A Different Gift

Tonight I had a most unusual experience. We were at an event at our parish, and afterwards a friend who is pregnant and I got chatting. She reviewed for me the history of her ebb and flow of fertility; times when she conceived easily, times when she couldn't conceive at all, when she miscarried, when she never expected to become pregnant again. It was the whole nine yards of conversation. I could almost hear the unspoken thoughts coming through: "So, you never know, Marie, despite the number of years -- the same thing might happen to you!"

I could very easily imagine a day when my heart would have started beating fast and I would have broken out into a sweat. Or worse, broken down into tears, these words pummeling at me like bricks falling on my already bruised and aching body.

But tonight, it was just a chat about her experience, and appreciating that she was exuberant about an unexpected turn in her life.

And I know I've had an unexpected turn in my life, too.

It was just over a year ago the last time I found it necessary to run out the back door at a baby shower. Too much baby talk, too many pregnant women, too much pain in my heart. A complete inability to face it.

One of the transformations that has happened for me this year has been peace about our family size. I don't know why it should be, but it is true: infertility just doesn't weigh on me anymore. I realized this somewhere in the late Spring. Today sure confirmed it.

Infertility is a strange kind of mourning because it is mourning the absence of something, like the loss of something that never was there. So it is hard to articulate being free of an absence. I guess it is just called contentment. It, too is a gift of God, just like the yearning is. It's just... different.