Rebecca St. James has opened up about the painful "winter season" in which secondary infertility and two miscarriages left her questioning whether her lifelong dream of a large family would ever become a reality.
The Grammy-winning Christian singer revealed that she and her husband, Cubbie Fink, spent several years trying unsuccessfully to conceive again following the birth of their first daughter, Gemma. Although St. James had already experienced motherhood, the uncertainty made each loss no less devastating.
"I miscarried a couple times," she said in an August 20 video released by Focus on the Family. "And I remember just being really heartbroken."
St. James described the private question that haunted her during those years: "Will I ever get pregnant again?"
For the singer, the struggle cut directly into a dream she had carried since childhood. As the oldest of seven siblings-including Joel and Luke Smallbone of for KING & COUNTRY-St. James often functioned like a second mother inside the famously musical Smallbone household.
"It was always just my dream to be a mom," she explained.
St. James married Fink, a founding member of Foster the People, when she was 33 and welcomed their first child at 36. Because that pregnancy happened relatively easily, she initially believed that they would have no trouble expanding their family. The miscarriages abruptly shattered that confidence.
The timing could hardly have been worse. While the couple was grieving their pregnancy losses, Fink was also dealing with his difficult departure from Foster the People, his mother was facing illness and both spouses were struggling with exhaustion.
"Everywhere we looked, the landscape of our lives was challenging," Fink previously recalled. For him, one of the most agonizing parts was watching his wife suffer while knowing there was no practical solution he could offer.
"As a man, there's a natural inclination to want to do something to help," he said. "But there's very little you can do other than emotionally care for and support her through the pain."
Fink admitted that the miscarriages struck him "deep to the core" and described the losses as "incredibly devastating." Even more unsettling was what felt like silence from God during the couple's darkest period.
"It was the first time in my life where I was really forced to live by faith," he said.
For St. James, the ordeal challenged the tidy assumptions that can sometimes accompany public Christian success. She had spent years singing about trusting God, but infertility forced her to live those lyrics without knowing whether the ending would resemble the future she wanted.
"You don't know how long that season of uncertainty is going to be," she said. "The pain and the grief of that is just really, really heavy."
The singer said the ordeal ultimately strengthened her marriage and deepened her dependence on God. Rather than receiving an immediate explanation for the losses, she learned to trust that God remained present even when her circumstances appeared barren and his voice seemed silent.
The couple's story eventually entered a happier season. St. James and Fink welcomed their second daughter, Imogen, in 2018 and their son, River, in 2020. They now live in Nashville with their three children.
St. James said the difficult road to motherhood left her with "tremendous gratefulness" for the family she has today. The losses were not erased by the children who followed, but they changed how deeply she appreciated every ordinary moment of family life.
She and Fink discuss their courtship, marriage, miscarriages and family journey in their joint memoir, Lasting Ever: Faith, Music, Family, and Being Found by True Love. Their story also adds a deeply personal chapter to the Smallbone family history depicted in the 2024 film Unsung Hero.
St. James now describes those years as a long winter that eventually gave way to spring. Her message, however, is not that every infertility story will conclude in the same way. Instead, she says the experience taught her that faith sometimes means trusting God while the future remains painfully unresolved.
The singer's candid disclosure also gives voice to women who may feel guilty for grieving secondary infertility because they already have a child. St. James made it clear that gratitude for one child and heartbreak over another lost pregnancy can exist together.
