(Originally posted as a series during Lent 2014 and titled "The Lent of My Life")
Tom and I have been through a lot of ups and downs in our marriage but probably nothing has challenged our relationship with each other, with our families, and with God more than our struggle with infertility and miscarriages. So, I wanted to share our story with others who may be facing this same struggle. Maybe it can give someone a little hope.
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Before we married, we knew we wanted kids “eventually” but not right away. I was working at the time and Tom was looking for work. We knew that we would likely be re-locating to another state once Tom found employment, and I wanted to get settled somewhere before trying to have a baby. There was admittedly also a part of us that wanted to “enjoy being married” for a while before becoming parents. We’d had a very long-distant relationship during our period of courtship and after getting married, we wanted to have “fun” for a while and do things as a couple that we hadn’t been able to do while we’d lived so far apart. We also had no shortage of people telling us to wait to have children because, as they would say, “once you have a kid, the fun’s over.” So, we decided that we’d wait a year before trying to have a baby. At the time, it all seemed very prudent and unselfish. However, in hindsight, we regret that decision to wait before trying for a baby and as time went on, we began to wish we could have those first months of marriage back.
After being married about eight months, Tom found employment and we moved to Missouri, where I also had a new job. Soon after that, I was diagnosed with interstitial cystitis (IC). My doctor recommended I spend a year on medication to manage the IC and I was told that this medication was not something to be taken while pregnant. So, we decided to postpone pregnancy one more year while I was on the IC medication in hopes that my health would improve.
I also had reservations about getting pregnant because I had just started a new job and wanted to make a good impression in my new workplace; another decision that, in hindsight, I regret. And truthfully, my desire to please my employer and co-workers had more to do with deciding to avoid pregnancy than being on the IC medication. My doctor had told me I could stop the medication anytime and that my IC may even go into remission or improve if I became pregnant (hormones play a big part in my IC). However, I let my fear of not being able to please my employer overshadow my desire to be a mother. I was afraid that if I became pregnant soon after starting a new job, it would appear that I didn’t take the job seriously, or worse, wouldn't be able to perform the job (there was a lot of physical activity involved). I felt like I needed to “prove” myself first.
Time passed quickly. Tom and I put all our energy into our careers and spent our spare time traveling and fixing up our new home. Before we knew it, we’d already been married for almost 3 years. Things were going well, my IC was improving, we were happy in our new home, and we were getting established in our jobs. We finally felt like it was a good time to have a baby.
We always had used Natural Family Planning (NFP) during our entire marriage, first to avoid pregnancy, and now we were ready to use it to achieve pregnancy. We were both in our early thirties and knew lots of people in their thirties who were having babies with no problem. We were finally ready to join them and we got excited as we talked about what month would be best for having our first baby, how far apart we wanted to space our babies, what we would name our babies, and how many children we would likely have in the coming decade (we assumed we’d have four, maybe five). In our minds, we had it all planned out and were in control of everything. Little did we realize just how out-of-control things were about to become.
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It was the summer of 2003, and Tom and I were anxiously planning when we would have our first baby. I wanted to get pregnant in the fall, so that morning sickness and fatigue wouldn't interfere with my “field season” since I was working as a wildlife biologist at the time. We talked about how we would manage child care, what the names would be (our first girl was going to be Rachel Marie in honor of Rachel Carson and the Blessed Mother and we liked Samuel Thomas for the boy, after the grandfathers) and all the things we were going to do with our little ones. We were excited, anxious, a little scared, and extremely optimistic.
Summer gave way to fall and we couldn't wait for that first cycle. Thanks to NFP, we knew how to take advantage of my most fertile days, and so we did. And then we waited anxiously for what we just knew would be our first BFP (big fat positive). We were on our way to being parents, or so we thought.
But it didn't happen. And the month after that, it didn’t happen. And every month after that, for the next two years. We didn't know why we couldn't get pregnant. Now 36 years old, I knew age could be a factor. I also suspected endometriosis but my OB/GYN at the time, based upon my description of symptoms, wasn't convinced that I had endometriosis. Of course, she did no diagnostic tests to determine this. She suggested I consider IVF (in-vitro fertilization) if I was “serious about getting pregnant” and I explained why that was not an option for us. And that was it. I was left with no other options other than to just hope it would happen naturally. I went home, and another year passed.
