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Surrendering Our Wombs

Posted by Arwen Mosher in Faith on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 8:00 AM

As I’ve mentioned before, Bryan and I went through two-and-a-half years of actively trying to conceive before I became pregnant with our first child.

That waiting period was a spiritually fruitful time for me, at least by the end of it.  At the beginning I did a lot of flailing.

Writing helped, and so did corresponding by email with other Catholic women who were dealing with similar struggles.

I made one friend who had half a dozen early miscarriages during the time I was waiting to get pregnant.  (She, by the grace of God, now has a toddler and a baby just as I do.)  She and I wrote many emails back and forth, and I gained many insights from our conversations.  Years later, one of these in particular still stands out in my mind.

We can look at the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary and learn much about how to live our lives as Christians.  Christ’s mother standing at the foot of the Cross is a particularly poignant image.

But for us women, there is a special lesson to be learned from the actions of Our Lady at the Annunciation.

This is the insight my friend shared with me, one that she herself had gained in a grief-filled moment of praying to the Blessed Mother.

When the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her of God’s plan for her, she gave her famous answer.  “Let it be done unto me according to your word.”  In that moment, she handed her life over to God, but more specifically, she handed over her womb.

In that instant she agreed to do as God asked her.  This would mean carrying the Son of God and watching him die on the Cross and eventually following him to Heaven, but Mary did not know that.  She assented in spite of her lack of comprehension and by doing so showcased the incredible grace of God within her.  And her journey as Christ’s mother began with that surrender of her womb.

I wrestled with the emptiness of my own womb during our waiting months, and my friend’s insight helped me to see Mary as my model in a special way.  Our fertility struggles, I discerned, were my call to hand over my womb to God just as Christ’s mother had done, to accept God’s will for me to bear children - or not - in his timing.  Praying for the grace to do that carried me through the months of our wait, blessedly short though it turned out to be.

As I’ve moved into the current stage of my life, I’ve continued to meditate on the idea of Mary at the Annunciation as an example for our lives.  All Christians are called to surrender our lives to God, but we women in a special way are called to surrender our wombs to God.  This is true for all of us, no matter what our vocations.  Women called to religious life must assent to not bearing children; married women on all parts of the fertility spectrum are called to assent to God’s will for us as well, whether it means we will bear a dozen children or none at all.

Today, on the Feast of the Annunciation, we have Mary as our model in that task.

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