I have been dealing with infertility and pregnancy loss for more than five years now. I bought this book last year during my fourth year on my infertility journey.

While I appreciate the author's viewpoints in many instances - I think her opinions or even knowledge of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART), such as IVF is really narrow minded. Her tone is almost derisive.

There are MANY couples who finally achieved their dream of parenthood through IVF.

She mentions that one of the reasons she did not pursue IVF was because she was concerned about having too many frozen embryos.

One is lucky if one has ONE EMBRYO make it to freeze - let alone many. I have done 3 IVF cycles and out of 3 cycles - and more than 50 eggs - only TWO embryos have ever made it, to be frozen. Not only that, some women are lucky if they even get ANY eggs from an egg retrieval. There are many women like me on infertility support boards/groups everywhere - who have similar stories to tell. Like trying to conceive naturally, IVF and other forms of ART don't always work - so I feel that when they do it is because God has been working through the process to make it so.

Ms. Flowers also offers the couple who has struggled with infertility for a long time little hope beyond adoption.

Adoption is a beautiful option to family building. However, it is not a panacea. Adoption can be a difficult, time consuming, emotionally draining process filled with its own pitfalls and disappointments. The thought of going through the adoption process (homestudy, birth mother searches, psychological interviews, medical reports etc) can be overwhelming to a couple who are already emotionally drained from years of infertility. Beyond that, adoption, especially international adoptions, can cost $20,000+. (Interesting when you consider that Ms. Flowers suggests that spending money on IVF is somehow un-biblical because it is expensive).

The bottom line is - that she chose or through prayer was led to conclude that adoption was the way forward for her, and that she would not pursue IVF.

That's fine - that is what was right, for her. However, I think that is not necessarily the right thing for everyone, which is what she seems to suggest.

The book should be re-titled: " Infertility: How I found God's Peace in My Journey".

Back in November of 2007, I went in to our local Berean bookstore, looking for one of the few pretty standard Christian Infertility Books (Hannah's Hope, The Infertility Companion, and a couple others are pretty "big"). I was annoyed to discover that Berean had only one book in the entire store on infertility (and for a moment, the store associate thought it was in the Parenting section. I was glad to find it in the "Women's Health" section instead). Anyway, I bought the book, stuffed it in my purse, and went on to meet a friend. When I got home, I logged on to Amazon and ordered those more "common" books and shoved this one to the back of my ever-growing pile. After all, I'd never heard of the book or the author, and had never seen it mentioned in any of my IF circles. I knew that it was recommended by Greg Smalley, and H. Norm Wright so I figured it couldn't be bad, but I still wasn't enthusiastic about reading it.

All those other books were great and I appreciate what I learned from them. I read through all of them and was left with just a couple more obscure titles, including this one. When I had to leave on a business trip, I tossed this book in my bag figuring it would give me something to do on the plane.

I started reading it and it wasn't long before I was hooked!

Infertility: Finding God's Peace in the Journey by Lois Flowers is a practical, Biblical guide book of the journey of Infertility, written for the IF Patients. As the author tells her story, she challenges the reader at every step with Biblical truths and logical challenges to the traps we often willingly fall victim to in our IF journeys that would seek to steal our joy and attention from God. She maintains a delicate balance of bold truth, and compassionate earnestness.

I've tried for a while to figure out why I like this book so much more than other books because really, what she says is not so profound that it's vastly different from other Christian books on the subject. I think I prefer this book because I appreciate the author's tone and approach. While other Christian Infertility books are very warm and almost personal, they appeal to the heart. They give me a sense of sitting and chatting over coffee, hugging and crying along the way. Those are wonderful elements of those books but for that reason, I never completely identified with them. I've done my share of crying no doubt, but at the end of the day I need help logically processing through everything.

This book appeals to the head and mind of the Infertility patient, which is much easier for me to identify with. I dogeared many many pages that contain content I've read before framed differently, but in this context the concepts reached out and grabbed me like they hadn't before in other mediums. My mind was challenged at every step, which in turn trained my heart. The author never allows the reader to just sit and stew in her own melancholy thoughts. She confronts prejudices, false entitlements and pity parties with the truth of God expressed with all the compassion of someone who knows the pain of this journey.