During those three years of trying, with each cycle, we felt greater and greater disappointment. And this disappointment soon turned into envy and anger as I watched others have the babies that I couldn't seem to have. Gradually, my anger began to affect my closest relationships. Whereas previously, all the conversations with my mother-in-law had usually included the phrase “when we have kids”, over the years, as it became more apparent that the kids weren't coming, we found that we had very little to talk about. The conversations with my sister, who gave birth to two babies during this time, one of whom she decided to name Rachel, became painful. The visits with my parents became strained as Tom and I listened to story after story about their grandchildren (my sister’s children). Everyone had stopped asking us "so, when are you going to have kids?" and were starting to assume we never would. Gradually, Tom and I found ourselves feeling more and more isolated as we suffered alone and in silence.
It was only a matter of time before this started to take a terrible toll on our marriage. Feeling abandoned by our family and God, we turned on each other. I couldn't rationalize a marriage without children. Tom couldn't understand the anger I was directing towards him. The roller coaster of hope followed by disappointment that cycled month after month, year after year, put us both in dark places. Feeling desperate, we attended Retrouvaille and for a while, that gave us a better way to communicate what each of us was feeling. However, everything positive in our life seemed to be overshadowed by the ever-growing despair that came back month after month. What we had been so complacent about in the first years of our marriage had now become our greatest desire. We wanted to be parents. We wanted to hold our baby. We wanted it more than anything.
And then came Francis.
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Another summer was coming to an end and a hint of autumn was in the morning air. The leaves were already starting to turn gold and yellow; winter would be coming early that year. It was September 2006 and in one more month, Tom and I would be celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary, but I didn’t feel like we had much to show for it.
I can’t say that I had reached the point of complete acceptance of our infertility by this time, but I tried to convince myself that I had. However, I hadn’t really accepted anything. Instead, I was consumed by anxiety and restlessness. I put all my energy into my career and hid any outward signs that I longed to be a mother. Tom and I still tried with every cycle to maximize our chances of becoming parents by using NFP, but we had long lost all optimism.
And then that September, my period never came. I felt a wellspring of long-buried hope building with each day. I asked Tom to make a trip to the drugstore for an EPT (early pregnancy test). I no longer kept any in our house…they had only served as painful reminders. He said he knew before he saw the results that it would be positive, in spite of the fact that I’d taken many before and they’d all been negative. And his intuition was right. It was positive. After years of trying to conceive, we were finally pregnant! This was going to be the best anniversary ever!
But our elation was short-lived. My blood work indicated that the pregnancy wasn’t progressing. An ultrasound at 5.5 weeks failed to reveal anything more than a “possible pregnancy” and an empty gestational sac. The doctor, trying to be encouraging, said we’d do another ultrasound in two weeks. But we never made it that far. Instead, follow-up blood work one week later confirmed our worst fears… we were going to lose our baby. A few days later, the bleeding began. Our baby, the one we’d prayed for, tried for, waited for and longed for was gone within two weeks of our learning that I was pregnant.
We named him Francis Gabriel. I had chosen to miscarry at home and gave birth to little Francis on our anniversary, which made the emotional pain even greater. We had initially been planning to spend our anniversary in Kentucky, which would’ve given us the opportunity to tell my parents our great news in person. Instead, we had to stay home so that I could miscarry our baby, and we had to call our parents with the sad news.
On that anniversary, we weren’t celebrating our marriage and the blessing of children; we were discussing where to bury our first child. It all felt like a very cruel and heartless joke. We decided on a peaceful spot under the oaks at the edge of our property and over the next few months, instead of watching my belly grow, we watched as autumn leaves and snow fell and covered the grave.
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Before I conceived Francis, I thought I had been through the darkest part of my life, but those days after the loss of Francis proved me wrong. I found myself facing all the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. But it was the anger that really lasted. I was angry at my body for not working the way it was supposed to work, angry at my family for treating my six week pregnancy as just a blip on their radar, angry at my doctor for referring to my baby as “pregnancy tissue” and not being more pro-active in trying to help me figure out my infertility, and I was angry at God because I hadn’t received the miracle we’d prayed for. I hadn’t received the baby that I thought I deserved.
If one good thing came out of the loss of Francis, however, it was that the desire in me to be a mother was made even stronger. From the moment I found out that I was pregnant, I had wanted Francis more than anything. No longer did I see motherhood as something that I wanted to “balance” with my career. No longer was “have a baby” just something on my lifetime “bucket list”. Now, motherhood was all I really wanted and I knew it was a calling all its own. Now, I truly realized how every moment of my child’s life, beginning with that moment of conception and the first heartbeats, was precious and a gift that I could lose at anytime.
