Remembering
Anniversaries have always been hard for me, maybe because I have a thing for dates so I find it easy to remember what I was doing this time last year, even without Facebook to remind me! When it comes to my fertility journey though, the anniversaries always seem to fall on especially memorable dates. Christmas Day 2017 was when we found out that our first round of IVF had failed, my birthday 2018 was when our IVF babies would have been born and Halloween 2018 was spent praying for our final embryo to make it (it didn’t).
Grieving
This fall I was expecting to grieve our losses from last year. I was cautious around Facebook as I knew I had received countless messages of love and support, so I half expected it to appear in my memories. I remembered when our IVF had started, and how I had been injecting myself at a fundraising dinner the evening of the first snowfall. I handed out candy to the children who braced the rain and winds, thinking how last year that had brought tears to my eyes as I had prayed that our child would live to do that too.
Hoping
Yet it didn’t hurt. I remembered the pain, the disappointment and the bitter sting of grief that I had felt last year, of course I did. I thought back to the tears that flowed so freely and the wounds of heartbreak that were so raw. I also remembered the love that I had received and the hope I still felt, despite the disappointment. And I started to realize that I am being healed. I could look back and grieve without sadness. I still don’t know what God has in store for us, but I am starting to give up control and know that His plans for me are better than I can dream or imagine.
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