Jennifer Saake

When HANNAH'S HOPE arrived, I picked it up just to scan through it. Turned out, I couldn't put it down until I absolutely had to.

A few nights later, I picked it up again and started from the beginning, intending to read at least to where I'd left off before - but I had a highlighter in hand this time. By the time I reached that original point, I'd forgotten the highlighter, forgotten the time, and was just engrossed.

We're just starting our real journey with infertility - I've known for quite some time, since before I was ever diagnosed with anything, that having children would have to be a miracle of God. But I didn't used to care as much as I do now. There are lots of resources available about infertility - medical jargon, possible causes and treatments, someone else's story, encouragement that God gave _________ a child, He can do it for me, too, if I'll just [fill in the blank with "relax," "try such-and-such treatment," "pray", "adopt," etc.]...

Part of my problem with women facing/battling infertility - and this will sound so ridiculously insensitive, but bear with me - is that we are so focused on our empty arms that life is miserable not only for us but for everyone around us. I've seen that same tendency in myself, but I do not want to be "that woman." My identity is wrapped up in the identity of Jesus Christ, whether He ever allows us to be parents or not, and life does not revolve around me or all the ins and outs of infertility and whatever my underlying cause is.

HANNAH'S HOPE is just such a book to help me be the woman I want to be - and that I believe God wants me to be - even if God never gives us children. Mrs. Saake is writing from first-person experience with all three child-bearing difficulties she addresses. She's struggled to conceive. She's miscarried multiple times. She and her husband have watched multiple adoptions fall through. She knows what she's about in this arena.

And she is so gracious, and so hopeful! She understands the pain that many women feel, and she understands how nonsensical some of our reactions may seem to what are everyday occurrences to everyone else. But though she kindly acknowledges self-pity and depression as natural emotional responses to everything an infertile or grieving woman is going through, she doesn't allow her readers to wallow. Instead, she points us always, gently, to Christ:

"God knows this grief personally. He has gone to greater measures to make you His child than you will ever go in the pursuit of growing your own family...I like to paraphrase [John 3:16] this way: 'For God so longed to call me His child, that He offered the life of His only biological Son to pay the price of my adoption.'

As can be assumed by the title, she bases her writing around the story of Hannah from 1 Samuel 1. Each chapter deals with a verse or two from that story, and the various challenges or questions revealed about infertility. She sorts out issues like envy and rivalry, the desire to hear nothing and everything about a friend's or loved one's children at the same time, the impact of infertility and the pursuit of children on marriages, where ethical boundaries are placed by God, how to be a part of a church that seems insensitive to your grief, and how to minister and worship in the midst of heartache.

I admit that I haven't been around the block as far as resources are concerned, but I'm convinced that Mrs. Saake's treatment of such an emotional and devastating issue is one of the best available. HANNAH'S HOPE: Seeking God's Heart In The Midst Of Infertility is written out of a heart that's been there, and has learned to hold tightly to Christ, because only in Him is true strength found.

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