People come to this between cycles, after a failed transfer, after losses, or after treatment has ended. One wrote on Reddit's r/infertility, "With each passing month and failure I was feeling crushed." Another, on r/InfertilitySucks, said, "I wanted to be a mother and couldn’t." A third, asking for prayer on r/PrayerRequests: "We have had 4 previous rounds of treatment failed." These passages give words for the waiting and the grief, each in its setting.
If you only have a minute
The passage
Psalm 13:1-2, which asks "How long?" four times and lets the question stand as a prayer.
On the hard day
Read verses 1 and 2 aloud as your own complaint, alone or together.
The closest story
Hannah in 1 Samuel 1, praying so hard the priest thought she was drunk.
What it gives
Words to pray in the wait itself, however long it has lasted, alongside the people in Scripture who waited too.
Psalm 13, for the long wait
The passage Bible Nudge offers for waiting is Psalm 13:1-2, here with the three verses that follow:
1 How long, Yahweh? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart every day? How long shall my enemy triumph over me? 3 Behold, and answer me, Yahweh, my God. Give light to my eyes, lest I sleep in death; 4 Lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed against him”; Lest my adversaries rejoice when I fall. 5 But I trust in your loving kindness. My heart rejoices in your salvation.
"How long" comes four times, and the psalm lets the question stand as a prayer. The same question is already in Scripture, said out loud to God, and you are welcome to say it the same way, however long your own wait has been. Waiting on God when nothing is happening reads it for the ordinary day, and when the answer to a prayer is no or nothing is for the reader whose treatment has ended.
On the day of a negative test or the end of a cycle, you might read verses 1 and 2 aloud as your own complaint, then sit with one question: what have you been waiting for longer than you expected? A couple can read it together.
Read aloud, slowly, with nothing to add.
Hannah at Shiloh
The story closest to this page is Hannah's, in 1 Samuel 1. Every year her husband Elkanah took the family to Shiloh to worship. His other wife, Peninnah, had children, and Hannah had none. The text says "Her rival provoked her severely, to irritate her," and that this happened "year by year, when she went up to Yahweh’s house." Hannah "wept, and didn’t eat." Elkanah asked, "Am I not better to you than ten sons?", a question loneliness in marriage reads closely.
She went to pray "in bitterness of soul". Her lips moved and no sound came out, and Eli the priest, watching her mouth, took her for drunk: "How long will you be drunk? Get rid of your wine!" Her answer is the heart of the chapter:
Hannah answered, “No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit. I have not been drinking wine or strong drink, but I poured out my soul before Yahweh. Don’t consider your servant a wicked woman; for I have been speaking out of the abundance of my complaint and my provocation.”
This is prayer as complaint, misread by the one person who should have understood it. Her story ends with the birth of Samuel. The text tells what happened to Hannah, not what will happen to anyone reading it.
The other women in these stories
Each is remembered for what she said and how those around her answered. Sarai told Abram, "Yahweh has restrained me from bearing" (Genesis 16:2). Rachel said to Jacob, "Give me children, or else I will die," and Jacob answered in anger: "Am I in God’s place, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?" (Genesis 30:1-2). Isaac "entreated Yahweh for his wife, because she was barren" (Genesis 25:21). An angel came to Manoah's wife, who "was barren, and childless" (Judges 13:2-3). And Elizabeth, when she conceived, said the Lord had acted "to take away my reproach among men" (Luke 1:25). Their stories are told in full in Rachel's name in the Bible and Sarah, behind the name Sally.
Each of these named stories ends in a birth, and if yours is different, that deserves saying plainly. For waits left unresolved, waiting on God when nothing is happening reads Hebrews 11 for them.
The verses people send
Psalm 113:9 and Psalm 127:3 are the verses most often sent, and for some they are the hardest to receive. Psalm 113 is a praise psalm about God who "raises up the poor out of the dust", and it ends: "He settles the barren woman in her home, as a joyful mother of children. Praise Yah!" David Guzik at Enduring Word reads verse 9 as an individual woman and connects it with Hannah, while Ellicott and the Pulpit Commentary, collected at Bible Hub, read it as restored Israel.
