Life More Abundantly

The second half of the story between Jacob and his four wives (two sisters and their two maid servants) has some very contemporary applications for couples who are struggling with infertility.

After Rachel hands over her maid servant, Leah experiences what we now call “secondary infertility” - an inability to conceive after having already carried one or more pregnancy to full term. There are a lot of medical reasons this happens, and just as many times that it happens for no medical reason at all. We can’t know the cause of Leah’s secondary infertility, but I think most women in my shoes have a hard time drumming up sympathy for her. Here is a woman with four healthy sons, and it’s not enough. To be fair, I have no idea what it is like to live your life seemingly unloved as the result of your own father’s fraud. Regardless of her reasons, she deems her four sons insufficient, and turns over her maid servant Zilpah to her husband. Zilpah delivers two sons.

Okay, here’s the score: Leah: 4 natural, 2 by proxy, Rachel: 0 natural, 2 by proxy. Making Jacob’s total 8.

In this situation, Rachel remains childless while seemingly every woman around her succeeds in achieving healthy pregnancies. I can empathize with the poor woman. It’s hard enough to be childless all by yourself, but to be forced to watch three other woman bearing children with your husband, and to have none yourself must have been almost unbearable.

We know that Rachel was seeking to rectify the situation through any means at her disposal, because when Leah’s oldest son finds some mandrake root in a field, Rachel is desperate to get her hands on it. Mandrake has been used since . . . well since before Rachel’s time, in pagan fertility rituals. It seems that Rachel, desperate to conceive, had turned to occult or pagan practices to achieve her goals. While I don’t know any women who are performing witchcraft in the hopes of getting pregnant, thousands of godly women have abandoned faithfulness in their pursuit of conception. And these same woman, like Rachel, are completely prepared to make “deals with the devil” to get what they want.

Rachel asks her sister for the mandrakes, and Leah’s response is one filled with bitterness and resentment: “Is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband? Would you take away my son’s mandrakes also?”(Genesis 30:15) And then the truth of what this situation has become comes pouring out. Rachel tells her sister that she can “rent” Jacob in exchange for the mandrakes. Leah accepts, and goes to her shared husband, telling him that she has rented him.

What a sad situation this has become: Rachel is prepared to exchange her husband’s affection, for a chance at pregnancy, and Leah is prepared to purchase time with her own husband.

I must say that I have seen this attitude among a great many infertile women, both with whom I have spoken personally, and those whose blogs and posts I have read online. The goal of conceiving a child become so all encompassing, that women cease to see their husband as anything more than a means to an end. Some women become Leahs: the beauty of marriage is reduced to a transaction, and a husband becomes merely a “breeding stud”, who is expected to provide a service when demanded. And some women become Rachels, where affection and fidelity come a distant second to that all important idol of pregnancy.

There are such contemporary lessons that can be learned here from a dysfunctional, fractured family that lived thousands of years ago.

Every time I read this story, I am overwhelmed at the sadness of it. I can’t even begin to summarize it here without a great sense of sorrow coming over me. The Cliff notes version of this story is:

Jacob, Isaac’s youngest twin, steals his father’s death bed blessing from his older brother, and is forced to go into hiding. His mother sends him to her brother, Laban. Jacob falls in love with Laban’s younger daughter Rachel, and asks to marry her. Laban agrees to the marriage in exchange for seven years of free labor. At the end of the seven years, Jacob has a wedding, and wakes up the next morning with Rachel’s older sister Leah. Jacob works another seven years, and is given Rachel.

This is only the beginning of Jacob’s woes as a husband.

In verse 31, we find, “When the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.”

Leah gives birth to 4 sons. The first she names “Behold a Son” and says “Maybe now my husband will love me.” (Doesn’t that just make you want to cry?) The second she names “heard” because the Lord had heard her cries. The third she names “Cleave” in hope that this will encourage her husband to cleave to her. But the last she names “Praise”, saying “This time I will praise the Lord.”

Through this time, Rachel is barren. She’s watching her sister deliver baby after baby, and all the time her normal cycles are continuing. Rachel’s response to this is the picture of ungodliness. She begins to hate her sister, and then goes to Jacob and tells him “Give me children, or I shall die!” Rachel assumes that Jacob is, in some way, witholding this from her on purpose. when Jacob tells her that God’s holding her womb closed, and there’s nothing he can do about it, Rachel takes a page from Sarai’s operating manual, and hands over Bilhah, her maid.

Of all the men in all the world, Jacob should have seen the inherent issues with becoming involved with more than one woman. Maybe he thought the problems between his wives was because they were sisters. Maybe he thought he wasn’t adding another wife, so there wouldn’t be any problems. Who knows. But he takes Bilhah, and behold, she has, in the course of time, two sons. One, Rachel names “Judged”, determining that God has judged her as worthy as her sister to have a son, and the second she names “wrestling” because she believes she is beginning to wrestle the upper hand from her sister.

So here we have two sisters, and six sons. The first sister is praying that her husband will love her, and the second just wants to win.

There is a great deal more in this story to explore, but I want to stop here for now.

Infertile woman, hear the statement in scripture - Leah was hated, so the Lord opened her womb. What hope there was in that for me, as I looked at this man God had given me (and me alone, no sharing with my sister, like Rachel). I am loved deeply by a good, and godly man. God has not withheld all blessing from my life! A lot of women I know don’t have this beautiful gift of a loving husband, but I do. When women ask me how I can stand to work in the same job with my husband, seeing him almost every hour of the day, I am stunned. He’s my best friend!

Here, sons are given to Leah as a sort of “consolation” prize. Children are a common grace of God to cover over other deficiencies in her life. This radically changed the way I looked at blessing. Rather than focusing on what I don’t hold in my arms, I am daily in awe of the gift I do have.

