I wrote this blog post* over three years ago, but wasn’t ready to share until now.
My hope is that it will encourage others who find themselves in this place.
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Mother’s Day is hard for me…
…even though I’ve never lost a child.
…never had a miscarriage
…never adopted a child who was taken away from me and returned to their biological parents.
My heartbreak is different. Because I’ve never had a child at all.
I always wanted to have biological children and believed it would happen. I had also always wanted to adopt. For years, I hung on to a kernel of faith that God would make it possible. In 1997, I did my final project in my masters degree on the benefits of homeschooling, believing I would homeschool my children one day.
But, as the years passed (30’s) and disappointments stacked up (40’s), I adjusted my dream.
I could still adopt. At least I can still be a mom.
I began to look at the South Carolina Heart Gallery and fell in love with a few of the children there. I even picked out a little boy and began praying for him, praying he would be mine.
Then, my own health took a turn for the worse. Getting out of pain consumed my thoughts and crowded out my dreams.
I can barely take care of myself. How can I take care of a little person?
The hope of adopting remains, but faintly. It’s bewildering to me because I know that a mother’s heart beats in my chest, and children the world over need families. My husband and I could provide one of them with a safe, comfortable, happy home, where he or she could grow and learn and develop.
But, God has not seen fit to supply this longing. So a river of love inside me strains to be released, my heart engorged with love for a child that hasn’t come. Like a river meeting a rock, it flows around it and keeps going, finding its way to other children.
Even so, it is not enough to satiate the longing, to quell it. I still want to be a mother.
Mother’s Day is hard—not because I’m envious, but because I’m bewildered.
Why has God given me a mother’s heart, but no child?
If he had not given me a mother’s heart, there would be no longing, no suffering. But he has. And I am puzzled.
When Mother’s Day comes, I love celebrating the mothers in my own life. But, going to church is hard. I sometimes cry. All the mothers are called to stand and we clap. I don’t begrudge them their honor. They deserve it.
But, oh, how I long to be standing among them, instead of looking on from the outside with empty arms.
How can you lose a child you never had? Or grieve one that never was?
Mine was not a miscarriage—not in the traditional sense. And I can’t fathom that kind of loss. But it was miscarriage—of the dream of a child, and of a mother’s heart.
Today. May 10, 2019
It took time, but I let myself mourn. I took my loss and unfulfilled dreams and bewilderment to Jesus because they mattered to him. He gave me a new perspective, an eternal one. And the long view changes everything. Truth changes everything.
- There is a reality more real than the one we experience day to day on this earth.
- There is a family with stronger bonds than any blood ties on earth. Jesus himself never bore physical children, yet he has many.
- God really does set the lonely in families; he makes family where there was none before.
- My mother’s heart is not wasted. Nothing in God’s Kingdom is.
*[edited for clarity and readability]
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