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.

A Father's Heart

Triggers mentioned (miscarriage, molar pregnancy, ectopic pregnancy, infertility, subfertility)

"O eternal Trinity, You are a deep sea in which the more I seek, the more I find, and the more I find, the more I seek to know You."            -- St. Catherine of Siena

This year is the first time my husband is a father for the observance of Father's Day.

He has not lost any sleep from crying babies. He has not been repulsed by any stinky diapers. He has not spent hours of endless worry. Fumbled with swaddling techniques. Dealt with fevers. Or throw-up. Or any of those things.

We never met our children. We never got to celebrate any good news. We have no stories of hope and wonder and anticipation. We have no baby onesies. Or crib. Not even an ultrasound.

Today doesn't bring us the joy of children; it brings only confusion and a search for meaning.

Instead of oozing fatherly pride, my husband fumbles through unknown territory, struggling to process how he is a father and at the same time lost in what it means live up to that title. I wanted him to experience fatherhood in our marriage, but of course this isn't what I envisioned.

Today, like all holidays and anniversaries - -  we just stare at each other and remember the two times over this past year that we learned we were pregnant while I was experiencing miscarriages. We think about the panic involving opposite Rh factors and the worry involved with whether I would develop destructive antibodies that first time. We think about the horrific bruises on my arms from the blood draws when the phlebotomists blew my veins. We think about how much of those experiences were lived in the bathroom, where our anguish was echoed back to us in an eery cacophony amid the tiled walls. We think about the feeling of emptiness that we both struggle with today and how it is as sharp as it was last year when it happened the first time.

And at the same time, academically at least, we know that we are parents. And my husband knows that he is a father today. We process the spiritual loss like Mary suffered the death of her own Son. We process the physical realities very differently though, but the loss is the same.

There is no life ahead for two babies that most certainly had our dimples. There are no smiles or coos from two babies that definitely had our blue or green eyes. There will be no future for two babies that would have had our pale skin and our wavy hair. And even while we sit here and think of all the things they must have been.... we can't begin to imagine who they were.

How do you grieve someone you can't picture? I've come to the conclusion that the only answer to that question is that my entire faith is based on grieving the loss of a man I never met or saw either.....and so should I be grieving my own children. Maybe more than any other time in my life have I now begun to understand what it is like to have a connection to Mary. Oh how she must have suffered...

So today is Father's Day, the first of many to come for us (and for so many who have walked this path before us). We hope to learn more in the days ahead about how to better process the pain and hurt we feel in such a raw way now. For now though, we are on our knees. And we are mourning what might have been. And yet we are tasked with trying to conceive hope again, if we are to answer God's call in our life to be parents to living children. Anyone who has been in the same position knows what a feat of strength that takes. (That said, I refuse to draw distinction for our lot in life from the reality of so many other couples who struggle with subfertility, infertility, molar pregnancies, ectopic pregnancies, or miscarriage. A void is no less painful because of the circumstances surrounding it and the glory of God and His sacrifice cannot be found in such a distinction - of that I feel certain.)

If nothing else, today has been a reminder to both of us that our strength and hope have only ever come from the death and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that is no different today than it was before we were parents.

Today, this blog is dedicated to all of the fathers  - here and on the other side. And to everyone with a father's heart (thanks Lauren!). And to all of the children not with us (yet or anymore). God bless you. And God bless my broken-hearted husband.