by Catherine Rider
My family does not look the way I thought it would, nor, if I’m honest, how I still wish it did. For many years, May hit very hard. Sometimes it still does. Infertility and recurrent loss added a layer of sorrow to a month that seems so celebratory: Mother’s Day, First Communions, Graduations, awards ceremonies, recitals, performances. Spring has sprung, but your heart and womb still feel stuck in the dead of winter.
“You should really think about having kids. You’re not getting any younger!”
“Children really are such a blessing!”
“Do you have any news yet?”
“Why don’t you have children?”
“Is it your fault or his?”
“When are you going to give him a sibling?”
These are only a few – and more benign – of the many comments that I have gotten throughout nearly ten years of infertility. For a long time, I ruminated on these things and carried them close. In the midst of a struggle, it is so easy to question our goals, our purpose, our understanding. It is easy to blur lines and question truth, to try and justify means because the end is good.
It is in these moments that Jesus meets us at the well.
The woman whom Jesus met at the well was, indeed, an outcast. John makes note of the time – almost noon – in part because that was an unusual time for coming to the well. The Samaritan woman would have been surprised to find anyone at the well. She went late in the day to avoid running into other people.
Woman at the Well, Carl Bloch
When Jesus asks her for a drink, He begins to dismantle the wall that she has built around herself. Samaritans and Jews did not interact with each other; they didn’t talk and they would have never used one another’s utensils. Yet Jesus asked her for a drink and her response was to ask how would I give you a drink, you have nothing with which to drink. What seems like a practical question on her part is much deeper. The conversation at the well is not just about the physical needs. In this moment, Jesus shows His human nature and reveals His divine nature. He approaches with a request for water, but what He really wants is her faithfulness.
Sometimes, in our own humanness, we react as the woman who asks for the water – “Give me the water of which you speak so that I don’t have to come to this well anymore.” She is still thinking in the physical realm, and we often do that in prayer. “Lord, please give me a baby, and end this misery.” We bargain, we plead. We get so hung up on the particulars and technicalities, that we miss the more profound things happening.
After Jesus speaks with the woman, she does something subtle and significant: she leaves her water jug behind.
Her encounter with Christ at the well showed her not just who He was, but who she was, and who she was to Him. She came to the well carrying her shame and isolation and she left knowing that she was beloved by God. She left knowing that His mercy and kindness were hers. She left with joy.
She left her water jug.
So many times, the journey of infertility, loss, grief, and desire catch us up. We forget that even more than we desire a certain outcome, He desires us. Instead, we carry our jugs and hold them close.
May we be faithful enough to leave them at the well and bold enough to embrace who we are called to be.
Catherine Rider is a writer, musician, and ecologist in south Alabama. She has one living child and many saints. She loves exploring that ways that nature reflects our Creator and how nature’s own systems can be inspiration for healing and peace.