One comment I hear about myself all the time is that people admire how much faith I have in our TTC journey, and they don't see how frustrating it is for me. I heard the same thing after Nora died, that I was so strong and they couldn't understand how I was staying strong during a time like that.
I'll attack the last part first. I didn't feel strong when it happened. I felt shattered and broken. I would cry at the drop of a hat, something I didn't even do when I was pg. I cried myself to sleep at night for months after we lost her. I hated it with every fiber of my being when someone would tell me that I was so strong going through that. I was not STRONG, I was surviving something no parent should have to go through. I felt like I had failed my child even though there was nothing I could have done to change what happened. So, if you know a woman who has lost a child, never ever tell her she's strong because in reality, she's barely holding it together.
As for the faith in the TTC journey, it hasn't always been there. I was raised going to church every Sunday. I went to the same church from the time I was a baby until the Sunday before I moved to Vegas. I always thought I had a strong connection with God and that He was guiding me. Even when I moved to Vegas, I felt like He was guiding me to where I needed to go. When we lost Nora, I held onto my faith but I couldn't go to church without crying, it hurt to hear people singing about how wonderful God was but He didn't help our child. I lost my faith for a long time because I felt betrayed. How could God give us such a promising start and then take it away without us ever getting to know her? I never stopped believing in Him but my faith in Him had shriveled.
It took over 3 years for me to realize that God did what was best for Nora, not what was best for us. It would have been a difficult and painful life for her if she'd survived and He took her to a place where she wouldn't have to go through that. It's a hard lesson to learn that God does what is best for the people involved and it isn't always what they'd like. It can take years to learn it. After all that time, it seems like I feel like a repentant child and am always praying that He let me make up my lack of faith to Him. I rarely go to church now because, in a way, I feel like I don't deserve His forgiveness, but that doesn't mean that I don't still believe and pray.
As for TTC, well, the faith in that is the faith that our lives together would not be complete without children, whether our own or adopted. I will never give up on having the children that we want because that is what we are meant to do. It's hard to see every other woman on the planet, or so it seems, getting pg when we've struggled with it for so long, but just because they are doesn't mean I'm going to just give up.
I look at this as we are never going to have the children we want if we just give up because it's too hard. Nothing in life is easy, and the worthwhile things are never easy to get. When you have to work harder to have a healthy child, you will appreciate it more than someone that didn't have to work for it. You won't love them any more or less than someone who didn't have to work for it, but you will appreciate just how hard the journey was.
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