Give me children or I die! ~ The Idols that Crush Us

The following entry was written on a particularly difficult day in August of 2015. I hope it reveals the rawness of my wrestling and is an encouragement. Your idols may look different from mine. Maybe it is your employment or lack of it. Maybe it is your marriage...or lack of it. Regardless, the principles remain the same and the goodness of the Great I AM is unchanging. ~ Rachel

There are days that I really struggle with being a "good Christian." My head hurts. Emotions cram my brain so that I can't think clearly. God's Word seems miles away from being a comfort or aid. Today, apparently, is one of those days. Everywhere I look I see children. My husband's daughter is staying with us for a few days and I wake up every morning reminded that I'm the odd one out. I don't have a claim as a part of their family and, by God's allowance, I'm not able to contribute by carrying children and growing this family. I literally find myself jealous of my husband. I think often of my name...Rachel...and think of another Rachel, described in Genesis, who experienced a familiar scene. Childless she suffered. Her sister prospered and bore children to her husband. And Rachel, like any human would do, experience hurt and began a battle with bitterness, jealousy, and idolatry. 

"When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister. She said to Jacob, 'Give me children, or I shall die!'" Genesis 30:1

Due to current medical knowledge my husband would look at me like I was a lunatic if I, like Rachel, demanded, "Give me children, or I shall die!" Yet, in my emotional heart, sometimes I'm tempted. The reality here lies in the fact that Rachel's statement revealed a normal, fleshly struggle that had produced a response, equal to it's fleshly origin. Rachel had come to a point of utter agony in watching her husband joy in the lives of children given to him by someone other than herself. Yet, her response was to turn her gaze from a good God and be consumed with the belief that her husband, or a child, would ease that agony. Rachel fell head long into the trap of Satan which deceives one into thinking that something, anything, will provide a greater satisfaction and belonging than God can.

"Christ did not die to forgive sinners who would go on treasuring anything above seeing and savouring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people into heaven; it is a way to get people to God. It's a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God. If we don't want God above all things, we have not been converted to the gospel." - John Piper

For many years I viewed Rachel's story with contempt. Why did I have to be named after her??! The chick who sat on her idols so no one would find them!! The girl whose entire family situation was seriously messed up to the point that she and her sister were making deals as to who would get their husband for a night!! But now that I'm older I find it ironic, and even beautiful. We live in a broken world where families don't look like they were originally designed to. Bodies don't work the way they were intended to. God's plan can often appear messy to us. My family certainly is an interesting creation in the sovereign hand of God. I find myself wrestling with jealousy toward a woman I hardly know and a beautiful teenage stepdaughter. Ironically, my body, like Rachel's, doesn't work the way it was designed to. I sometimes feel a pull that something is missing and a longing to be completely understood. But all of this is beautiful in that it reveals the core desire in all of us to find belonging, value, and satisfaction. As a modern day believer I can totally see now how Rachel ended up where she did. She focused on her desire for a family free of sin and allowed it to consume her rather than focusing on the God who would one day redeem that broken family. She focused on the brokenness of her world and missed the God Who made the world. She focused on her need to be loved and missed the Only One who could fully satisfy her need. I get how easy it was to end up where she did. But I have the rest of the story:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and thing on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things accord to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and belied in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory." Ephesians 1:3-14

In this awesome passage of Ephesians 1:3-14 I come to understand what Rachel didn't. I have been chosen, beloved, and made holy by God. He has drawn me and given me a family in which I am completed and for which I am perfectly designed. By His grace I can experience belonging, joy, and satisfaction. Realistically, my husband can't share in this experience of loneliness and longing, but God can. Realistically, my husband, nor a child, can fill the unsatisfied place in my heart. But in this I find hope, for it demonstrates simply that God alone is capable of filling and satisfying my heart. If any one, or anything, could accomplish this, God would cease to be God. How so? Because God is the great I AM (Exodus 3:14). Because God is the source of all things (I Corinthians 8:6). Because God alone gives life and fulfillment (Deuteronomy 32:39, Psalm 107:9). If only Rachel could have held Psalm 119 in her deepest agony. When the days seem endless and I begin to feel as hopeless as my namesake I have a choice. I can choose to sink deeper into my emptiness and demand children as the means of life, or I can look to God's Word and say with the psalmist, "Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things, and give me life in your ways...remember your word to your servant, in which you have made me hope. This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life...for...You are good and do good. Teach me your statutes." - Psalm 119:37, 49-50, 68