but typically that's not the most helpful comment to make. So, just to encourage that it does help to make some goals outside of the ovulation kits that are piling up in the bathroom trash can. It is good to make some goals outside of that during this time, because I firmly believe girls, I firmly believe that we are all called to mother in some capacity. It's just what capacity we end up being a mother. We're all called to love on the girl down the street that's 10 years younger than us that needs a mother figure.

We're all called to be aunts and uncles and ministry leaders. None of us get out of this stuff free, none of us get out of this without being leaders and being a foster mom and being an adoptive mom. I really believe we're all called to mother. It's just what capacity we end up being a mother; that might be biologically, that might be being really involved in ministry. We don't know exactly what that looks like. Even while we're trying to get pregnant, I don't think we get to stop ministering, and I know that for me was very hard, but I use that time to say, "OK God, who else can I pour into right now?"

And that for me was very healing, and for just my personal story, took a lot of the pressure off every baby shower I went to, to not feel that tremendous thief of joy in my heart. I still was full of joy because I had these other things that God was doing in my life during that time.

Kaley Olson:
That's good, Rachael. Let's dig into that, I do have a question though. I love the big overarching goal of being able to love someone else, but if someone were really stuck in that cycle, is there anything that you would have them do on a daily or weekly basis to refocus that life that they need to live elsewhere outside of where they feel so stuck right now? Like you said, ministry doesn't stop but how do they keep track and make sure that they're focusing where they need to focus instead of only thinking about infertility?

Meredith Brock:
I'd love to build on that question a little bit, because I think I didn't go through a long season of infertility, but with my first child, we got pregnant right away. Then with my second child, it took a whole week, it was over a year before of trying. Right. I just remember, every single month when my period would come, it was such a trigger and I would spiral, I would just spiral down and feel so defeated, and I would become, honestly being totally transparent here, obsessive, compulsive about tracking my ovulation. What am I eating? Am I drinking enough water? Am I exercising too much? It was on my mind constantly.

And so, apart from setting those other goals, what are some of those practical things that we can do on that daily, weekly to redirect some of those anxious thoughts and feelings around trying to get pregnant?

Kaley Olson:
That's great, Meredith.

Rachael Elmore:
So even though obviously I'm not diagnosing anyone that's listening necessarily with OCD, it does become, Meredith, an OCD type of a cycle. I actually posted a graphic on my Instagram about it, where with OCD or an OCD related thoughts— so again, I'm not telling everyone you have OCD out there if you've gone through this— is we have the obsession. So here the obsession is, I've got to get pregnant or I've got to be a mom, or I hope I get pregnant. So you would have to fill in the blank for whatever your obsession is.

Then that leads to fear and anxiety. Then that leads to the compulsion, and the compulsion is a set of behaviors. So maybe going through and writing down and looking through your journal and seeing maybe what have I been eating? What have I been drinking? Maybe I need to take another ovulation test. Maybe I need to take another pregnancy test, maybe I need to call these friends or Google it for the rest of the day. So a lot of times, and even just the Googling can be a part of the compulsion.

And then that leads ... For the anxiety, it leads to some temporary relief, but girls, that temporary relief is very fleeting, because that temporary relief lies to us and says that it's fixing the obsession. It is not fixing the obsession. It is giving us some temporary relief, which then leads us back around on that circle, straight back to the top, and we start obsessing all over again. So we're looking at that little four part cycle, and the way that we deal with that is we delay our obsessions or we scheduled our obsessions. And yes ladies, in a perfect world we wouldn't obsess.

Absolutely. We should not make this an idol. I am aware that is completely biblically solid. We do not make this an idol, but if we struggle, what would it be like to schedule an hour a day where you pray, think, journal about your infertility, and the rest of the day you say, "I'm going to think about that from 8:00 to 9:00 p.m. tonight. Or I'm going to think about that from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m., and the rest of the day, I'm not going to obsess. I'm not going to fuel that obsession with the behaviors that they lead to the temporary relief, which lie to us." For me, it was all I could think about for a year of my life. It was horrible. It was a prison that I never want to be in again.

So with that, I actually didn't know at the time that I wish I would have scheduled time. It seems weird to schedule your time to obsess, but it's really healthy to schedule your time. Girls pray, go to the feet of Jesus. He cares. He cares. Hannah was better, and she still prayed. That's my favorite thing about Hannah. She was better. Scripture says she was better, and she still went to the feet of our God. So use that time, schedule it and delay your compulsions. So when you feel the need to take a pregnancy test twice a day, I'm raising my hand full transparency, I've done it. I had to learn to say, "I'm going to wait two days and I'm going to wait and take it." Because delaying the compulsion helps not feed the obsession.

Meredith Brock:
Yeah. Go ahead.

