Katie Scheurmann discusses this question with us, "Are you a mom if you have no children in your house?"
Katie has written several books, including her nonfiction books, He Remembers the Barren (LL 2011; 2nd ed., EP 2017), Pew Sisters (CPH, 2013), and He Restores My Soul (EP, 2018), addressing the topic of suffering and the theology of the cross for the benefit of her sisters in Christ.
Aired 5.10.25
Ancr: This is I Choose Life News and Views sponsored by Indiana Right to Life and Right to Life of Northeast Indiana. Committed to defending innocent human life for all people of all ages. I Choose Life News and Views is produced by Bot Radio Network in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Abigail: Welcome to I Choose Life News and Views.
This is Abigail Lorenzen. Thanks so much for tuning in with us. Another week here, another program, and in May now we are starting another series as well. So during the course of the year, we've been working through different series. If you've missed some of those, check 'em out at I choose life.org underneath the radio tab.
But now in May, May is always the place that Mother's Day lives, right? So we are gonna focus in on motherhood. And if this is a painful topic for you, I want you to stay here with us because we are going to deal with some of the grief and suffering that people experience when we're talking about motherhood.
Motherhood can be rainbows and unicorns. I think most mothers know that that's not a lot of the case, that there is a lot of pain that can go into this. There's a lot of suffering and for people who desire to be mothers. But haven't seen that come to fruition in their lives. Our guest today and who's gonna be on with us next week too, I think, is gonna maybe open a door for you guys to see actually how motherhood extends beyond what our culture typically thinks of it as.
Um, and so this is, I love doing this around Mother's Day because Mother's Day has a lot of beauty to it. But it can also carry a lot of pain, and we wanna address that head on and help you heal. If that's the case for you, or help you navigate that. If you have a friend who you know has pain surrounding the idea of motherhood, surrounding Mother's Day.
So today with us, we have Katie Schuermann She's been on with us, but it has been years. It was 2019. Uh, she keeps saying that we're old, but I don't really believe her. 2019 wasn't that long ago. Uh, but high time to have her back on. Katie is an author and just a generally artistic person. I would advise you to go hop on her website here, check her out.
Um, Katie Schuermann, her last name is German, so just put as many consonants in it as you possibly can. Uh, but like for instance, Dr. Just from the seminary here says real authentic, lyrical, and I think that that's a fantastic quote. So Katie, thank you so much for joining us for these two episodes.
Katie: Abigail, it is always a joy to be in your company. Thank you for those kind words. And yes, Schuermann, S-C-H-U-E-R-M-A-N-N. Did you know that when God gives you the gift of a spouse, sometimes you get a name that has so many consonants in it? I do.
Abigail: I know my husband gave me that name, not as a spouse. I know this as a child. My, my maiden name is Cheba. Yes. Yeah. I kid you not Katie, when I was studying abroad in Spain. These Spanish professors would be going through the class list, and they would say Everybody's first and last name, right? And they would get to me and they'd say, Abbi, Gael, Abbi, Gael. And I was like, oh, no last name.
That's me because it's way too German for Spanish speakers to even try too many consonants in a row. So Sherman, they wouldn't probably try either. It's just too much.
Katie: You know, all about the SCH, then I do. I know all about it. Mm-hmm. Well, thank you for having me. It's, it's really a blessing to talk with you today, especially about this topic.
It's one that is dear to my pained heart.
Abigail: Yeah. So this is, like I said, you guys we're gonna sink into this deep, um, and I think that's kind of where we're gonna start, right? Katie, you have your own long and beautiful, but somewhat painful story. Um, and I wanna give you an opportunity for those of you listeners who weren't around with us in 2019, you can of course go back and grab the episode for sure.
Um, but Katie, tell us your story, and then of course, anything that's built here in the last six years since we've been on together.
Katie: Sure. Yeah. Well, thank you. I'm going to overshare in hopes that that will serve you who is listening out there. I have been. Married to Michael Schuermann, it will be 23 years this summer.
