Grief is a cocoon from which we emerge new.

_{Untamed (p. 271)}

So what now? Where do I go from here?

I could stay mad at God, I could give up on faith because it doesn’t make sense and life is generally unfair…

But I just can’t. There is some small part of me that refuses to give up on faith. I experienced the same thing when I went through postpartum depression. It felt like my world was turned upside down, and nothing made sense, but there was the tiniest ember of faith inside me that just refused to be extinguished. And all I can do is try to fan that flame into life again.

So here are the things I’m focusing on right now:

1. Trying not to be bitter – pregnant people are everywhere. Babies are everywhere. It’s so easy to assume that everyone else “has it all” and is living your dream life. But they aren’t. Despite what you’re seeing on social media, no one’s life is perfect – no one “has it all.” But at the moments when it seems like everyone else is luckier than me, I don’t want to be bitter or envious. I want to be happy for others, genuinely happy. I’ve had to do a lot of pretending the past three years – a lot of gritting my teeth and saying “Congratulations!” I’m practicing holding space for my own pain AND space for joyfulness for others at the same time.
   
   
2. Being grateful – part of trying to not be bitter is working on gratitude. One of the good things that has come out of dealing with secondary infertility is being able to appreciate the kid I do have. He feels more like a miracle to me now. We don’t know why we were able to get pregnant so quickly with our son, and our doctor said that maybe it had been a “one-in-a-million lucky shot.” Besides my son, there are a lot of other really good things happening in my life right now. I have the greatest friends – I have people who consider me a best friend, and that was something I had been desiring for a long time. Adult friendships are difficult, and I feel so thankful to have met the right people at the right time.
   
   
3. Accepting uncertainty – there is no avoiding this one, unfortunately. I’ve had to work hard to just accept uncertainty. I’ve realized that faith isn’t really faith if there is no element of doubt or uncertainty in it. Glennon Doyle in her book Untamed says, “control leaves no room for trust – and maybe love without trust is not love at all” (p. 316).

Kate Bowler has a podcast “Everything Happens” and she recently interviewed Maggie Jackson, author of Uncertain, about the “wisdom of uncertainty.” I haven’t yet read the book or listened to the podcast episode, but I am confident they will be excellent!

If I had had the choice, I would not have chosen to go through all of this – infertility or a faith crisis. But as much as I hate to admit it, I can already see good that has come from it. Do I think this means that God “wanted” this to happen to me? No – I don’t. But I like to believe that good can always come from the bad.

I do feel like a different person now. My faith feels different, not bad, just different. Grief changes you. Suffering changes you. I am obsessed with the book Untamed, so I’m going to put yet another quote from Glennon Dolye in my post to wrap this all up:

“Grief is a cocoon from which we emerge new… Grief shatters. If you let yourself shatter and then you put yourself back together, you wake up one day and realize that you have been completely reassembled…When that kind of transformation happens, it becomes impossible to fit into your old conversations or relationships or patterns or thoughts or life anymore… There is no going back. We have to let ourselves become completely, utterly, new.”