At tonight’s Maundy Thursday service I wasn’t expecting to reflect on our infertility. Believe it or not the pain and the longing have subsided to a point where I’m not thinking of it continuously. Maybe it was the song ‘Even If’ which was sung so poignantly. This song has given me so much hope in our journey that it often feels like it was just written for me. But I think it was the candles that made me remember and reflect. It wasn’t that long ago that I had stood on the stage with my husband and lit the final advent candle on Christmas Eve. The advent candles that herald so much hope in the coming of Jesus, the Messiah. And when we lit that candle we too held onto the hope that the embryos inside me were growing into a baby or babies. Tonight, slowly, one by one, the candles were extinguished. We read of the shadow of betrayal, the shadow of Gethsemane, the shadow of desertion, and the shadow of death. I thought of the shadow of death we had experienced as we learned that none of the embryos had survived, the shadow of disappointment and the darkness we experienced with this news.
In tonight’s service the final candle wasn’t extinguished, it was just removed from the room for a while. This symbolized the fact that although Jesus died, he didn’t leave us forever. The darkness was real. The disciples would have experienced that emptiness in a way I can’t imagine. They didn’t know about Easter Sunday. Our disappointment was real too. But the darkness didn’t last forever. As the light was brought back into the room we were reminded of the resurrection which we will celebrate on Sunday. The light of hope is still there, and always will be. That light of hope remains in me too. I don’t know if and when we will get pregnant. But I know Jesus is always with me and He gives me hope. His light is greater than the darkness.
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