Words

An amazing thing about having gone through infertility is that it gives you an empathy for other people's struggles like no other. Before having gone through it, I always felt for people. I really did. I've always been an over empathetic, feel-y, and super emotional person. But having experienced what felt like a loss every month for YEARS upon YEARS really changed my empathy relation into a full blown experience with others. Especially when that experience is along side a very close friend. It's interesting to me how things can affect me in ways like it's my own personal experience...even though it's not anymore. It has made me so much more aware of the effect people's words can have on others and how often people don't realize the severity of their words. I know most people aren't out to purposely hurt others, it's just that they can't relate because they haven't experienced a similar hurt. And I'm glad that many people have that innocence that they can't relate, because otherwise life would be very very sad. It's just that sometimes we need to look at situations and know that we are not in control, we don't know what the outcome will be like, and that's ok. We don't have to fill the silence with meaningless words that we don't mean or don't truly know. We can simply say we are sorry and don't know what in the world to say...because really there aren't any words.

I recently read in a bible study the story about Jesus telling His disciples what was going to happen to Him and Peter not knowing what to say did the same thing as we do all the time...

'From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day. Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, "God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You." But He turned and said to Peter, "Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's."' -Matthew 16:21-23

Even Peter, who walked alongside Jesus, couldn't handle life going differently than what the normal constituted or from what was "expected," and tried to say he knew differently how things would go. But sometimes things are going to go differently than what is expected or even desired. That still doesn't mean that God isn't in control.

I can't count the amount of people and times that I have been told over the past 9 plus years that I would get pregnant and/or have a child. Sometimes people even told me specific time frames (all of which have long ago passed). I don't blame them or hold any grudges. I understand. Just like Peter, we all sometimes can't handle a situation going differently than what we desire for ourselves or even for someone else. Walking through the loss of a child with my dear friend, I have unfortunately witnessed many similar situations of people not knowing what to say and filling the void with telling her the "positive future" in many different forms. Again, nothing against them. I know I used to do the exact same thing before my experience with infertility.

Hopefully we can move forward and try to remember that God is in control and is the only one that truly knows the future. Only He can tell us the plan. We just need to support one another, be there for each other, and love on one another....through all the bad but also all the good. Because God does say that there WILL be good...we just don't know what it will look like exactly.

'Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that."' -James 4:14-15