In today's episode, I want to dive into striving in our own strength to become moms trying to conceive, getting pregnant versus resting in the provision and the trust that God is going to provide what and how and who we need in our life. This is a little bit of a difficult topic, maybe sensitive. So, let's talk about it. Let's see what God's word has to say about it and dive in. Hey friends. Welcome to the Waiting Well Podcast.
I am your host, Courtney Dunker and you are here because your journey to motherhood has not looked the way that you always imagined. It has held heartbreak, loneliness and questions like why me God, I'm here to remind you that you do not have to walk this road alone. And here we can wait well, together. Each week, I will share faith based encouragement from my own infertility journey.
Provide information from guest experts on navigating infertility and conceiving powerful testimonies and top tips on stewarding your health and emotional well being through this demanding journey. So if you are ready to take back control of your life, find peace with God, join the in between spaces and thrive in your waiting season. Then meet me at the well, girl, grab that warm chocolate chip cookie, a little bit of unicorn juice or iced coffee. We've got some intentional growth to do.
Let's get it. Ok. So at the beginning of our trying to conceive journey, I remember feeling almost like this obsessiveness with trying to figure out how to get pregnant. It was kind of like a game. I felt like it was like a challenge and I am someone who loves a good challenge. So I was like, ok, I'm going to rise to the occasion. This is just a matter of figuring out how to do it. And it was almost like I lost the understanding and that it's actually all in God's control.
So I want to dive into a story that maybe you have never really spent too much time on that's in the Bible that I think really can speak to striving in your own power versus resting in God. And the resting. And God part is something that actually I came across this past week. I was doing my devotional and it explained rest in a, in a new way. Like for me, a lot of times I think of rest in the sense of I need to take a nap physically, I need to rest.
I need to take a Sabbath like whatever it was kind of like, that was my concept of rest. But I was talking about rest actually in just kind of like almost like falling back spiritually mentally, emotionally into the arms of God in trust of his provision for your needs. And I was like, dang, that is so good. I feel like that's so to trying to conceive. Because the first half of my journey, I was not resting.
I was spinning my wheels, looking under every single rock I could like pick up and look under for a solution to our situation. And really just trying to dive into any and all resources and options to figure out how to actually conceive because I felt like maybe I'm just doing something wrong. Maybe I'm just missing something. I was just kind of like obsessed with like that's the destination I want to get to.
I'm a really hard worker, I'm going to apply myself and Google the heck out of this to be able to get to the end result. That is not God's plan for us in the journey. 100% is not because that's really where we are taking ownership over our story and our journey and our will is becoming almost like this ungodly ambition. And so I want to dive into the story of Saul King, Saul back in the Old Testament, he was the first king of Israel.
He actually lost his throne and was judged by God because of his like ungodly ambition and his unwillingness to in its entirety, fully rest and rely. And trust in God as his leader. So Saul was leader of the Israelites, but God was like, hey, I'm your king. So you need to come to me as your leader. And he was not doing that. He wanted to be kind of like the end all, be all.
So even though he was anointed, he really followed his own desires and his own ambition throughout these different stories and scenarios when God had put him into a position of, of submission to God, but he wasn't choosing that. So for example, God had called him to go to war with specific instructions to kill the king of the Aleki and to not take the spoils, the spoils as in like not plunder the city or the king's house and like take all these riches for themselves.
Saul started off doing what God had commanded, but then he actually took matters into his own hands. He did not kill the king and he kept some of the animals and the spoils for himself. I think almost the worst part about this situation is that Saul was in denial and then was trying to hide things from the Lord. So Samuel, the prophet actually came to Saul in first Samuel 15, we read about this story and he comes to Saul and he says, blessed be you to the Lord.
I have performed the commandment of the Lord. And then he said, what then is this bleeding of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear. Saul said, they have brought them from the Aleki for the people spared the best of the sheep to the oxen to sacrifice the Lord, your God. And the rest we have devoted to destruction. Samuel says to Saul, stop. I will tell you what the Lord has said to me that night. And he said, speak though you are little in your own eyes.
Are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. The Lord sent you on a mission and said, go devote to destruction, the sinners, the Akis and fight against them until they are consumed. Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the Lord's sight? And Saul said to Samuel, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I have gone on mission on which the Lord sent me.