Of all the stories of biblical infertility I have read, this is the one that encourages me the most.

And Isaac prayed to the LORD for his wife, because she was barren. And the LORD granted his prayer, and Rebekah his wife conceived. Genesis 25:21

Isaac, the son of Abraham, and heir to God’s promise of creating a great nation, marries for the first (and only) time at 40. This is significant because of the three patriarchs, he is the only monogamous one. He just faithfully, and without fuss, picks a wife.

And then the next verse is 21.

I love the subtle way that God hides truth in every day accounts. If you just read this verse, an infertile couple who had been trying to conceive for a couple of years may say “so why does Isaac get to pray once, and his prayer is answered?” But let’s look at a tiny fact buried in verse 26: “Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them.”

20 years. Isaac prayed for Rebecca for 20 years. In all of scripture there is no record of Isaac following in his father’s pattern and reminding God of the promise to multiply the family line. Neither Isaac nor Rebecca take the issue into their own hands. They just walk, faithfully, for twenty years, in infertility.

I am also so encouraged at the heart of a husband who prays, not that his name would be carried on, or his seed be fruitful, but prays for Rebecca. It doesn’t say that he prayed for her womb, but he prayed for his wife. Now Rebecca is a very straightforward woman! When the twins in her womb get into a tussle, she goes directly to God with it! So it doesn’t seem that these are the prayers of a henpecked man whose wife harrassed him into praying on her behalf. She was probably doing her own praying. Isaac loves his wife, and prays for her to conceive.

Interestingly, Abraham is still alive through this struggle. Genesis 25:7 tells us that Abraham lived to be 175. Doing the math, he’s 140 when Isaac marries, and 160 when the twins appear. It appears that when he was a “younger” man, he felt the need to remind God of His promises, but now, seeing the fruit of that promise, he has the faith to let God do things in His own time. And God let Abraham see his grandchildren. For fifteen years.

Continuing to read Isaac and Rebecca’s story, we can learn a lot about what NOT to do when raising twin boys. But for the infertile couple, I believe that Isaac offers us a beautiful example of faithfulness, patience, and being a Godly husband.

In the middle of my last round of infertility treatments (July/August) I began a study of all the barren people in scripture. I was greatly encouraged by the study, and continued to be strengthened by it through the miscarriage. I would like to share what the Lord has taught (is teaching) me through these scriptures. Instead of one long post, I plan to borrow a technique from Rob, and do a series of posts.

Sarai and Abram.

Here’s a super quick, fast forward, ultra-abridged version:

There’s a guy named Abram, he marries a girl named Sarai. Next verse - Now Sarai was barren; she had no child. That’s a direct quote. So God tells Abram to pick up and go to the land God would show him, so he and his nephew Lot head out on a “Camel Road trip” and a lot of things happen along the way. But one of the things that happens (several years after the verse declaring Sarai barren) is that God promises to make Abram the father of a great nation.

Then a few more things happen which are really neat, but we don’t have time for here. Suffice it to say, that Abram obeys God, and God tells Abram He’s pleased. Abram takes that opportunity to remind God that he is still childless. (ahem, maybe you forgot that great nation promise?) God responds by restating his promise to make Abram a great nation.

So in chapter 16, Sarai’s had enough, and she takes things into her own hands. I (unfortunately) appreciate the sentiment. I’ve become fed up with God’s timing on too many things, and taken things into my own hands. And Sarai and I have the same track record of success with that. We’re both batting 0’s. Sarai suggests that maybe God didn’t actually include HER in the promise. She actually suggests that Abram impregnate another woman (a move I have never even been tempted to make) and Abram agrees.

This turns out to be a mistake, both biblically and politically.

So several more years go by, and God does something really neat. He comes to Abram, and he changes his name from “exalted father” to “Father of the Nations” (or Abraham). And just so Sarai (now Sarah) doesn’t get any more great ideas, God says very specifically that his promise will be met through her. She will have a son, and from that son will come a great nation, and great blessing not only for Abraham, but for the entire world. A year later, when Abraham is 100 years old, they have a son, and they name him Isaac.

So first: I think that every couple struggling with fertility has thought at least once “By the time this actually works, we’ll be 100!” And like Sarai, we are tempted to create little Ishamael’s of some kind. We try to take things out of the Lord’s hands, and do things in our way, in our timing. The world of fertility and reproductive technology is so wrought with bad choices, and in the pain of empty arms, they begin to look very appealing.

But it was God’s plan for Abraham and Sarah (and the rest of the people I have studied) to take them to a place where people knew that no one other than God had brough Isaac. But he doesn’t just make them wait. When Abram is saying “But I’m still childless” God doesn’t say “take a chill pill and hold on until I’m ready!” Instead God keeps giving the promise, over and over. He keeps offering hope, over and over. And in the end, he changed Abraham’s name to declare a truth, that was physically not yet met. He declared Abraham to be a Father of Multitudes, even when Isaac hadn’t yet been conceived.

Not only does that give me hope in my barenness, but it is a beautiful picture of God’s work of Salvation. When God saves us, he declares us completely righteous in his eyes, even though we will have the rest of our lives to struggle through the working out of that promise. He declares it to be true, because He has made it true eternally, even if we don’t see it fully here in time.

So I have hope that:

1. I will not be 100 when God meets my heart’s cry for a generation of my own to raise and train.
2. As we pray (daily) for the Lord to open my womb, he doesn’t stare back at us impatiently from heaven, but instead continues to give small beacons of light until we are able to hold the reality in our arms.
3. He offers the same hope as I struggle with the pride and selfishness of my sinful nature, that he has renamed me as His child, and declared me righteous, because He is righteous.