Thanks be to God. The older I get, the more I realize that God, as he promises in his word, he gives all of us such good gifts. And sometimes those gifts are not the ones we ask for. Sometimes they are. Michael is one of the gifts I ask for, and I thank him for that gift. Um, I will turn, Lord willing, 47 this summer and just this last year I turned postmenopausal.
And that has been harder to write the list of all the good things down on a piece of paper in response to that, uh, that change in my life. But for those of you who are turning postmenopausal, I do recommend as an exercise to have your womb close. Forever is a death, it's a loss. Um, maybe some of you are asking for such a closing.
Maybe some of you endure tremendous physical pain every day and you know, are begging that God would release you from that pain, uh, by making you postmenopausal. Maybe some of you have become postmenopausal very early in life because your womb had to be taken out. And then there are those of you who are, are blessed with fertility and you're tired and you feel like you cannot possibly take care of another person.
So we all greet menopause differently. For me, I have spent my 20 years of marriage, marriage asking God that he would grant us the gift of children through our womb, of course, but also through adoption or foster care. And the short of my story is that as of today, God in his wisdom, has withheld that gift from me and my husband, at least specifically as I've prayed for it to appear.
That is hard. It was very hard in my twenties. It remained hard in my thirties, and this year as I turned postmenopausal, I had a day where I just had to stay home because I could not face another human being without bringing them into my grief. And there's nothing wrong with grieving in public. I've just learned over time that some days maybe it doesn't help my neighbor for them to see me.
So, yeah, sometimes it's a little raw, but something that I knew to do in my forties is to sit down and to sing a psalm. It was an original Psalm. It was a new Psalm, the Psalm of 2025, and I just started saying aloud. The good things God has done for me in my postmenopausal state, one of them is that I have been shown by God.
Not only has he promised me this in his word, but I have been shown by him that unless he builds the house, it is built in vain and I've endured many expectations and comments from people over the years wanting me to stare at my empty hands, wanting me to look at the work or the failure of the work of my own hands, because they very much needed me to be able to produce a child, to make a child, to adopt a child, to foster a child, and, and whenever they would force me to look at my empty hands, I would just feel anew my failure. But in my postmenopausal state, I can sing with assurance. Lord, I have tried and, but unless you build the house, it cannot happen. Children are your gift. They're your heritage, they're your reward. And so if you are the great giver, you are also the withhold. And Lord, I know with assurance this is true.
My own life is proof of that. Another thing I thanked him for is that I still have my uterus. Didn't know if I would, and I count that a great blessing because who wants another surgery? Not me. Not you. And not everybody has their uterus, and so I recognize the mercy in that. I'm blessed to live in an age of information where while hot flashes are terribly socially awkward and inconvenient and a mess, and they interrupt your sleep, I live in an age of information where I can learn, you know, ways to help with that.
And that's a blessing. Not everybody has that. My list goes on and on and on. One of my great gifts that I can, uh, rejoice in is that God has called my husband, who is a pastor in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. My husband has been called to serve at University Lutheran Church. It is a campus church. It's an actual congregation that sits right off of the, uh, main, just a block away from the main quad on the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
And it is not lost on my husband or on me. The merciful goodness of our Lord that he has answered my prayer to make me a foster mom. He has made me a foster mom of about 60 kids all the same age with minimal state interference. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that is a gift, and that is something that I know my husband and I can do well.
Uh. Certainly, a campus pastor doesn't need to be barren to do the job well. Right. But we can see that our barrenness gives us a great opportunity to keep different hours than other people. That's true. To be present in a way that is difficult.
Abigail: If you have people who need to go to sleep at nine o'clock or seven 30 or right.
Katie: Yeah. We're the ones who need to go to bed at seven 30. Now, the reason that I state at the end of the story before I tell the middle. It's because I want you to hear that even in the death of my womb, even though our Lord has, at least as far as we know, determined that my body from now until eternity will never ever give birth to a child, there are still things in it that are soft and tender for me.
Now, I can't promise those things for you 'cause you're not me. But I can tell you that God promises to have his eye on you. That he hems you in behind and before and lays his hand upon you. He does lead you besides still waters. He makes your cup overflow, and I can't wait to hear your Psalm of praise that you sing, not because I expect God to give you the gift of a child.
