Tears rolled down my face. Again. This was nothing new. One line on a pregnancy test was a site I had come to know all too well. The pain of wanting so desperately to feel a human being kicking inside of me is something I don't have the words to describe. The ache of seeing a newborn baby and knowing that that is something you're body is not allowing you to have hurts in a very physical way. Heart ache is physically real, and those who struggle with infertility can testify to this fact.
I used to feel victimized by God, angry at the fact that He was blessing my family and friends with precious babies, and not me. Was I not good enough to be a mother? Month after month came with some of the most painful heart breaks I could imagine. Test after test of negativity and nothingness.
Nothingness. A victim. Borderline hopeless.
I can't put an exact finger on the point when everything started changing, but it did. Maybe it was anger, maybe it was frustration, but I remember suddenly being done. With all of it.
It hit me, slowly but surely, that I didn't have to be a victim.
I didn't have to be miserable and motherless, month after month, drinking wine and engulfing ice cream as I sobbed and threw away a one-lined pregnancy test. I could be a victim, if I wanted to. But I didn't have to be. And that realization changed everything.
I suddenly realized that I could be a mother right now if I wanted to. There are a countless number of motherless babies out there that desperately need a motherly touch and love. I had simply been choosing not be a mother right now, and I started to realize that it was a choice that I had all along.
I could choose to be a mother, and not a victim of my own body.
And that was an empowering moment. To realize that this overwhelming desire in me to be a mother is there for a reason. It's not a stupid desire. It's something ingrained in my very being to be used to mother a child. And I could use that desire to love a young one who desperately needed a mommy.
I could tell my body no, that it didn't get to decide whether I became a mother right now. I could choose to adopt.
So that's why we decided we are going to foster with the intent of adoption. Because children born of your heart are just as much your children as children born of your body. We still pray that one day we will have a child born naturally, but if not, then I am still choosing not to feel like a victim. To utilize the motherly love that I have for children in my heart.
If you too are struggling with infertility, I encourage you to remind yourself daily that this desire inside of you is there for a reason. And if that reason is to have children born from your body, then that will happen one day. But if that reason is to have children born from your heart, then that is just as wonderful. Either way, you are not a victim of your body. You get to decide when to be a mother, not your body. Your unwilling uterus does not get to tell you whether or not you will mother a child right now. And that is one of the most empowering and wonderful feelings in the world.
Original Post can be found at: https://heatherhiccups.wordpress.com/
Photo credit: Ashley Simpson, Simpson Productions Photography Service