Tired

I am writing this blog on Monday night, but I won't post it until tomorrow afternoon. I've known since Saturday that I'm not pregnant, that we've just spent $7,000 on another failed fertility treatment.  My body let me know the same way it's let me know all the times before.  It's devastating, absolutely devastating.  I am broken. I moped around all day Saturday at a birthday party, hoping that I was just imagining things or that what I was seeing was just spotting, maybe implantation bleeding, not my actual period, but Sunday morning confirmed my worst fears. Now I will get up early tomorrow and traipse down to the doctor's office and have a blood test that I dread having done because I know there is no hope or chance of a pregnancy this time around. 

How am I doing?  Not well.  I won't lie.  I'll be brutally honest, transparent.  In fact, I'm about to say some things that might offend people. I'm not trying to hurt anyone's feelings or point fingers.  I'm just sharing the thoughts that run through my mind.  I'm sorry, but this is how I feel.  I am miserable.  I want to stay in bed.  I don't want to go to work.  I don't want to talk to people.  I am fighting to keep from spiraling into depression.  I’m tired of my job.  I’m tired of this town. How would you feel?  I'm tired!  I'm tired of just about everything.  I'm tired of people telling me that they know how I feel.  No, you don't.  Even if you've been through infertility treatments, every person has a very different and unique situation.  I had a conversation with a friend one day who told me that she got tired of people saying that they knew how she felt after losing a loved one.  She pointed out that people mean well, but they forget that everyone grieves a different way and everyone's situation is different.  

Please don't stop me in front of other people and start asking me several questions about our situation.  I will start crying.  I am fragile right now.  I don't like crying in front of people. I'm also tired of people telling me to go on vacation, stop thinking about it, get acupuncture, try this and try that.  I'm tired of people telling me how to pray and what to say and if I quote this scripture 100 times a day and tilt my head to the left and do a jig while I pray, God will answer my prayers.  I'm tired of being told how I need to feel, what I need to say, and how I need to approach God. This is between me and God, and we will work it out.  He hears my prayers and your prayers.  He knows my heart.  I don't know why he isn't answering my prayers.  Just like any other Christian faced with a situation like this, I'm trying to be introspective.  Is there unforgiveness in my heart?  Is there sin I haven't repented for?  Are there things in my life that are hindering my prayer life or keeping my prayers from being answered?  I don't know, but I'm trying to figure it out. 

My faith and hope have taken a hit.  When you get bad news after bad news after bad news, yours would be impacted too. I am frustrated with God.  I don't understand.  Don't pretend like you've never had moments like this in your life, moments when you've doubted God, moments when you've been frustrated or angry at God, moments when you've wondered if he even hears you. It's part of being human.  It's part of being a Christian.  I will snap out of it.  I will pray and read his word and gain insight and eventually snap out of my funk like I always do.  

This may seem like a miniscule problem to you.  It may seem like there are so many others things in this world that are far worse, but for me, this is a tragedy.  It is my tragedy.  I have to have a few days to mourn and figure out what to do and pray and seek God's wisdom.  Nikki Giovanni says it best in her remarkable speech after the Virginia Tech shootings: 

"We are sad today and we will be sad for quite a while.

We are not moving on; we are embracing our mourning. 

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly; 

We are brave enough to bend to cry 

And sad enough to know we must laugh again.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does the child in Africa dying of AIDS; neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by a rogue army; neither does the baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory; neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water; neither does an Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy."

I cut some parts out, but I think you get my point in posting it.  “No one deserves a tragedy.”  No one feels like she deserves the struggle she is facing, but horrible things happen to good people every single day.  I will cry and mourn, but there will come a day soon when I will be happy again.  I will move on. 

 The truth is this:  I am about to be thirty-eight next month. I've dreamed of being a mother my entire life and can't envision the lonely existence I would face without children in my life. I have tried for nine years to conceive.  I don't know how I will have children.  Maybe I'll have a biological child of my own, or maybe I won't.   God may perform a miracle and allow us to conceive on our own.  He may give us a child to adopt.  I don't know the answers to how and when this will happen.  I am open to whatever he places before me.  I don't know that IVF is an option for us financially.  With the amount of eggs I produce, we would be looking at $40,000 plus to do that, and my chances would be considerably low from the doctor's perspective.  The cruel truth is that infertility is a billion dollar industry.  Clinics and pharmaceutical companies are more interested in the almighty dollar than giving deserving people children.  If you can pay for it, anything is possible. But, is it worth taking that type of financial risk?  Adopting an infant is $25,000, and we will be on a waiting list for quite some time.  Do we try embryo donation?  It's no different than adopting.  The child isn't biologically yours, but you do get to carry it.  It costs money, but it's still cheaper than adopting...if it works.

I don't know what we will do.  I can't even think about it right now.  We have to finish paying off this loan before we can even do anything else. In the meantime, I will be praying and asking God to show us what we need to do.  Just pray for us.  That’s all I know to say.