Infertility is a unique kind of grief. It’s like mourning a life that was never there.
For a long time, I felt guilty for being so sad. After all, no one died. There wasn’t a funeral. There was no graveside to visit with flowers. Still, each month the realization of another negative pregnancy test, the gut-wrenching sorrow of “not this time,” felt like its own cruel death over and over again.
I didn’t know grief before infertility. After a year of trying to conceive and a visit to a fertility specialist, I had a medical diagnosis that wrecked my world. No one in my family had struggled with infertility. I was caught off guard and confused. As questions about treatments and chances for conception filled my mind, hurt filled my heart.
Why would God allow this to happen to me? Why would he give children to people who didn’t want them and withhold the blessing from me? The sorrow that filled my heart is hard to put into words, but every woman who has ever longed for a child understands the unique pain.
As I tried to hold onto my faith, I scoured scripture for some hope I could cling to. One day I found a simple verse that felt like it perfectly described my life.
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