He hasn't promised to do that, but I do know that he promises to work everything for your good. And so I'm here as a barren woman. Forever. Now, the reason that I state that is because that does not mean that I am still not incredibly pained and disciplined in God's withholding the gift of children from me.
And when I say withholding the gift of children, I wanna be clear about something. I mean that he's withheld the gift of children from my womb and from my home. Um, that he and his wisdom has just seemed that, uh, that's not our vocation. My husband and I, he has not given us children to raise in our own home.
But what he has done for us is what he does for every single man and woman in the church. Doesn't matter if you're single, it doesn't matter if you are widowed, doesn't matter if you are married, doesn't matter if you are barren. None of us in the church escapes the blessed work of parenting in the church.
I am a mother in the faith. I take great comfort when I read the epistles by Paul and he talks about his sons in the faith. I never thought I would relate so much to Paul, but I do because it is true for any of us who stands up and prays for children in the church. That's a motherly act. I'm gonna speak as a woman.
Now, for anybody who stands up and says, amen at a baptism, you know, we're promising to raise someone in the faith that is a motherly. Act, a spiritual motherly act. It doesn't matter if you're the godmother or not. When you stand up and you say Amen, you are committing to raising a precious child in the church.
When you teach any child, whether it's to teach them to fold their hands, whether it's to teach them to recite a Bible verse in Sunday school, whether it's to teach them how to knit and pearl, you know, whether it's to teach them how to say the alphabet in preschool or whatever. However, your days are occupied in whatever ways God has given you good works to do, they, we are mothering those around us. For me specifically, I have found it astounding what I stop and think about. While God has given us no children in our home, he has seen fit to give us thousands of children outside of our home. It's almost as if my home life is backwards.
Instead of focusing on the raising of people on my side of the door, it's when I walk out my door that my work is really seen by me and none of us escapes that. But here's the thing, that doesn't mean that we want it that way. And it doesn't mean that we don't feel embarrassed or ashamed that God has given us nobody in our own home.
Therein lies the cross of bareness. This is why I can tell you. Bareness is being worked for my good and for your good. I pray. But that doesn't mean bareness is good. Yeah. All from scripture that bareness is a cross. When I say something is a cross, I am actually designating that it is a suffering that God puts upon our shoulders.
And so I view it as if something is a cross, God puts it on my shoulders and he's the only one who can take it off. Mm-hmm. It's not something I get to shirk. It's not something I get to shrug off. I cannot put it down. I cannot rip it off. It is there. It is heavy, painful, and it demands my attention. And I think about my Lord Jesus who carried the physical cross all the way up to Golgotha, and I think about how even he needed the help of someone else to get that cross up there. That's how hard crosses are. And Jesus did not get to take his cross off when he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. Lord, please remove this cup. Take this cup from me. It's too much, but thy will be done. He was in faith saying, Father, this may be ahead of me and I am going to bear that cross knowing you will take it off if it's supposed to, but if not, I know what I'm supposed to do with it.
I'm supposed to bear it. I'm to wear it. And you're going to work it for good. And this is what's so amazing as Christians. How is it that our Lord miraculously takes something so painful and so terrible and works it for good? How is it that an instrument of torture becomes the instrument of salvation for us?
That's Jesus' cross. But then, when I look at that and I'm bearing my own cross of barrenness, I know how to bear it. I bear it in faith. I pray the prayer of Jesus. I say, Lord, please take this cup from me. It is too much. I cannot handle it. It is too painful, but thy will be done. And so if I wake up in the morning and that crosses on my shoulders, I know what I'm supposed to do.
I'm supposed to wear it. And I trust that God will just as he used Jesus's cross to work, the greatest good work ever done to man. I trust that in bearing the cross of barrenness that he will work it for good as well. One of the blessings of being in my mid to late forties is that I can look back on a couple of decades of marriage and see some of those good things.
That does not mean that I'm glad I bear it. It just means hindsight. You can see just the trail of goodness behind you. Part of what is so painful about being postmenopausal then, is it appears, unless the Lord has a miraculous plan of which I am not aware, it appears that I am to bear this cross my whole life.
