When we were struggling to start a family, I prayed a lot even though I wasn’t sure what the God I was praying to could do about it.
Either God did have something to do with this getting pregnant thing and was choosing not to, which begged the question – WHY THE HELL NOT?????? Or more likely God didn’t have direct control over it, and those who wrote the stories of miraculous conceptions in the bible were doing so to make some theological point, unaware of the impact of their stories on me and many other women in the same position, who millenia later, would be longing for a conception of our own.
Now, I see God not as controlling fertility, but as caring for us through the compassion of the people we met on our journey through IVF. One stands out. She was a clinic nurse who had no children of her own, despite wanting them. There’s a wall of baby pictures sent in by couples delighted their treatment worked. She faced that everyday. I can’t imagine how
.
I read the Nativity differently too. I wonder for whom might news of Mary’s pregnancy have been hard to hear. Elizabeth comes to mind. I like to think some solidarity between the barren women in the bible might have been at play.
Was it Sarah, God
Who had a word in your ear
And tipped you off
That Elizabeth had better get pregnant before Mary
Or You’d never hear the end of it?
This was one of a series of reflections on theme of ‘Re- thinking God’ featured on RTE Radio 1 Living Word slot in Dec 2020.
Photo by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash