A New Year, A New Hope

I know that I sounded a little pessimistic in the first post I made on this blog, but I am a lot more optimistic than I used to be. As we've looked back on the year, Amanda and I made a promise to each other and to the Lord that we were going to do our best to have a much more positive and loving year. We are ready to move on from the troubles of the past, and to see that things can only get better from here. As we listened to Bro. Van Sunday evening, Amanda said that the Lord was just touching her throughout the service. He asked us to pray for our church family for different reasons, and as he discussed each topic, he asked one of the men of the church to come up and pray. It gave me a peace and a joy unlike any you could imagine. He read this scripture. Jeremiah 29:11-14 11 "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile."
As I listened to those words, I reflected on the last year, and you know, it did feel like we had been in exile. It seemed like every corner we turned there was some unexpected problem that would bring us down. We did have good moments too, though, as we saw between 10-15 kids saved in our church in the last year. We had opportunities to show them Christ's love, and we were loved back by them so much. That was what made it hard to leave. But God is in control, and He has great plans for us in the new year. It has been on our hearts to start a group that would comfort and reach out to those who may have gone through the things that we have in the last year.
It is so difficult for someone to know the pains of childlessness when you have children of your own. We have watched people who we once considered friends become distant and afraid to speak to us, as if they didn't want to make us feel uncomfortable or they didn't want to feel uncomfortable themselves. There were people who were going through the struggles we did, and they turned to us and we were grateful to help them, but when they were able to have children, we were almost shunned by them. That's a very hurtful experience. I watched as my wife would come home from baby showers in our home church, and she would be crying. It would hurt me so bad, knowing that there is nothing that I can physically do to help her experience what these women felt. No one knows that pain, but we do. And we want to help others who are going through that. I don't know if anyone will read this, but if you do, I want you to know that there is hope in spite of all the bad in this world. Yeah, it may seem unfair that God has chosen not to bless us with the beauty of natural childbirth, but God never promised that life would always be fair. He did promise, though, to be there for us, and to comfort us and to give us the strength to overcome. I hear so many people say that God will never put more on us than we can bear, but I disagree with that. The reality is this, if we try to bear anything alone, it will become overbearing for us. God doesn't want us to bear our burdens alone. When our burdens begin to weigh us down, we need to go to Him right then and ask Him to help us carry our burden. It may be our burden, but it's not ours to bear alone. It's ours and His together. Just as a husband and wife must bear all their joys and sorrows together, so must the Christian bear all their joys and sorrows together with Christ. Remember what Paul says in Philippians 4:13: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."
I plan on talking about this topic of infertility and loss a lot throughout this year, and I hope that I can help someone who is going through what we have gone through. Amanda and I have talked about starting a support group for folks who go through this pain this year, so please be in prayer for us. It's going to hurt a lot to go through it again and again, but it's part of God's plan, and we know that He has great plans for us, because He told us so in His word.


Brian Luna
The Lunatic Preacher