*Part 1: God and Infertility is part of a series I will be publishing over the coming year. Feel free to come along and join the conversation. As parts are published, they will be linked on one post to be seen in chronological order:
God and Adoption: The Series
Part 1
God and Infertility
The Modern Adoption Gospel tells young, unwed, and poor mothers that God intends the children in their wombs for others. This is what I was told 20 years ago as a pregnant teenager. It is a practice still in use today amongst many evangelicals and within the adoption community (see previous post: Kansas and the Gospel of Adoption).
As a pregnant teenager, I was told that my daughter was meant to be a blessing for another family. This was an answer to the circumstance of my pregnancy that generated many more questions over the next 2 decades than I ever anticipated.
I’ve wondered for so many years how it came to be that God placed my daughter in the wrong womb? Or was it the right womb at the wrong time? Or was it the right womb, but His intentions were that she be raised by total strangers to me? Was I not included in the “God adopted us all” narrative?
Dare I say, what kind of incompetent God do we worship who employs baby-redistribution to clean up His mistakes? Was I only a function to God- an incubator, a warm body, a vessel- while others were His children? Was losing my daughter for a lifetime my penance? Do other sins require us to lose our children for a lifetime? Were the adoptive parents of my daughter “called” to adopt her? Why weren’t they called to help keep us together? Why wasn’t anyone called to help keep us together?
Was God powerless over my pregnancy? Is God powerless over which wombs babies end up in? Does His sovereignty only begin after the birth of a child? How do we know that we’re redistributing babies to the right homes? Are the “called” guided to the right baby? What if we’re screwing this all up? What if this has nothing to do with God at all? What if we’re separating families that God meant for His purpose? What if my daughter and I were victims of a machine?
Oh, the Rabbit Hole of Adoption.
So, I have to separate the wheat from the chaff. I have to find truth after all these years. I’m going back to the basics. Back to the beginning. I don’t know where I will end up. My faith is shaky as it is.
I look forward to the next year of searching out the scriptures. Perhaps, my faith will grow stronger. Perhaps, I will walk away from it altogether.
At this point, I just want the truth. No more confusion. No more chaos.
Does God have power over the womb? It seems that He does. If God is intentional about which wombs He places children, should the Church be less cavalier and more solemn about separating babies from their mothers?
Scriptures about God and the womb:
Hannah
1 Samuel 1: 5-6
“But to Hannah he gave a double portion because he loved her, and the Lord had closed her womb. 6 Because the Lord had closed Hannah’s womb, her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her.”
Sarah
Genesis 16:2
“so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.”
Rebekah
Genesis 25:21
“Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was childless. The Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant.”
Rachel and Leah
Genesis 29:31
“When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.”
Genesis 30:22
“Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb.”
Elizabeth
Luke 1:13
“But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John.”
Mary
Luke 1:30-31
“But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.”
Ruth
Ruth 4:13
“So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When he made love to her, the LORD enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son.”
Continue to Part 2.
velvet bocephus 
Only Puritans and Evangelicals believe that children are born into sin, and to write from only the ultra fundamentalist Christianity aspect from the plains states of the US leaves out the other Protestant, Catholic, Judaism, Islamic, Sikh, Shinto, native, and other religious teachings in this part of the world is not only unfair but also exclusive.
To suggest that God (Alla, le bon Dieu, Buddha, etc.) have endorsed a system akin to adoption that erases the child’s identity and steals its inheritance and heritage is just the babbling of village idiots. Women have been infertile just as they have been fecund since ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’ found out what coitus was -this after having ecstasy while in one another’s arms. (Probably before that little slinky snake enticed them with the apple)…. And the creation story is far older than what we know from the Hebrews.
that said, in order to study a thing one must know the history and the language of the group from whence the narrative comes. For the part of the story before the Christ, we have the Pentateuch and the other parts of Hebrew (Judaism) theology. That is the first of the triad of western monotheism; the second third is Christianity centuries after Issa/Jesus was born (his birth written aout in Roman tomes in Latin -but not exactly as the Gospels tell it..), an written by men who did not live during the time of Christ but only knew peace meal something about the man, writing thier narratives in their own languages-Greek, Aramaic, etc. dependent upon their birth places and education. The last third of this triad is Islam. the message of which cam via an illiterate man of the 7th century Arabian peninsula called Mohammed to bring the message which was supposed to bring monotheism to its purest and original form. Humans being humans of course would have none of that real truth.. After all , who knows better than Allah/God, etc.? Men , of course! Just ask them.
