FEATURE ............................................................................................................................... .................................................................................. .
DEALING WITH THE PAIN OF CHILDLESSNESS
Dionne Gravesande shares some ideas on how the church community can help and support the increasing number of Christian women, who are having to confront the reality of childlessness
DIONNE
GRAVESANDE is Head of Church and Young People’s Relationships at Christian Aid
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ver recent months, I have had good reason to test the words of a Lebanese poet and writer, who wrote, “Some of
you say ‘Joy is greater than sorrow’, and others say, ‘No, sorrow is greater’. But I say to you, they are both inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, the other is asleep on your bed”.
Maybe you are curious as to what has been the cause of both joy and sorrow. My sorrow is connected to the pain of women of a certain age, who, for a range of medical reasons, are no longer able to conceive and carry a child. For some women, the sadness attached to the realisation they will not experience motherhood is immense, and one I hadn’t fully recognised since I am already a mother.
These women will not experience the joy and anxiety of pregnancy, of feeling life growing within them. They will not know the feeling of weight bearing down as an expectant mother prepares for birth, or know what it feels like to hear the words “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl”, or experience how her body makes provision for a newborn child. It is a hard and bitter pill to swallow if you have to walk in such shoes. I know a handful of women for whom this is a painful reality, and I want to offer my best support, however I am asking the question, How do I best do that?
Official statistics reveal that up to one in five women will undergo a hysterectomy during their lifetime, so it is a relatively common operation. Around 60,000 women undergo hysterectomies per year in the UK. For the majority of women, hysterectomy is elective surgery. However, it seldom feels that way. In many cases, from the moment a woman presents at the doctors’ surgery with a gynaecological disorder, she “feels as if she’s on a conveyor belt of pre-operative process”. Post-operatively, after a few days in hospital, she is passed medically fit and discharged to contemplate how this piece of ‘elective surgery’ may affect the rest of her life and her relationships.
Interestingly, the NHS drug and treatment watchdog, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), warned in January 2007 that too many women with gynaecological problems were ‘suffering symptoms in silence’, because they feared having to have a hysterectomy. With such numbers affected, it is likely that many women in our churches experience this medical condition; after all, the population in our church is two thirds female. Some will have had children and some will not. Some will be married and others will be single. Some will talk about it, but the vast majority will not.
“For some women, the sadness attached to the realisation they will not experience motherhood is immense, and one I hadn’t fully recognised since I am already a mother.”
From the testimonies and stories I have encountered, many woman reach a place where they feel uncomfortable discussing these matters within the context of church. One woman asked me the question: “Who would I trust enough to let them share my times of greatest anguish?” I am not suggesting this is a sermon topic for a Sunday morning, but congregations are also communities, and is it not the case that
the Spirit of Jesus requires and invites us - through that Spirit - to belong more deeply to one another, to challenge and overcome the divisions?
It was within this context that I began to understand that a number of critical life questions are reshaped and reformed, and many of these questions do not have immediate answers. The answers have to be worked through, and while there is truth in the statement, ‘Other people won’t understand you until you understand yourself’, we can be accompaniers on each other’s journeys. There is a joy to be discovered, and once a new understanding is achieved and reconciliation to God is complete, it is possible to recognise the life of God inside of us and, within that, there is purpose for our lives.
Jesus invited His followers to think and to do things differently. No doubt at times this is hard because it’s not our default position, and it’s always the minority position.
The Easter season calls us to remember the work of Jesus on the Cross, and the Cross is the place to which our bad times can ultimately be brought.
God doesn’t offer cast iron answers to the questions we have about our suffering, but He enters into the questions, and participates in the suffering through the life and the terrible death of Jesus. When nothing else helps, look at the Cross as a symbol of resurrection and eternal hope. Remember the truth that, in the last resort, only a suffering God can help any of us.
Here are some tips for women experiencing gynaecological problems:
1. Start a daily gratitude journal; it can truly be soul-saving
2. Invest time and energy into your key relationships
3.Write a testimonial of one page and laminate it
4. Identify where your strengths lie
5. Take some time each day to do something nice for yourself
www.keepthefaith.co.uk23
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