Living With An Open Wound

I remember getting hurt as a child. Scraping my knees. Slicing my thumb on a saw in the backyard while trying to cut enough branches to make a fort. Road rash on my side when I fell out of a wagon, towed behind a bike while flying down a hill. Skin breaks. Blood seeps out. Tears flow. Eventually, with the aid of pressure, a band-aid, or the simple miracle of human physiology, the blood would clot. A scab formed. Skin healed. Scars remained, but faded in time. Maybe someday, this will be my experience with the emotional and psychological scars of infertility. I'm not sure. Right now, I live each day with an open, hemorrhaging wound.

Everyone in my life is incredibly compassionate about this struggle. There are even a handful of people I know that have walked this same road. I wish I could articulate the deep, never-ceasing, excruciating pain that I feel each day. I desperately want someone to know exactly what I experience. All I can compare it to is suffering a wound so deep and so serious that it drains every ounce of your strength, all of your reserves, and saps you of any hope that you can move forward. I cannot compare this to the struggle of a mortally wounded soldier, but it is my emotional equivalent of warfare. And in the midst of this horrific, tragic, gut-wrenching pain, I am expected by everyone (even those who are compassionate and loving and caring and the most incredible people I know) to continue living life and moving forward and having hope. There are days where I lose the battle when I have to do something as simple as brush my teeth, never mind having to walk out the door, interact with other people, go to work, smile and nod that yes, I am doing well. Behind the facade I am face down in the dirt, drowning in a pool of my own blood. Those who have walked this road will know the complete sincerity of this statement. Those who have not, I appreciate your compassion and your acceptance that you simply cannot know how this feels until you have lived it for nearly one thousand sunrises and sunsets. 

Simply leaving the house hurts. I go to the store and am surrounded by reminders of pregnancy, babies, toddlers, teenagers, grandparents-the ceaseless ebb and flow of divinely ordained life that I may never play a part in. I experience all of the emotional depth of that statement when I stand in the store behind someone buying a package of diapers. I clutch my nieces and nephews to me and breathe in their sweet smells and my heart bursts and I wonder if there is any way I can be saved. I seek to escape the pain of the day through sleep and am haunted by dreams of caressing my pregnant belly, of giving birth, of holding my daughter who already has a name and is fiercely loved, and wake up feeling like I was hurled out of a moving vehicle into oncoming traffic. And it never, ever ends. 

I hurt everywhere. All the time. I understand how infertility leads to destructive behavior, ends marriages, wrecks families. I know why people choose to be numb.

People never know what to say. Those closest to me know that things like, "It will happen," or "Just be positive" or "your babies will come when it's time," will likely earn them a punch in the face and a sincere apology for breaking their nose. I think I have an advantage in that I am incredibly open (likely to a fault) about everything I am dealing with, so I do not hesitate to talk about feeling this way and people generally know when I am so low that not even a Harry Potter marathon can pull me out of the depths of despair. I think the best thing I have had someone say to me is simply, "I love you." That does more than anything when you are so emotionally obliterated that you can't seem to take another breath. 

Living with infertility is a hell through which few will pass, when you consider the population of the world through all time. Yet it touches most of us in tangential ways. Six months of trying to shrink ovarian cysts and get my cycles under control was absolutely terrible, but it only required me to feel disappointment. Now, as we gear up for a cycle of treatment, I have to feel the worst thing I can imagine-hope. I believe in a mind-body connection. I need to have hope and faith that this will work. But taking drugs, injecting drugs, doing an insemination, taking more drugs, and then having your heart ripped out by a negative test is more than a heart can handle. And if you do back to back cycles, you begin the whole process over three days after your negative result. It is the highest and most hellish form of torture I have experienced. Hope and promise shatter and you get to stand in the broken glass, bleeding all over while people look at you and tell you to be hopeful all over again. 

I am  hopeful right now. I am responding well to my Femara treatment, started my Gonal-F injections today for the next three days, will be re-scanned on Friday, and will finish up with a few more shots this weekend before I trigger ovulation. The tentative IUI date is Sunday. But hope is most definitely tempered by experience and disappointment. My hope feels like the last gasp for air while I am drowning before I sink away into oblivion. But it is there, and it is mine. 

