Can I Handle Anything Else?

...and the answer is..."I don't know."  How's that for being wishy-washy?  My husband thinks I'm tough enough to handle anything, but I know that I just put on a good front.  I am an actress, I can put on a good front.  I've reached a point where I honestly don't know if I can take anything else.  I'm sure that if something else happened, I'd deal with it, but...  The best way I can describe it is to say that with each new challenge, I feel a bit of "me" slipping away, I lose more of my optimism, and I start turning into a "grown-up".  I've always held out on becoming a "grown-up", because my view is that adults who lose their joy in life become "grown-ups".  I'm feeling myself sliding down that slope, and it scares me...a lot.

So what perfect storm of events has led to all of this inner thinking?  I'm glad you asked, because I need to share.  My period started on Monday, which meant that yet again, I've failed to get pregnant.  I was even two days late, and I'd gotten a pregnancy test.  I'm not sure why I spent the money on the test, but I did.  Each month seems to get harder and harder.  Someone once said that infertility is worse than grieving the loss of a loved one, because when someone dies, you have a funeral, you say your goodbyes, and then you move on with life.  Infertility is like that, only you grieve anew each month, and you never get to really say a final goodbye.  Instead, you have that flickering light of Hope each month, only to have it cruelly snuffed out each time that time of the month hits.

What's sad is that I've gotten used to it.  It's been two years of negatives, that's 24 of them, and each one has gotten harder.  It's easy to go into a depression, and if I didn't have a supportive family, my husband, and God, I'd willingly go into that depression and stay there.

So anyway, I had grieved this cycle, and had wrapped up my emotions and my heart so that I could make it through Thanksgiving without just bursting into tears.  Then, while stopping to drop food off at Grandma's house, I got to see my 2-year-old nephew wearing a shirt that said "BIG Brother".  That's right, my sister is expecting again.  Since I was only stopping to drop off the food, I was able to mumble congratulations and then slip off.  I was then able to have time to put on my happy face and re-wrap up my heart.

Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled that I'll have a new niece or nephew to love on, and I'm praying she has an uncomplicated pregnancy.  I just didn't know they'd been trying or that they'd been planning on one yet.  Then there's the whole finding out about her good news right as I'd been coming to terms of my bad news.

My deep-down fear is that my first pregnancy was my last one.  That it was a test and I failed.  That my miscarriage was totally my fault, and because I couldn't carry to term, I'll never get that chance again. 

These are the thoughts that creep out when it's dark outside, when I'm laying down to sleep, sometimes when I see someone's new baby, sometimes when I see a pregnant woman.  I know that many of them are Satan's accusations hurled to make my light flicker, but he's just magnifying what's already in my head and heart;  and on days like yesterday, it's almost too much to resist. 

The cry of my heart is to be a mother...of a living child.  I want to feel a new life growing inside of me, to hold an infant and know he/she's mine, to have the responsibility of training him/her in the ways of faith, to have all of those moments my siblings are having with their kids.

So, can I handle anything else?  I guess I have to be able to handle whatever.  I just want to have too many good things to handle instead of too many bad things.  God will see me through, I just want out of this valley sooner rather than later.