IT’S MONTH EIGHT!

Wowza, this baby will be here with us in just a few short weeks, and I can hardly wrap my brain around it. I always imagined I would share a lot more pregnancy updates and journaling with y’all throughout these 9 months. (Besides those weekly “my baby is the size of this fruit” stuff) But… I don’t know… Maybe this season has just taken a lot out of me. Maybe everything important going on in the world feels so much bigger than my story. Maybe I don’t want to come across tone deaf to things that matter. Maybe it’s that pregnancy during a pandemic has been a lot to process & navigate. Maybe it’s my sensitivity towards others who are still in the throes of infertility. Shoot, maybe I’m just. plain. tired. 

But I was thinking about how much I’ve shared of our infertility journey the past few years with y’all. The friendships it forged, the community it created, the healing it brought. How incredible it was to just know I wasn’t alone, and the discovery that other women and men were going through the same things. Now I’m in a whole new realm with being pregnant and becoming a mom. But I find the same needs ring true for me – community, compassion, knowing I’m not alone. Don’t we all need that, whatever the case?

I love the verse in the Bible that says “rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” I mean, is there a better way to describe what empathy looks like? These past years I got pretty comfortable opening up about my times of “weeping” with infertility. It became natural to talk about the struggles, to listen to other’s sorrows, and I felt strangely like I had found my place and voice there. So honestly, now sharing my “rejoicing” in pregnancy has been much more difficult, awkward and uncomfortable for me. I’m afraid I’ll talk too much about my rejoicing to someone who’s in a place of weeping. And right now, it feels like so much of our world is weeping for all sorts of reasons that really matter.

But I have been reminded through counseling, friends, etc. that there is space for both. The happy tears and the sad. The growth and the loss. The beauty and the pain. That it’s okay for me to share about my joy of being pregnant, of having a miracle baby, of finally becoming a mom. Not only is it okay, but maybe someone actually needs to see a little joy in that way. My wish is that my story is never a source of pain or hurt for anyone who is battling infertility (or in the midst of any dark time), but instead a little ray of hope, a story of God’s power, a reminder of his healing. Maybe there is room for that now more than ever in this world.