So I’m going to be very real and vulnerable right now and this may be long. This post is not a cry for help or attention, I just feel there are others who need to know they are not alone in their pain.
If you know me and are reading this, please don’t send me messages or call. I do have some people around me walking this with me and I am seeing a professional. When I’m out the other side, then we can chat.
But I have decided to write this as I have always said I wanted God to use my journey to help others and today I feel there are others in the midst of grief like myself that need to know they are not alone. That in this very lonely place, there are others with them. And I am one.
Now I have a wonderful husband, amazing family and friends, but right now I am processing a grief like I never imagined I could or would. I am a person who is energized by people, but in this moment, the thought of people and especially crowds overwhelms me. My memory is bad, I am tired all the time. I am depressed.
The Bible says “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when desire is fulfilled, it is a tree of life.” (PROVERBS 13:12 AMP). After a while, hope and believing and then not seeing a miracle can make your heart literally sick. That’s where I am right now. Heartbroken that dreams are not what I imagined, that even though I have done everything I can; been obedient to the call of God, sought medical advice, taken supplements and mixtures that make your toes curl…. done everything I could and leaving God to do the rest….. the rest has not come, the rest is still unfinished. So I have come to a point where I have to lay my dream down and it is the most painful thing I have ever felt or experienced.
Dom and I have been trying to grow our family for just over 5 years now. Each month I have built hope and expectation of a positive report, or positive test on a pee stick and then had to go through the process of carrying on and trying again when it didn’t happen. Month in and month out for over 60 months. Hope has been deferred, my heart is a little sick and you, the other person drowning in grief…. you are not alone.
Every time I have had a friend or family member announce they are pregnant, I have genuinely been excited for them. But the well meaning of others ‘you’ll be next’, or ‘it will be your turn soon’, do become hard to hear even when you know they come from a genuinely caring and supportive place. Which makes me feel bad for being upset that comments are said and adds more weight to what I am carrying.
I have risen above and carried on in regards to my fertility journey more times than I can count. There is nobody immediately around me (as in locally to my location) that I am aware of that is on this journey who can really relate to me.
I feel I truly lost hope when we went to look at IVF as an option that someone was going to pay for and that was pulled away suddenly. We are not in a position to pay ourselves and we have two children that live in South Africa with their mum, so any spare dollars gets set aside so we can aim to see them. And that makes me happy to have two beautiful children, but due to distance we don’t have physical time with them often. So our decision has been God needs to do a miracle and I am so okay with that decision. I guess I thought His answer was the IVF that someone else was going to pay for, but that pulled out without a word to us. I was devastated, but I decided God had another plan. I never realised that the hope that was deferred in that moment was going to lead me here. Because each month from that time has been harder and harder to pick myself up and carry on. With no hope in sight.
I do love my life as it is. I love my husband deeply. I have never thought that having children would complete me or give me identity and I still don’t feel that, and getting married in my mid thirties I was aware falling pregnant may have its challenges. But I never knew that letting go of a dream of having them would break me like this. I am grieving what may never be. I’m grieving not giving our parents more grand children, I’m grieving not giving my husband more children. I’m grieving not watching my belly and probably the rest of me expand as I carry them. I’m laying down something I have prayed for since I was sixteen – twins. It is painful, it is draining, it is grief.
Now hear me, I don’t feel God had reneged on promises He has given me, I don’t think He is holding back. I believe He is allowing me to feel others pain so I can help them, but also His promise may not look as I have imagined. So I need to let go of my dream and grieve. Then He can do what He has for me. But that does not make the pain any more bearable in this moment.
So whoever you are that feels so alone in your pain. You are not. I am here and more importantly I know my God who is carrying me in my pain and He wants to know He’ll carry you too if you’ll allow Him. It doesn’t mean we don’t feel the pain and grief, but He will comfort you and listen to you as you journey to the other side of it.
“Be strong and courageous! Do not be terrified or dismayed (intimidated), for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” (JOSHUA 1:9 AMP)
God is with you. As overwhelming as our emotions may feel, remember that.
Love Ange
Footnote:
Angela's Blog 