3 Ways to Pray with a Broken Heart

In the moments when we suffer - through loss, tragedy, trauma, or loneliness - God is never far from us. We know this. We've been told this, and reminded of this, and it's supposed to be a comfort to us. Unfortunately, none of that guarantees that it will feel easy to talk to Him when we suffer. If you've been in any of the powerfully painful situations I just mentioned, you can probably relate to how difficult it may be to have a dialogue with Him. You are angry, upset, and wanting to take it out on someone, something, and in some way. You want to exhaust yourself with the power of your grief, but you also want to plead for a different truth to your situation. If God could just show you a miracle right now! He could if He wanted to, you tell yourself.

And then you convince yourself that He isn't listening, because there you still are, broken-hearted, exhausted with the burden of an ugly truth, and unable to face it. For many, myself included, this can be a crucial moment when our conversation with God begins to break down. No matter how much sense it makes to keep our broken hearts close to God and aligned with the sufferings of Christ in our own misery... these tend to be the moments when we push God away. We tell ourselves that we can't handle it anymore. God isn't listening anyway, we reason.

I'll just pull myself up by my own strength of will. I'll push through the pain. I'll find an answer. With logic. And effort. And determination. We all do this kind of bargaining. For some, this stage of "powering through the grief" can last years. For others, it can happen within the hour of finding yourself on misery's doorstep.

But at some point, aren't we are forced to deal with the Truth? Not our "truth", but rather His Truth. We are not capable of making sense of His Plan. We can't understand with human emotion and human minds how to reconcile tragedy and loss and trauma and loneliness without Him. So how exactly do we do find God in moments like that? And how do we navigate a life that is simultaneously filled with joyous moments and grievous tragedies? How do we pray with a broken heart and find God in the seemingly smothering and immovable sea of our own suffering? 

Here are 3 Ways to Pray with a Broken Heart that help me in dark moments. I hope you find them helpful as well. If you do, share this with others.

1. Jesus is Our Prayer

"There is no other way of Christian prayer than Christ. Whether our prayer is communal or personal, vocal or interior, it has access to the Father only if we pray "in the name" of Jesus. The sacred humanity of Jesus is therefore the way by which the Holy Spirit teaches us to pray to God our Father." 

This is what we learn from the Catechism. It makes sense to tell ourselves (remind ourselves) that our access to God is through His Son - especially when our hearts are broken. Invoking Jesus' name is the easiest way to call Him within us. That means so much that I can hardly put more emphasis on it. Imagine the broken-hearted woman who weeps at the death of her child. Is she capable of anything but calling out to Jesus in pain? Imagine the injured survivors of a tsunami pulled out to sea. Are they capable of anything but calling out to Jesus in their dire moment of need? The name of the Son of God is a prayer itself. When we are praying in dark moments and uncontrollably weeping and incapable of even standing, we need only to invoke His name and it becomes our entire prayer. He hears us. God the Father hears us. The Truine God weeps with us. And no perfectly fitted rhyming verse that is dutifully called to memory supersedes the power of a simple prayer. All we have to do is say His name. Jesus. Jesus. AMEN.

Yes, that imagery paints a powerful picture - pulled out to sea, with your calls in earshot of no one but God, wading through dangerous debris as you weep for what once was. And you might be thinking how so few moments in life are that stripped down and dark and desperate that we might have no other power in us but to say the Name of God over and over in our pain. True. (And you thank merciful God for that.) At the heart of all prayer in times of need - the kind that sucks the strength from our knees and the air from our lungs...the kind that is so powerful that we are completely overcome - it's a powerful reminder that we aren't performing for God. We aren't praying complicated prayers in hopes that He'll listen only if we get them right or say them with enough repetition. That helps me in my darkest moments. God suffers with us. The Author of Compassion. We are not alone, even in our darkest moments when all we can manage is to utter His name. Jesus is enough. He is our prayer. 

Let's dig deeper on that Catechism quotation though, because there is a lot of meat in that simple sentence. Communal. Personal. Vocal. Interior. These are all ways that are called out as ways to pray.

