What’s Your Isaac?

And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. (Gen. 22:9-10 KJV)

When I was a young girl, I dutifully listened to the story of Abraham and Isaac. I knew it by heart. But I remember, even as I grew up in the church and began attending as a married adult, not really getting it.

What kind of God would ask a father to kill his son? Especially a son God had given to Abraham and Sarah decades later than they expected.

My husband and I were Abraham and Sarah. (Although we didn’t wait quite as long.) Diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, I was told our chances of having a child without invasive procedures was very unlikely.

So we began a journey of doctor appointments and needles and shots and blood draws and ultrasounds and more poking and prodding than I could ever put into words on a piece of paper.

By the time my husband and I had been married for ten years, five attempts with artificial insemination (IUI) and four attempts with in-vitro fertilization (IVF) had left us in the exact same place that we had been when the journey started. Only this time, we were not just childless. We were also completely broke. We had exhausted our savings and gone into significant debt trying unsuccessfully to have a baby.

Along each step of this adventure, I found myself depending on an “ace up my sleeve.” When we first started struggling, I would say, “Well, there are always infertility treatments.” When we were doing IUI, I would say, “Well, there is always IVF.” And always, along the whole journey, I would tell myself, “Don’t worry. If you can’t have biological children, there is always adoption.” (And if for any reason that failed, then surely God would let me be a missionary somewhere, surrounded by children I could mother.)

These far-off promises gave me great comfort. God knew my heart. He knew that ever since I was a little girl, the only thing I had ever wanted to be was a mom. (Well, that and a grocery store checkout girl. But that’s another story.) He wouldn’t take away the thing in my life that meant the most to me. He wouldn’t ask me to give up my only dream.

One day, I walked into the living room of our condo holding an adoption packet. I knew my husband wasn’t ready to talk about adoption yet. And I knew that financially, we had exhausted every penny.

But we had just suffered our third IVF loss, and I was getting desperate. If we could just get the ball rolling on the adoption process, maybe I would be able to wade through this valley of grief with a little bit more grace and peace.

“I’m not ready yet,” my husband said.

“I know,” I said. “But I need something. I need some hope.”

“We have hope,” my husband said. “Our hope has to be in the Lord. Not in some way of securing our happiness ourselves.”

I was crying hard at this point. Tears were streaming down my face as I sat down on our sofa and pulled my knees up to my chest, squeezing the manila envelope against my knees.

“The pain is too much, JB,” I managed to say. “I can’t live like this. I need to be a mom. Or I at least need to know that someday I’ll be a mom.”

“But what if God has other plans? You can’t force this to go your way.”

And then he asked the most powerful question of my life.

“What if God is calling you to be childless?”

My shoulders started to heave. What was he saying?

“He wouldn’t do that,” I said between gasps for air.

“What if God is asking us to give Him the most important thing in our life? What if His plan doesn’t include biological children or adopted children or even a life lived as a surrogate mother to children? What if He has an entirely different plan? Can you accept that plan?”

And I thought of Abraham.

I thought of Abraham at the moment he heard God’s voice. God told Abraham to sacrifice the one thing in his life that he wanted more than anything in the world.

Isaac.

 And Abraham was willing to do it.

(Ever wonder where Sarah was during this whole event? Sorry. That’s another blog post entirely.)

Oh, to have faith like Abraham! To listen to God like Abraham! To be willing to sacrifice everything for our Heavenly Father.

Could I do it? Could I place my dream of motherhood on the altar of God and be willing to sacrifice it because God asked me to?

I realized that I loved God so much, I would do it. But oh, I didn’t want Him to ask that of me. Please, my heart pleaded. Anything else! Please don’t take motherhood.

I’m sure Abraham wrestled with the same emotions as he climbed the mountain.

It was at that moment I began to cry the hardest cry of my entire life. I watched all my thoughts and dreams go dancing through the recesses of my mind, and became aware, instantly, that my life was not going to go as I had planned. That God had a plan for my life that might look very different than the plan I had envisioned. And that I had to somehow turn control of my plans over to my Lord, place them on the altar, and be willing to sacrifice them if He asked.

It was one of the hardest and biggest and most wonderful and devastating moments of my life all rolled up into one. My husband held me and we cried together for what seemed like hours. I kept thinking about Abraham. And I kept thinking about my own Isaac.

Motherhood.

Could I put it on the altar?

I’d like to tell you I came to a place of total peace as we faced yet another failed attempt at IVF just a few months later. I’d like to tell you I was able to totally give my desire for motherhood over to the Lord. But honestly, I knew even at that moment, sitting on our old sofa sobbing uncontrollably, that if this was truly what God was calling to me to do, it would be a process. It would be a journey. And I would learn to walk it until the day I died.

But if God was asking me to do this, then I would do it.

Somehow.

I don’t know what your Isaac is today, but most likely, there is something in your life that isn’t going the way you planned. I encourage you to try, as I did, to put it on the altar of God. Give it to the Lord.

His ending will be far more beautiful than anything you could have ever imagined.

Wendi Kitsteiner is a former city girl now living on a farm in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee with her husband and four young children. She is passionate about the causes of infertility, adoption, and keeping it real as a mom. You can follow her at flakymn.blogspot.com or becauseofisaac.org.