I think at some level I always knew.
In our first year of marriage, I told my husband that I wanted to start trying to conceive before we were “ready” (whatever that means) because I had fears that it would be hard to get pregnant. My concern was deeper than a passing thought. It invaded my mind and entangled my heart. When the time came to try, the negative tests came with it.
Negative Luteinizing Hormone.
Negative estrogen increase.
Negative basal temperature rise.
Negative egg release.
Negative blood tests.
Negative pregnancy tests.
Negative.
Negative.
What’s wrong with me? I’m only 24. I’m too young for my body to fail me. I’m too young to be defective and broken.
Now my life whirls around me filled with month after month of medical appointments, Clomid pills, trigger shots, and blood work—each medical intervention further confirming my own inadequacies.
I try to be hopeful, trusting in God’s timing. I really try.
I hit my knees in the late hours of the night when all the world is asleep, and I plead with God through tears and shaking limbs to grant us a child. I know He can. The most terrifying prospect is the fact that He might choose not to.
Have you ever felt that way? It’s that secret place in the depth of your soul when you know God is able, but if He says no it will feel as though every part of you is wounded.
He seems to say “yes” to everyone else. You have seen Him say “yes”, even to those that you deem less deserving than yourself (not that you would ever admit that out loud).
So, what about when hope begins to fade? What about when the hours turn to days and weeks, and you will time to slow down just so you won’t have to face yet another negative? This is infertility for the fearfully faithful.
Yet with the chaos and tears and fear and dread, I want to believe and rest in God’s sovereign goodness.
When He promises to be the Giver of all good gifts, I want to walk out in my belief in that.
When He tells me that I am “fearfully and wonderfully made” I desperately want to believe that my body is not defective.
My husband is the most wonderful man on the planet, and it breaks my heart that sometimes when I see pregnant women, I think “my husband would have been better off married to someone else. Someone who isn’t defective like me.” But he patiently loves me and reminds me that I am the best part of his life.
Perhaps you don’t struggle with infertility. Maybe your deeply rooted place of fear and chaos is financial. Maybe it is a feeling of hopelessness for your child to ever have true friends. Perhaps it is a difficult season of your marriage that you can’t possibly see a silver lining to.
As much as we all love happy endings, I’m just not there yet. I’m still in the middle of this season, but I hope to encourage your heart:
You are not alone. You and I are not broken or defective. We are not sub-par.
Feelings are not facts.
Let yourself mourn for what you think should have been so that when you have properly grieved for what is not, you can be hopeful for what is.
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