I read two things last night that stuck with me. The first was a re-reading of  a series of short essays by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a man who I believe lived his entire life in emotional pain and agony. In "The Crack-Up," he penned, "and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day." And so it is three o'clock in the morning for me, day after day. 

The other was from the scriptures, more specifically, the Book of Mormon. If you do not believe this to be the revealed word of God, then perhaps accept this as a story that illustrates a larger point about resilience. The leader of a small group of people was named Jared, and as his people fled wickedness and crossed a great body of water in small ships, their small quarters were illuminated by stones that had been given light by the Lord. The wind blew furiously during their year-long journey, and though they were tossed about relentlessly and frightened and cried unto the Lord for stillness and peace, they were blown continually in the direction of their destination, and they had light. And the wind never stopped moving them in the right direction, and the people never stopped praising and thanking the Lord. And they had light continually, even in trial and tempest and through fear and anguish. And when they arrived on land again, they humbled themselves before the Lord, shed tears of joy, and recognized His tender mercies over them.

I am in a dark night of the soul. It is a night full of pain and fear. But I have a small light. And I have the love of my husband, and my family, and my friends, and my Father in Heaven. It doesn't change the fact that I hurt like hell and on good days, the best I can do is drag myself an inch closer to safety while I live with this open wound, but it does give the struggle a sense of meaning. This wound will never go away. It may change form and become an old wound, a scar, but it will mark my experiences forever. No pregnancy or adoption or perhaps a life without children will nullify what I have experienced. But I can own the pain and the experience and set myself up willingly for the punch in the gut that I might have to take in two and a half weeks, as long as I know that the pain and experience are mine to own and learn from. 

Please, if you are inclined, say a prayer for us and those others that live each day with an open wound in the deepest dark of the night, that we might see the pinprick of light that will lead us on, and someday, lead us home.

Pushing Through

A view of the waterfall in Bells Canyon

Two weeks ago, my husband and I went on a truly amazing hike. Well, it was amazing when we got to the top and were rewarded with the view of a hundred foot waterfall crashing into a mountain river, white spray misting through the air and sound thundering across the canyon. The whole way up to this waterfall, I was thinking, "why the crap did we do this?" I cursed in my mind (and OK, let's admit it, out loud) too many times to be proud of as I crawled up giant rocks, banging and scraping my knees and arms as I hoisted up and over the chunks of granite that peppered the forest floor. We climbed at a steep incline for the last mile and a half, and I felt my heart thudding in my chest in a steady rhythm as we kept ascending, stopping only briefly for to rest our aching knees and ankles. We hit several false summits, and I was almost in tears by the last one. 

When we finally reached the top of the trail and scrambled down to the waterfall, the sight was absolutely breathtaking. The way down was equally as difficult in terms of impact, but we reached the bottom with a sense of exuberance and accomplishment. I couldn't help but be struck by the symbolism of what we did. The hike was an exercise in pushing through the pain. Not pushing through by numbing out and shutting down, but by acutely feeling the pain and difficulty in every step, and still moving forward. I can't say I enjoyed the actual process of pushing through, but I do value what is on the other side of that-the knowledge and assurance that I can do really hard things and those things can make me mentally, emotionally and physically stronger. 

I think my life right now is defined by this idea of pushing through the pain. I shut down completely from January to June this year-work necessitated a level of focus, commitment, and composure that demanded I not turn into an emotional wreck that curled up on the classroom floor to join first-graders in their temper tantrums. When work ended, I slammed into a brick wall of all of the feelings that I hadn't been feeling. It was like being punched in the gut. But I am learning that walking through each day in emotional pain is preferable to walking through each day feeling nothing at all. I hate the way I feel sometimes. It is torture to be around children for me. I want to burst into tears at the sight of them. I can't handle being in the same room as a pregnant woman. I can't even watch the adorable videos the people I am closest to in my life post of their beautiful babies on Facebook because I know that they will send me into complete meltdowns. I am overcome so many days with absolute despair. It is really the most horrible, difficult thing I have ever experienced. But for the first time in months, I am actually experiencing it, and I am grateful for the companionship of my sweet, supportive husband and my Savior as He walks hand in hand beside me. Even when I am furious at Him for making me endure this hell. But I will take angry over indifferent, and I know He will too. 

