Prayers, God, and Empty Wombs

(I had a different post written for today, but after this morning it didn’t seem fitting).

I have never had so many people tell me they’re praying for me. Friends, family members, and complete strangers from across the blogosphere have left me comments and sent me emails telling me their prayers were with me and my husband as we journey towards starting a family. One dear friend even prayed with me over the phone, praying blessings over the child either in my womb or soon to be there. I have been unspeakably uplifted by all these kind and generous words.

This morning I found that my temperature dropped, after only nine days of highs. Meaning not only that I’m not pregnant, but that I couldn’t have even gotten pregnant this month. As far as my understanding goes, the embryo needs at least 10-11 days in a luteal phase to implant. [If none of this fertility lingo makes any sense to you – don’t sweat it. The point is that I now know that pregnancy was once again impossible for me].

Not that I’m really surprised by the short luteal phase. Nothing else in this cycle was really pointing to fertility anyways. But I still felt crushed to see it spelled out in numbers on my expensive thermometer like that: still no baby for you. Your body’s broken.

That marks month nine.

I was still crying by breakfast time, my teardrops falling into my oatmeal, my husband sitting across from me speechless at the table. He understands that I want a child but he doesn’t understand the emotional toll that all of this takes on me. He doesn’t understand why I take the long way around the store to avoid the baby aisle. He does his best, though.

As for the prayers, I can only come up with three possibilities:

• The people who said they were praying for my fertility were lying
• Prayer doesn’t work
• Prayer does work, and God was listening, but for some reason he hasn’t granted it. Because maybe he wants something different for my life. I don’t know. Maybe he wants me to write.

Even though I believe in theory that God wants to give us good things and that possibility #3 is the most heartening, I can’t help being a little upset with him.

I thought you wanted me to have babies! I thought you were telling me nine months ago to quit school and quit the Pill and start a family! Or are you even paying attention? I’ve been taking all those %$@-&#*@*! vitamins and reading those stupid parenting books . . . for what? So you can taunt me every month with the hope of a child, just to dash it over and over again?

I don’t actually mean any of it. I know God doesn’t behave like that. In theory.

My friends are having a girls’ night tonight. I don’t think I’ll go. Everyone there is either a mom, expecting, or planning to get pregnant soon. Almost all of them are now practicing FAM thanks to me and my stupid blog, which means they’ll all be able to have kids the instant they decide to, which will probably be next week.

Maybe I’ll stay home and write.

I feel like all I ever do any more is whine and complain on here and then you guys say incredibly nice things to make me feel better. I feel like I’m abusing my rights as a blogger. I’m incredibly self-indulgent. Forgive me for that. But it’s hard to write about anything else when I’m feeling like this.

There is no real point to this post except to say that I feel a little hopeless today. So if you’re feeling hopeless today, know that you’re not alone. Maybe tomorrow will be better for both of us.

Maybe by tomorrow I will have gained some insight into all of this, too.

P.S. Don’t forget to take my very quick survey and enter to win a gift card. I know there are plenty of you who took the survey but didn’t enter. You still have a chance!