Mother’s Day can be hard for so many reasons. Hard. Hard. Hard.
Maybe you long to have children and can’t. Maybe you have a Prodigal child that you long to see come back to God.
There are so many maybes and each can lead to a place of fear. I want to walk through life without fear. To walk with the sure knowledge that God is with me. He. Is. With. Me.
Much of my life, I have known this to the core of who I am. In fact, this knowledge is foundational to who I am. If you read my novels, you will see that ultimately they come back to this point. That God is with us.
My characters learn that in some way.
I’ve had to learn that in some deep, real way. The way that strips the candy coating from my faith and digs deeply into the bedrock of my beliefs.
Eight years ago I had a miscarriage. Prior to that I would have said life had challenges, but it was nothing God and I couldn’t handle. Much of it was the kind of thing I could handle on my own. I’d thank God for His provision, I’d ask for His leading and His direction, but there had been very few times where I had been pushed so far beyond what I could endure that I didn’t know how to find myself. Here let my words from 2010, a few months after my second miscarriage, illustrate how shattering these events were:
I’m on a quest to restore my heart.
The miscarriages have caused a piece of my heart to break. And while I want to grieve fully and completely — and some would tell you a tad too much — I don’t want to live with heartbreak.
I want to live where the sight of a pregnant woman doesn’t remind me that I’m not 7 1/2 months pregnant right now. Where the learning that another relative or friend is pregnant doesn’t pierce through my heart with another reminder that I have another little one waiting for me. That there isn’t the pain of separation. Of what ifs. Of what might have beens.
Each day I think I get a bit closer.
Then there’s an anniversary of a loss or a due date.
Or I simply go to Chick-Fil-A and see a pregnant woman or someone with an infant. And I smile as my eyes fill with tears. So if you see me like that, know I am fighting back even while my heart breaks again.
That’s where I lived. But I wrestled it to the ground with God. I had to know that when I was curled up in the closet with so much pain that I didn’t know what to do, that God was there. I had to believe that He would somehow use the pain for His good. He has.
If you’re in the midst of your own pain right now (so many of my friends and loved ones are walking such hard journeys right now), know that God is there. He never leaves. He never forsakes us. Jesus endured that, so we wouldn’t have to.
So if you can’t feel Him, look up. Look out. You will find Him. And He can put your broken heart back together again.
Comments 6
Thanks for sharing your story, Cara. Mother’s Day is always a hard holiday for me. We’ve been trying to get pregnant for years, and I know I have at least 5 babies when I get to heaven. I definitely know what you mean about digging deeper into your relationship with the Lord to carry on. 🙂
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Laura, I am so sorry. We experienced secondary infertility, but I know that is a shadow of the pain of your journey. Praying for you this week. It is HARD when you want a child so much and the ones you’ve had are in heaven. Hugs!
We also struggled with infertility, but never even got to the point of pregnancy where I could miscarry. As much as I ached for my friends who lost babies, I found myself jealous that they could even get that far when I could not. Eventually, through a series of odd circumstances, my husband and I wound up adopting our three nieces, a process that ultimately took nearly seven years from the time they came to live with us. Last year was my first “official” Mother’s Day, the first following the adoption hearing. The six previous years, I had felt like a fraud of a mother—caring for children that I loved as much as if I’d birthed them myself, but without the title or the legal rights. Without the respect in certain circles. Even now that it’s official, I still wonder sometimes…
This year will be difficult for another reason entirely. My parents, our staunchest supporters throughout the insanity of the custody battle and the termination of rights hearing and who were there in absolute delight on the day of the hearing, who have met us for dinner in some way for every Mother’s Day for the last seven years…this year they both won’t be there. My dad died very suddenly ten months ago. If I had to label my five closest friends, my dad would be on that list. The gaping hole in my life is massive.
My heart aches for my mom, as this will be her first Mother’s Day in 40 years without her husband. We’ll go out and spend the day with her, because she’s asked us to.
But I miss my dad. I wish he was here.
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Oh, the heartache. I remember the days before kids where I HATED Mother’s Day, because it felt like I was overlooked. We all can mother children around us, but it’s not the same. Congratulations on the adoption! It sounds like those three girls are very blessed.
About 40 years ago I was told by the doc I was pregnant, then I wasn’t, no yes you are. I kept having false and positive test results for several weeks. Then the bleeding starting and I was told I miscarried. I wasn’t married but living with my boyfriend (whom I married several months later). He was as sad as I at the loss of the baby, if there had been one.
Fast forward six months we get married and I get pregnant the week we married. His reaction…you are going to have an abortion. He didn’t believe the child was his. I wish I had had the courage to leave him that night but I didn’t. It was something I had longed for, forever…a baby. I did not have an abortion but it was a miserable pregnancy because I was with a man who didn’t love me after all, didn’t want the child I carried to be born, etc. I carried my sweet baby boy to term and he is now 38 years old. His father and I separated then divorced when he was just four months old.
Mother’s Day is hard because my son chooses life on the streets and drugs to having a relationship with me or his two beautiful children. My son … the baby I gave birth to has done things to people which are unthinkable to me. He says he does things to survive. He’s lost his way with God. I know he knows God because my son’s innocent questions in. kindergarten led me back to God.
My heart aches for what should have been bad the lost years. I saw him about a year ago at my grandson’s high school graduation and in my heart I thought who is this man? My heart aches because I realized those words ‘a mother’s love is unconditional, never ending’ didnt apply to me. For I saw a stranger who hurt my grandchildren to their very core and this man, my son who stood before me, I felt nothing but pity and anger for. He is once again in jail because of his own choices. My heart aches. It really does. It’s a different kind of loss. It’s one that is not easily explained.
I hate mother’s day Sundays because of all the hype at church. I just as soon stay home. I feel like a fraud.
My son is my only child. Well I do have a step daughter but that is another sad story for a different day.
Sorry to spill on your page Cara.
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LouAnn, I am so sorry. Such a hard journey for you. We can’t control the choices our children makes — and sometimes those wounds run very deep. Praying for your heart’s pain to ease today.