We are only a tiny step closer to an end to project baby (whatever that end may be). After two months of very, very unpleasant hormone supplements to suppress a persistent cyst on my right ovary, I have the go-ahead to go off them. These pills made me feel like garbage-emotionally and physically. At the end of taking them, the cyst on my right ovary is resolved, but there is a small one on the left ovary now. Dr. Peterson has now seen enough of a pattern to classify them as alternating functional cysts (hormone producing) rather than endometriosis, which I guess is good news. I need three weeks to clear my system and return to a normal cycle, and then we start all of the fertility drugs again. We have waited 6 months for this, so we are anxious to try again. I am hopeful that the perfect storm will hit-I'll be pumped up on the drugs, husband will be in the last two months of his zinc/folic acid supplement trial, and I will be in a place where I am not only mentally but physically healthy, and the magic will happen. We get three chances at the magic. Then, the conversation will have to change.

Due to my low AMH levels (eggs in reserve), our doctor wants us to start talking about IVF if our current plan of action doesn't work. I have never wanted to pursue IVF, however, as our church has moved away from facilitating very affordable adoptions, a $15,000 IVF package has suddenly become the more affordable option. I don't know how I feel about it yet. I think that's a mountain that I will wait until the last possible minute to even consider climbing. 

The rest of the summer will provide plenty of chances for growth and fun and pushing through the pain. We have some great (hard!) hikes planned. I am working out like a crazy woman each day and it is definitely giving me an Elle Woods-esque rush of endorphines (because happy people just don't shoot their husbands). I am spending lots of time with my husband who I adore more and more each day. Isn't it amazing how you only fall deeper in love with someone as you struggle through the hard stuff together? We have a great vacation to Florida (yay for Disney and Harry Potter world!) planned for the end of July/beginning of August. I know I am going to keep hurting through all of this, and I don't think that will change. But I can see a way to appreciate the good things while I am hurting. 

I may be scraped up, bruised, prone to crying in the presence of small-children, and soon to be pumped full of more hormones, but I am still climbing, and anticipating whatever view awaits me at the top. 

Riding out the Storm

I haven't posted anything about our struggle with infertility for nearly five months. I have sat down to write many times, but each attempt feels forced and half-hearted. I think that I have given everything that I have to this fight, and writing about it feels incredibly taxing and exhausting. I have thought these past few weeks about how to continue moving forward when I feel like I literally have nothing left in me. It is hard to dig down deep to find the resolve to move forward when you feel like your reserves are totally spent. 

I began a very challenging new job in January, teaching first grade to an adorable (and exhausting) group of kids. I love it on many levels. It is a good distraction from the daily reminder that there is a huge, baby-shaped hole in our life. But even with this heightened level of distraction, I am reminded every moment of every day, as I watch their sweet, innocent faces, that I want my own version of a first-grader in my own life and in my own arms. It is a completely bittersweet experience.

There are some days where I think my heart is going to explode out of my chest from aching so much. I hurt from the inside out. We are on three months now of being told we can't move forward with any treatment because I have ovarian cysts that pop up at the very beginning of my cycles. This month, I was ultrasound monitored on day two, and I already had a four centimeter corpus luteum cyst on my right ovary. Last month, there was a follicular cyst on my left ovary. It is incredibly frustrating. We can't move forward because of the risk of hyper-stimulation and hormone overproduction. I suppose I should be grateful that an ovarian cyst means my scans are all covered by insurance, but right now, I would sell everything I own to pay to be pregnant. Gratitude is hard to cultivate and practice right now.