2. Get Back to Basics

When you are raised Christian, you are often taught to pray at bedtime...on your knees with your hands clasped together, kneeling at the side of your bed. But how many of us pray like that as adults? How often are our conversations with God even out loud anymore, let alone said at the foot of our bed with prayerful hands? My point: Go with what you know. Pray the way you were taught to pray. And if no one ever taught you to pray - take a moment to kneel by your bedside, palms clasped together, with your head bowed. How often do we hear someone say "God hears the prayers of children loudest"? Then what makes us think that our adult broken hearts need to aspire to more? What makes us think that a more complicated prayer is better or the goal? I'm not saying that we need to reduce our conversation with Christ to a litany of requests that might be better aimed at Santa Claus. The maturity of our prayer doesn't come from the form it takes though. Get back to basics. Do what you know. Pray with your broken heart at the foot of your bed. Yell at God - He can take it. ("The righteous cry out, the LORD hears and he rescues them from all their afflictions." Psalms 34:18). Give Him everything that broke your heart. Every last bit. What you will find is that peace and a little bit of certainty will find you right there at the foot of your bed when you do.

But what about the beauty of litanies, petitions, novenas, chaplets, Saints, and all the rest you forgot?! Yes, yes, yes, there is immense beauty and comfort to be found there. Let's talk about how the broken-hearted can use them to find God in dark moments.

3. Let the Saints Pray with You

Let me first say that you don't have to be Catholic to pray Catholic prayers. Remember that catholic means "universal". All who call Christ into their hearts are joined by that shared Truth. And one of the beauties of the universality of being Christian is that we have amazing examples of suffering available to us through the holy saints. There are people who lived before us (and among us!!) who really get our pain in a human way, without being divine themselves (and honestly sometimes that is easier to relate to in dark moments because the divine suffering and Passion of Christ can seem so unreachable). Use that gateway of understanding as a way to find Jesus through your pain. For nearly every instance of suffering, there is a human saint known to us. They all came into existence just like us. They suffered just like us. They failed just like us. And they were purified through their pain and deep suffering by a merciful God who heard THEIR prayers. When we pray with broken hearts and we give God our suffering, we are saying YES to drawing nearer to sainthood ourselves. Let it be done unto me! When we pray for the favor of God by asking others who have suffered to pray for us, we are uniting our pain with those who understand. It's not us vs. the world, in another clear defeat. It's all of us with a shared suffering speaking at once. Take a moment to look up the "saint of suffering" or the "saint of infertility" or the "patron of loneliness". There are gobs of them - waiting to intercede with God on your behalf. Let them help amplify your broken-hearted prayers to Christ. The amazing thing about the saints is that they often are associated with specific prayers. You don't even have to find the words yourself! Sometimes God gave them directly to the saint with detailed instructions on exactly what to say and do in difficult times! St. Faustina is a great example of this with her Divine Mercy chaplet and story. There are so many others.

Let structured prayer help you find an inner peace that is hidden underneath your misery. Let it help connect you back to what you already know. Those prayers can be simple verses from the Bible or they can be structured into several day long prayers (that's what a novena is), or they can take the form of a rosary (just a couple of prayers, said in repetition, highlighting Christ's suffering - it's not hard to say a rosary and you don't have to be Catholic to try!). There is comfort to be found in the Word of God, but oftentimes when we are hurting, the empathy of someone who has suffered similarly to us can be helpful. It's a shortcut to find God again through the pain. Use the saints and the prayers they bring us. They are real human examples of God talking to us directly. Listen to that Voice.

Lastly, you don't need the perfect words. There is purpose to this suffering, even if you can't see it. And God has already redeemed it. Remember this: The LORD is close to the brokenhearted, saves those whose spirit is crushed. (Psalm 34:19, NABRE)

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Whatever way you choose, know that you aren't praying alone. My family prays for broken hearts daily. We have a specific devotion to those struggling with infertility, but our prayers our broad enough and specific enough to be including you and your struggles too. If you have shared your pain with us in any way, you are prayed for each day. If you are suffering in pain, illness, loneliness, tragedy, with loss, and any number of circumstances...we're doing our part here to help carry the burden a tiny bit. How do you pray with a broken heart? Tell us in the comments - we can always use your inspiration!

