To God Be the Glory

I turned the faucet off quickly. In my ears, I could hear the quiet popping of bubbles from the shampoo still lathered in my hair. I held my razor silently in midair and covered the gurgling of the drain with my foot so I could hear better. Straining, straining....

Quiet.

I turned the shower back on and continued with my sudsy routine. Shampoo, soap, shave...

We had only been watching her for three days. And, not even three full days at that. I suppose it had only been three mornings that we had been on duty while her parents worked at a conference. I was surprised how, in three short mornings, I had already grown accustomed to her noises, her cries, her happy screeches. So accustomed had I grown that I had even begun hearing her when she made no sound at all. Silly phantom noises.

As childless caregivers, we were completely and utterly overattentive. We'd put her down for a nap, only to sneak in her room twenty minutes later to make sure her chest was still rising and falling, rising and falling.  We picked her up perhaps a bit too readily, and we rarely put her down. Not that it was just for her sake, however. We commented often to one another how deeply we longed for this to be our everyday-reality.

Watching my husband look after this petite three-month-old wrecked me. This man was made to be a father. He held her close at all the right times and fearlessly changed diapers and outfits and warmed bottles just right. I have never seen a childless man so at ease with caring for an infant.  In the late hours before bedtime as I curled my legs up next to his, we breathed the truth that this whole experience was both healing and heartbreaking. Our arms were full of that for which we deeply longed, but then, we gave her back at noon, when her attentive parents returned and greeted her with the same tenacity with which we longed for what they have.

I snapped off the water again, hair full of conditioner. I was sure I heard her crying this time.
He had told me to take a shower. He said he didn't mind watching her.  He assured me that they'd be fine. As I turned off the water, I rolled my eyes at myself a bit - he's so capable, and what would I add or how would I even be helpful in my wet, soapy condition? But I paused all the same.  As I strained my ear to listen, it was not her crying that I heard.... I heard something else completely.

He was singing to her.

I stopped for a second and just listened. The words washed over me like the shower head I'd just been standing under... and, regardless of my former resolve, the tears just came.

"To God be the glory, great things He has done. So loved He the world that He gave us His Son who yielded His life, an atonement for sin, and opened the floodgates that all may come in."

Her crying had ceased as his singing calmed her, and the words of his song undid me.

"To God be the glory, great things He has done..."  

So often, on this infertility pathway, I pray until I'm breathless that God, for His glory and *obviously* for our good, would grant us the desire of our hearts - that He would do a great thing for us - that he would give us a baby.  I have imagined a million different scenarios where we announce our long-awaited pregnancy and everyone around us celebrates riotously. Surely that would bring God glory! Surely this would be a great thing that, quite obviously at this point, only He could do! Clearly a baby in the midst of heartbreaking, unexplained, long-term infertility would demonstrate His power and His glory! Why would He ever withhold such a thing?

"So loved He the world that He gave us His Son who yielded His life an atonement for sin..."

And here I am, an empty-handed child, standing at the foot of the cross, asking the GOD OF THE UNIVERSE why He would withhold one.small.thing.  I find myself throwing myself against the Rock of Ages asking why it won't budge for my will!  The fist that was raised to the heavens in arrogant frustration is being undone, brought low, gently reminded. My good, good Father has done and will do great things. He has parted seas and breathed life into dry bones and opened and closed wombs and brought heaven to earth and suffered and died for     His     glory.
And all I can see is my empty womb.

"Oh come to the Father through Jesus the Son, and give Him the glory, great things He has done..."

Here was my husband, cradling someone else's child, cradling a reminder of all that he did not have, and the only thing escaping his lips? Praise.

Praise the Lord, indeed.