The doctor thinks I will have another period in about two weeks, and that the cyst I had probably contained and released an egg. We probably had a shot at getting pregnant this month on our own, until an unfortunate case of strep throat for hubby sent that chance flying right out the window. Time will tell if we can start things over in two more weeks. I am pretty sure we had the same scenario happen in December when we took a month off of treatment. I had two periods two weeks apart. It is amazing and frightening what injection fertility drugs can do to mess with your hormone production. Things are happening two weeks earlier than they should, and without the ultrasound monitoring, we would never even know. Doctors are a gift from heaven.

Starting this summer, we will be squirreling away money to save for an adoption, if necessary. I think the reality of that being a very likely way that we start a family has finally hit me in the face. I have nothing but positive feelings about adoption, but I also know that process will be its own harrowing, emotional journey. The thought of embarking on that new and assuredly rocky road feels so scary that I don't know if I could handle it.

Writing about all of this is an opportunity for reflection, and a chance for me to look for something positive. This week, I read a scripture that has stuck with me. It said that Christ will succor his people according to their infirmities. I have to rely on what I know deep down, even if it doesn't feel like I am being heard and it certainly doesn't feel like my prayers are being answered. It is so hard to pray over and over again for the same thing. It is much easier to just feel empty and like a victim. I'm trying hard to stop living in the realm of negativity. The scripture helped me glimpse what I have known in the past, that Christ will always give me what I need to get through to the next waypoint on my journey. Most days, I have a hard time remembering that. When I have the chance to think, to pray, to be taught by the Spirit, I know that Christ will succor me, and that I am not alone, hopeless or worst of all, a failure. It's easier to remember that some days than others. But I do remember.

I know I haven't experienced all of the hurt and heartache that is coming my way, but until I've ridden out this turbulent storm, I'll rely on what I know and sweet six-year-old smiles to get me through.

The Bitter Cup

I have drunk from my fair share of bitter cups in life. We all have. Plans are made. Expectations established. Hearts are set on hopes and dreams. And then the very dregs of bitterness must be swallowed as dreams shatter and hope explodes into a million tiny pieces. Broken friendships. Familial strife. Failed relationships. Financial stress. I have experienced all of these things before. But nothing compares to the bitterness I have swallowed in the past thirty six hours. We all have our cross to bear and our challis of sorrow to endure. Mine is yet another failed attempt at becoming a mother.

A little over two weeks ago, we had our first IUI procedure. It was quick, easy, and filled us with hope and a renewed sense of promise. After the IUI came daily hormone supplements which gave me every pregnancy-like side effect known to womankind. Nausea. Hot flashes. Wretched dizziness. Cramping. Sore breasts. Veins appearing in new and interesting places. Horrid constipation. Gas. Sore and bleeding gums. A cold. Absolutely everything. And then, early Sunday morning, after I was absolutely convinced I was pregnant, I peed on what must have been my 30th pregnancy test over two years, and it was negative. I sat on the bathroom floor crying, hating to wake my husband up to tell him the bad news. But when I crawled back into bed crying and shaking like a leaf, the cat was out of the bag. We cried together until we fell asleep and slept fitfully for several hours.

Sunday was a blur. We watched mind-numbing amounts of shows on DVD. BJ held my hand all day. I went through an entire roll of toilet paper as I cried and blew my nose. We stayed home from church, the thought of facing anyone we knew just too difficult to even bear. We even went to the movies just to escape from the house and the crushing sense of disappointment that sat on our chests all day. I accepted yesterday that I feel like absolute crap about the whole thing. I'd love to be all "there is a bigger plan," and "I'll just be patient." But I can't. Right now, I want to hurl my bitter cup off a cliff and scream every four-letter word in the book into the abyss. 

It is a special kind of hell to have your body and mind chemically convinced you are pregnant by hormone supplements, and then have it not be true. Biologically, everything for a pregnancy was in my system for at least twelve days after my procedure. Everything in me felt pregnant. But I'm not. And I can't do anything to change that. Every pill I swallowed, every time I was in pain, every moment I was hot-flashing, every minor twinge in my body, I became tied emotionally and physically more and more tightly to the idea of a pregnancy and a baby. And in the space of three minutes, all of that hope and promise was ripped away from me. Right now, I am furious about my cup being full of this bitter and horrifyingly painful trial.

