I had a birthday this week where I turned forty, and I reflect on how that makes me feel and my journey with infertility.
Over the Hill
This week I turned Forty.
This number holds a lot of weight for me. I don’t care about being “over the hill” or all the other jokes that come with hitting this milestone. In most things, I welcome getting older. It is how life works, and we can’t stop it so we might as well accept it. There is no need for Botox or age defying treatments. I have blonde hair but if I didn’t, I promise I would embrace the grey. Too many people try to make themselves look younger when all they do is age themselves instead.
This number holds weight for me as a woman, a woman who deeply desires to give birth. My husband and I celebrate fourteen years of marriage this May and we struggle with infertility.
Unfortunately, we have had one miscarriage – an ectopic pregnancy while in China. It was a devastating loss.
The last eleven years, especially, have been full of praying, tracking, lab work, diets, vitamins, tests, and even surgery (check out Veritas Fertility for amazing doctors). Countless tears have spilled, and desperate prayers voiced. This cross we carry has been persistent and heavy, and I have not always carried it gracefully. I have whined, stomped my feet, and wanted to give up.
Thankfully, I have an amazing husband that carries it with me. We have family and friends who support us. Most importantly, we have our Lord with us every step, and he knows much about suffering. This lent I have been meditating on the agony in the garden. He asked for the suffering to pass over him; but then he said, “your will be done.”
God can do anything. I read scripture, and I know it to be true. It is full of the miracles he performed. I know that he can give us a child; that is never the issue. The difficult part is knowing that he can but might choose not to. What I must place my trust in is that “his ways are higher than my ways.” He may choose not to for my good and for his glory to be shown. Whatever the reason, I must trust that he will give me grace not just to get through it but to grow in virtue from it.
Tick, Tick, Tick…
Many women I know over the age of forty have given birth to children. And trust me, I know many because I have traditional Catholic friends. Our church parking lot might as well be a staging lot for a transit van dealership.
I know forty is not the end of childbearing years, but it is the age the medical world uses as a marker of decreased fertility. It does mark that those years are coming to an end. As my biological clock ticks loudly in my thoughts, my mind and my heart must shout “thy will be done” even louder.
Before you say it, I know biological children are not the only way to have kids. Trust me, my family knows loving regardless of biology. Adoption is a beautiful thing, and we have been and are open to it. Sometimes, I assume that other people judge us for not having adopted already. I want to tell them how we have tried to follow God’s path for us. I want to tell them how we have tried twice, and it did not work out, how we cared for one child for several weeks and held another at the hospital the day she was born. But it is not fair to assume what people are thinking. It also doesn’t matter because God has a different plan for all of us, and we don’t know what God is doing in others’ lives.
Forty Years of God’s Grace
Turning forty also makes me reflect on my life and I realize I have so much to be thankful for. I tend to focus so hard on the one thing I lack that I can forget to be thankful and content with all that I have, which is more than I ever deserve. I have forty years to look back and see all the ways God has provided for me, protected me, and loved me. One day, I hope to have children so I can share all of it with them. But, until then, thy will be done.
Here’s to Forty
God willing, I will have many more years to sing God’s praises.
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