Barren Women

Day 12

Definition:  A woman incapable of conceiving or unable to get pregnant.

In some places motherhood is the only way for women to enhance their status within the family.

The impact of infertility is compounded because women are generally held responsible for reproductive failure.  This blame may result in divorce, husbands taking a second wife, difficulties with in-laws, domestic violence and economic abandonment.

This is a topic I know too well.  I don't even have to deal with many of the repercussions that many women do, but i know the pain that comes from not being able to bear a child.  God has used my infertility as a great blessing to us, we have children from Colombia and Ethiopia and without a very hard dry season of infertility we wouldn't have know the beauty of adoption.  It has taught us so much, we have a new deeper understanding of all that the Father has done for us and we better understand that he adopted us for his great pleasure.  but for many cultures infertility is viewed much differently and adoption isn't even in their vocabulary.

Let's read a portion of the book:  "I am barren.  Every month I hold my breath and say a prayer--many prayers--and every month the turning moon mocks my fragile hopes as it calls forth another river of blood.  Oh God, what would I give to stem that implacable tide!
I am despised by men who don't see any purpose for me apart from bearing children.  I am pitied by women who are more favored than I, and of whom I am jealous with an intensity that sometimes borders on madness.  I am utterly alone, and full of emptiness that devours me from the inside out -- a long, slow, agonizing death of the heart.  Little by little I am being eaten alive, and one day there will be nothing left." (30 Days of Prayer for the Voiceless)

Oh Father that you would open the wombs of these women.  That you would hear their prayers just as you did with Leah and Rachel.  Oh Father, that cultures would change and women would be valued for who they are and not for how many sons they can produce.  Open eyes to see women the way that you see them.  In Jesus name Amen.