We face an uphill battle. We can do more IUI rounds with fertility drugs. We plan to. Each one will cost at least $500. We can do up to four of these before the options become infinitely more expensive. We already have over $500 sunk into our first failed round. For two people on a single income, it's terrifying. I start work tomorrow as a long-term sub for at least 12 weeks, and that will help, but it won't solve every problem.

I have been thinking about Christ and his acceptance of the bitter cup. We know that He took it willingly, but not without difficulty, pain and pleading that it pass from Him if it be at all possible. I know that there will be something on the other side of this for us, and that our cup must be consumed if we are to move forward. I am pleading that there is another way. I know that there likely is not. But I am tired of being tested. I am tired of being disappointed. I don't know how many months of this I can possibly withstand. I am frustrated with my Father in Heaven because I lack the knowledge and capacity to comprehend this on a grander scale. I know that it's ok to feel that way, because we are meant to experience the full spectrum of emotion, and because eventually I will and He will help me. But right now, I am angry. I have thought often of Jacob of the Old Testament, and of the significance of his new name, Israel, meaning "one who wrestles with God." There is some solace in knowing that on the path to truth and understanding, there is turmoil, heartbreak and trouble, and that we are meant to experience it. We all wrestle at some point. We all learn the bitter cup cannot pass.

But how I wish it could.

I still believe in the idea of bread being disguised as stones, but I think it's going to take me a while to digest and accept this particular stone/piece of ridiculously hard bread that might as well be a stone.

We are starting all over again, bitter cup in hand, and we drink on, choking it down, banking on the moment when the sweet overwhelms the bitter and the cup has passed from before us. So I drink it down freely as I begin another month of mourning the loss of a baby that I never had.

I don't think I'll raise my glass to that one.

Expectations and Extremity

In my heart, I always believed that my I would be pregnant at the same time as my best friend, Aly, and Meredith Grey. Yes, Meredith Grey from "Grey's Anatomy."

It sounds totally nutters, but I am completely serious. Best friend and I have this intense soul-mateish relationship, a lot like Cristina and Meredith on Grey's Anatomy. She is my person. When one of us is having a hard day, the other can kick our butt out of bed and get us motivated. Or we can just watch endless hours of Netflix on the couch and be completely satisfied by just being. It is a special bond that can never be replicated. So, naturally, in my mind, Aly, Meredith and I would all be having babies together.

Imagine my disappointment when stupid Meredith Grey got pregnant before I did. I wanted to hit the TV and tell her that she has too many unresolved emotional issues to be bringing a child into the world. For heaven's sake, the girl was almost blown up by a bomb in a body cavity, quasi-committed suicide and died and came back to life, and messed with a clinical drug trial that could have cured Alzheimer's. It is not fair that she gets an adopted baby, a biological baby, and Patrick Dempsey. Ugh. 

Then, back in March, on my birthday, best friend calls me to tell me she is pregnant, and expecting her little bundle of cafe con leche joy (the baby of lily-white best friend and caramel Mexican husband is sure to be beautiful) in November. I was genuinely, completely, and absolutely thrilled for her. In every possible way. She will be an incredible mother, and her husband will be a wonderful father. I had none of the Meredith Grey-induced rage when Aly told me she was pregnant. We talked for a good hour about how important it was for her to tell me, because it would have been far worse not to tell out of fear of hurting me. So naturally, when we hung up the phone, and I looked down at my 9 month old niece that I was babysitting, I burst into tears. It is incredible how something so joyful, beautiful and incredibly happy can reduce me to a blubbering, bawling mess of a woman. I am not jealous. I am not angry. But I am aching inside and beyond disappointed that I am not part of this great fantasy of a pregnancy triumvirate that I have dreamed about for so long. 