My favorite part of the book is when she quotes the Horse and His Boy by CS Lewis. I already have a soft spot for Lewis but the Horse and His Boy is a book I hadn't cracked since adolescence so I've forgotten much. In the passage cited, in an exchange between Aslan and a main character, the boy is asking the "Whys" of Aslan's workings in both his own life and that of a friend. Aslan answers:

Child...I am telling you your own story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.

Wow! Over and over I turned that in my head. This past fall I remember lamenting to my best friend that while I was overjoyed for her pregnancy I couldn't help but think that there must be some cosmic checklist that they accomplished and we didn't for God to decide that natural childbearing was a part of their story and not ours. In my head, there had to be some discriminating factor. I still saw infertility as incompleteness. As a blessing withheld. Childbearing was something they somehow deserved and we didn't, for reasons unbeknownst to any of us. That passage by Lewis and Ms. Flowers' excellent correspondence of it to the infertility journey continues to challenge me even now.

My other favorite part of the book is when the author is addressing the grief Infertility women often feel in modern Christendom, when motherhood is so magnified, and sometimes too much so. The Infertile woman is left feeling like the world thinks her life is "less blessed" or "less purposeful" and sometimes, she thinks those things about herself. The author writes:


I agree that children are wonderful blessings. If they were not, infertility wouldn't be nearly as hard as it is. I also understand why people with children might count them among the greatest blessings in their lives. But to suggest that people without children (married or not) are somehow missing out on the ultimate blessing is both narrow-minded and unbliblcal. The Scriptures (especially Psalms and Proverbs) list dozens of other sources of God's blessing. And nearly all of these have to do with a person's heart and relationship with God and others, rather than her ability to reproduce her own genetic material.

For example, you are blessed when you refrain from walking in the "counsel of the wicked" or standing "in the way of sinners" or sitting "in the seat of mockers" (Psalm 1:1). You're blessed when you delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on it around the clock (Psalm 1:2). You are blessed if your "transgressions are forgiven" and your "sins are covered" (Psalm 32:1). You're blessed when you take refuge in the Lord (Psalm 34:8), when you make the Lord your trust (Psalm 40:4), when you have regard for all the weak (Psalm 41:1), when you learn to acclaim the Lord and walk in His presence (Psalm 89:15), when you seek Him with all your heart (Psalm 119:2), when you maintain justice, and when you "constantly do what is right" (Psalm 106:3).

You're blessed when you are kind to the needy (Proverbs 14:21), when you are generous to the poor (Proverbs 22:9), when you are faithful (Proverbs 28:20), when you honor the Sabbath (Isaiah 56:3), when you are disciplined by God (Psalm 94:12), when you find wisdom (Proverbs 3:13), when you serve others (John 13:11-17), when you fear the Lord continually (Proverbs 28:14), when you read the book of Revelation and take its message to heart (Revelation 1:3-4) and when you actively watch for the return of Jesus Christ (Revelation 16:14-15).


The author goes on to share the beatitudes as well and finally concludes:

Notice that this passage says nothing about having children. Like most of the blessings delineated in the Old Testament, all the blessings here are a direct result of Christlike behavior, not of familial relationships.

God may not have blessed you with biological children yet. And He may never choose to do so. But regardless of whether you ever have a successful pregnancy, you have many other wonderful opportunities to receive His blessing, most of which can have eternal impact. In the meantime, you can either bemoan the fact that you're missing out on the blessing of children (either temporarily or permanently), or you can actively seek out ways to grow in purity and godliness, serve others and develop wisdom.



What a wonderful, exhaustive list of God's goodness and mercies! As a long term Christian, I knew all of these things, and I also know that I do not exist so that God may bless me, but that doesn't mean that I have always stopped my heart from wallowing in what I was bound to "miss out" on! This passage was such a challenge to me and I hope that it would be a challenge to our church culture too.

I really love this book. I want to find the author and hug her guts out. The book does have an appendix for family and friends of infertile people, as well as a resource for pastors, and those are well and good too, but this book was just so instrumental in shedding light on lies in my heart, in encouraging me in places where I felt a bit on shakey ground, and in challenging me to really appreciate this journey of Infertility.

I recommend it with my whole heart! Praise God for the "inconvenience" of Berean having only one book on the shelf. I am confident that it was so I would read this book that I otherwise would not have touched and I am so grateful for the gift it has been. I hope it will encourage you all likewise!

