Life is not Fair — and Jesus Didn’t Come to Fix That

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This past fall — right about the time of my last miscarriage and when I originally wrote this post — we noticed a giant pumpkin plant growing in our backyard. It wouldn’t have been weird if we had planted it, if it were placed in a well-tended garden instead of growing seemingly randomly right at the edge of our yard and the wetlands behind our house. We watched it this fall, growing larger and larger by the day, sprouting what seemed like the start of a dozen pumpkins.

Isn’t it funny, I remember telling my husband, how this plant has grown out of nowhere, without us watering it, without us even trying to make it grow? When others plant gardens and sow seeds and add fertilizer to the soil, only to have some crops never make it?

The symbolism of this plant is not lost on me. Except for when it comes to fertility, we seem to be on the other side.

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Over the past six years or so, I’ve watched as friends and family have accidentally gotten pregnant, gotten pregnant on the first — or second, or third, even — try. All the while I’ve seen specialists and tried new diets and purchased expensive supplements. Done everything I can think of to try to get pregnant and stay pregnant. And they casually mention how they’re always forgetting to take their prenatals, while I buy the best ones money can buy. And never forget to take them, month after month, just in the hopes of being pregnant.

When I consider the stories of others’ infertility and miscarriage, I’ve been one of the fortunate ones, I know that. I have a healthy, two-year-old son that I’m sometimes still in disbelief is mine.

And I’ve lost two babies, too.

But through my losses and infertility and even during my healthy pregnancy, the announcement that another person is pregnant on the first try or without even trying never fails to suck the air from my lungs. The idea that another person can have without even trying — or worse, without even wanting — what others are so desperate for. It’s so incredibly unfair.

What is the cause?

And so we’ve spent thousands and thousands of dollars trying to figure out the cause of my infertility and miscarriages. I’m just not the type to jump to possible solutions when I’m not sure what the problem is.

Sometimes I ask questions: Do you think it was my thyroid that caused my miscarriage this time? I ask my husband. Why do you think I got pregnant this time in the first place? Was it my back surgery, eliminating inflammation? My TSH becoming normalized again? Or do you think it was that ten-day detox diet we did in June? Should I try a gluten-free diet again? Go up a dose on thyroid meds?

There are too many variables; too many question marks. If I only knew how I had a healthy pregnancy the one time, I would know what to do.

Or maybe it’s all of the things. Maybe I have to do every little thing. And so sometimes my questions are really just me venting, arguing with my unsuspecting husband for no reason other than to have someone to be mad at other than myself: If it’s just my thyroid like you’re saying, then why, when my TSH was below 2.5 for months last fall, did I never get pregnant? Why is it that I have to do every little thing? Everyone else can get pregnant when it seems like they don’t take care of themselves and eat whatever kind of junk food they want! I don’t know why but my body just doesn’t work like that! I have to do every single thing!

And so in addition to my frustration with not getting pregnant month after month, I’ve noticed that something else frustrates me more than it should: The idea that life is not fair.

Life is not fair

I heard a sermon recently on the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16). It’s the one where the landowner hires people to work all different amounts of time — and ends up paying them all the same. It’s not fair. The ones who only work for one hour get a denarius at the end of the day, the same amount that the workers got who worked a full day.

At the heart of the workers’ frustrations, of course, is not the money. It is the fact that some workers felt like they deserved more. It’s the idea that they worked longer and harder but didn’t get any more than those who worked much less.

I think that’s how a lot of us feel, too: God, I’ve worked so much longer and harder than so many other people for a baby. And somehow people who started trying a month ago conceived that very month while I’ve been trying for years.

But not only is that not fair, but God, am I that bad of a person or a parent that I can’t have any (more) children? Why are you giving other people children — even some people who don’t seem to deserve any, like the ones screaming at their kids in the middle of the grocery store? Am I worse than that parent, so bad that you wouldn’t give me any more children? How is this fair?

But as our pastor pointed out in that sermon, God doesn’t care about fairness. He didn’t come so that life would be fair for us. After all, we don’t want to get what we deserve. Instead, He came to give us grace — what we really need.

This knowledge might not make this unfair life any less difficult to deal with, and it doesn’t give us a baby. But it is worth remembering what we really need. We think we need children, we think we need fairness, we think we need certain things to be happy. We think we’ll be happy when…

After all, I thought I’d be done longing for children if we could have just one child. I thought I’d be all done writing about the struggles of infertility.

But here I am again, sick of talking about it, sick of writing about it, sick of wanting it…but still crushed with an overwhelming feeling of disappointment every month.

And so I’m coming to realize — once again (how many times will God need to teach me this lesson?) — that it’s only when we don’t get everything we want that we realize we already have all we need in Jesus. Jesus was sent to save us, not to make life fair for us.

True contentment does not come as a result of having all of our prayers answered, but rather the opposite: Learning to be content in the midst of unanswered prayers.

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