A few centuries later, some men decided that religion should not be run by some elite person who used an unused ancient language to give sermons and prayers in, so they in different ways and in different languages brought out their own ideas of what God actually said… in their own languages-the common languages of the normal every day workers… Luther, a priest-who never meant to leave Roman Catholicism had the bible translated into German-and also tacked up a list of grievances against the ‘Church’; Henry VIII, an English King who wanted to divorce his then Queen to marry another but who was refused by the Pope found away around the said Pope by appointing himself head of the Church (and having the bible translated into English (with wife 2 also translating it into the same language); the Scots followed suit, and so forth and so on.
And that brings us to 21st century so-called ‘Merica where everything goes and absolutely nothing is natural, real. or even believable…. Except perhaps that marvelous substance called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) that is life itself and makes us us-something no court in the universe can undo, just as it is slowly loosing its voodoo power to keep an adoptee’s real self hidden in a drawer or file or prevented from finding who they really are … including finding long lost family (who may or may not be too thrilled that they have been found … but that is another story with its own messy narrative …)
Speaking of languages, three Judaic books were mentioned -Genesis, Samuel, and Ruth. Genesis is by far the oldest of the three and the most well known of the Hebraic passages. It forms the first five books of the Hebrew Holy text known as the Pentateuch. The others are chronicles that follow later in time but still of the same nation and ancient language. Luke came centuries after Genesis and well after the birth and death of the man we know as Jehova, Jesus (which is probably from the Spanish Jésus a name quite popular for males born in Hispanic circles) , and the Arabic Issa (Esau in the Hebrew Old Testament). The Jews during this time were allowed concubines when their own wives could not produce children. It was not uncommon and perfectly acceptable. Wet nurses were also common for women who had problems producing breast milk for their infants. The English is clumsy and suggestive of a lewdness never intended-probably from such ilk as Cotton Mather and gang.. the very ones who managed to hang my 7th great aunt and 19 others (16 women and 4 men) for a crime none of them had any part all by whipping up hysteria and using gullible young girls as fuel for the fire of hatred, intolerance, and fundamentalism in 17th century Salem in Massachusetts Bay New England Colony-all of which is still very alive and too well today.
To take a phrase out of its own history and its own context is misleading. To take it out of its own original language is heinous!
Adoption was not from or of God, but from men who wanted what they have always wanted-CONTROL of the society. It wasn’t even instituted until early 1900s and not legal and aceptable until around the time of the second world war. It is unknown in most of the rest of the world. Islam forbids it as it takes a child’s rights from the child.
As for infertility, that is a whole other subject for another time.
I have known almost since I was born that I am a part of a much larger group than myself, and that my ‘family’ is a huge chain of others who bore no relationship to the court appointed adopters I was conscripted to. I cursed the judge at five years of age for stealing my name … as I curse him now and his society for having taken my siblings from me and me from them and separating me from my greater family, my religion, muy culture, my ‘tribe’.. Allah/God etc. did not do these things to me, MEN did these things to me and to many others… and their society continues to allow them to do so.. and the women who call themselves feminists who are worse than any male ever has been. And no! my rant against feminists is NOT over! to paraphrase something form the Christian bible, ‘They know not what they do..” but that does not excuse them for making this world ugly, brutal, and unnatural ….
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I saw the Bible verse 1 Samuel 1:27 (I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him) on adoption items sold online. So I read the story in the Bible, and compared it with adoption stories. I found the modern Hannahs are different than Hannah in the Bible. Modern Hannas have faith in child traffickers, in adoption agencies, in tragedy. They have faith in the human beings, in adoption, not in God. Their prayers are different too , they pray to get someone else’s child, they pray so that their adoption goes through. And then they say the child is God’s answer. https://holtproduct.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/modern-versions-of-hannahs-story/
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Yes, it’s a strange twist on scripture to pray for someone else’s tragedy and then compare it to Hannah’s faithfulness.