Best friend and I talked today about them finding out the gender of baby Jimenez next week. I am thrilled for them. And I spent the better part of tonight wiping away tears as I mourned what feels like an incredible loss to me. I don't know how it is possible to mourn the loss of something you never had. Perhaps I am mourning what feels like the loss of a dream. I may never know exactly what this feeling is, but I know that it is all tangled up with feelings of happiness and joy for the person I am closest to in this life besides my husband. There must be something absolutely exquisite and wonderful on the other side of this personal hell, because I cannot see any other reason behind having to experience this gut-wrenching back and forth of emotions. 

Several years ago, before I met my husband, I experienced what was absolutely the most horrendous break-up of my life. I felt like my soul had been ripped from my body and that I was wrecked beyond all repair. There are really no words that can adequately describe how horrible things were. I know that there was some serious divine intervention that lifted my burden of anguish and pain to help prepare me to meet my husband six weeks later. Some valuable counsel that I received at the time was this statement: "We come to know God in our extremity." I thought I understood what that meant at the time-in terms of love lost and earth-shattering disappointment, I suppose that I did. But extremity is a far deeper and more complex idea that I could have ever realized. 

Extremity is the maximum extent of joy, and in it's opposite, pain. It is the highest high and the deepest low. The brightest day and the darkest night. I believe we experience extremity relative to our current path in life. Three years ago, my extremity was having my heart broken by the person I believed I would spend forever with. Two years ago, it was the palpable elation of marrying the most kind, gentle and wonderful man in the world for time and all eternity. Today, it is feeling a consistent sense of loss and emptiness as I yearn for a child that will fit perfectly in our arms and be bound to our hearts for eternity. It is feeling the most exultant and pure joy for my best friend as she prepares to welcome a perfect, heaven-sent soul into her life. It is weeping over the room that sits empty in my house, waiting to welcome our baby home. 

I do not know God yet, but He is revealing himself to me slowly in my extremity. And maybe that is what this struggle is all about. But for right now, I still hate Meredith Grey. 

A Trial of Faith

Normally, I don't write about deeply personal experiences of faith. I share them with people in my life through conversation, but sometimes sharing them online to a potentially wide audience seems strange and almost disrespectful. But I know that I need to share this, for all of the other women and men who may read this who are struggling with fertility, or perhaps any other crisis of faith or timing in their lives. I took a break from blogging over the past six weeks or so. Sometimes, baring your soul and struggles can be really difficult and very tiring. So I went on a blog-cation and then, today, I felt like I needed to write again.

On the positive front of Operation Baby-cute husband's testing all came back normal, and our fertility consultation is scheduled for July 17, a day after our second anniversary. That day feels like a light on the horizon for me, and I am remaining nervously optimistic for that meeting. 

But to be totally honest, I am struggling hard right now. As I have been temperature charting for a long period of time, I have felt like maybe, just maybe, I had pinpointed the optimal time for baby creation. I was so optimistic this month, even after taking three pregnancy tests that all came back negative. I left for a four day camp-out with the young women from my church, hopeful that I would return home and another test would be positive. Then, BAM, the need to take that test disappeared. I stood in the bathroom, crushed (but cognizant enough to resist the urge to curl up on the floor of the scary state park campground bathroom), then retreated to my tent to cry for a while. After I used every tissue I had to soak up the tears, I prayed. 

I have been struggling with praying for help with my fertility. Part of me feels like it is silly to pray about it-my body is my body, and it is going to do what it is going to do. The part of me that knows better, knows that I must pray about this. Prayer will bring comfort, guidance, peace, and purpose. But sometimes I am afraid of the knowledge that can come from prayer, because I have learned from experience that sometimes, prayer gives us God's answer, and not the answer we want for ourselves. And God's answer is always the right answer, but it can be a hard answer and a painful answer. My prayer (and it is a constant prayer that lives in my heart), did not give me the answer that I wanted. I did not feel like, "you will get pregnant," or, "this is the date that you will have your baby." I did feel something else.