Wendy Blight:
What I wanted to share was one of the things that you talked about trying to get your mind off of it. One of my dearest friends, she's actually our pastor's wife, went through years of infertility. What she did was, she prayed and felt very called to serve at a crisis pregnancy center. It was the very last place she would have wanted to be, but she did it out of obedience and she served there every single week in some bitterness in the beginning. But the longer she served, the easier it became and the stories of the women that she worked with and the stories of the children that came, she has some amazing stories but for her serving there, who knows what would have happened?

And she's the one who taught me this scripture from Isaiah 58, and it says, "If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noon day." (Isaiah 58:10, NIV) When we serve, when we take our eyes off ourselves and we sow into a need that we so desperately want, that brings light not in only into whom we're serving, but it really brings light and hope into us.

Meredith Brock:
I love that, Wendy. I think what that does is, I think oftentimes we make or at least I was, when I went through that year of trying to get pregnant— I'm just going to be totally transparent, it was the worst year of my marriage. It was the most tense. We had ever been, we fought more than we had ever fought, because I was having all these obsessive… and it was totally obsessive thoughts. I could never stop thinking about it.

Now, Rachel, you’re telling me I should have scheduled. Honestly I'm like, "Whoa, that would've really helped." Because instead I just peppered my husband with text messages all the time. It was just because I was feeling anxious, I wanted to tell him about my anxiety. Then he felt like I can't fix this. I can't fix this. Wendy, when you read that scripture, I realized, I think in that season I was making motherhood my destination. I was trying, if I can just become a mom, again, I need to have two, I don't want my son to be an only child. It was this destination I was trying to get to when our destination is sanctification, you guys, our destination is not necessarily becoming a mom, but making ourselves more like Christ in the process of whatever He's walking us through.

And I think I had just gotten my focus so fixated on if I can just have another child, I will get to where God wants me to go. And boy, did He use that year to really sift some things out of my heart. I want to talk a little bit ... I think we've talked a lot about the mental waiting game, we've got to take control of those thoughts, scheduling our time to obsess, refocusing our actual physical energy onto someone else and setting some goals. But there's a whole spiritual side of this, y'all, that runs deep. We've alluded a lot to praying, and I think that that's really important. Wendy, what do you see in scripture, about this waiting game in scripture?

Wendy Blight:
It's just not stuff you want to hear when you're in infertility. Right? When you're [crosstalk 00:23:57]

Meredith Brock:
I know, it hurts. It hurts.

Wendy Blight:
I want to preface, I feel like I'm bringing in the biblical part, and every time I bring in the biblical part, it feels like it's bad news. By the time we finish it, it's really good news. But the Bible is the same way. There are wait stories all the way back to Genesis. It is part of this, and this is really going to be ... We'll introduce it today and talk a lot more about waiting and what we get out of waiting in next episode. But the Bible is full of stories.

So, I'm going to start with this story that has nothing to do with motherhood or infertility, but to me, when I've been in really hard waits in my life, this is the story. The very first story God took me to, and it's from the book of Daniel that I don't spend a lot of time in. But when it feels like God isn't listening or acting on my behalf, this story from Daniel Chapter 10 is the story of where Daniel is fasting and praying on his knees, four weeks on behalf of the Israelites.

And as he's doing that, he hears literally nothing, every day, imagine. You get to that 21 day fasting and praying, and then it says beginning in verse 12, "Relax, Daniel..." (MSG) An angel came and it's believed it's the angel Gabriel. So, it's one of the top angels, came to Daniel and said, "Relax, Daniel, ‘don't be afraid. From the moment you decided to humble yourself to receive understanding, your prayer was heard, and I set out to come to you.” (MSG) OK, stop there, and just hear what that saying is, you've been doing this for three weeks, but I'm telling you from the moment you started, God heard you. But here's the explanation…

"But I was waylaid by the angel-princes, of the kingdom of Persia and delayed for a good three weeks. But then Michael, one of the chief angel-princes intervened to help me, and I left him there with the prince of the kingdom of Persia, and now I'm here to help you understand what will eventually happen to your people." (Daniel 10:12-14, MSG). So, God heard Daniel's prayer, God valued Daniel's prayer. But this wait was necessary in this situation, and Daniel was left waiting with no answer because God was doing other kingdom work, other things were going on that had to be attended to, does that make Daniel less important? No, but Daniel learned something through this.

And so, it's hard, but I want you to know I haven't dealt with infertility, but I've dealt with very difficult waiting. So when it seems God isn't active, and He's not active in the area of life that you necessarily want Him to be, and think He should be, and I got those words from Kaley because she's been there, doesn't mean He's not acting. It doesn't mean He's not working. We're going to see more and more as we go on. So this isn't a trite response, this is, we are building in scripture, why we have to wait sometimes and what we gain and what God is doing in the wait. But I also want to tell you that there's another verse that brings me a lot of comfort from Psalm 56:8, and it's David.

