This post is a guest post from my husband, Tom. He’ll be posting on the blog occasionally in the future.
I never thought I’d be having this conversation. I am sure no one really ever does.
I thought I had done everything the right way. I never settled in relationships. I ate well and exercised daily. I graduated from college, and married my dream girl.
It’s almost like I thought I deserved to have everything fall into place- especially something as important as having children. It was the natural next step.
But then the negative tests came, one after another, and slowly I began to feel as if I was living someone else’s life, that there had been some mistake.
The greatest difficulty so far on this journey of infertility is the one of acceptance. Whether I like it or not, I am living through this.
There is still so much uncertainty surrounding the life that my wife and I are living, but the one thing that is certain is we have so far been unsuccessful in having children. And as much as I would like for God to take that away, He hasn’t- not yet at least.
So what do I do while we wait and how do I avoid going crazy in the meantime?
Being a man in this situation has presented a weird dichotomy. On one hand, I have to be the supporter, the strength when things become overwhelming in our lives. I sometimes feel the need to keep up the macho façade, the lie that infertility is not sucking the life out of me and that men really don’t need babies around anyway. But that becomes exhausting.
On the other side there is the very real loss of it all- the times when I simply want to crawl in a hole and die. I want to have children so very badly, not only for myself but also for my wife. It has been a desire of mine my entire life, and now, as I enter into my thirties, nearly all of my friends have started having children.
I know many people can resonate with this feeling of longing to have what others have and struggling to still be happy for them. I hope that one day I can do that, but sadly, I admit that I am not fully there yet.
My hope is by telling our story, I might bring peace and fellowship to the lives of men who are struggling and fighting to find hope and get through another day.
Sometimes I can’t even breathe I am so burdened by the struggle. But I still hold hope in the darkness; I hold hope that I am learning through it all, and that the lows of this valley will only be surpassed by the mesmerizing heights of the mountain God is bringing me toward.
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