AI Generated Image – not me.
Through the pain of secondary infertility, I found a deeper faith – a reminder that my true identity and worth are rooted in God’s love. My worth is not measured by quivers or the weight of expectation, but by the unwavering love of God who calls me His own.
I had never heard the term Quiverfull before entering the fundie church threshold I had been brought to by the very first Sister in Christ I had made. Because of my childhood trauma, I bonded to her like glue. Sisters for life etched in my heart, soul. Forever family. It was years later, and after intense shame and shunning, I learned this was an actual Movement that shaped my early entrance into the fundamentalist evangelical world, not antiquated, but ‘present’ day.
I carried all the shame inside thinking I was its only target. I also didn’t know at the time I suffered severe CPTSD, but that is a story for another time. Thanks to the very first book I ever read on current day Patriarchy bringing my experience to Light, Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood by Aimee Byrd, I learned I wasn’t the only one peeling yellow wallpaper fighting for my very life, mind.
This book I read in 2023 helped piece together for me the cognitive dissonance I had suffered and the reasons why ~ well before discovering I was raised in a narcissist home going back to my childhood roots to let me think all this was my fault leaving me trapped in despair. That’s how fresh this new discovery is to me. I was not alone. In Neurodivergent Jesus Follower I speak about being an Internalizer. This was me as an Internalizer on steroids having no other point of reference to know the magnitude of this entirely new-to-me movement with octopus tentacles into American Evangelicalism I knew scant about, but for the fact I had found Jesus at 24. Praise the Lord.
I was still dancing pirouettes in my heart having accepted Christ after a Beth Moore Conference at a large non-denominational church with Bible in its name at the time I entered the fundie church. Beth had admonished the women to turn around and wrestle it out with God. You will know it is finished when the blessing comes. Just like at Bethel. I had never heard of Bethel, but it was beautifully raw and desperately hopeful.
I experienced my born-again instant transformation encounter with the Living Jesus, me tucked in my bed that night nestled next to my nine month old daughter, for and on whom I wanted the blessings to pour. I loved her to the ends of the earth ~ the gift I did not deserve. I cried to Jesus to wrestle out my past that had often left me feeling crimson shame. I have always been and will forever be grateful to Beth Moore. Her memoir All My Knotted Up Life also brought me Light piecing together the puzzle of my own life and its tangled knots.
Back, nestled in that bed after Beth’s conference, Jesus washed me clean and gently untied the yokes from me I had been carrying deep inside keeping me in bondage. It was the first time I had let myself face the Lord in six years since crimson stained me red. And, I knew in the very moment with the warmth of the Holy Spirit flooding me, I had been saved. I dedicated my new daughter to Him that very night and begged the living God to help me be the mother she deserved.
I was flooded with purpose greater than myself with connection to the Living God. It is this encounter with the Living God that is the reason I am here today. My remembrance stone that stayed anchored deep within me despite the raging waves. Isaiah 46:9; Joshua 4: 1-8 It is also why my subsequent losses were so excruciating and confusing, my very salvation story so entwined with motherhood itself. I didn’t know my identity with Christ without it being tied. This is a very dangerous foundation made worse by my childhood and adolescent trauma background filled with sinkholes threatening to swallow me up.
I wish that Bible church where I had found Jesus with Beth is where I had stayed. I do believe it was a healthy non-denominational, multi-cultural, and diverse church. My first introduction to evangelicalism. Two years later, we moved to a smaller town away from that Bible church to a new one following my friend there after running from 9-11. That’s another story I’ll write about someday.
Not all bible churches are alike. Beware. At 26 years old, I grew up unchurched. I had never been to a Christian concert. Never heard of James Dobson until I played him on my little kitchen radio wanting to be the best mom I could be in the world. Focus on the Family. Yes, Lord, that was my mission. Soon inside the fundie church new names were added to the list of my brand new Christian repertoire. Debbie Pearl. No Greater Joy Ministries. Gothard. New terms under which I started to sink. Purity Gospel. Eye traps. Umbrellas. Quiverfull. Homeschooling. Elders. Awanas. These were all new to me.
I stopped twirling. The pirouettes in my heart ceased. New yokes started to entrap me. Shame enveloped me. I wanted desperately to please the Lord and be used by Him. Now I didn’t know how. Once again I didn’t fit in. The idealism of Jesus in me and the Jesus in you making it so began to fade black. Not even with my newfound Jesus would I belong. The Orphan Spirit traumatized from childhood back to flood my essence once again. Abandoned this time in God’s House in plain sight.
Where God, with all my cracks and broken pieces including my not-made-for-procreating womb was my covering? The covering that was supposed to cover a multitude of sins. Why were my sins so exposed? I kept digging for my idols that prevented me from experiencing His blessing other women received with extremely little effort – quiverfulls. God, why was I so cursed? My worth too tightly wound to my womb.
The majority of women could count their blessings using two hands and many needing a third. This was how you knew they were blessed. Their idol of womb-carrying- motherhood not being torn down – not in the slightest. Quite the opposite. This hierarchy of womanhood worth – I was teetering near the bottom. The parking lot full of oversized vans and mini buses with multi tiny fish stickers swimming on their bumpers. I couldn’t even fill my back seat though I tried and begged the Lord to make it so. Where had my blessing I wrestled for gone only three years prior? Why am I being cursed now? I had given Jesus my all.
