Stop trying. Those two infamous words people, who are having difficulty getting pregnant, always seem to hear from the well meaning. There were times...many, many times...when someone would utter that phrase to me and I would want to raise my fists toward the sky, shake them, and thunder in my best Braveheart voice and at the top of my lungs:
"WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?"
For a woman struggling with the reality of infertility, how do you ignore that tick tock you hear? How do you step off of the roller coaster of OPK's (that's ovulation predictor kits for you fertile people) and temperature charting or quit the merry-go-round of "What cycle day do I need to start this medication or when do I stop that one?" How do you ignore the what's-this-twinge-mean-or-that-one feelings or stop worrying about whether you missed the small little window when you were ovulating? How do you quit beating yourself up for waiting all those years to start trying? Is this what the rest of your baby-making years will look like?
Infertility takes something beautiful that a couple shares and, if you're not careful, it can make your marriage so full of "holes" it will look like a block of Swiss cheese.
I know what its like to cry myself to sleep because I feel hopeless. I know what it feels like to look your spouse in the face and sense that desperation they feel. You can see it in their eyes: I can't fix this for you. But because they love you, they give it a try anyway, hoping desperately that this time the arrow they shoot at the moving target might land in the bulls eye.
"I love you for you. It's ok if we can't have children together."
Wrong answer. Hearing you say those words makes me feel like I'm failing you and I don't deserve your love. I want to give you a million babies. I wish you wouldn't try to fix it and you would just hold me.
The "next time" they try saying nothing and just reaching out to comfort you. Wrong again. This time I don't want to be held. I'm angry.
"What if we start looking at adoption..." Wrong. I hear you telling me you are giving up on me.
"Maybe we should..." Wrong.
"Why don't we..." Wrong.
"_________________" Wrong.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Will anything ever feel right again?
At some point, you'll hit the wall and think, I've had enough. "Maybe people have it right. Maybe I should just stop trying..." but what YOU really mean by those words aren't that you're just going to chill out. What you mean is that you're losing hope. Or that you're losing faith. Maybe both. You don't know if you'll ever be a mother or why God feels so far off or why His plan seems so unclear.
Or, is there really even a God out there? Because let's face it, if there was, how could He let you hurt this bad? And doesn't He know that you don't know how much longer you can face the pain of waiting and wanting without losing your very soul.
Am I close? Ok. Thought so.
So back to the stop trying thing. Let me start out with the easy part...
If you've been blessed with a marriage and babies...try to think of the thing you most want emotionally in this entire world and then try to imagine you're holding it in the palm of your hands. But then, month after month, year after year, you see this very thing you desire slip through your fingertips and there is nothing on this earth you can do to stop it or change it or get it back? Now, let's assume you have a good imagination...so take that feeling you have, hold it for a second...and then multiply it. By infinity. And then you'll have some idea of what infertility makes you feel like.
This is why you should never say, Stop Trying and replace it with two better words: I'm Sorry.
Can I just take a minute to speak directly to those struggling with infertility and explain what I wish I'd been able to articulate during my journey?
First, I feel like I can safely tell you what those words ("stop trying") don't mean. They don't mean give up. They don't mean lose heart. They don't mean lose faith. They don't mean walk-around-like-an-emotional-zombie. And, for God's sakes, they don't mean that He has forgotten you.
God is not a forgetter. I've learned He's incapable of it. He's a master story-teller, weaving layer after layer together so that when He answers - and He will - you won't be able to deny that He was in each and every single detail.
I know when I, personally, stopped trying and I can tell you what that looked like for me. It wasn't that I wasn't timing cycles or seeing doctors or praying like crazy for answers. It was the moment when I said, "God, come what may, I lay my life and my future and my motherhood in your hands...and I trust you." And then I did this amazing thing where I said those words and in my heart, I really meant it.
I trusted He was good. I trusted He had a plan. I trusted Him when He says He doesn't forget His children. And so I started praying differently...sometimes in just short sentences because I didn't have the emotional capacity for more than:
God, I'm in pain. But I trust you.
Lord, I want so desperately for my time to be now...but if you have a better plan, I'll wait. Give me the strength to wait.
Lord, help...I'm drowning. And, if I'd let Him, He would.
This is what stop trying meant for me: it meant that I laid down all of my pain and longing and searching and aching and said, "I will walk this road because You, Lord, have asked me to."
And at the end of that seemingly broken and bitter road...there was a little girl with blond hair that curls into ringlets at the base of her neck when she gets too hot...and who has eyes so blue they almost look purple sometimes...someone who runs her fingers through my hair and says, eaaaaaaaaasy...and someone who, above all else, calls me Mommy.
How she got here doesn't matter. It only matters that it was her that got here...and that she was always in His plan for me. And, as crazy as it sounds, it doesn't matter that I suffered and suffered and suffered for it...because if I had the chance to do it again, I would walk through that fire, barefoot and naked this time, all over again.
Gladly, I would wait for her.
After my post yesterday, my mom sent me a message that said: "When was the original blog about purchasing the bunny for your hypothetical baby girl?"
I don't know, I replied. It's linked at the bottom of the post. Original post would have the date stamped. What in the world was she up to?
This morning I got a text from her asking me if I realized that the week I wrote
the bunny post was exactly 3 weeks into a 40 week pregnancy?
How incredible is that?
...that our little girl had already been conceived when I bought that
beautifully significant bunny? In retrospect, I now realize the feeling I got that day was God giving me encouragement that
His plan was well under way. Only what I couldn't have known then, in that moment, was that LC wouldn't be anything more than an aching in my heart and a prayer on my lips for
11 more months.
11.5 months from "Bunny Day", I held my daughter for the first time and became a Mother.
"But these things I plan won't happen right away. Slowly, steadily, SURELY, the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled. If it seems slow, be patient! For it will surely take place. It will not be late BY A SINGLE DAY." Habakkuk 2:3
Let it sink in: It will not be late by a single day.
See, to my friend who is hurting today, what I'm trying to say is that if your back is bent from your burden, straighten up. If your load is too heavy, lay it down. If you're heart is aching, let the tears fall. If your tongue feels too tied up to pray, let your heart groan out prayers on your behalf. And if you feel like you're lost, stop right where you're at and ask HIM to come and get you.
I promise, He knows right where you are.