Jiminy Cricket and My Adrenal Glands

You're supposed to trust your doctors. You're also supposed to trust your gut. There's definitely a balance of trusting your gut and having faith in your doctors. So in walks my Jiminy Cricket the other day while talking about my adrenal results with my doctor. Itching from the inside. Chirping loudly that something is wrong, but I couldn't substantiate it with knowledge - just feeling. Normal doesn't include crippling back pain and insomnia out of the middle of nowhere. That voice kept singing louder and louder. Normal doesn't include 18 months of unstable thyroid. CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP.

Here's the thing about your inner Jiminy Cricket - nothing bad ever happens from listening to it. And bad things often happen when you don't listen to it. We're so blessed with having an amplifier built into our soul.....we need to listen to it.

So when my doctor agreed to test my saliva cortisol levels, I was really grateful. But when she said 'tests seem normal, no treatment indicated', I didn't find myself being relieved...but rather being confused. I swore this *had* to be the problem from everything I had read about it. That said, I had no medical degree to back that "feeling"up. But if it's one thing I've learned about hormones - you have to follow the symptoms. You have to treat the symptoms. It doesn't matter what the standard reference range is for the lab if you still feel horrible.

So there I was, outside my comfort zone, challenging the doctor I had trusted the most of any in my life. And that, my friends, is how I found the answer to something. I talked over my symptoms with my doctor a couple weeks after the results came in and she agreed it was best to try and treat the symptoms that pointed to adrenal fatigue, even if the graphed cortisol levels didn't look as bad as expected.

She offered me a prescription of low dose hydrocortisone. I was hesitant to believe that steroids were the best option, but I had done a fair amount of research about adrenal fatigue - think 4 straight weeks of reading everything I could find - and I did know that a lot of people needed hydrocortisone to heal the stronger forms of adrenal fatigue. So I dove in, head first, and got myself the prescription. 5 mg at night right before bed and 15mg immediately upon waking in the morning. A decidedly small dose, so nothing to really worry about. I doubted it would do much, but I couldn't have been more wrong!

And here I sit 5 days later almost a new person. The constant sharp and aching pain I've had in my thyroid for over a year that no one knew what to do about? GONE. The pain in my back in my kidneys that I've had for years? GONE. The cracked and bleeding skin on my forearms that has plagued me for a year and a half? GONE. Debilitating insomnia that I've had since May? GONE. Crazy amounts of anxiety and stress that ovulation brings with it? GONE.

So while I don't think 5 days of treatment and a serious abatement of symptoms mean that this is all solved.........I do know that something really, really, really good is happening up in my B. O. D. Y.  Maybe for the first time in a long time, I don't feel like a medicated zombie. I feel filled with hope. It's like the sun in shining down *just* for me this past week. I swear it is! :)

I'll tell you what I'm most excited about (someone take a few swings of a wiffle bat to me for saying this)... is the end of my cycle. Is this adrenal/thyroid situation resolved enough to make my PMS disappear? If it is, I may actually be singing from the rooftop. If you're in hearing distance, it might sound like chirping at dusk. Appropriate, no? ;)

First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage...

....then comes denial, bargaining, anger, tears, and acceptance?

I think my problem recently has been looking at my marriage through the stages of grief. Over the past year and change, the process of trying to unravel our fertility issues has taken its toll on us. For me, it has colored and camouflaged love in the form I knew and recognized and understood it...so I just don't see it as easily as I did before.

Marriage is not my grief though. Our fertility is. But the fact that my fertility was never fully realized until I was married is what intertwines and confuses this topic for me so often. At least that is today's self-diagnosis! :)

I don't suppose that I write today with answers so much as I write with questions and to process 'out loud'. How do we encounter our spouse, through the lens of infertility, without our marriage suffering? The people who can answer that question with "It's easy, you just..." are the people who don't sit here as I carefully count out X number of fertility-focused pills each day and figure out when I can eat before one of them and which ones have to wait until after Y and the math on how I can manage to keep Z exactly 12 hours apart from X if meal A is late today. They aren't the people who get horrid bruises from incompetent Lab.Corp staff every. single. month. And they aren't the people who have lived the hope and subsequent let down when you are once again not pregnant (whether that involved never being pregnant or losing a pregnancy).