While I had been pregnant with Francis, I had been a bit taken aback by the fact that my OB/GYN had never referred to Francis as anything more than “pregnancy tissue.” When we viewed the ultrasound, what we saw was simply referred to as a “gestational sac” but there was no reference made to what (or who) was inside it. This really upset me, especially after I lost my baby, because too many people around me already were treating the miscarriage as if it had not been a real baby. I didn’t want an OB/GYN who treated me the same way. No longer was just having a “good doctor” with great credentials important…I realized I needed to find a good doctor who also recognized the unborn baby as just that, a baby…no matter how far along in gestational age the baby may be.
I also was determined to learn more about what my cause of infertility could be. I was still having terrible cramping with every period and still suspected endometriosis. Tom and I also weren’t entirely sure we were following our NFP method properly, since we had no guidance at the time from an NFP instructor and were mostly self-taught. So, I searched online for more NFP resources and found the website for the Pope Paul VI Institute. I read about the Creighton Model and how it was being used with Naprotechnology to help couples treat infertility and achieve pregnancy. Tom and I had always insisted that we would not do anything that was not accepted by the Church and so I was excited to find that there were other options available to us as Catholics. And the more I learned, the more I realized that these other options actually gave us more hope for achieving a successful pregnancy because they looked at treating infertility as a disease.
Tom and I now felt extremely blessed to be living in the Archdiocese of St. Louis. Not only did we have access to multiple Creighton Model instructors, but we also had access to OB/GYNs who practiced Naprotechnology and were unashamedly pro-life doctors. We started instructions with a Fertility Care Practitioner (FCP) and she referred us to a Naprotechnology doctor who became my new OB/GYN. In just a few months after starting to practice the Creighton Model of NFP, I knew more about my fertility and body than I’d ever known. Working with my FCP and new OB/GYN, it was determined that I had stage 3 endometriosis, low progesterone, and limited mucus during my fertile days. All of these were likely major contributors to my infertility. Still, my OB/GYN was extremely encouraging and optimistic and told me there were treatments available for all of these issues. I underwent surgery to treat the endometriosis, and started taking medications to enhance my mucous cycle, boost ovulation, and balance my progesterone levels.
Tom and I were once again filled with hope. We were convinced that we’d found the answers we’d needed and would be holding a baby within a year.
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Unfortunately, even though Tom and I felt a renewed sense of hope, we still didn’t get pregnant. Two more years had passed since the loss of Francis. There were frequent tears and I withdrew even further. We prayed fervently for a baby, but the prayers were just not being answered, at least not in the way we wanted. We said countless novenas, spent hours in adoration, but still, nothing. I began to again question if being a mother to a child on earth was really the vocation God had been calling me to. “Why would he put such a strong desire in my heart to be a mother if it wasn't His will for me?” I asked myself over and over again. I was almost 40 and I was devastated. I was supposed to have 3 or 4 kids by then and yet, I still had none. Nobody starts a family after age 40, I told myself. I’ll never get pregnant in my forties, I told myself. I’m too old to be a mother now, I told myself. It felt like my dream was over and I was haunted by pessimism.
One weekend, feeling particularly depressed, I went to speak to a priest. In the confessional, I poured out all the anger, jealousy and pain that I’d been carrying for years and ended with “I’m tired of people telling me this is all part of God’s plan!” He calmly and patiently listened and then simply said “it’s not God’s plan; it’s just biology.”
“It’s just biology.”
Those words hit me like a ton of bricks. They were so simple, yet they said so much. It wasn’t “God’s will for me”, it wasn’t “what’s meant to be”, it wasn’t “because I wasn’t meant to be a mother.” It was “just biology.”
The words from this priest helped me find the perspective that I had lost during what was then almost 6 years of trying to have a baby. Infertility is just one of many serious diseases that can afflict the human body. By keeping it in the context of it being a serious disease, and not a judgment (or plan) from God, I was able to find some peace again. Why I had been afflicted with this disease was a biological question, not a spiritual one. How I dealt with it was the spiritual part. And when I put it in this context, in a strange way, I felt grateful that, of all the serious and grave diseases that I could be facing, I was given infertility. Infertility was ugly and emotionally painful but it didn’t keep me from ever being able to climb a mountain or run a marathon or swim in the ocean like some diseases could. The emotional symptoms of infertility were at times, debilitating, but I thanked God that at least those weren’t coupled with debilitating physical symptoms as well. And although my prognosis wasn’t exactly encouraging, I did at least have a chance at being healed and it certainly wasn’t going to take my life. I really had a lot to be thankful for and those few words from that priest reminded me of that.
