This post was first shared in issue 23 of These Sacred Words

Vulnerability is terrifying. There’s nothing like exposing the desires and fears of your heart (especially on social media) to make you feel like you’re standing naked on a stage in a room full of people. 🙈

That’s how I felt when I shared a few week’s ago about our journey of infertility. But I chose to invite you in, and this is why.

I don’t have the answer of how to walk through infertility well. Some days I doubt. Some days I am unspeakably sad and hopeless. But as I share I hope, even in my bumbling and doubting and wrestling (and probably rambling), to invite you into my journey of learning to truly trust God at every turn.

I don’t have it all together. We’re not yet on the other side of this painful journey. Sometimes it is a fight to believe, but like Jacob wrestling with God and walking away with a limp and a deeper intimacy with him, I believe that it is in the doubting and wrestling that we are invited to know God more.

I share to encourage you, in whatever difficult season you’re in, to not distance yourself from God, but rather to press more deeply into him. Because there is a kind of raw intimacy with God that can be found in times of suffering.

It might not be the type of intimacy you expected – with sweet quiet times and gentle prayers and soft worship.

It might be ugly. It might be a yelling and pounding on his chest kind of intimacy where you finally feel comfortable crying out to him with the anger and doubt you feel. You might feel like your faith is failing, but take heart knowing that he who has called you to himself will continue to hold you fast.

I share our journey to say that I’m in it with you, and to remind you that in all things God is abundantly good.