"Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' but not do what I command? I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, listens to my words, and acts on them. That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when the flood came, the river burst against that house but could not shake it because it had been well built.” // Luke 6:46-48
“You could try IVF.”
I stared at my friend, unsure of how to respond.
“I know, you’re Catholic,” she continued. “But you can just go to Confession. If you want a baby, this might be the only way.”
She was right. I knew that. I’d thought the same thing myself. My biological clock was about to strike midnight, and my hopes of becoming a mother were quickly dying.
But I also knew IVF was not an option for me. I wanted a baby. But I wanted Jesus more. And doing what I believed to be wrong with the presumption that I could just go to Confession afterwards, would be betraying Him twice over.
“No,” I replied, finding my voice. “If God wants me to be a mom, I’ll be a mom. And if not, He has something better for me.”
That no to IVF was the hardest no I’d ever uttered. It required more than knowledge of Church teaching.* It required that I be like the Biblical homebuilder who “dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock” (Luke 6:48).
Digging deeply was what I had been doing for years. It’s what I had been doing as I strove to know my Faith, do God’s will, and walk daily with Him. I had been maturing as a disciple, learning to do the right thing, even when it felt impossibly hard.
Someday, God will call you, too, to do something that feels impossibly hard. Your ability to do as He asks will be a grace. But it also will be a grace built upon a hundred smaller yeses and nos. It will be a grace given not in an instant, but slowly, as you do the long, hard work of growing in virtue and building a relationship with Him.
Start doing the work now. Don’t wait. If you want God, and not just the gifts He gives, dig deeply. Build your life day by day on the Rock. Then, when the storm comes, not only will your faith survive, but after it passes, you will witness a dawn whose glory is beyond your imagining.
*The Catholic Church understands that infertility is a great cross and supports the use of NaPro Technology to treat the underlying causes of infertility. To learn more about NaPro visit the Pope Paul VI Institute. For more on why the Church condemns the use of IVF, see this article from the USCCB.
Emily Stimpson Chapman is the author of more than a dozen books and studies for women, including The Catholic Table: Finding Joy Where Food and Faith Meet and These Beautiful Bones: An Everyday Theology of the Body, and as the general editor for the Formed In Christ High School Textbook series. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with her husband and son. Find out more about her here.
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