The Fruitful Soul

If you are aching for a child and perhaps confused about why God seems to be denying you this good gift, you may feel very alone. Our churches and communities can seem as if they are filled with children, which can be a source of both joy and pain. You may wonder whether God thinks you are somehow less worthy of being a parent than others, or if he is punishing or disciplining you for some reason.

Susannah Lee knows this emotional wrestle personally, and doesn’t believe Christians should be left to experience it in isolation. She wrote The Fruitful Soul to inspire Christians—those going through infertility and those around them—to work out together how God’s word speaks into this painful situation, and to do so with compassion and with confidence about God’s character, promises and plans for hope.

In The Fruitful Soul, Susannah examines the big picture of creation and sin, and the examples of infertile couples in the Old Testament, to see what we can—and can’t—learn from these. She also gets personal and practical by looking at self-blame and ‘fault’, issues of obedience and curses, and how we can still be fruitful when we face temptation in the wilderness of infertility.

This gently written book bravely and honestly faces the grief of childlessness—and all its connected questions—with deep and careful biblical research and the wisdom that comes from lived experience.

Introduction

Our story, briefly

1. A fruitful design

2. Fruitfulness against the odds

3. Blaming ourselves

4. The book of Job

Interlude: The most fruitful life ever

5. The testing of the fruitful soul

Afterword: The tree of life

Study questions

Appendices

1. Mother’s Day and Father’s Day in church

2. Michal

3. How much medical intervention is okay?

4. Do unborn children go to heaven when they die?

5. Adoption

6. Further reading

Acknowledgements

Susannah is a child of God, the wife of Toulia, an aunt, a godmother, and a friend. She wrote a PhD on Puritan Theology in American Literature when she was too young to know what she was doing, studied Middle Eastern Studies in Germany to distract herself from unwanted singleness in her 30s, and is very grateful to be mistress of an unruly garden in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, where regular attacks on the kikuyu grass help her to ponder God’s love and life’s challenges. She works as an Auslan Interpreter and is studying Health Science.

Susannah has written a deeply thoughtful book in an area where churches can be quite thoughtless. This book will speak to those who are experiencing the grief of infertility with a direct and compassionate voice. I would also recommend it to pastors to better understand the unique and deep hurt that some of their people carry. Susannah rigorously analyses both the Scriptures and her own ongoing experience, producing a book that is theologically astute and emotionally sympathetic.

—Steve Young, Senior Minister, Anglican Churches Springwood, NSW, Australia

This beautifully pastoral book is a balm for the souls of those struggling with unwanted childlessness. Through rich and careful biblical exploration, Susannah unpacks why childlessness can be so deeply painful, while continually pointing readers back to the comfort and hope we have as God’s beloved children. She thoughtfully addresses the many questions infertility can raise, as well as the particular trials and testing it may bring. The truth and compassion woven throughout will not only bless those walking the path of infertility, but also equip those seeking to love and support them. 

—Jocelyn Loane, Chaplain, Moore Theological College, Australia; author of Motherhood

This is a deeply pastoral book, as anything dealing with such a complex and personal subject must be. Dr Lee offers an extraordinary combination: the vulnerability of lived experience, an acute and often profound interpretation of the biblical narratives, and a capacity to understand cyclical somatic grief, emotional pain, and the fragility of hope deferred. The Fruitful Soul focuses on infertility, but it opens up a way of understanding the Scriptures that generously invites members of the body of Christ—single, married, parenting, parented, fostered, adopted, and all the other ways of being and relating that characterize human interaction—into a community of care, suffering, and love suspended between the lost garden of Eden and an eschatological vision of the heavenly Jerusalem. Lee outlines the responsibility and privilege that all children of God have when following the sacrificial path of the incarnate Christ in suffering and resurrection: moral probity, emotional honesty, humour, and the sheer hard work of thinking and loving in the messiness of human brokenness.

—Alison Searle, Professor of Textual Studies, School of English, University of Leeds, UK