If I could travel through time and talk to my 24 year-old self I might tell her something like this:
One day she is going to be alarmed when all of her friends start having one, and then two kids and she doesn’t have any yet. She is going to pray for a baby for so long until the day she can’t see the point in asking anymore. She is going to know what it feels like to be angry with God, and sad. Really, truly, deeply sad when she realizes the babies are not coming. But then I would gently grab her shoulders and look her in her now worried eyes and I would say to her; Listen. God has every intention of completely wrecking your heart more than once in your life so you will know what it means to let Him put it back together again. And one day that will happen when you find yourself holding your husband’s hand in a small office at an adoption agency and the case worker will get off the phone and tell you that you are now the mother of a three day old baby boy. That is when you will close your eyes and thank God for all of those unanswered prayers. But just you wait, it will happen again. Just when you think your heart can’t hold any more love, a beautiful girl will lay her baby in your arms and make you a mother of two. And then I would hug her tight and tell her sorry for spoiling the ending, but everything is going to be okay, because her heart knows no happiness like mine does right now.
I’m thinking of all you beautiful 1 in 8’s out there who are experiencing your own achy wait while suffering from infertility. I was one. I am one. It can be one lonely road, but take comfort in these statistics: 7.4 million women are having difficulty getting and staying pregnant. If you are not one of the 12% of women waiting to be a mama, then chances are you know one. These numbers represent a lot of broken hearts out there and proof that you are not alone in this. Please don’t give up hope while you wait for the miracle God has in store for you. Whether you are waiting to find your baby through adoption, foster care, IVF or another way; it is hard to understand what God has in store for you when you are being held in His hands like that. You ask why a lot. Why would He keep you from having the one thing you always wanted…that He wants for you? You don’t feel the space being created in your heart or the soul stretching that is taking place. And you can’t hear Him through all the frustration and tears telling you to please hold on, ‘I am working on your prayers and what I have for you is better than you ever imagined.’ I didn’t hear or feel any of that until I saw that little face that looked nothing like my own for the first time–staring up at me, begging me to love him. And that’s when I knew. That’s when it dawned on me exactly the kind of heart all of the days and months and years of waiting shaped inside me. I began to realize that if God wouldn’t have spent that extra time on me, I wouldn’t be here holding this baby and being asked to love him. I wouldn’t have known that I could. I wouldn’t have known that the disappointment of seeing one line on that pregnancy test month after endless month could become the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen while I was holding my three day old baby boy; who would’ve never been in my arms had the test read positive.
Hang in there beautiful you. God is making something beautiful out of this situation and of you. Pinkie promise.
-Kortni
@born.from.my.heart