Back in November of 2007, I went in to our local Berean bookstore, looking for one of the few pretty standard Christian Infertility Books (Hannah's Hope, The Infertility Companion, and a couple others are pretty "big"). I was annoyed to discover that Berean had only one book in the entire store on infertility (and for a moment, the store associate thought it was in the Parenting section. I was glad to find it in the "Women's Health" section instead). Anyway, I bought the book, stuffed it in my purse, and went on to meet a friend. When I got home, I logged on to Amazon and ordered those more "common" books and shoved this one to the back of my ever-growing pile. After all, I'd never heard of the book or the author, and had never seen it mentioned in any of my IF circles. I knew that it was recommended by Greg Smalley, and H. Norm Wright so I figured it couldn't be bad, but I still wasn't enthusiastic about reading it.

All those other books were great and I appreciate what I learned from them. I read through all of them and was left with just a couple more obscure titles, including this one. When I had to leave on a business trip, I tossed this book in my bag figuring it would give me something to do on the plane.

I started reading it and it wasn't long before I was hooked!

Infertility: Finding God's Peace in the Journey by Lois Flowers is a practical, Biblical guide book of the journey of Infertility, written for the IF Patients. As the author tells her story, she challenges the reader at every step with Biblical truths and logical challenges to the traps we often willingly fall victim to in our IF journeys that would seek to steal our joy and attention from God. She maintains a delicate balance of bold truth, and compassionate earnestness.

I've tried for a while to figure out why I like this book so much more than other books because really, what she says is not so profound that it's vastly different from other Christian books on the subject. I think I prefer this book because I appreciate the author's tone and approach. While other Christian Infertility books are very warm and almost personal, they appeal to the heart. They give me a sense of sitting and chatting over coffee, hugging and crying along the way. Those are wonderful elements of those books but for that reason, I never completely identified with them. I've done my share of crying no doubt, but at the end of the day I need help logically processing through everything.

This book appeals to the head and mind of the Infertility patient, which is much easier for me to identify with. I dogeared many many pages that contain content I've read before framed differently, but in this context the concepts reached out and grabbed me like they hadn't before in other mediums. My mind was challenged at every step, which in turn trained my heart. The author never allows the reader to just sit and stew in her own melancholy thoughts. She confronts prejudices, false entitlements and pity parties with the truth of God expressed with all the compassion of someone who knows the pain of this journey.

My favorite part of the book is when she quotes the Horse and His Boy by CS Lewis. I already have a soft spot for Lewis but the Horse and His Boy is a book I hadn't cracked since adolescence so I've forgotten much. In the passage cited, in an exchange between Aslan and a main character, the boy is asking the "Whys" of Aslan's workings in both his own life and that of a friend. Aslan answers:

Child...I am telling you your own story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.

Wow! Over and over I turned that in my head. This past fall I remember lamenting to my best friend that while I was overjoyed for her pregnancy I couldn't help but think that there must be some cosmic checklist that they accomplished and we didn't for God to decide that natural childbearing was a part of their story and not ours. In my head, there had to be some discriminating factor. I still saw infertility as incompleteness. As a blessing withheld. Childbearing was something they somehow deserved and we didn't, for reasons unbeknownst to any of us. That passage by Lewis and Ms. Flowers' excellent correspondence of it to the infertility journey continues to challenge me even now.

My other favorite part of the book is when the author is addressing the grief Infertility women often feel in modern Christendom, when motherhood is so magnified, and sometimes too much so. The Infertile woman is left feeling like the world thinks her life is "less blessed" or "less purposeful" and sometimes, she thinks those things about herself. The author writes:


I agree that children are wonderful blessings. If they were not, infertility wouldn't be nearly as hard as it is. I also understand why people with children might count them among the greatest blessings in their lives. But to suggest that people without children (married or not) are somehow missing out on the ultimate blessing is both narrow-minded and unbliblcal. The Scriptures (especially Psalms and Proverbs) list dozens of other sources of God's blessing. And nearly all of these have to do with a person's heart and relationship with God and others, rather than her ability to reproduce her own genetic material.

