The Silent Pain

This photo was taken by our son, Allen, of Benjamin and I for an Anti-Abortion paper he wrote for English in College.

This post is dedicated to Sanctity of Life Week.

Most of us just assume life will go according to some rules.  We will marry our prince charming, establish a home, fill the home with the children we desire, graduate them from college, attend their weddings, bounce grand babies on our knees while enjoying retirement.  Life rarely goes according to our Garden of Eden ideas.  Heaven will hold that perfect vision, not this sin-filled world.

Sometimes in our journey, reality checks come.  You start to see that everything isn't a bed of roses.  Finances haven't turned out how you expected, you walk through miscarriages, a child's rebellion shatters your world, an abuse from the outside world brings you to your knees and God isn't finished with your children, as you watch them struggle.

When your children are struggling and they remain under your roof, one has a false sense of being able to control the struggle.  You continue to release them, but somehow you feel you can cushion the blow.

Our son and daughter-in-law have been married 6 years.  They started out the vision of a young married couple.  She finished her college degree while he established himself in his own business.  They bought a house, cars, fun toys and vacationed.  They gave themselves time to mature while getting to know each other.  Then the day came, like most young couples experience, and the decision to have children was made.

What was not in the plans was infertility.  Everyone around them was having children, both inside and outside of marriage, so how would they have known they had a different path to walk?

Infertility doesn't only hit the couple experiencing it, it hits the whole family.  As my daughter-in-law has experienced one miscarriage and empty arms at this time, so have I.  Each time she hears of another pregnancy, she hurts and each announcement of another grandchild being born, I, too, ache for a grand baby.

In the midst of our family praying through their journey of infertility, we have very close friends dealing with another ache.

Their daughter married one year after our son.  We have known the family since our children were born.  The daughter followed the dream also...waited, got further along in her career and her husband's degree plan and bought a home.  The pregnancy came!  The rejoicing began.  Then the pain that shatters a whole family happened.  The diagnosis for the new baby girl was that she could not live outside the womb.

Both couples are believing Christians, raised in Christian households.  Both couples have surrendered  their trial to the Lord to bring Him glory.  Both couples have dealt with, and still are dealing with "WHY?'  Both sets of grandparents...to-be-grandparents, pray for their children's journey.

Our children are no longer under our roofs.  We can't protect them...but we both know God is Sovereign.

I share all of this in case there is someone who can be encouraged.

My daughter-in-law has started a blog to document their journey... Alien Encounters of the Womb

The story on my side bar is from the Aunt (age 15) of the baby that will be received into heaven upon her birth.  Elise (click to read the Aunt's story of her niece)

All of our prayers are to lift Him up and stand firm on His promises as the journey continues for both families.

May we all remember the Silent Pain that many women walk in everyday.  The empty cradles or infant graves that they deal with each day.  Our world doesn't allow us to walk through life without thorns, and yet we have a Savior that wore the thorns so that we will be perfect, lacking in nothing.


Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, ³ knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. ⁴ And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.  James 1: 2-4