I know what it feels like to wait.

My waiting is going on 18+ years now. I have wrestled with the heartache and survived under the crushing weight of unsatisfied hunger to birth a child. Although time moves forward and I grow older, my longing seems to stay forever frozen in time and nestled in that secret place within my heart that very few people ever see.

Through the years, I've been blessed with adopting two wonderful daughters. They have given me the precious gift of motherhood. Why then, am I left with this desire to give birth?

In order to find an answer to this question, I had to look to the only place I know to find truth; the Bible. When I read the Scriptures, I've noticied that God would often give a person a great desire and then withhold the fulfillment from them. From the book of Genesis, Abraham is a great example of this struggle. God promised him that he would be the father of many nations and that he would conceive a child through his barren wife, Sarah. Sarah continued to be barren until she was in her nineties before God fulfilled this desire and promise. God seemed to move at an incredibly slow pace (called longsuffering) in fulfilling this promise. He used infertility (the closing of a woman's womb) to move deep within the hearts of Abraham and Sarah. There was a specific reason and purpose. Each time, Abraham met with the Lord, he built an altar and offered a sacrifice upon it. He brought to the table the best of all he had and laid it before the Lord. This altar was a place of meeting; with Abraham, his desire and the Lord in attendance. In Abraham's life, we see that each time these meetings took place, he left as a different person. His life had been altered.

Things haven't changed today. God still requires us to come to His altar bearing the gifts of our will, our wants and our plans. Because of the cross, we don't need to come to an altar of stone. We meet with Him in prayer. In my heart, the Lord has placed a deep-rooted desire; a void that cannot be filled with earthly things or even precious people. I must go, kneel before my altar of waiting and meet the Lord who holds my heart within His hands. Each time I kneel there, I am transformed. My will, my want and my own plans are changed to align to His will, His plan and I find the comfort to wait for His timing.

This has been the pattern of my infertility for the past 18+ years. With all that the Lord has changed inside of me, I can now rejoice with news of others conceiving, and am released from the chains that once bound me and held me back from doing the work He's set before me in ministry. I know that one day He will finish what He has started within me and fulfill or remove the desire to birth a baby. But in the mean time, I will trust Him and allow Him to continue to alter me upon my blessed altar of waiting.

Tracy