This is not to say that I didn’t still carry a ton of emotional baggage created by month after month of disappointment, but I did at least start feeling like I no longer needed to be angry at God. I realized that God and his angels were suffering with me on those hard days when I longed to be a mother. I still had to battle all the anger, jealousy, resentment, and disappointment that came with infertility, but I could stop battling and questioning God. Now I understood that He was in the fight with me. God only has one plan. His plan is to offer us the grace we need to get through our sufferings in this life, no matter what the cause of that suffering may be. I needed to stop questioning so much and instead, start asking God for His grace to lead me in the direction that He wanted me to go.
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I had never given a lot of serious thought to being the mother of an adopted child, but I had always loved the idea of it. I loved the idea of bringing a child into the home and giving them a secure and stable family that they otherwise may never have. I loved the idea of using adoption to grow a small family into a larger family. What I didn’t love was the idea that I had to adopt in order to have a child. I wanted adoption to be a choice I made, not something I felt “forced” into by my infertility. Again, I wanted to be the one in control and I resented anything that took control away from me, especially if it was connected to my infertility, and adopting was now connected to my infertility. Subconsciously , I really resented that.
So, it took a bit of soul-searching and a lot of God’s grace to bring my heart back to where it was before I went through infertility. That is, I tried to focus on the good that could come from adopting, and not the fact that infertility was the path that had brought me there. I still had a heart that wanted to be a mother, wanted to give a child a family, wanted to grow a family. So, I used that part of my heart to help me make the decision to pursue adoption. I knew that part came from God, and the resentment did not.
Tom was quickly on board, too. This is a huge testament to how big-hearted he is. He didn’t hesitate when I approached him about my desire to start seriously pursuing adoption. In part, I know he wanted to see me be a mother no matter what, because he knew how happy it would make me. But in a larger part, he really wanted to be a father too, and accepting the fact that we may never have a biological child seemed to come easier for him than it did me. Tom has never been one to put any limits or conditions on his love.
So, adoption it would be! We enthusiastically filled out the lengthy paperwork, got the background checks, submitted to the physicals, the fingerprinting and the home visits. We excitedly shared our good news with our family. We were going to adopt! A baby was coming! And we waited for our phone to ring.
But the phone didn't ring. And another year passed. Our adoption case worker (with Catholic Charities) would check in with us from time to time, usually to tell us that she wasn’t placing more than one or two babies every few months, and that she had a dozen couples waiting. She sympathetically shared about how she’d been handling domestic adoptions for almost 30 years and that when she’d started her career, she placed over a hundred babies in adoptive homes every year, but now, she placed only a dozen or fewer. She told us how almost no teen mothers ever choose adoption because the grandparents raise the babies, and that only the more mature college-age girls usually consider making an adoption plan. And she encouraged us to market ourselves as much as possible and to even consider going to another adoption agency where our “odds” might be better because they offered better incentives to the birth mothers and as a result, placed more babies.
Tom and I discussed all this and, needless to say, the hope we’d regained when we had decided to adopt rapidly started to fade away again. Something about working with an adoption agency that paid birth mothers thousands of dollars for their expenses (which is actually paid for by the couples wanting to adopt) just didn’t feel right to us so we opted to stick with Catholic Charities despite the fact that our odds of getting a baby were very low. We did market ourselves a bit at an online site, for a fee of course, but that also did not yield very good results, and instead, many women who were scammers and claiming to be considering adoption contacted us wanting us to send them money (although we did get one legitimate contact, but that birth mother decided to keep her baby).
It was all very discouraging and at this point, we didn’t have anything left but prayer, which was starting to feel really pointless. I still was working with my Naprotechnology doctor but after all the medications and procedures, none of which seemed to be working, I had decided to take a break from it all. My sanity was quickly waning and more than being a mother, I wanted to emotionally and physically just get away from it all. My doctor had recently sent me a letter informing me that he was starting to prescribe low-dose naltrexone to some of his infertility patients because it had shown some success, but I just put the letter in a file and didn’t respond to it. I was done. Medications weren’t working, surgery hadn’t worked, prayer wasn’t working, and even adoption wasn’t likely to work. No longer was I going to fill my head with more false hopes. I needed to reclaim my life again, and if it was without children, so be it.
