Surrender Sorrow By Grabbing It

The carpet fibers catching my tears were soaked with salty love poured out.

Month eighteen of trying to conceive had just passed and I was weary of purchasing pregnancy tests, only to pitch them.

I was exhausted from the physical pain of endometriosis. I was worn thin from the emotional pain of waiting.

I wanted so badly to have a reason to save one of those tests. But instead, I found myself purchasing only to pitch, month after month.

Life was calculated by cycles. The calendar was eaten up day by day by the pac man of ovulation and possible-implantation days.

Would this month be our month? The month I would see two bright lines, parallel to one another, announcing the creation of a biological child? Would this be the month we’d begin our nine-month countdown, the month we began experiencing the miracle of pregnancy?

I knew exactly how I’d tell LB. I knew how we would tell everyone.

We had been saving bits of money since our first paycheck, set aside for the adoption process, but we were far from the chunk needed. So we continued trying to growing our family the biological route. The route everyone else seemed to achieve so effortlessly.

Pregnant women surrounded me. Most of my friends were rounding with expectation, some for the second and third time. We were on staff at a church: there were babies and toddlers and pregnant bellies popping through our days like popcorn.

Face down, I cried the blue out of my eyes and into the carpet, thinking about all the newly born babes and the babes on their way. None of them mine or mine-to-be.

When would I be made a mama? Am I selfish and petty for wanting to experience pregnancy so badly? Is God disappointed in me for being sad about this?

My tears turned into sobs, my body convulsing, wondering if I had permission to grieve the loss of fertility. The loss of a healthy body. The loss of expectations and a surprise pregnancy.

I wondered for months turned years if giving these losses—these aches and pains and sorrows—space to exist in my life was sinful. Was bad. I wondered if it made me unlike Him. Being like Him was what I wanted, but I wanted to be honest with myself too.

I wondered if loss of any kind could have an honest voice—or does it have to be shoved away with a smile exclaiming all the right things? Must I smile through the storm even if ingenuine?

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