Your Body Is Strong (To the Women Facing Infertility)

I’m amazed at what my body is capable of doing!

I realized how strong my body was after giving birth!

Wow, I can’t believe I did that!

Just a few of the phrases you may hear on podcasts, Youtube channels, Instagram stories or read on Facebook posts, blogs, Pinterest boards. It’s endless. And to the woman who hasn’t given birth with a body that feels like it’s against her, incapable, unable, weak, forgotten. . .well, those adjectives are endless, too.

I heard someone talking about her birth experience, but instead of relating to her exclamations of a capable, strong body, able to do the hard work of giving birth, I kept thinking how the women walking through infertility would hear those words. And not in a self-pity way, but those words are bound to scrape against wounds that may just reopen and loose the grief always just below the surface.

Because,

Is she incapable?

Does she have the body that can’t do amazing and hard things?

Is her body the broken thing? The forgotten vessel? The hollow sound of what could be, but isn’t. . .

So here’s the blog post where I talk about how capable and strong the bodies are of the women stumbling through infertility.

Your body is so strong and so capable.

For smiling when your friend tells you she’s pregnant.

For getting out of bed after another year of nothing.

For crying and meeting the grief of childlessness head-on.

For getting off the bathroom floor (again).

For smiling when your friend tells you she’s pregnant for the second time.

For walking through the baby asile by faith or pushing your legs right past, because it’s not a healthy place for you to be.

For letting your voice speak though it cracks as you ask the doctor questions you never wanted to ask, consent to tests or medication you never wanted in your story.

For letting your body curl up tigther than you knew it ever could, because there is pain to face as you say yes to healing. Say yes to God. Say yes to life.

For waking up to Christmas morning and Mother’s Day and Easter and Father’s Day and taking deep breaths, letting the day be what it is–hard, or numb, or empty, or just nothing at all.

For holding his hand evermore.

For arms that hold her baby. And her baby. And her baby. And hers too.

For hands that throw out the negative pregnancy test. And you’ve lost count, but you face the trash can and let go of one line all over again.

For the womb holding unmet expectations, pulling you ever toward hope and life. Baby or no baby.

For the strength of a body and heart that carries on through every season and setback, every pregnancy that isn’t yours, every baby shower, holiday, announcement, negative test, and sleepless night.

For the long labor of endurance which (with Jesus) always ends in life whether or not you ever house a second heartbeat.

For doing one of the hardest, most painful things on earth–not carrying a baby within you though you long for it.

For a body that says yes to life as your feet touch the floor every morning, and you call the doctor for results, and you hear no again, and you congratulate another friend on getting pregnant.

You’re choosing life with your body every day. And I celebrate the life you are and all the ways you have chosen it for yourself and your family, your present and your future.

You are strong,

too.