Psalm 56:8 says, To God ... He's praying, "You've kept track of my every toss and turn through the sleepless nights. Each tear has been entered in your ledger and each ache written in your book." (MSG) If you can think of that when you're crying in the middle of the night, when you don't understand where God is, I go to that and I'm reminded, I may not hear from Him right now, but He's telling me, He knows when I'm lying awake, He's there with me. He knows the number of tears I cry. Each one is written in His book. So, those are things we can hold on to, and if you're ready, we can talk about where we find hope. Do you want to go there?

Meredith Brock:
Let's do it, Wendy. Well, before you move on, I want you to say that scripture reference again in Psalm, because I feel like right now there's a listener who's going through this, and she feels really lonely and she feels like nobody sees or understands her tears. I want you to say that scripture again so that maybe she's driving and now she has a chance to jot it down because I just think it's so powerful. So what was that Psalm?

Wendy Blight:
OK. It's Psalm 56:8. And it says, "You've kept track of my every toss and turn through the sleepless nights. Each tear entered in your ledger, each ache written in your book." (MSG) And that's from the message which is just unique translation of the Bible. If you want it in the NIV, then I can also tell it to you. It says, "Record my lament; list my tears on your scroll — are they not in your record?" (NIV)

Meredith Brock:
So good, Wendy, and I love that. There's this moment of saying you're not alone. In this battle with infertility, you are not alone. It's not going ... You talked about Hagar earlier, it's not going unseen. He's the God who sees. So let's talk about hope.

Wendy Blight:
OK.

Meredith Brock:
How do we keep going? How in the midst of this waiting, where do we find hope?

Wendy Blight:
You can see I'm like bursting because I want to share this because the rest of what we're going to talk about in the next few weeks, this is your setup right here. Because in God's Word, that's where we're going to find hope. And so, every week we're directing you to scripture, we're directing it to you for truth, for comfort, for hope. We're going to invite you to meditate on it, to read it, to pray it, to literally declare it over yourself.

And why are we doing this? Because Romans 15:4 says, "For everything that was written in the past ..." I want you to listen to the active verbs, and then we're going to go over [inaudible 00:30:33] "Everything that was written in the past was written to teach us so that through the endurance taught in scripture and the encouragement it provides, we might have hope." (NIV) OK, those are powerful words. God says, "… I sent this word to teach you, to encourage you, to equip you to endure so that you can have hope in the wait."

And then another place in Romans Chapter five. "Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings ..." And OK, we're going to talk a lot more next week about this. I'm not going to be able to dive in. So, hold on. What “…we rejoice in our sufferings knowing suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character and character produces hope…”, and that word rejoice isn't like woo-hoo, we're having a party joyful rejoicing. In the Greek it means to boast or hold your head up high.

So what it's telling us is that, in that suffering, when we know the Word, which we're going to be learning, we can know that suffering has purpose, our wait, our grief, our loss has purpose and it's productive and God will use it for our good and His glory. That sounds trite, but we're going to break that down later on. But what I want us to remember is, we cannot learn endurance by a daily devotional once a week, or going to church a few times a month or reading our Bible every now and then. Endurance a lot of times the only way we can learn it is walking through a trial and trusting and obeying God.

In one of the Bible studies I taught, a woman said this, and I wrote it down and I've never forgotten it. "God's faithfulness is most effectively learned when experienced." Sometimes the only way we can trust and know the faithfulness of God is walking through things where we just show up every day even when we don't want to, and He ends up showing us whatever it is He has to teach us. Then Isaiah 41:10 is something I clung to during a really hard time in my life. I was raped by a masked man hiding in my apartment when I was 21 years old, right, a few days after my college graduation, and I lived in fear for a long, long time.

And this verse, "Fear not for I am with you, be not dismayed for I am your God." And listen to what he promises aside from telling us not to fear and not to be dismayed in the hard place we're in, but he says, "I will strengthen you, I will also help you, I will also uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Those verbs, those verbs of, I'm with you, and I will strengthen you and I will help you, and when you're fallen down and you don't want to get out of bed and you don't want to be around people, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. It's a strong hand, and He is there.

And so, if you want to wait, well, I'll just end with these three things that are very short and maybe you can write them down; and just waiting well biblically cry out and draw near. I mean, tell God everything. If you are angry with Him and you are mad at Him, tell Him, because He already knows. Right? So just tell it, write it down, I did that, and then meet Him in His Word because that is truth. That's where His thoughts become our thoughts. That's where His ways we begin to understand more and more so we can accept them and trust in them and believe them. And then it's a lot of what Rachel talked about. Don't dwell, keep moving. So, into your need, make goals for yourself, do those kinds of things.