I have brought the king and I have devoted the Amala hes to destruction. But the people took the spoiled sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord. And Samuel said, basically that that was not true. And Saul realized, OK, I have sinned, I have, you know, made the sin. And then Samuel tells him you were rejected from the Lord. The Lord has rejected you as king over Israel.
So essentially like him, choosing his, I guess what he wanted most over obedience to the Lord. And he was so blurred in his vision by the riches and the victory of the war that he lost sight of what God had called him to, to be faithful in the mission of the whole, the whole journey. And that lost him, his kingship, that lost him the opportunity to remain the king of the Israelites and God judged him.
There is always going to be a temptation on our journey to be really ambitious about trying to conceive, to really seek out that like desire that's in us. And I really believe that the desire to become a mom is from the Lord. Like the Lord says, God says in Genesis 1 28 to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. So I believe that the desire that we feel to become moms and to conceive is from the Lord.
However, just like with anything, anything in this world, whether it's like your marriage or it's even your relationship with a child in the future or it's your career. Like there are things that God gives us and God calls us to that the enemy can twist if we are not on guard and careful of ways that we can, he can get footholds in that area. So just like this is a calling from the Lord, it doesn't mean that the enemy is not going to attack that.
And try to twist it and turn you into almost like an obsession to become pregnant. And so that's really what I want to talk about today is that struggle, like we see Saul struggle with. He was so distracted and blurred in his vision of God's calling or even God's voice that he had convinced himself that it was OK to do something that was not OK.
And on this journey of fertility, there are so many decisions to make and there is a lot of gray area where the Bible is not explicitly clear on what steps to take and what medication to try and what doctors to work with. But I do believe that we, when we are operating in a place of surrender with our desire and ambition to become moms, we can always kind of default to God's provision through that.
And so choosing instead of this struggle that saul dealt with, of that ungodly ambition to become a mom, choosing to reject that and choosing to instead say I am not going to get distracted by all of these promises by man that I can become pregnant. That if I just tried this, if I just did this, if I operated this way or like went for this treatment or you know, tried this medication or took this person's advice.
If we release that desire to almost like clear our vision and remove that desire of like I have to become a mom instead saying Lord, if it's your will allow me to become a mom. And that difference in language is like one is grasping white knuckling. The ambition is ungodly.
It is, it is like you are telling God what the plan is going to be and instead you're becoming or as a result, you're becoming like Saul, where you're becoming obsessed with what can happen, that fulfillment that might come if you were to conceive or become a mom and you get distracted on the steps of obedience, the sovereignty, the will that or even just the surrender to the will that God might have for you. So the opposite is also true.
If we choose to do the opposite of what Saul did here, what if we chose to rest in God to trust Him to follow his instructions when he does speak. There were times on my journey where I felt like God was not giving us clarity at all on what to do. So we did nothing because we didn't feel a release to do something. And so even though for years, I would say probably four years, I V F was an option on the table.
Like anyone we could have paid for it, we could have signed up, we could have done it for four years. But neither Josh nor I felt that release from the. So it was like the ungodly ambition would have been like, I'm just going to move forward with this because that's the next step to becoming a mom. Like I want to become a mom so bad that I'm willing to just rush ahead of God and just say yes, even if I don't feel a peace or a yes to go forward.
And so for four years, we waited when the opportunity was there, the money was there like we could have taken that step. But we, I genuinely felt like God was not giving us His blessing to do that. And that's what happened here with Saul, like God had not given him the blessing to take the things from the people that they had just conquered. He told them to destroy it and they didn't listen.
And so there are going to be times throughout our journey where we're going to have a green light, we're going to have a yellow light like hang in there, just continue doing what you're doing or we might have a red light. And I believe, believe that God is going to give us that clarity as we go. But if there is no clarity, we don't want to become so blurred in our vision of God's will and God's timing that we are consumed with that ungodly ambition to just become a mom.
Like if we just get that, then we will be happy, satisfied, fulfilled. That's a lie from the enemy. That is a total lie from the enemy. Guess what? I'm a mom and I still struggle with insecurity. I still struggle with moments of unfulfillment. I still struggle with moments of dissatisfaction like that's still relevant. It's not like everything goes away just because you got married or you got pregnant.
Like those are all blessings and they bring so much joy, but we can't allow the enemy's lies that, that in and of itself is going to fix all of our problems, overcome what God is currently trying to teach us in the process. So there was a lot thought that God taught me in the four years of saying no to I V F that. And I was always clear like it might not be a no forever. But right now I don't have a yes.
