Black Days

Warning: If you're in a good mood, don't read this today.

I'm having a hard day.

I'm trying to apply my counselor's wisdom for my friend last week to myself today. To embrace depression and let it be a friend. I feel myself fighting what's inside of me, scared to embrace it. Scared to embrace the deep sadness and fear because if I do then I'm not sure the tears will stop.

Three and half years and ten or so fertility treatments later and still no children.

I heard Amy Grant being interviewed on the local Christian radio station this morning. She talked about a conversation she had with Minnie Pearl about 13 years ago. She wanted to name one of her daughters after Minnie's real name (Sarah) and wanted to ask her permission. Minnie was ill but lucid and asked Amy if she knew the most important color. When Amy said she didn't, Minnie said, "Black." She told Amy that black makes all the other colors come to life and have dimension.

Today is a black day and I'm hoping and praying that there will come a day full of color when I'll hold a child of my own. But I just don't know. What makes the black even blacker is the not knowing.

As I face my 36th birthday approaching quickly (June) and as I prepare for our first In Vitro Fertilization consult in a couple of weeks, my heart is heavy. IVF was always down the road, in the future, an extreme option if everything else didn't work, a last resort. And now here we are. And I can't help but wonder, "What if this doesn't work? Then what?" There is no next step, no other option.

I'm sure if you are reading this you are thinking, "There's always adoption." Even adoption isn't a sure thing these days and it isn't the same as knowing what it feels like to have a life growing inside you. I always thought I'd get to know what that is like.

I'm grieving lost dreams today. Grieving the dream that I would be a mom. Life is what I've done on the road to being a Mom. There has never been a career plan in my heart in the traditional sense, only jobs along the way. My career plan has always been to raise God's precious gifts. To teach them the sound the cow makes, teach them to tie their shoes, to say please and thank you, to eat their vegetables, to embrace life, to love people, to know God, to live a life that matters.

To have such a strong desire and nothing to show for it is beyond my understanding today. I know that God is good. I'm confident there are things at work that I don't see. I want so much to trust His plan. I want to believe Truth in my depths and appreciate that He is not here for my pleasure but rather the other way around. I believe, help me overcome my unbelief (Mark 9:24).

And Oh Lord, if it is Your will, please give us children. Amen.