God is amazing. This ministry is so new. We are looking for those of you who would be willing to share your journey with others so they might feel community and hope. Then just yesterday, Donna Claycomb Sokol, a friend from divinity school wrote the following post. She quotes another divinity school friend, Enuma Okoro. Donna is a pastor in DC. Enuma is a writer who has written a poignant book called Silence and Other Surprising Invitations of Advent. Enuma writes about what happened in the corners and in the minds of those journeying so long ago. She writes of Elizabeth’s barrenness and that God brings John the Baptist into the Christmas story so it isn’t such a “Hallmark Story.” She also broaches the subject of barrenness and infertility. Donna wrote about this yesterday and had several comments on her post. She has allowed me to share it with you today.
“I encountered rather raw words from my reading with Enuma Okoro this morning. The words are uncomfortable. They also name so much of the pain I have encountered as a pastor and as a woman who always thought she would have children but now finds absolute peace in my family of two. Our churches have not always made space to name and hold infertility and miscarriage. Instead, we regularly ignore the pain as we hand out flowers to mothers and celebrate fathers while some young adults sink further into the hardness of their pew. We don't know what to say when someone says, "I just had a miscarriage," often failing to see and hold the pain. I'd give anything - absolutely anything - to fill wombs that are longing to no longer be empty. Here's what Enuma writes, ‘Barrenness does not simply mean that a woman cannot have children. Infertility can be fraught with all kinds of unmentioned trials and varying levels of pain. And rarely is it clean. It is messy. Enduring a miscarriage is a horrifying experience of encountering life blood seeping from your body. Not to mention the emotional trauma of infertility, the self-inflicted guilt, feelings of failure, the possible onslaught of depression. Only after we acknowledge the physical reality of barrenness can we begin to consider how such pain can transfer to other forms of barrenness. Then we can adequately name other empty spaces in our lives that feel as painful as the ache of a womb that refuses to carry life, the purpose for its creation.’” – Rev. Donna Claycomb Sokol, Mount Vernon Place UMC.
You may be struggling with infertility or you may be struggling with a barrenness inside of you that is an unwillingness to forgive someone or to be forgiven, or an inability to hope. This season, we are called to look to the God of hope and love. We are also called to cling together in the messiness, be there for one another through the pain and bring life to one another.
Director of Programming and Membership at PHUMC
Partner to Candi and Mother to Miller who is 5
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