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So good And I found the email notification for new blogs 🙂
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Great! Thanks so much.
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Thank you! I have always wondered: “If God wanted aps to have babies, why did h render them infertile?” That one remains unanswered and makes absolutely no sense. Of course, some say, because they were chosen to care for the “unwanted” children of the world. Well, if that’s so why were so many WANTED babies pressured form loving mothers in the name of God and God’s will – as happened to velvet and so many, many of us?
If God is masterminding this redistribution of babies and children: 1) why is so corrupt and filled with money-makers far worse than the ones Jesus threw out, and 2) why do so many of them wind up abandoned, abused, beaten, burnt, caged, starved and even killed at the hands of those God chose???
Is it God’s will for innocent children to be stripped of their identity for all time? BULLSHIT!
These are false God’s people are attributing their own will, their earthly desire to COVET another’s child, to! It’s blasphemy!
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I have had many of the same questions and concerns.
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Velvet Bocephus, thank you for tackling this subject. Be encouraged to stay focused on the truth of scripture even in the face of the attacks that are sure to come. As an adoptee, it pains me that nobody helped my mother while she was in crisis. She just needed some support and encouragement so we could have stayed together. Instead, the knee-jerk reaction of family and friends was to take me from her and gift me to a childless couple that society deemed more worthy. My story is not unique and we need to speak our truths to spare the coming generations this trauma. God is the author of the family. Why would he endorse its destruction?
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I love that “God is the author of family…” I may use that in the future. That’s beautiful. Thank you for your kind words.
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I really appreciate your transparency in talking about this difficult subject. As a woman of faith I too have struggled with the very distorted images that the church often portrays Jesus to be in relationship to adoption. As an adoptee, I have found it too painful to attend church and have others speak for me. I am praying God will reveal the truth to me and that I will heal. I pray for healing for ALL of us.
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I notice this is a natural response of many adoptees and birth moms. I haven’t been able to go to church in 3 years. Many have left Christianity altogether. And it seems any time we try to mention this to church leaders or adoptive parents, we get shut down with the usual “angry and bitter” or “sorry you had a bad experience.” If only the Church could understand how many have been driven away.
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How can anything filled with such ghastly lies, as adoption is, be of Almighty God?
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If there is a god I don’t believe he’d make that couple go through the pain of infertility nor do I believe he would make you and others like you go through the pain of losing your children. For those going through infertility there isn’t a reason people go through it. Bad things sometimes happen to good people. How they choose to proceed in their lives is their choice not some calling.
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I love your website, it has nice articles, Thank you.
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When I was pregnant at 16 in the 70’s I often wondered why God allowed me to be pregnant and not my daughter’s adoptive mom. I searched God’s word for answers, too, knowing with all my heart that He is sovereign. I believed what I was told by the adoption agency that basically there were married couples more qualified than me. “For the best interest of the child” was told to me over and over and I believed it….until I met her three years ago. I have never doubted that God intended me to carry her, that she was a blessing even to me during my pregnancy.
I prayed for her all the time, especially that she would know and love Him.
Now at 60 years old I have searched His word again as you are doing. Don’t give up. God will answer. We may never truly understand His sovereignty but He does promise “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28
I am reminded of when Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers, put into jail by the pharaoh’s wife. These things were not fair and truly evil. But God used it for His purpose and for Joseph’s good! He brought repentance, reconciliation, and ultimately saved the nation of Israel from starvation through the one they betrayed. (What a wonderful picture of Christ.)
I still wonder “what if” and “why”, but God is big enough for my questions. He has allowed me to be reconciled with my daughter. Now I can see that His promise that children are a blessing was even for me and my firstborn. As I have worked on forgiveness, through shame and guilt, and suffered through the grief I never allowed anyone to know about for 40 years, I have seen God healing the brokenness. I can be thankful even in the hard. Praying for you as you continue to seek His word.
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