Psalm 127 is a Song of Ascents that opens with building a house and guarding a city, and only then says, "Behold, children are a heritage of Yahweh. The fruit of the womb is his reward." What you do with either verse is yours to decide.
If you have been told it is a punishment
Elizabeth Hagan's 2017 essay in Time, which reports interviews, records women being told "God withheld your blessing because of your sin." and "Maybe God is teaching you something."
Three named traditions have written on it. The Catholic Catechism says such couples "suffer greatly" (2374). A 1994 Orthodox Church in America parish resource asks, "Does it signify that God’s blessing is withheld?", and answers that a couple's marital blessings "can still be creatively and generously realized" without children. The Southern Baptist Convention's 2024 resolution speaks of "the searing pain of infertility" and says couples can know "their lament is heard by the Lord", though the SBC treats a resolution as an expression of opinion. None of the three calls infertility a punishment. "Barren," in these stories, is the translators' word for a condition, not a verdict.
When "God's timing" is hard to hear
Waiting on God's timing takes those sayings one at a time. On Reddit's r/IVF, one person wrote, "I am in no way religious, so it’s hard to hear religious folks that don’t suffer from infertility tell me that God will make it happen." Another replied, "I’m a Christian and it’s hard for me to hear too." On male-factor infertility, one poster on r/InfertilitySucks put it bluntly: "“God’s timing” won’t magically make my husband suddenly not have a genetic condition that causes him not to produce sperm." Others in the same forums find the phrase meaningful.
Some Sundays are harder than others.
When church is the hardest room
A poster on Reddit's r/Christian wrote: "As someone struggling to conceive for 3+ years, I can easily feel left out due to the big celebrations they have for baby dedications, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, new school year, etc… most couples going through infertility won’t tell a soul about it though, due to the stigma associated with it." Claire Bates' 2021 University of Glasgow thesis, drawing on Christian infertility sources, names Mothering Sunday, Christmas and baptisms, and quotes the question "Isn’t it time the two of you start having kids?" Donna Paulsen's 2019 study of nine women found stigma inside their own faith communities.
What your church teaches about treatment
The Catholic Catechism encourages research to reduce sterility, does not accept IVF (2376 to 2377), and says a child is "not something owed to one, but is a gift" (2378). The Orthodox Church in America's 1992 synod affirmations, in a parish resource that calls itself neither complete nor official, say "Married couples may use medical means to enhance conception of their common children." The SBC's 2024 resolution asks Southern Baptists to use only technologies that protect the embryo. For your own tradition's detail, ask your priest or pastor.
Losses, and husbands
Some readers carry pregnancy losses too. Among the things one Reddit r/infertility thread records as landing badly is "Well, at least you were able to get pregnant!" If you are grieving a loss, what the Bible says about grief may fit.
For husbands, the UK fertility regulator's 2025 blog says "For men specifically, depression, low mood, and loss of libido are all common issues going through fertility treatment." The World Health Organization notes that women in a relationship with a man are often perceived to suffer infertility "regardless of whether they are infertile or not."
Two people, one wait.
Questions people ask
How is infertility defined, and how common is it? The WHO defines it as "the failure to achieve a pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse," and says "approximately one in every six people of reproductive age worldwide experience infertility in their lifetime." That is a lifetime, worldwide estimate, not a figure for couples in a clinic.
Is it normal to feel low or anxious? WHO names "emotional stress, depression, anxiety and low self-esteem" among what women frequently experience. A doctor or counselor is a good person to tell.
Where can I find others going through this? In the United States, RESOLVE runs support groups, including groups for men. In Europe, Fertility Europe is a network of 35 associations in 29 countries.
Where to go next
If this has turned into thoughts of ending your life, please reach a person tonight. In the United States, call or text 988 for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. In Canada, call or text 9-8-8. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans is on 116 123. In Australia, Lifeline is 13 11 14. Anywhere else, Find A Helpline lists services by country.
When you are ready, read Psalm 13:1-2 with the verses around it, for the next hard day.
Or describe what you are carrying in your own words, and Bible Nudge can suggest a single passage with its setting. Find a passage.
Words that come up here
Tap a term to see what it means.
Yahweh. The personal name of God in the Hebrew Bible, printed where many translations have "the LORD".