So it's a no because I didn't have a yes, it was a no. And that's also important to like pay attention to if you don't have a clear yes. If you don't have a clear peace and clearly open doors, then it is a no. Like honestly, that's God speaking, you know, anyway, so then let's talk about the like opposite of that and how to proactively set ourselves up in a position where we are not chasing or struggling with that ungodly ambition to become a mom.
But we're actually walking through our conceiving journey from a place of rest. So like I mentioned in the beginning, I always thought rest was kind of more physical. Like to me, it's, it sounds like taking a nap. It sounds like not doing work, not doing the dishes, like just kind of having a Sabbath moment. And I was reading in my devotional this week where it talked about rest in a different capacity. It talked about rest in looking like trusting God's provision.
And I got this image of just like relaxing into like someone behind you, someone sitting behind you. Like if I was sitting in front of Josh and I just kind of like let my weight fall back on him and he's holding me up in like kind of like a seated position, like my back is to his chest, right? And I just kind of relax in and I settle in because I feel safe. I feel rest. I feel secure.
He's like holding me up, even though I'm sitting there, I feel like the weight of my body is being held up by his weight, right? I think that's kind of that version of learning how to walk in rest or your conceiving journey and really being conscious and aware and tuning your heart into the seasons and the days and the weeks where God is calling you to more rest than he's calling you to take action.
So this journey can be all about the action because every single month, another month passes and it's another month older without a baby. And I know for me, I was watching those years tick by like, hello, my, my internal clock is ticking. I don't want to be later in my years when I start childbearing and so we can start to get kind of in our head about timing and what we think is better and appropriate and like more beneficial. And God is there just like rest like lean back against me.
I have this and there, there were seasons where like I mentioned Josh and I had the low or the red light. We did not have a green light and it was like, literally not trying at all. Like we weren't not trying. If that makes sense, we weren't being proactive about stopping pregnancy, but we were just not proactively seeking a solution, whether it was treatments, doctors, like we went through periods of time throughout our journey where we just were in a rest season.
And so that rest season is really important to take when you feel like you're slipping into an unhealthy relationship with your cycle, an unhealthy relationship, even with your spouse. And you're feeling like that is just constantly a battle. It's not like intimacy anymore or even you needing that place of rest spiritually just to like refill up and come back to the well of the Lord equipping you for what you need to carry on for like the next years, right?
So a lot of times in the battle, we would see like they would go out, they would fight the battle and then they'd come back to camp and kind of take a moment of rest. And I think that's a lot of times like this, this waiting journey where we have seasons of fighting, like really proactively fighting for God gives us that green light. We do the next step. But then there are seasons where he calls us back and he says it's time to rest. Let me fight on your behalf and he's working on our behalf.
But he also might be in a season of teaching us something like kind of game planning like coming back together, getting the if you think of like a military, getting them back together to go over the plan one more time before they go back out into battle.
It's like sometimes God needs to show us the plan and his will and his character in the weight in the yellows and in the reds of the stoplight of the journey to be able to take us to the next step where the green light is going to go and that is going to equip you for that next step and constantly kind of checking your heart and saying, ok, am I just seeking this because I'm convinced it's going to fix this, this hole that I feel in my heart or am I seeking this?
Because God has actually given me the green light to pursue this in this journey. And I think there's nothing more beautiful than an act of sacrifice that costs you something in your relationship with the Lord, for example, a lot of times I think of financial tithing where I'm like, ok, you know, I could give $2 but that's not really gonna make a debt in my bank account. Right?
It's not, I'm not gonna feel that I'm gonna be like, ok cool $2 whatever put it in the basket or I can make a deposit of like $2000 and I'd be like whoa that it I I felt that coming out of my bank account, right? And sometimes there are seasons in your waiting journey where we do have to take that step of obedience to feel the repercussions of stepping back into alignment of rest with God.
So translating that into our waiting season, like if you feel like things have gotten a little bit sideways, a little bit unhealthy, maybe mentally, you're struggling physically, you're struggling spiritually, you are just off with God because you have been kind of in this running rat race of trying to conceive. It's time to take a beat and step back and take a moment, a season of rest. Now, however long that looks that's between you and God.
