Small Potatoes

For the past couple of years I have made it my goal to read through the Bible in a year. I accomplished that in 2009, 2010, and I'm well on my way to doing so in 2011. It's amazing to me how easily it has become a habit and how it's not that easy to forget. If I forget even for one day, my day is changed... I get upset more easily, my words don't come out as lovely, it's easy to get discouraged. I've come to realize just how important my time in Bible reading and prayer is to my walk with Christ. Probably one of my biggest consumers of time right now, is my thoughts about our Infertility. What does that do for a Christian's walk? Well, I'm not sure what it does across the board, but to me, it causes me to relate everything I read or hear to our struggle. I glean encouragement from God's Word. Words that aren't always meant to speak to infertility, but that reach me anyhow.

This morning was no different, really. Along with my Bible reading, I'm reading a daily devotional from Dian Neal Matthews book "The One Year Women of the Bible". It's amazing to me the number of women in the Bible that we overlook and never really think about, but they seem to be behind the scenes of every story we have ever heard or taught about in the Bible. This morning I read a devotional called "An End in Sight". It was based on the Women of Smyrna.

The women of Smyrna had endured extreme poverty and intense persecution from the hostile Jews and it was imperative that they understand that the End was in Sight. All of their fight was not for nothing! While 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 is talking about the battle towards the end of times, I can see a direct correlation between these womens battle and my own through infertility. These women needed to understand that the time of suffering was limited and the gift to come at the end of their suffering was well worth the pain and agony they endured.

I guess that's how it is with me. It's intense, it's extreme, and so many times it's persecution from others. No, I don't mean people are physically persecuting me. I am not being beaten and forced to suffer in ways like the women of Smyrna. But, with words and looks and actions, others do persecute a woman struggling through infertility. It comes in the form of not loving their children who are miracles. It comes in the form of pregnancy complaints and parenting woes. I wonder. Do people even realize just how precious of a gift they have been given? DO they realize that their "battle" that they are against is something that I am battling for?

Infertility is intensely hard. There are days where you just feel completely alone. There are moments when you are ready to throttle someone for being so insensitive to your struggles.Especially when it comes from those who know how you are struggling. There are days that you can't believe you had the strength to crawl out of bed and actually function. But then, there is God. There is grace. There is love. There is God's Word and there is prayer. Because those are the only two things that are always constant, always encouraging, always.

Today, despite all my infertility struggles, I glean encouragement from this Scripture because even though sometimes I'm falling apart, GOd is still at work for something good that will way outweigh our battle scars!

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (The Message)
So we are not giving up. How could we? Even though on the the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us.