For example, you are blessed when you refrain from walking in the "counsel of the wicked" or standing "in the way of sinners" or sitting "in the seat of mockers" (Psalm 1:1). You're blessed when you delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on it around the clock (Psalm 1:2). You are blessed if your "transgressions are forgiven" and your "sins are covered" (Psalm 32:1). You're blessed when you take refuge in the Lord (Psalm 34:8), when you make the Lord your trust (Psalm 40:4), when you have regard for all the weak (Psalm 41:1), when you learn to acclaim the Lord and walk in His presence (Psalm 89:15), when you seek Him with all your heart (Psalm 119:2), when you maintain justice, and when you "constantly do what is right" (Psalm 106:3).

You're blessed when you are kind to the needy (Proverbs 14:21), when you are generous to the poor (Proverbs 22:9), when you are faithful (Proverbs 28:20), when you honor the Sabbath (Isaiah 56:3), when you are disciplined by God (Psalm 94:12), when you find wisdom (Proverbs 3:13), when you serve others (John 13:11-17), when you fear the Lord continually (Proverbs 28:14), when you read the book of Revelation and take its message to heart (Revelation 1:3-4) and when you actively watch for the return of Jesus Christ (Revelation 16:14-15).


The author goes on to share the beatitudes as well and finally concludes:

Notice that this passage says nothing about having children. Like most of the blessings delineated in the Old Testament, all the blessings here are a direct result of Christlike behavior, not of familial relationships.

God may not have blessed you with biological children yet. And He may never choose to do so. But regardless of whether you ever have a successful pregnancy, you have many other wonderful opportunities to receive His blessing, most of which can have eternal impact. In the meantime, you can either bemoan the fact that you're missing out on the blessing of children (either temporarily or permanently), or you can actively seek out ways to grow in purity and godliness, serve others and develop wisdom.



What a wonderful, exhaustive list of God's goodness and mercies! As a long term Christian, I knew all of these things, and I also know that I do not exist so that God may bless me, but that doesn't mean that I have always stopped my heart from wallowing in what I was bound to "miss out" on! This passage was such a challenge to me and I hope that it would be a challenge to our church culture too.

I really love this book. I want to find the author and hug her guts out. The book does have an appendix for family and friends of infertile people, as well as a resource for pastors, and those are well and good too, but this book was just so instrumental in shedding light on lies in my heart, in encouraging me in places where I felt a bit on shakey ground, and in challenging me to really appreciate this journey of Infertility.

I recommend it with my whole heart! Praise God for the "inconvenience" of Berean having only one book on the shelf. I am confident that it was so I would read this book that I otherwise would not have touched and I am so grateful for the gift it has been. I hope it will encourage you all likewise!

This book has been a great help. I am in the early stages of infertility. My husband and I have had so much pressure from family, friends and the church about when are you going to have a baby. I laughed and cried while reading it. Finally, I said to myself someone understands. Even if you just started on this "journey of infertility", I recommend it. The author does not leave you hopeless. She helped me to remember what is important while still validating my feelings. I cannot make having a baby my "idol". God is still good!

This book helped me immensely in bringing closure to our infertility journey and helped me find peace. It answered and helped explain many of the issues I had been dealing with while struggling with infertility. I definitely recommend it to anyone who asks God, "Why me?" However, I would like to add that you may want to wait to read it until you are near the end of infertility treatments and considering other options. It is very straightforward and may upset someone who is just starting off dealing with infertility.

Since I, too, have struggled with infertility, I was anxious to compare my experience with the author's. And I found I could relate to so many things she said; she has a beautiful way of making a private emotion seem very universal. If you are a Christian asking the tough questions about infertility and treatment options, this is a great book, and a great comfort.

Ginger Garrett is the author of Moments for Couples Who Long for Children.

I read this book at a very low point in my fertility journey. After finishing this book, I felt like the the author left no room for God's power to work through any fertility situation.

I understand that she never conceived, and decided to adopt, but not all of us are there. I still feel that God can bring me a baby, even if I get to be as old as Sarah! I guess I didn't feel the same from this author.

This book is a must read for any couple coping with the trial of infertility. I was able to do just what the title said, find God's peace! Chapter by chapter I learned important information, grappled with the hurt and pain and found some of the answers I had been looking for. Now I know that I'm not alone and that others have gone through just what I am, and that there is hope and peace to be found. I am recommending this book to others I meet who are going through infertility.