There is no "It's easy, you just..." to this Catholic path of being married and not having children. It's like a constant itch. We know we're living our vocation and that children are an important component to that. In the day-to-day living of that reality we feel the void. There is a place in our life for children that is not occupied. And we as married creatures feel that void heavily, though differently as man and woman.

When I finally got the courage to start talking about this journey 'out loud' (read: I still cringe every time I push the 'publish' button), I didn't realize how consumed my life and every passing thought is focused to the goal of having children. I knew we were immersed in treatment for the betterment of my health. I knew that we were focused on conceiving and carrying a child. But I didn't realize how much of a one-track-record-on-repeat that I have become. I went from being a dynamic, smiley, multi-hobbied, adventure-loving, light-hearted girl to a monotone, frown-faced and miserable ear-worm in under two years. It just feels like I have a constant thundercloud over my head...

And why is that? How did that happen? Actually, I know the answer to that question; I can even tell you all of the steps to achieve that! This is the moment where I realize NFP's impact on my psyche and how I have approached my marriage. And I'm not talking about the practice of achieving or timing things, y'all. There are other blogs that whine about that and I have no intention of joining that chorus. What I mean is a little different. My NFP chart is an integral part of my medical treatment plan and it is the 'God document' if-you-will on how our marriage looks on paper. For spouses to encounter each other, even from the early newlywed days, there have always been ultrasounds, needles, pints and pints of blood draws, bruises from the blood draws, pelvic exams, cervical exams, laparoscopic surgery, incisions, stitches, abnormal bleeding, infections, torn-up stomachs from antibiotics, fevers, drug induced panic and anxiety, drug interactions, severe exhaustion and lingering fatigue, drastic diet changes, itchy rashes, constant recurring UTIs.......... and the list goes on.

No-flipping-wonder!

Marriage has literally HURT for the entire time I have experienced it. It has involved fear and physical and emotional pain the entire time. No wonder I'm not having any fun over here and I feel like a 2 dimensional bore! How did I not see this before? Maybe it's because the cyclical reality that I live now involves an active audience and it never did before (at least he doesn't make popcorn and sit back and watch me unravel like I'm a one-act tragedy)? Maybe it's because one hundred percent of our marriage has had to be focused on children from day one because the women in my family go through early menopause and I'm not young enough to be casual about this? Maybe it's all of the above and a couple things I'm not thinking of yet? I bet it's probably that last one, y'all.

I sit here thinking about how every single month has been lived as a neat, contained cycle of grief. And how each month after the next has been compartmentalized and disconnected from the previous disappointments and becomes it's own vacuum-sealed terrarium of grief [that's right, I just described marriage like it was part of the Kreb's cycle... :)] If we continue this way, I'm going to need a very large warehouse for all of these individual compartments of grief. None of that sounds like a great way to live out marriage in the long term.

2 Corinthians 4:8-9

"We are afflicted in every way, but not constrained; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed..."

So this is where I ask you if you can relate. How do you rise above the fog? I can't seem to connect with the girl I used to be - she knew tons about life that had nothing to do with making babies and the heartbreak that comes with that. She wasn't boring or monotone. So what works for you? How did you push the reset button? (Counseling and spiritual direction are definitely part of the answer. We know that much. I'm more asking what else worked for you with your spouse. You are creative, internets! Share your creative wisdom!)

Sincerely,
A needy newlywed

A Wedding Anniversary

Today began with the knowledge that I would inevitably be mentally processing the contents of the past year of life throughout my waking (maybe also my dreaming?) hours. While I see the wisdom of focusing on the good and all of the blessings this year, there is also very real pain that has been lived because (and since) I got married. Sooo......... much like one of the find-own-adventure books from years ago, that's how I'll be publishing this: as a circumflexion if you will, that can be read from both vantage points; two stories that connect at the seams and occurred in concert.

How to read the information ahead: both relevant posts are linked below. You (the reader) will choose which experience you wish to continue reading. Each of those posts will have a preface on them that links them back to this post, so that it makes sense to the reader what they are a primer for...

Thank you to my readers - who I am both grateful to and humbled in front of, because this story lived out loud - especially this one - is a tough one to type. I am all at once vulnerable by the honesty and details that are shared within this story and thankful that they are no longer just lived and left to occupy my memory.

