Searching For Hope
Grief is a funny thing. It lies deep, well below the surface and it will come up for sneak attacks when you least expect it.
This last year, and especially these last months, I’ve been grieving the loss of my unwavering hope.
Hope is defined as a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. A feeling of TRUST.
I tend to be a very positive person, focusing on the good in any situation. But this last year of trying to get pregnant and being incredibly intentional about my health while not feeling any closer to a pregnancy, my hope has been shattered.
My head knows that we are on track. We have an excellent Health Care team working with us and for us. They are teaching me so much more about my body and helping me zone in on what it needs NOW to optimize conditions for conception.
Yet, there’s still this voice in my head that says: “you’ve failed!” I mean being pregnant is designed specifically for a woman’s body. It’s the one thing I’ve always dreamed of being able to do and yet, my body is resisting. In fact, I’m in peri-menopause. That means my body is closer to menopause than conception.
Yet if you were to ask me if I regret the path I took that led me to Brendan, my best friend, and partner for life, I would tell you ABSOLUTELY NOT! I have never once wished there was a previous pregnancy with anyone else in my past. So it’s a hard one to reconcile in my heart. I have the love of my life and yet, here we are struggling to start our family. It’s easy to say, “Its not fair!” But that doesn’t change anything either.
So where does that lead me?
It leads me to a choice:
Lose hope, forget trying and just live our lives without the chance of getting pregnant.
Continue to seek hope, find hope, and ask God for hope, with the chance that we could conceive and meet our miracle baby!
The first choice is easier but leaves me void. And that option does not resonate with me. It’s not in my character to stay in that space. But grief tries to pull me there, daily.
The second choice is challenging! Some days I see signs that my body is responding to the treatment and program and it’s easier to find hope. On other days, I feel tired of waiting. It seems everyone around me is getting pregnant and having their 2nd, 3rd, and 4th babies. It’s easier to compare and feel anger or jealousy, but that doesn’t get me any closer to where I want to be either. Nor is someone else’s pregnancy related to my ability to get pregnant. I can, and have many times, been able to congratulate a friend on their pregnancy. It’s hard, but I am genuinely happy for them.
I have to choose to have hope.
Some days, it’s hour by hour. It’s one small piece of proof after another. It’s a prayer and a cry out to God for faith as small as a mustard seed.
But it’s a choice.
Just like any other hard situation in life, we are given choices daily. Some days I choose to let HOPE IN and fill my soul on fire. Other days, I fight back and resist that hope because it’s quite honestly scary.
Do you know what else has been scary in my life that has turned out exponentially better than I could have imagined?
Getting up on stage time and time again to sing and perform for fun even though it would be my first time singing 🎶 those songs with that band…it was so nerve-wracking and thrilling at the same time!
Moving overseas with 3 weeks notice to a job that turned out to be nothing like they explained - I got to travel 🧳 to over a dozen new countries, living out hundreds of adventures and meeting some life-long friends.
Moving to San Antonio- nothing went as planned but in my last year there, I met the love ❤️ of my life.
Going on yet another first date from a setup. He turned out to be a keeper 😉
Starting my own business and solely focusing on this and nothing else - it’s led me to so many lives changed and positively impacted. 💝
Friend, I hope if you find yourself searching for hope and faith as small as a mustard seed, when it seems like there is none to be had. I pray that you too can learn to make that choice, no matter how difficult, to choose to let HOPE IN. Something I have found that helps in times of grief and pain is to start a list: a PROOF that “IT” is working list. It could be one point long or 20, but start it and continue to daily show up and see what you can add to it. This has been the key in helping me stay focused on HOPE and I can’t wait to share the news with you all someday in the near future that we are pregnant.