Maybe you have a different cross. Maybe you are blessed with the gift of children, but they are too much for you, and you cannot greet a sunset or a sunrise without despair. Maybe you are alone and you don't have enough help. Maybe you have been blessed with the gift of children, and those children have abandoned you.
They've abandoned the church so it's hard to think about them because to think about them is to think of their dishonoring you and dishonoring our Lord. Perhaps you have, we're blessed with the gift of a child in your womb, and you chose abortion, and you have since thought about that children are a gift, and you have deep regret.
You have a special pain as well. Maybe you want nothing more than to be a wife and a mother, but God for some reason has not in his wisdom, given you the gift of a spouse. And how hard it is to enter into every room alone and having so many people only want to talk about how you're not married, can't even participate in a community without people making you look at your hands and wanting you to work some kind of miracle for yourself.
I don't think any of us in this life, especially the baptized, I don't think any of us escape wearing crosses. But here's what is special about us. Our crosses are not our identity. They don't make up who we are. Our baptism makes our identity. God puts his name upon us and he calls us as his own. And he washes us, clean up all the sin that dams us, and he gives us Christ's righteousness and he tells us, my child welcome.
I will bless you even with suffering just as I did my own son, and welcome into this beautiful participation of the Christian life. Our identity is actually as one who lives by faith. That's what the righteous do. When you're baptized, you're made righteous and the righteous live by faith, not by sight.
And so part of bearing the cross is, is in an invitation to trust in the one who removes crosses. Now I'm going to speak specifically about Bareness because that that's what I can talk about in the first person. Yeah. If God gives the gift of children, then he also can choose to withhold the gift of children.
And I want to say in the church, that is a hard truth for people to trust. Yeah, it is. I think it's because when we encounter someone else's suffering, it makes us uncomfortable. We don't always know what to say when we are confronted with that unanswerable silence that surrounds their wounds, and so we can't help but talk.
I know this because I have done this and I want to pause it. Something maybe you haven't considered today. Maybe someone's cross really has no answer that can be spoken aloud. Maybe when we come up to a person, let's say our dear friend who desires a husband and has not been given one, we know the joy of marriage.
We know the blessing of having somebody. Help carry groceries into the house. We want that blessing for that person. And so in our love for that person, we can't help but try to figure out a way to make them married. Yeah. And maybe that's by fixing our friend. We think there's something that they could do differently.
Okay. Let's set aside for just a second. The fact that, as mothers in the church, maybe we do have some good advice. Okay. Let's just set that advice and let's just actually acknowledge the fact that whatever can be done, that person is hurting, and if that person could. Take their cross off, they would.
Mm-hmm. Let's acknowledge that God has given them a season of waiting in prayer, and perhaps our job in that moment is to wait with them. That means instead of telling them what to do or what has been done, or how we can make this problem better, how we can fix it, in other words, instead of tempting them to despair at the empty hands before them.
Let's instead consider the fact that one of the ways you can love the person who is bearing the cross is by suffering with them. So when you walk up to somebody and there is that awkward silence of, I don't know what to say because this makes me uncomfortable, why don't you instead, in your head go, aha, here's that suffering.
Oh Lord, thank you for the opportunity to suffer with this person. I'm supposed to feel uncomfortable. It's supposed to be awkward. There really is nothing I can say that can change whether or not you give this person the cross or not. So instead, let me walk through that pain. Stand next to them and instead, let me figure out what you have given them, Lord.
And that does not mean that we then fish and say, you know, you may not have been given a spouse, but you've been given this. No, no, no, we don't. Again, that's still tempting somebody to think too much about what they haven't given. Instead, why don't you just say, it's really good to see you. What did you do this week?
What's a week look like in your life? And listen to their answer and celebrate. Listen and learn about their life. Get to know them, not the them you want them to be. Not the them that you think they should be, but instead get to know them today 'cause that's who God has made them today. And that is one of the ways that we can encourage each other and celebrate each other.
Whatever gifts we've been given and whatever crosses we've been given, is that let's stop expecting each other to be somebody that we're not. Let's get to know who we are today. And in that listening. And in that asking questions, that's how you feel. The unanswerable silence. Ask them some questions. Not about their cross, maybe.