Eventually after struggling with secondary infertility for two-and-a-half years my son was born a preemie and almost died. Praise God for modern technology. Thank you, Jesus! My miracle baby. Everything came hard. Both my children born via emergency C-section while mothers bursting with perfect wombs shared drug-free, au natural testimonies and Zen like at-home births. I haven’t stopped thanking God for my Miracle boy 20 years ago. Having been cut open and hearing the doctor tell me through the curtain that separated me from my insides, and my brand new son, the sound I heard was a grunt, not a cry. That meant he couldn’t breathe. He could die.
We both would have died had I actually lived in biblical antiquated times. I thanked God I wasn’t. Praying days for him to stay alive not allowed to touch him. God answered me. He truly is my Miracle boy. I struggled the rest of my life to conceive. Loss after loss including an ectopic that left me wanting to die, post partum so severe lasting years. I languished in what I now know was undiagnosed CPTSD too ashamed to ask for help. No rainbow babies for me leaving me believing I was perpetually “cursed”. All my worth tied up in failed reproductive ability.
*Trigger Warning*
For those not in the infertility choir for which no one wants a seat, rainbow baby is one born subsequent to a miscarriage, stillbirth, or death of an infant from natural causes. Under this Oxford definition, reads quote, “my rainbow baby gave me my hope back.”
My hope never came back though I prayed. I know the ache. I know what it is to feel the long, dark shadow of curse following you where only death remains. Its pain that never goes away with sunshine and rainbows in the form of healthy and lasting baby bumps to term with showers. I also know I speak from a place of having two miracle babies prior to all my losses and subsequent maybes being crushed. In no way do I want to take away the weight of one who’s in the midst of this horrific cycle wishing for one miracle to be their own.
God, just one, we pray, together, now on the riverbank. We pray in Jesus Name for the lady reading with longing for this miracle. I want the desires of your heart, friend. They are not wrong. Your identity, though, can not, must not rest on them. This, friend, is where it gets dangerous. We must, however torturous, find our true Identity in Him alone not tethered to the desires of our heart no matter how pure. I know this now. Our Identity does not come in the answers He gives. Our Identity comes from the One who gives no matter the answers that come. Selah.
Through my weeping years, though He didn’t put any in my belly, God did put many rainbows above my house, magnificent full ones covering my entire home end to end after crying and pleading for Him to show up on my drives home with blurred vision. Give me a sign I’m Yours and not cursed; my childhood traumas of emotional abuse and neglect mixing with this current pain.
I do not have pictures of rainbow babies canvasing my walls that brought me hope as in the Oxford dictionary, but I do have these rainbows printed and hung up. Time and time again I sat awestruck seeing these rainbows above my house while profusely wiping my tears. My reminders through endless days and nights of the soul, I was not, am not forsaken.
And, you dear loved one, are not either despite the cries of your womb.
God tells us in His Word, “I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.” Genesis 9: 15-16
God keeps His promises.
Despite the rain, sometimes torrential, that threatens to wipe you out.
In the midst of my infertility struggles, women looked away from me in the grocery store. I cleaned church toilets during Awanas to make a new friend to no avail. I sobbed at a pastor’s wife’s house over summer book club not able to contain my weeping and sharing post-ectopic through mucus snot running out of my nose and toilet tissue stuck to my eyes the reason why. Not one woman checked on me afterwards. Not even the women’s ministry leader I worked beside. Completely invisible. I disappeared into my shell. One I had developed in childhood.
I looked down from men in the halls so not to be an eye trap giving them total deference making myself small. Becoming small a skill I learned in my narcissistic childhood home. I just never imagined I’d have to do it in the Lord’s House after being saved and feeling all that weight lifted.
I was told by one woman with a quiverfull from whom I dared asked advice for my first grade girl, “I must not be that protective over her because I didn’t homeschool” crushing my already fragile spirit. We were rubbing the two pennies we had to send the daughter I had dedicated to Jesus the day I was saved nestled in that bed to Christian school trying our best to honor the Lord. That was not enough in this post modern antiquated world.
I was not enough.
Oh, the yokes that never end. Jesus plus all these yokes left me bound slipping under their weight once more drowning and choking for dear life. Stuffing all my limbs in contortionist boxes to fit in. My depression became so severe I picked up my little family and left ~ after eight years ~ this time following a neighbor straight into “THE” fundie SBC church of my severest trauma nightmare to come, our small town being a patriarchy mecca unbeknownst to me.
Let’s pause. I see you. I see your pain. Your struggle. Your silent cries. If any of my own story resonated with you, I urge you to get help. Jesus walks with us, but sometimes the help He gives is in the form of licensed professional care. CPTSD does not cure itself. Infertility alone is a trauma. The yokes I describe are spiritual abuse. Lies from the enemy no matter the righteous cloak he wears tying your worth to anything but Jesus. Jesus loves you unconditionally no matter the state of your womb. Jesus plus NOTHING is the only Gospel ~ the one He died to offer us free. The nightmare that followed could very likely have been averted had I paused right here in my story and gotten clinical help. I’d have at least seen the signs sooner. There is no shame in getting the help you need. Jesus wants you free. You are worth the care you need. Please get it today. Do not wait like me. I plead.
Love,
Raya
The Gentle Rise 