Hope

Nearly every cycle this past year, I had ultrasounds which showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was not ovulating. Though getting this news every month was disappointing, the certainty of the bad news offered protection. The past year, I never had to face the 2WW. I didn't even take more than a couple pregnancy tests all year (compared to probably 30+ tests the year before).

The past 12 months I've been busy building a wall around my heart. I know things won't work out and so I don't have to feel the let-down when things do indeed "not work out." This month there were no ultrasounds- only half-assed charting. My charting showed I was not ovulating and yet without that proof from an ultrasound that I've grown so used to having, I let myself hope. Hope that we may just be pregnant.

Conversation with girlfriends this weekend only got my hopes up further. "Everything can go wrong in a cycle and you can still get pregnant. It's all up to God in the end," was the take-away from the conversation.

I had been feeling unusually tired the past couple weeks. I was super-close to CD 28 and I wasn't noticing the usual pre-AF cramping... could it be? Was God trying to tell me something through my friend?

I let myself fall into this all-to familiar monologue of gathering evidence for pregnancy. And then... the spotting began.

I have never been so upset by AF before. For the first time in along time, I allowed myself to grieve the child that might have been. I cried. And cried. And thanks be to God, my husband held me. All I could think of was Rachel crying out "Give me children or I shall die." I didn't understand where all the pain was coming from. It just felt like I could be swallowed up by it at any moment.

And then I finally opened an email a friend sent me the other week:

"They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength." -Isaiah 40:31, RSV-CE

How do we wait for something we need so badly, something we know for certain is God's will, and something that we just can't live another day without? We must wait patiently and confidently, not complaining. To do otherwise would be to insult God by displaying a lack of faith in His ability to deliver. We renew our strength by "waiting" for the Lord (Is 40:31, RSV-CE).

The Hebrew word translated as "wait" or "hope" in Isaiah 40:31 can mean to twist together, as cords of a rope are intertwined. In our waiting, then, we wrap ourselves around the Lord and He wraps Himself around us. When discouraging forces pull at us, we are not pulled apart. Instead, like strands of a rope, we and the Lord are pulled more tightly together and grow in strength. We never "come to the end of our rope" because the Lord has roped us tightly into His presence.

"Hence do not grow despondent or abandon the struggle" (Heb 12:3). Stay focused on Jesus (Heb 12:2) and confident in Him. Don't even move an inch out of your position of hope. 

And I have to believe that even if it means pain and grief and monthly loss- God wants me to hope right now. And ultimately if my hope for a child remains unfulfilled- it will not have been in vain. At the end of this road, I hope you will find me firmly intertwined with Our Lord- wailing and grieving maybe- but wrapped in His arms standing firm in hope.