I tell myself that I understand that I’m not going to bear children.  I reassure myself that God has a plan for me, that I am not some horrible mistake, but that all this will work to His glory.  I even whisper to myself that maybe I have a mission on this earth to serve and love other women who have suffered as I have.

And yet, and even yet, I can’t help but hope that I’m wrong.  While the voice in my heart whispers, “Trish, trust Me.  This is for My glory“  the voice that swells from my empty womb pulls at every possible straw, looking for hope. 

Maybe my mission is not to be a model of how to live with the grief of infertility, it says to me, or to carry the message of Christian infertility to the fertile world.  Maybe I’ll be called to serve as a different model of God’s glory. 

Maybe I’ll be someone cradling an infant child while others look on and say, “God is so good to her!  Look how He works His miracle to overcome her grief and shame.”

How do I reconcile the irreconcilable forces of my undeniable infertility, and my indefatiguable fertile immagination?  And I can’t stop wondering whether or not this conflict exposes me as untrusting, as unaccepting, as unrelenting in my desires to live my life according to my own plan, and not according to His plan for my life.

I’ll be honest with you:  I’ve been avoiding posting on this blog site for weeks while I’ve wrestled with these thoughts and feelings. 

Over my Christmas break, it just so happened that right at the time my in-laws left Tony and I to ourselves at precisely what should be the right time of the month for a pregnancy to occur.  And I was rested.  And Tony and I, after ten days of houseguests and no privacy, were reacquainted with each other in a way that happens so rarely, and was so joyful.  To say we were like newlyweds, as so many like to say, would not express the same fulfillment anda  sense of knowing each other with that deep intimacy that comes after many years of loving Christian marriage.

I should have been happy and blessed just in my marriage, just to have that bond with my husbanda, and in the goodness of our relationship.  But with all those variables aligned like so many shining portents, I just couldn’t help myself.  I couldn’t stop from hoping.  All those years of pain and heartache, of living in two week cycles, of having my heart wrenched from me in tears, cramping, and bleeding, was no match for my irrepressable belief that God can work miracles in my barren womb, just as He has done in others, that maybe…

…just maybe…

…this would be the right time according to His mysterious plan for me to bear the child I’ve prayed for, for so very long. 

This hope was borne silently in my heart for two weeks.  I didn’t tell Tony, because I didn’t want to get his hopes up.  I didn’t even tell my best friend, who I can share everything with.  I kept it close and quiet, a whispered prayer between me and the Lord, a private, silent supplication to my Loving and Gentle Father.  Abba, please.    I was even a day late in my cycle, 29 days, which is so unusual for me, as I normally start after about 25 days.

Of course, you know how the story ends.  Eleven days ago, on a Sunday, while I was sitting in Sunday School class, God gave me my answer.  He said, No Trish.  Not this time.  To add a bittersweet punctuation to His answer, it came at a time when I was sitting in a class called Discovering Your Life’s Mission.

I don’t know what my life mission is, I just know that, it all likelihood, it does not and will not ever include motherhood.  And so I come back to my original question:

Am I a fraud?  If God says to me, in so many undeniable ways, that this is not His plan for my life, how can I say with my mouth, “Your will be done,” and in my heart beg Him to change His perfect and omniscient mind? 

And this is why I’ve not posted in so long.  I’m still sad, I’m still grieving, or grieving again, for my lost hope.  But that’s a feeling I’ve come to know very well.

What has kept me from posting is feeling a bit ashamed that I let myself go down this path again.  Like Lot’s wife, I looked back and not forward in obedience, and in doing so, I’ve tasted the salt of my own tears again.

I know that God will pick me up and dust me off again, that in His Grace He has already forgiven me and is just waiting for me to forgive myself and get back to work. 

But I did feel that I needed to share this with you before moving on from here, to mark this spot on my emotional map of infertility so that maybe I won’t come back this way again.  And also to let you know I’ve been here.