Then if we have time, Meredith, I do have just a few things at the very end, if we want to just declare over them as we head into the next week.

Meredith Brock:
Absolutely. Let's go ahead and do that now, Wendy.

Wendy Blight:
OK.

Meredith Brock:
Let's do it, and then we'll wrap up.

Wendy Blight:
OK. If you're somewhere where you can close your eyes, then close your eyes. And if you're not, especially if you're driving, I just want you to let these words from scripture stand over you and then soak into you. Sweet daughter, your heavenly Father has compassion on you. He will be faithful to comfort you, let Him in. Your heavenly Father hears your prayers. So cry out to Him. He receives your tears as liquid prayers and those tears are precious to Him. He is present with you, wrap yourself in His sweet presence in peace, quiet your soul, receive His love and care. Go before Him as often as you need, be honest, be real, because He loves you and He's waiting for you.

Kaley Olson:
Well, Wendy, thank you so much for just wrapping us up today with that declaration. I know at the very beginning Meredith and I said, there's no way we can talk about everything, there is emotions that women go through while experiencing miscarriage, or while experiencing infertility. But I do just want to end with how I'm feeling right now, and that's hopeful because we're pointing people back to the hope that they can find in God's Word, knowing that God meets them where they are, and from the first moment that they open their mouth to pray, that's what we learn in Daniel Chapter 10, that God hears it even if He doesn't answer it immediately.

So, I think what is resonating with me is this thought, is that, your hope in the wait is part of your ministry right now. I think as believers, I wish that I could tell you how long you were going to have to wait. I wish I could tell you exactly when you were going to get that positive pregnancy test or just some sort of an answer. I wish that that was a guarantee, but it's not, and that's the hard, hard truth about waiting. So often about what we go through, whether you're struggling with infertility right now, or whether you're struggling with some other type of waiting, this is perfectly applicable to anything that you're walking through right now.

But I think as believers, the hope that we have in the wait is the ministry that we can have in the moment, especially knowing there's 20% of other couples out there who are struggling too, not all of them are believers. If this purpose in my waiting for those two years or Meredith, however long you waited, Rachel, however long you waited, whoever is listening right now, however long you're waiting, if this purpose is to show someone else the hope that you have in Christ, then that's worth it to me. That's a hard truth, but that is worth it.

And then I think Rachel would agree with me whenever I say this, but you don't have to wait perfectly either. It's OK to have a bad day. It's OK for you to feel like you don't have it together or that maybe you slip back into some of those tendencies, because I know I did it too. I'm human and we mess up, and there is grace for that. But the hope that we have is found in God's Word. So guys, thank you so much for walking us through that today, mentally and spiritually, I learned so much, and I know that the people who are listening learned a lot too.

And we're going to be back here again next week, because infertility really is just one side of the struggle that many women experience on the journey to motherhood, but for some, infertility eventually ends in a healthy pregnancy, and it does seem to tie up in a nice, neat [inaudible 00:39:04] but for others including myself, last year, I experienced a miscarriage after walking through that, and it was a devastatingly painful season, or maybe they have even lost a child that they've brought here. So, we're going to talk about miscarriage and infant loss next week because they are different, and we want to address those of you who are walking through that or have walked through that. So we will be back with Rachel and Wendy to dig into that even more.

Meredith Brock:
Well, we've got a few resources we do want to connect you to, but first, before we do that, if you're walking through this and trying to do it well, and you're to a place where you've realized I need help, I need help outside of my current circle of friends or the people around me, Proverbs 31 Ministries really stands behind, endorses and encourages biblical Christian counseling. We want to recommend by starting out with the American Association of Christian Counselors. You can go to AACC.net to look up Christian counselors in your area to get started with finding somebody who might be able to help you go through this hard season.

Kaley Olson:
Absolutely. We've also pulled together a free PDF download for you. That's available at proverbs31.org/listen in the show notes for today's episode. That includes scriptures and key points for what we discussed today, as well as what we'll discuss in the upcoming episodes. That'll be a broad overview of everything that we're talking about over the next three weeks that you guys can download it for free and use on your own as you continue to process what you're learning.

Meredith Brock:
And if you're listening to this and you know a friend who needs a resource to guide her through a season of waiting and really it could be any kind of waiting you guys, we'd recommend Lysa TerKeurst's book, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way. You can get a copy today at p31bookstore.com. I just want to say, thank you for tuning in today. I know this is a hard subject to talk about, but it's so needed. So, at Proverbs 31, we really believe that when you know the truth of God's Word and you live it out, you'll see that everything really does change. So, we'll be back here next week with another episode. See you then.