Women are competitive. We constantly compare ourselves to one another, and are quick to judge. I have fallen victim to the madness, and taken part as well. But it seems as though the most difficult comparisons I have experienced were during the time when we were actively trying to conceive.
Everybody knows somebody, if not themselves, that has gone through some type of infertility. There are many different forms of infertility; miscarriage, still-borns, delay in successful conception for no apparent reasons, infertile husband, infertile wife, the inability to bare more children, barrenness, or even other physical factors. The thing about these situations is that every single one of them is different. And even within the groups, every STORY is different.
This is something I failed to see before I went through the situation, and now feel like it needs to be taught to the masses.
I have had people say flat-out rude things to me, and I have had sincere people who mean only the best come across as simple-minded or naive; I’ve discovered that the biggest cause of this miscommunication all comes down to our definition of GRIEF.
Grief is the emotional and physical response to loss. Most of us only think about grief as a reaction to a death in the family, but grief plays a larger role in our lives than we realize. Grief is also the emotional response to the loss of anything extraordinary in our lives: the missed opportunity of having your dream job, the loss of your house, the loss of a pet, missing out on the experience of having a father that loved you, missing out on a “normal” life due to innocence that was taken from you… the list can go on and on.
When we take time to understand one another, and truly listen to the words our friends are saying, we will start to learn and recognize what grieves us individually. I was recently sitting at a table of women, and a middle-aged woman who had 3 boys was encouraging one of the younger women that having all boys is not such a bad thing. She started her story sharing how badly she had wanted a daughter, and that she always imagined that God would bless her with a baby girl. I sat there thinking terribly selfish thoughts… until I started praying. I reminded myself that her not having a daughter was true grief to her. As much as I do not understand it, it doesn’t make it less real to her.
“Love… bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (I Cor. 13:4-6) Love means being understanding, bearing one another’s burdens, and encouraging one another. Think about it: if we did these 3 things, Christ’s work would abound, we would be unified, and there would be no judgment amongst us.
I’m making a goal to recognize grief in those around me by stopping to listen. “…but the greatest of these is love”– I Cor 13:13
LackOfNothing 