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“God can restore what is broken and change it into something amazing. All you need is faith.”
Joel 2:25

“But as for me, I will always have hope.”
Psalm 71:14

“Come to me, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest.
Put on my yoke, and learn from me. I’m gentle and humble. And you will find rest for yourselves.
My yoke is easy to bear, and my burden is light”.
Matthew 11:28-30.

One of the biggest sources of grief for me has been my inability to become a mom. More than
anything, I wanted to have my own kids. Unfortunately, it was not in the cards for us.

Over the years it has made me bitter, angry, jealous- all of the things. It was hard to justify it as real “grief” because I didn’t lose a person. I didn’t have a miscarriage, or a stillbirth or anything like that. But
I lost the dream I had since I was a little girl. I would get so angry when people would say things
like “it will happen when you least expect it! When you stop trying/adopt/fill in the blank here, it
will happen!”. My personal favorite is “God just didn’t mean for you to have kids”. That was
always the most hurtful. My faith has always been important to me, so why would God not let
me have the one thing I desired more than anything?

Because friends, maybe God knows what’s best for me more than I do. I always thought his “no”
to being a mom was punishment. But maybe he had plans greater for me that I would not be
able to accomplish otherwise.

When we had the Longest Night service, I was excited to be a part of something to hopefully
help others through their own grief. It was therapeutic, but it was also mentally and emotionally
taxing to face some of my feelings head on. The night of the service, Hope came in with her
blanket and her cup and immediately joined me. She sat with me for a while before the service
started. As I read the verse I was assigned, it affected me more than I thought it would. I was
then supposed to light candles. Hope left her parents, walked up to me, grabbed my hand
without saying a word, and followed me as I lit the candles.

At the end of the service, I sat by the empty manger. Part of the service included writing down something you wanted to leave with God and placing it in the manger. One of the things I wrote on my card was “I’m letting go of the baby I never got to carry.” As I sat by the manager following the service, I placed my hand on it and just cried. Mindi sat with me for a while and we talked. I didn’t know until the next day, but she had taken a picture of Hope and I lighting the candles by the tree. You can see the grief in my face, but it was a beautiful picture to sum up what I’ve been going through.

It’s ok to give God the heavy stuff and to even be angry at Him. He can handle it. Even if God’s
plans don’t align with our own. It is sometimes hard to hold on to faith and hope when things
aren’t going our way. We may not get the answer we’re hoping for, but God has a way of using
our struggles for something greater.