After I prayed, I sat and reflected for a long time. I recorded some thoughts in my journal, and others were etched upon my heart. I thought about Abraham and Sarah. If Heavenly Father can help Sarah conceive, he will help me conceive. I thought about Isaac and Rebekah, and that she was "barren," and Isaac pleaded for their children, and they were blessed with twins. I thought about Rachel, and God "opening" her womb. I thought about Elisabeth and Zachariah, and how in old age, they were blessed with John the Baptist, who prepared the way for the work of the Savior. All of these women were righteous, dedicated, and covenant-keeping women. All of them were blessed. For some of them, it took many years.

In my journal, I wrote, "Even if my faith in my ability to conceive is weak, my faith in Christ can be strong."  We are asked to have faith as small as a mustard seed, and Heavenly Father will create miracles out of that faith. I may not be able to create a baby out of sheer will. My husband and I may need to be patient. We may need to seek more medical assistance. We may need to explore adoption. There are any number of possibilities. But I received, as an answer to my prayer, an assurance that, if I can exercise my faith in Christ,  Heavenly Father will work a miracle in my life. 

In the Bible Dictionary that comes as a reference in my scriptures (as part of the LDS canon of scripture-it references the Old and New Testaments), it says "Faith carries an assurance of the fulfillment of things hoped for...when there is true faith, there are miracles, visions, dreams and healings." I cannot describe the comfort that has come from reading those words. Faith, no matter how small, can bring miracles. 

Sometimes I feel that my faith may not even be that of a mustard seed. As I prayed, I remembered the account of the apostles in Luke 17. As the Savior teaches them about repentance and forgiveness, the apostles ask, "Lord, increase our faith." The apostles asked for an increase in their faith. Christ gave them the parable of the unprofitable servant and taught them greater lessons than they could have ever hoped for. If the apostles can ask for an increase in their faith and be taught and guided, any of His children can ask for an increase in their faith. I am praying for an increase in faith. I am praying for guidance. I am praying for understanding. I am praying for peace. In the midst of confusion, of turmoil, of deep anxiety and pain, I will stretch forth my hand to walk on the water to Him, my Savior, and when I feel as if I am to sink or be lost, He will reach for me and help me the rest of the way, as he did with Peter. " And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid, and he began to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth His hand, and caught him." If I reach, He will take me by the hand. Whatever happens will be His will, and I will walk His path in faith.

After I finished praying and reflecting, I flipped back to an earlier entry in my journal. This entry contained only a scripture that I had written down on August 26, 2012. It spoke peace to my soul as I read it. The scripture is from the Book of Alma, from the Book of Mormon. For those who read this who are not of my faith, I ask you to examine the meaning and teaching of this scripture for yourself-it teaches a powerful truth consistent with the truths of the Bible, and testifies powerfully of Christ.

"And thou didst bear all these things with patience because the Lord was with thee, and thou knowest that the Lord did deliver thee...I would that ye would remember, that as much as ye shall put your trust in God, even so much ye shall be delivered out of your trials, and your troubles, and your afflictions, and ye shall be lifted up at the last day." (Alma 38: 3-5). 

I do not know exactly what is going to happen. I do not know the direction that our journey along the path of infertility will take us. But I am blessed to know and be reassured that if I have faith of even the smallest amount, that Christ will help me to be patient, understanding, and comforted. He will guide me and hold my hand as the storms rage around me. He will not take my trials and opportunities for growth and progression from me, but He will help me to walk through them with an open heart. He will help me to be like Rebekah and Elisabeth and Rachel and Sarah. He will open the way for us to have a family. And when I feel like I can't go on any longer, he will increase my faith. 

I don't know that I am much further along the path of understanding and progress than I was on Friday night when my period started and I wanted to lay on the floor of a scary state park campground bathroom and cry my eyes out, but I do know that I have felt Christ's companionship and love in these past few days that I haven't felt for a long time. I know that He was there with me in my tent as I cried, and that He was there as I prayed. And I know that the Son of God and the King of Kings and the Worker of Miracles is my friend, my comfort, and my brother, and that I will never be alone. And I know that through Him, we will someday have a family.