No, no,
Abigail: But like, so why do you think you're single? I right.
Katie: Oh, my word, right?
Not that kind of question. Yeah. And so, and maybe, maybe you can start asking about their cross, but it'll be, it'll be things like, you know, do you desire family life? Is that, is that something you want? And if they say yes, then enter into the suffering with them and say, that must be really hard.
How can I be a good friend to you? What, what helps you? I would imagine you feel lonely. Is that true? Like, what are some things in the church that we can do to help you? Um, or just be like, so tell me, uh, what do you do on the weekends? What do you enjoy? What do you enjoy doing? And see if you can't participate in that.
Enter into their life. Help them celebrate what God has given them. And that's by getting to know what God has given them. And then when the time is right, if they want to share. News of their suffering with you. And if they ask you questions and ask for help, you might be in a motherly position to be able to help.
But I think maybe we should recognize that in that awkwardness, we tend to say aloud the things that comfort ourselves, not the things that comfort other people. And when we do that, when we say the things that comfort ourselves, can you see that what we're actually doing is. Taking someone else's suffering, labeling it, calling it something that we're comfortable with.
Because then we can either file it away so we don't have to worry about it, or put it away from us and not have to look at it. We're making it so that we don't have to encounter their suffering all the time. But remember the person we're talking to doesn't get to lay down their cross. And um, I think as we approach Mother's Day.
Um, this is a good thing to keep in mind, and I think Abigail, you and I are probably gonna talk a little more too about Mother's Day specifically. Yeah. Um, but if you are someone who has a barren friend or a barren sister or a barren aunt, how do you care for them on a national holiday that celebrates women who have children?
I think that you're gonna have a hard time. It's worth it. It's worth it. But it's not easy. It's not easy. And so here's what I wanna say. The goal is don't worry about whether she's a mother or not. It is okay to celebrate her as God has made her. If they're not a mother, you don't have to talk about motherhood.
You can still celebrate them that day. Like this by single friend. Maybe I would drop a note and say I'm just so thankful that you're my friend. You make my life richer in these specific ways. Thank you for being that for me, if it's a barren woman and if it's a barren woman, you know well, if it's a barren woman who has actually confided in you, I don't recommend ignoring her.
Mm-hmm. Even though you want to not cause her pain, I actually recommend you. You acknowledge the pain privately. In a note or off in a corner where she doesn't have to be around people, 'cause she most likely is going to be triggered emotionally. So, in private, in whatever way that is best, let's say it's a note, you would write something like this, and it needs to be true.
Don't write something that's not true. But I love it when people have told me, Katie, when I think about the gifts you give to my children of time and attention, I can't not honor you on this day as well. And then I'm usually weeping. Those are tears of pain, but also of joy that God would give me people to love and who see in me a motherliness.
If it's a woman you don't know well, but she's barren. If it's true that she's in your life and that she cares for you, just send her a note thanking her for caring for you and saying Thank you for being a mother in the faith to me. That would certainly be appropriate to send to a Sunday school teacher.
You know, somebody who was your Sunday school teacher or somebody who helps you. You know, let's say there's a barren woman who helps you with your children in the pew. I think it would be very appropriate for your children to give her something for Mother's Day, a thank you for, for mothering them in the faith.
And you could just send a note that says, It is so good not to be alone. Thank you for so selflessly helping me raise my children. You are a mother to my children and therefore you are a mother to me. Thank you. These are just some ways to help identify. The good vocational work God has given to different women without insisting that it'd all be the same kind.
That's what I would recommend in regards to your friends who may be, um, who desire children but have not been given them. And maybe at another time, Abigail, you and I could talk about what about those beautiful mothers who have children. But Mother's Day is a whole other kind of painful.
Abigail: Definitely. I think the topic is huge, which is why we're gonna spend the better part of a month talking about it on this.
Program. Katie, thanks so much for joining us for this episode and next week as well. Thanks, Abby.
Ancr: You've been listening to I Choose Life News and Views. If you have questions about this program or if you'd like to support the Fight for Life, please call 2 6 0 4 7 1 18 49 or go to i choose life.org because without the right to life, no other rights matter.
