No Easy Answers

I have a friend struggling through fertility issues. She is as honest and transparent as anyone I've ever met, and she asks the really hard questions as she tries to understand why she can't do what is so effortless for most people. My heart breaks for her, and yet there is nothing I can do. I have two children, and she wants to be a mother with everything inside of her, and it makes no sense to me that she has to walk this lonely road.

Why is it that most people can have babies without giving it a whole lot of thought, and then other people face a steep uphill climb and have done everything "right" and yet can't make this dream a reality, through no fault of their own? And everywhere my friend looks, all she sees are happy families, and she longs to be in that club and yet the door is continually slammed in her face.

There are so many things which have the power to divide us in our relationships. Too much money or not enough, success instead of failure (or the reverse), kids or no kids. We end up with these lines drawn in the sand, and they become the elephants in the room which no one refers to, but they possess the power to capsize the smooth sailing in our friendships.

I love that my friend is talking about this pain. She is making a taboo subject visible, and I salute her bravery in doing this. There are no easy answers, and she knows that, but she is examining why it divides, and wondering aloud big questions like, "What makes a parent?" and "Will not having kids poison us with bitterness in the years to come, or will the difficulties of the fertility journey do the same thing?"

This kind of honest expression is inspiring to me. I can't provide a single answer to my friend as to why I could get pregnant and carry two children to term and she has suffered multiple miscarriages. I don't understand the system of why birthing babies happens for most, and yet some women have to suffer the indignity of infertility. I would like God to be fair to all, and offer the same reproductive possibilities to everyone, but this is not how life works.

For now, there is honesty, and humour, and grace to extend to those who are hurting. I may not have walked the same road as my friend, but I've been hurt in other ways, and been on the outside looking in, and I can take what I have learned and give as much of it away to her as possible. And if that is no help to her, I can stand with her and rail about how unfair it is, and give her a place to cry and rant and be totally true to her emotions, and pray that the best course of action for my friend and her husband will reveal itself, and bring her peace.

On a side note, I wrote a guest post for Seven Sentences today called True Transparency. Seven Sentences receives a lot of guest posts so I'm honoured to be chosen as a guest writer. You can find my post about honesty in social media here and comments are always welcome. Thanks for reading.