I had spent the past several months trying to suppress the heavy sadness that was consuming me inside. I was 40 years old now, and at the age where most people just assumed that Tom and I would never have children. We had been seriously trying to have a baby for 6 years and waiting to adopt for almost a year. I had given up on having a biological child and now all indications were that we would not be chosen to adopt due to the lack of babies being placed and our age. The last remaining hope that I had, which had been that we’d get to be parents through adoption, was nearly gone, and no emotional wall that I tried to build could protect me from the despair I was feeling.
I knew then that if I wasn't ready to accept not having children, then I needed to regain the hope I had once had. Even if it was a long-shot. Even if I thought I knew what the end result would probably be (i.e., still no baby), I had to have some hope to hang onto. So, I walked away from Francis’ grave, went inside the house, opened the file drawer and pulled out the letter regarding low-dose naltrexone that my doctor had sent a few months back. I read it and made an appointment. I was going to try again.
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It was October again, our 8th wedding anniversary and the third anniversary of our loss of Francis, and I sat next to his grave. I didn't visit it often and the summer months had covered it with honeysuckle. To anyone else, the grave would've been invisible but I knew it was there and I felt ashamed for letting it go unattended for so long.
I had spent the past several months trying to suppress the heavy sadness that was consuming me inside. I was 40 years old now, and at the age where most people just assumed that Tom and I would never have children. We had been seriously trying to have a baby for 6 years and waiting to adopt for almost a year. I had given up on having a biological child and now all indications were that we would not be chosen to adopt due to the lack of babies being placed and our age. The last remaining hope that I had, which had been that we’d get to be parents through adoption, was nearly gone, and no emotional wall that I tried to build could protect me from the despair I was feeling.
The most painful part now was knowing that most people assumed we would not have children. Even I was beginning to have trouble picturing myself with a child. I didn't dare tell anyone that “we’re trying to start a family” or “I’m trying to get pregnant” because I couldn't handle the “are you crazy?” looks and raised eyebrows that I thought I’d get due to my age. It was easier to just let them assume I had chosen not to have children and avoid the comments and questions. It was easy for me to hide the truth, because on the outside, Tom and I were both career-oriented and we were living what appeared to be a great life as a “child-free couple” with all the amenities.
Even within our family, it seemed that everyone had given up on us becoming parents. There was no more talk of “when you have kids” and our dog had long ago become the “grand-dog.” They didn't ask for adoption updates and seldom spoke of the fact that we were waiting to adopt. Our short-lived pregnancy with Francis was never mentioned again after the miscarriage. Pregnancy and birth announcements of other family members were not always shared with us. All of this was meant to “protect our feelings” but of course, did just the opposite. Instead, it made us feel more isolated and put distance between our extended family and us. We now avoided family reunions and many family holidays were spent “just the two of us”, which was always bittersweet, but less painful than the alternative.
But as I sat there next to Francis’ grave, I realized that all the walls I was putting around myself, with my family, with my friends, and with my co-workers, were doing nothing more than making me feel less loved and making me less able to love. I had tried to stop the pain but instead, now I was carrying even more pain. I was merely existing, and not really living. My thoughts were completely inward now and I had little compassion and empathy for any suffering of others because I was convinced that my suffering trumped anyone else's. I filled my head with hopeless thoughts. I told myself that nobody would pick us for an adoption and that there was no point in pursuing more medical interventions. I was rejecting all hope but I found myself incapable of replacing that hope with acceptance. Instead, I was replacing it with feelings of doubt and self-pity. By doing so, I had become a self-absorbed, bitter, angry and envious person. As I stared at the little grave site that I had neglected for so long, I knew that Francis deserved better.
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I’ll never know if it was the naltrexone, or a miracle, although in hindsight, it appears to have been the latter, but two cycles after starting the naltrexone, I was pregnant again. I was shocked, and Tom and I were scared to death. I called my doctor immediately and he ordered bloodwork and prescribed a cocktail of vitamins and progesterone, which I started taking immediately. And then we waited. It would be two weeks before the ultrasound that would tell us if our baby was likely to live or die. I counted the days. Tom and I prayed and held each other tightly. We told our parents immediately this time, asking them for their prayers as well. We asked Francis Gabriel for his intercession. We needed those prayers immediately, for ourselves if not for the baby.
