"Contentment: Inspirational insight for the LDS mother"
This is the title of a book I passed while walking through Walmart. I didn't see any books offering insight for those LDS women struggling with infertility. There is no "Chicken Soup for the childless LDS woman's soul." So I wonder, what about the rest of us?
Family and friends offer words of comfort, words like"It will happen." "...in the Lord's time." "Everything happens for a reason." "We were married for 3 years before we had... and another 4 after that until..." Words spoken in love, with the best of intentions, splinter the shards of my already broken heart and taste like bile in my mouth.
I know all too well that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. In mid-May "Congratulations, you're pregnant," from my doctor felt more like a cruel joke than welcome news.
It is difficult to find contentment when some mothers are lying in a hospital room counting perfect fingers and tiny toes, and I clutch only my cramping belly and aching heart. In the end my hospital room looks more like a horror movie, soaked crimson with my lost blood and with it lost hope. The agonizing pain of my fruitless labor made sharper as I leave the hospital with empty arms and empty womb.
Contentment you say? Perhaps some day it will find me, but not today.
4 comments:
Hey Valerie,
Just wanted to say ROCK ON GIRL!!
This is where my book comes in handy.
I have never seen anything like it out there, hence the reason I'm going to write it. It's going to be a collection of essays from women I know going through infertility. You are one of them, so you should write for it too.
I actually have a book that you might enjoy. I received it when I lost Hannah. You will never be content with loss, no one is, regardless of posterity.
The only thing that can take away the sting is Christ. The pain remains, but so does He.
I love you and I pray for you always. I really hope that you get to be a mother in this mortality. But know that regardless of the outcome, you are important, you have a mission, and most importantly you are loved so deeply by so many. That doesn't make infertility easier, but it does let you know that if you need someone to complain to, to throw a fit in front of, to eat copious amounts of ice cream with, we've got you covered.
I love you Val.
Love you my sweet sister.
One of my favorite conference talks from the last couple of years was "Come What May and Love It" by Elder Wirthlin.
One thing that I loved that he said was that we can't love times of adversity while we're in them and that we don't need to pretend to be happy or not acknowledge our disappointment. I loved that he acknowledged that. That part of the process is to just honestly feel what we feel. Or, as Jamie so perfectly put it "to throw a fit and eat copious amounts of ice cream."
I think that, in the midst of grief, too often people want the grieving person to get over it and be all peaceful and trusting immediately. Probably because it's uncomfortable to really sit with someone else's sadness and just let it be what it is. But I think that being hurt and angry and honest with one's feelings is part of the process. There's no right way to do it and no time table.
The peace comes later. But it really does come. I promise.
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