Holding Hope, Yelling at God

Today is egg retrieval day.

And I have so many emotions about those words.

Infertility is hard. IVF is hard. But doing IVF because chemotherapy is about to start is hard in a completely different way.

This cycle wasn’t planned. The timing was forced. Nothing about it happened according to the ideal timing or necessarily the way we know has worked for my body in the past.

Cancer gave us a deadline.

Chemo is waiting.

So we took the time we had and did everything we could with it.

This was the longest I’ve ever done IVF injections. Night after night and morning after morning of shots while also going to oncology appointments, making decisions about chemo, preparing our house and our lives for treatment, working full-time, being a mom, and trying to keep life feeling somewhat normal.

A cancer diagnosis is a full-time job.

IVF can feel like a full-time job.

Doing both at the same time is a lot.

And now we get to see what comes of it.

I don’t know how many eggs we’ll get today. I don’t know if we’ll get any. I don’t know if any eggs we do get will fertilize or become embryos.

I don’t know.

And I hate not knowing.

Because this isn’t just about an egg retrieval anymore.

It’s tied up in this much bigger grief about the family I thought we’d have and the future I thought we’d have more control over.

I’ve found myself looking at Brooks differently lately.

Not because anything about him has changed, but because I’m realizing that every first with him may also be our last first with a child of ours.

His first steps.

His first birthday.

His first day of school.

All of these moments I assumed we’d someday get to experience again.

Maybe we will.

I hope so much that we will.

But we might not.

And that hurts.

I think part of why I’ve always pictured at least two children is because I have a brother.

Other than my parents, my brother is the person who has known me the longest.

I have always looked up to him. I definitely didn’t always like my him though. That’s probably part of the job description. But I have always loved him. He was my best friend before I knew what that even meant.

He is one of the very few people in this world who knows where I came from because he came from there too. We share childhood memories and family stories and people we’ve loved and lost. He knows versions of me that existed long before most of the people in my life today knew me.

I think I always assumed my children would have that too.

Someone who knew them from almost the very beginning. Someone to grow up beside. Someone they might fight with and annoy and occasionally swear they can’t stand, but hopefully always love.

I wanted that for my children because I’ve had it.

And I want that for Brooks.

This week especially, the back-to-school pictures have felt like a neon sign flashing something I wasn’t quite ready to confront.

So many of those families are people I love. So many of those children are incredibly special to me. I love watching them grow. I’m genuinely happy for my friends as they celebrate these milestones.

Their joy isn’t what hurts.

It’s what those pictures remind me of.

Multiple little backpacks. Multiple first days. Siblings growing up together.

The family I pictured for us.

And it’s one more thing that suddenly feels completely outside of our control.

I know how incredibly blessed we are to have Brooks. He is everything.

But being grateful for the child I have doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to grieve the possibility of a child I hoped we’d have.

Both things can exist at the same time.

Actually, that seems to be where I live lately.

I’m grateful and I’m angry.

I’m hopeful and I’m scared.

I smile at Brooks as I drop him at school but then let the tears soak my shirt as I sob on the way home.

I know how lucky we are and I know how unfair this feels.

I can look at Brooks and feel like the luckiest person in the world and, in the same moment, feel heartbroken that I don’t know if I’ll ever get to watch him become a big brother.

It’s complicated.

So much of this is complicated.

And maybe that’s part of what I’m learning through all of this.

We control so much less than we think we do.

We make plans. We picture what our families will look like. We imagine the next baby, the next Christmas, the next first day of school. We make decisions assuming we have time.

And sometimes life changes the plan without asking us.

I don’t particularly like that lesson.

But here we are.

I also can’t stop thinking about the women who have gone through this before me.

We were already infertility patients when I was diagnosed. We already had a fertility clinic and a doctor who has been beside us for years. I already knew the language. I knew the medications. I knew how to give myself the injections and how monitoring worked.

And trying to navigate fertility preservation alongside cancer has still been overwhelming.

I cannot imagine hearing “you have cancer” and then immediately being thrust into learning all of this for the first time.

You’re trying to understand a diagnosis and treatment plan while simultaneously being asked to make enormous decisions about a future family you may or may not even have pictured yet.

I understood infertility before cancer.

I understand something different about it now.

So today I’m walking into this retrieval carrying all of that.

I desperately want this to work.

And if we get nothing, I will be devastated.

I’m not going to wrap that in a prettier sentence or pretend I’ll immediately be okay with whatever happens. It will hurt. It will be another emotion and another loss to make space for while I’m already navigating more than I ever expected to carry at once.

And somewhere in all of this, I’m trying to have faith.

I want to trust God. I want to believe there is a plan even when I can’t see it. I want hope to come easily.

But if I’m being truthful, faith has been really hard lately.

I find myself yelling at God more often than not.

Why this?

Why now?

Why does cancer get to touch this part of our lives too?

Why, after everything it took to build our family in the first place, does this have to be part of the story?

I don’t have answers to those questions.

And right now, my faith doesn’t always look peaceful. Sometimes it looks like prayer. Sometimes it looks like hope. Sometimes it looks like anger and tears and telling God exactly how mad I am.

Often it is bathing my soul in worship music, questioning the truth of the words, and telling God how disappointed I am in him.

I’m told he can handle my anger.

Maybe continuing to talk to Him, even when I’m yelling, is its own kind of faith.

I don’t know the ending yet.

Today there is still possibility.

Today there is still hope.

And even if I’m struggling to feel it, I’m trying to leave a little room for faith too.

So that’s where I am today.

Scared. Grateful. Angry. Hopeful. Tired. Faithful and questioning all at once.

Today, we hope. ❤️