I remember making it to the six-week point, a few days before my ultrasound was scheduled. “I didn't make it this far with Francis,” I thought. Could this one be different? I didn't dare get my hopes up. Nothing in my life had scared me more than this. Our ultrasound was scheduled on the Feast Day of the Holy Innocents and I prayed fervently for their intercession. Have faith, I told myself. Have faith. Don’t give up. God is here with us. It was a mantra that I repeated over and over in my head, day and night.
And then we saw it. The flicker on the screen. The 141 beats per minute. Life! My doctor smiled, I exhaled, and Tom wiped away a tear. “Looks like 2010 is gonna be a big year for the two of you!” my doctor exclaimed.
And so it was. I gave birth to our miracle, John, that summer. And that adopted child that I had long since given up on ever having? Joah was born six and a half months later, the day after Valentine’s Day. None of it was an easy journey. My pregnancy with John was another test of faith, in which we faced a terrible fetal diagnosis at 20 weeks, followed by a miracle healing, and then a pre-mature rupture of membranes (PPROM) at 32 weeks, followed by another miracle healing. And being chosen by a courageous young lady to be the parents of Joah? That has a miracle behind it too. God proved himself to be God even though I had doubted Him. I am humbled by it all.
This is not to say that the heavy cross of infertility that I had carried had been lifted off my shoulders. Not at all. After John and Joah’s birth, I started to long for another baby. Now I was really full of hope! I believed that I had been miraculously healed; that God had looked down upon me and said “Enough” and removed the burden of that infertility cross from me forever.
But I had forgotten that even Jesus was not relieved of His cross when He had asked for such in the Garden of Gethsemane so why should I expect any different? How could I prove my love for Him if I did not carry this cross? And so, I continue to carry it. One year after Joah was born, I found myself saying goodbye to another baby, our third pregnancy, lost after ten weeks, a little baby who we named Karol Elizabeth. Karol came into this world two days after Joah’s first birthday, the irony of which was not lost on me. Life is fragile, and all life, no matter how old or at what stage of development, is meant to be celebrated. So, Tom and I celebrated the birthday of our little one-year-old boy and two days later, we commemorated the birthday of our little Karol, whom we buried under the trees next to Francis.
There are two graves next to Francis now. One year after losing Karol, we lost Isaac Anne, again at six weeks. And now, I am in my mid-forties, and my dream of having more children grows distant as I realize that this chapter of my life will soon end. I still hold onto the hope that maybe, just maybe, we will get chosen to adopt another baby, but that dream, too, is starting to fade. I suppose this could be it. This may be how this story of my infertility ends. But other stories have now begun too, and it is because of my infertility years that I am where I am today, and who I am today, hopefully for the better and not worse.
Infertility will always be part of me. The pain changes but it never goes completely away. I will always miss that big family that I never got to have. I struggle with fear of losing John and Joah because of the losses I've already experienced. I still choke back tears and envy when I see a mother with her newborn baby. I try to suppress my anger and cynicism when I see others taking their ability to have children so lightly. And I still wonder why I had to bear this particular disease, this particular cross.
I know that I will have those answers someday, but not in this life. Nobody can rationalize infertility, and those who try, fail miserably. All I can do is share my story, and pray that someone might find some hope and reassurance in it. I kept trying to find reasons for my pain and did everything possible to avoid it, to the point that I gave up ever hoping for what I wanted most. But God didn't let me stay in despair. He kept tugging on me and allowing me to hope again. And I trust that in time, He will turn my hope into acceptance, and that I will reflect on my life and see only the blessings I have been given. Because, really, I have been truly blessed. We all have. To be given a cross to bear for Christ’s sake, and to carry it with the help of His grace, is a reflection of His love for us, even though our human minds can’t make any sense of it. If we could make sense of it, there would be no need for faith. There would be no need for Him.
Everyone who bears this cross of infertility has their own story and the endings will all be different. But the stories all share the common threads of pain, loss, abandonment, and persecution. In the end, really all that we can do is just persevere. When the cross becomes too heavy, and we fall, we get back up and keep following it where it leads. It’s what our Lord did. It is the stuff that saints are made of. And in knowing that, we can hope.
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There is a brief epilogue to this story and if you would like to read it, you can find it here. Thank you for reading about our journey. My husband and I pray daily for all couples who carry this cross and if you would like us to pray for you specifically, feel free to leave your name in the comment box.
Please know that you are not carrying your cross alone.
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