I have read so many blogs over the years, infertility blogs amongst them, and the beginning of my journey down this unlikely path was very much colored by feeling I had nothing to offer to the conversation. "How did I even belong in that conversation so early?" I reckoned with myself. I silenced my thoughts amongst the sea of pain that others expressed, because I believed everyone else's stories held more meaning, more pain, and were more worthy of telling. A void in my life couldn't possibly be as painful as the same void in other people's lives walking this path of infertility/subfertility/miscarriage/etc. Obviously, God pulled me out of that painful chrysalis of thought and I found the courage to begin chronicling my own steps on this path on this blog recently. My thoughts here are mostly indistinguishable from yours. We are the same in so many ways. And we write to make sense of this thing we cannot make sense of so similarly. We hope we are taking steps forward that will bring us to realizing our deepest dreams (coated in our deepest fears). We go to sleep at night (or not) believing we are doing the right things to achieve those dreams, and yet unable to be certain we are walking anything but a circle as we live in each moment.

I write today for the women who have not found the courage to give volume to their voice. If anything you see in these posts is something you relate to - please know that I am praying for you. Please know that you are not alone. Please know that this journey is purposeful and I wish I could encourage you to join this walk out loud with me. It is helpful. And it is in hindsight, post by post, that I am beginning to see that.

God bless everyone reading here and thank you for keeping me in your prayers. May there be brighter days ahead. And if for some reason there are not brighter days in store, then Lord please make my eyes unable to discern the difference between gray skies and sunshine.


If you would like to continue reading about the year in review was like, click here.

If you would like to continue reading about what the year ahead will bring, click here.

"It's Like Jack Bauer and My Thyroid Pills Over Here..."

I actually said that in a conversation today. Does anyone else have this battle with their thyroid? I get that my adrenals are a part of the conversation. But is anyone else that is on T3 having these Jack Bauer moments?

Because when it's time for my next dose - I KNOW. I have to keep it on me at all times. My neck starts to hurt. I get these pangs of pain in the area where my thyroid is........and then BAM. I can't think. I can't do anything. I have to take the medicine. Because why didn't I do this quicker?! Why did I wait so long to think of this????

That's how my thyroid communicates: like a terrorist. Every single dosage is like a hostage negotiation. I feel completely at its mercy every twelve hours. Over the past year and a half, my thyroid has been treated with a sustained-release T3 that is specifically compounded for me. It's been a roller coaster of symptoms and emotions and a few bits of feeling better...

For the first several months that I took SRT3 (22.5 mcg twice a day), nothing changed on my thyroid panels. Then one month out of the blue, that little butterfly-shaped beast sprang to life. Things were surprisingly good for a few weeks. I experiences energy I hadn't felt in a decade. It was short lived though, because the next month brought with it extremely hyper symptoms.

I would be sitting at my desk at work and for no reason at all I would spontaneously break out into a formidable sweat. My palms would be dripping so much that I couldn't even hold onto my computer mouse. My feet would do the same. (This is the part where you wonder why I was mousing with my feet...). Anyyywhooo, that symptom and the subsequent blood panel that was proof I was hyper brought about the reduction in my SRT3 dosage (down to 15 mcg twice a day). And that was wonderful, because I experienced an instantaneous abatement to Sweatgate. 

Now one month later, I am armed with a very hypo terrorist thyroid, and my dosage was raised back up a bit to try and find the sweet spot in T3 conversion (dosage now 18.25 mcg twice a day). If porridge were SRT3, you could call me Goldilocks.

That pretty much brings you up to speed with where I am in my love /hate relationship with my thyroid. And SRT3 therapy. I'm not sure if this is all just a symptom of my adrenal fatigue...or a clue that I have Hashimoto's...or some other unknown variable that would make me feel lost and clueless. For now at least, I seem to be tolerating the 18.25 mcg. If you have any experience with thyroid treatment like I've just described and you've come through it to greener pastures, I would love to hear what worked for you.

I do have hope that things will get regulated soon and that well-supported adrenals will be a magical part of what makes that angry pink terrorist stop messing with me so much. I guess I just need to hear success stories from people who have been where I am now. I know the ovary/thyroid/adrenal triangle is tough to treat. I'm trying to have patience. That I have managed not cartooning angry thyroids until a year and a half into treatment is proof I trust, God!! :)