In April 2019, I miscarried our first baby.
There are no words that can accurately describe the pain, the uncertainty, the disbelief that can be experienced in knowing a new life you are celebrating is no longer growing, changing, and the person you will experience meeting face-to-face for the first time.
I had been navigating treatment for possible infertility (as it was medically coded) for about a year and working with an incredible doctor who was helping me optimally ovulate and fine-tune my cycle, since there were underlying hormonal issues I didn’t detect while charting on my own.
Thank goodness for quality instructors and for my instructor who helped me get connected with a doctor for lab work and additional support!
In May 2019, we attended a diaconate celebration for our Catholic lay movement and the religious sisters kept coming up to me that night to tell me something special.
They would pull me aside – each one wanting to share so tenderly with me – that they were at the shrine in La Crosse, WI and had the opportunity to pray with the gloves of St. Gianna Molla to ask for her intercession for my fertility and our family life.
I start crying as I write this because I know now these intercessory prayers were God’s way of consoling my heart and asking me to trust His plan. The bigger picture. The unknowns I couldn’t control.
These sisters were so hopeful, so trusting in God’s plan, and so loving in their prayers for me and for us.
I know that through the intercession of St. Gianna Molla our fertility journey changed. I know that God heard these prayers.
I also know this isn’t everyone’s story. But, I can’t be everyone’s story.
I’m my story. And, my story, with it’s pain and loss, has seen resurrection and glory.
The wounds have become the places of intense glory for us in our journey as a couple and as a family. And, it’s not only been in physically having children. It has been in my heart, in the willingness of allowing God to move, in continually being stretched to trust Him.
Know that your prayers are not in vain. God’s plans are better than our own. Miracles happen every day and we may be surprised in how they occur and what it might look like (especially when it’s not the way we planned). But, we are not forgotten.
We are never forgotten in our pain and in our stories.
”Love and sacrifice are closely linked, like the sun and the light. We cannot love without suffering and we cannot suffer without love.”
St. Gianna Molla, pray for us!