But God could be calling you to say I want you to sacrifice that desire of conceiving so that I can fill your cup back up. I want you to rest, lean back against me, let me hold your weight up for a season so that you can rest up before the next part of the battle. And you know that process of saying like if we take time to rest, it is a sacrifice. You are sacrificing time, you are sacrificing on the altar, that desire, that deep, deep desire to become a mom.
And I think sometimes God asks us to do that so that he can reshape that and say like, OK, you're faithful to me over this thing that you're desiring, you are choosing to put it on the altar and you love me more than that thing that you're coming to me for, right? I think a lot of times I go back to Abraham and Isaac where God finally gives Abraham a son, OK, like the longest journey ever to conceiving was Abraham and Sarah and then God gives him a son and it's Sarah's child, it's Isaac.
And then God is like, um I want you to walk up this hill and sacrifice your son. Do you love me? It's kind of that question. How much do you love me? Are you willing to sacrifice anything for your love for me? And so then Abraham is like, OK, I'm obedient. I like Christ is supreme. God is supreme in my life like he is first and foremost.
So he takes his son, they walk up on this hill and when they get up there, his son literally asks him like, OK, so where's this animal that we're gonna sacrifice? He's obviously used to the process of sacrifice to God, but he's not used to the fact that they had no animals. And so Abraham was like, um, you know, God is gonna provide God is gonna provide what we need. And so they get there to the top and they're like, ok, so who's the son or who's the, who's the thing that we're sacrificing?
And Abraham takes his son and, you know, ties him up and all the things I think it talks about that like taking it all the way, almost like to the end type of a thing and then insert God's provision. God provides the lamb that they are to sacrifice because of the test that Abraham was able to pass. And he said, you do love me even over this, like your most prized possession.
And I literally cannot even fathom how Abraham must have felt because we've us, if you're listening to this, you know, some kind of waiting season, infertility, whatever, because you're, you're on this podcast. And so could you imagine you finally get the desire of your heart? And God asks you to give it up.
And so if that's like our season, now, if we have not been given the very thing that we're praying for yet, and we're still not willing to sacrifice it, we're still not willing to put it on the altar and surrender it. We're almost treating it like an idol over our relationship with the Lord and we're choosing our ambition to become a mom and our desire and our goals, our family goals over the. So in the will of God, then we are not waiting.
Well, we are not in a season of biblical waiting where we're saying, OK, I'm doing this on your terms, God. So a question that I think is really powerful to ask in this season of learning to rest that can just open up the door of conversation between you and God and even allow you some healing when you choose to surrender it and put it on the altar, that desire to become a mom. I'm going to put it on the altar. God, I'm gonna sacrifice it. I'm going to take a beat.
I'm going to take a rest and choosing to say, OK, God, I am putting in this work to become a mom. Like we are trying these various things. We're trying this treatment, we're trying this doctor, we are working on X Y and Z. We're moving toxins like we are pursuing this desire to become a mom and become parents and we don't feel like the fruit is lining up with the work that we're putting in. So God, what are you trying to teach me in this? What is your will here?
What is your will in these results like I am not conceiving? So what are you trying to teach me here? What are you doing here? What is your will right here? These questions can open up the door to really discovering what God is trying to do in the, in between. That's going to allow your faith to really expand in that relationship with God to blossom because you are coming to Him.
You are seeking Him. You are looking for the solution in Him and not in some other treatment that you know, you googled and you're like, let's just give this a go. You're coming to Him, you're sacrificing him and you're choosing to walk in alignment of like rest with God. That's biblical versus that chasing that ungodly desire of just being like, I'm gonna do anything in all things at any cost just to become a mom. And that's really a fine line. It's, it's difficult to have that self awareness.
But I believe when we take seasons throughout our journey to just come back to the foundation and say, ok, Lord, I was getting ahead of you. I was getting ahead of me. I just want to put this back on the altar and say, I sacrifice this desire of mine. I come before you and ask of you. What do you have for me in this? Where are you in this? What is your will in this like here I am Lord, you are supreme.
It is you who fulfills it is you who provides, I want to be living in surrender of doing things your way. So what are your instructions in this season for us as a couple that prayer and that willingness as a heart gosh, I can't imagine the blessings that God has for that faithfulness and for that, that just like livelihood of surrender, that livelihood of faithfulness. So I hope that was encouraging to you and I will catch you guys on the next episode.
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I am truly so grateful to be building out this community and I cannot wait to see you on the next episode until then go get a workout done for me and I will see you right back here in the Waiting Well Podcast.