Sacrifice of Praise

I am having a hard time going to church right now. During this season of infertility I have cried out so many times to the Lord so earnestly and so loudly that I have made myself hoarse. In my most vulnerable moments I cry out to him that I don't think He is listening. I don't understand how this could be within his power to do, and yet He chooses not to. It is so difficult to sit in church and sing songs about God's goodness and faithfulness without having an inward battle. I know in my head that this is true. I believe in my head that He is faithful and good, and yet my heart feels betrayed by Him. If in His nature He is good and faithful, then why does He choose not to be good or faithful to me?


I am surrounded by friends who are pregnant. Not just one or two, dozens of people that we know are pregnant. It has made it impossible to be around other people without awkward moments and intense pain. It isn't that I think that I should be pregnant and not them. It is that their being pregnant feels like a slap in the face to me from God. Being around them is such a painful reminder of what I desperately want and cannot achieve. I feel like I make every pregnant person uncomfortable. I resent people pitying me. I resent every time I hear a friend complain ungratefully about being pregnant. Sometimes I want to scream at them that I would throw up every day for the rest of my life if it meant I could have a baby! And yet as time passes I become more and more uncomfortable and feel more and more pain as I am forced to watch my friends belly's grow as their baby gets ready for the outside world. It feels like God is asking me to bear more than is humanly possible. Why can I not share this experience with my friends. Why do I have to watch people that aren't even trying to conceive get pregnant? I just want the same gift!

I feel so ugly as I have these thoughts of anger and frustration with God and my friends. I am not angry with my friends for being pregnant, but I can't seem to make myself celebrate with them either. I feel like if I was godly enough I could suck it up and deal but I cannot.

So then I go to church and try desperately to worship, and instead end up crying as I sing about the faithfulness of God that I have not seen realized in my situation. This morning in church I stood there wrestling with God and admitting that I desperately want to say that He is "wonderful, so wonderful" and sing of His "unfailing love," while trying desperately to hold it together so that I don't make every one around us feel uncomfortable -all the while feeling like God is cruelly withholding from us. I open my eyes to see my dear friend in the choir who is recently pregnant worshipping her heart out. I wanted to scream at God, "Of course she can sing her heart out to You. You have answered her prayers!" God so strongly spoke to my heart that this is what the psalmist meant when he spoke of a "sacrifice of praise." I am supposed to praise Him even when I feel like He is witholding from me...even when I feel like He is cruel. I don't want to be guilty of only praising Him when He answers my prayers when I ask Him to.

I am determined to offer the sacrifice of praise throughout this situation because I know it will remind me that He is worthy of praise, and because it forces me to think of other things in my life to be thankful for. I am determined because He IS worthy of praise, even if I don't feel like it.