Welcome to The Upper Room

As I type this, I'm sitting in my upstairs office. This room has been a place of great redemptive work, but also of deep sorrow. This room is where I do all of my virtual counseling. It should be a nursery.

When we bought this house—our first home—in 2022, we planned for this room to be my office only for as long as it took us to have a baby. At that point, we had been trying for almost a year. Fast forward another 18 months and there is still no nursery, and no reason yet to start preparing one. So, as I sit in this upper room, I am filled with both genuine joy for the work I do every day, but also loss for the hopes and dreams left unfulfilled.

Long ago, there was another upper room where joy and loss collided on a much bigger scale.  “The Upper Room” is what the Bible calls the place where, on the festive Passover holiday, Jesus ate the Last Supper with His disciples, revealed one of them would betray Him, and broke bread and drank from the cup that signified His impending sacrifice for us (Mark 14, Luke 22). The Upper Room was the site of the most bittersweet feast in human history.  In a way, it was a sacred place for Jesus and His disciples. This room feels sacred too.

I put very few decorations on the walls, because I still have faith that we will be adding baby things soon. The two things I have committed to hanging are these two drawings from 1 Samuel 1-2—right now, my favorite Bible story. The left frame shows a long-infertile wife named Hannah desperately pleading with God for a child. The right frame shows Hannah with her son, Samuel.

For this first post, I wanted to brag on Hannah a little bit by sharing some highlights of her story and talk a little about what we can learn from her. In 1st Samuel 1, we are told that the Lord had closed Hannah’s womb and that it went on year by year.

1 Samuel 1:10

"Hannah was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly."

Hannah was “deeply distressed.” She pleaded with God. She wept. It is pretty safe for me to assume that we all feel deeply distressed and weep for things that are broken—about our pain, and about the pain of people we love. Whether you plead with God, I don't know. But the brokenness of our world indicates, and we all know, that each human being suffers deep emotional wounds—some self-inflicted, and others completely outside of our control. . This left-hand frame reminds me every day that things are not as they should be. Of course, the story is personal to me (and the other 13,000,000+ women in America personally dealing with infertility), but the concept is universal to all humanity.

Thank God for the right-hand frame. It shows Hannah taking the little boy God gave her (Samuel) to the temple. I cannot imagine the joy she felt as she was dedicating the child she desperately prayed for to the Lord.

1 Samuel 1:26-28

"And she said, 'Oh, my lord! As you live, my lord, I am the woman who was standing here in your presence, praying to the Lord. For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition that I made to Him. Therefore I have lent him to the Lord. As long as he lives, he is lent to the Lord.'"

Many people pray for something then forget who to thank when the prayer is answered. Not Hannah—out of the overflow of her thankfulness, she gave God exactly what she promised Him. She worships God and says in 1st Samuel 2:1, "my heart exults in the Lord, my horn is exalted in the Lord." She goes on and on about how amazing God is, praising Him for who He is. She feels joy because she has seen God redeem. And God still redeems today. Out of deep sadness and brokenness, God gives us redemption and joy.

If I haven’t already told you, welcome to The Upper Room. By inviting all of you into this space with me, I hope we can process both the sorrows and joys of life together. Right now, I sit writing in a space that holds both joy and sadness. Even as I look at those two frames, I feel both grief and hope. When this room does become a nursery, I’ll leave them up. I never want to forget that deep brokenness can bring about great joy.

I live most of my life holding that tension between brokenness and joy.  To live in this beautiful, dying world is to constantly hold those two things together. We all experience brokenness, hurt, and pain in this life. Christians also have present and future joy in Christ, knowing that God is continually in the work of making us whole and that one day all things will be made new. Not only that, but God gives common grace for all to experience joy—some of my personal favorites being a nice hot latte on a crisp fall day, hiking to a magnificent view, and a long walk with my dog on a sunny day.

Even on this infertility journey, which is totally broken and not fun in the slightest, I’ve experienced some simple joys. I’ve re-evaluated the products I use, what I put on my body, and what I eat. This has surprisingly been enjoyable for me, especially to talk with friends and family about how to honor our God-given bodies in healthier ways. I’ve had more time to invest in things like making sourdough or putting together a closet that I love. My dog brightens each day and brings companionship to our home that helps our mental and emotional health. Not yet having children allows me to have more free time to establish relationships in my local church before we do start a family. I’ve seen community form and friendships flourish. I’m so grateful to have a hand in leading that charge. All these things are joyous gifts and I want to share these things equally as much as we talk about the hard things too.

I know that every person reading this experiences brokenness and joy. You are human, after all! My goal is for us to become more whole humans together. Thanks for coming along with me in this work; we need each other. I’ll see you here again soon.