“WORSE” THINGS COULD HAPPEN…

I’m not trying to diminish other people’s hardships. So, please don’t judge me. I’m not saying my pain is worse than yours. But please try to understand me. Do you appreciate my pain of wanting a family? Of wondering what’s so bad inside of me that God wouldn’t want a piece of me to go on? What did I do so horrible in my past that I deserve this? These are questions I often ask myself. Questions that make me question myself, my feelings, and my worthiness. I know God isn’t a punishing God, but why do I keep asking myself what I did to deserve this?

Whenever something is going bad is someone’s life – people say something like, “Just remember what’s most important in life – your family and children. As long as you’re together – that’s all you need.” Exactly!! So, imagine for a moment how one would feel when all you want is to start your own family – but you can’t make that happen. If the most important thing in life is “family,” then why can’t we make our own?

I know people can say that there are much “worse” things out there that could be happening to me. But really, who is the final authority on what is the “worst” thing that could happen to someone? Is it going through a divorce? Watching a loved one die? Getting raped? Losing a job? Having cancer? Having depression?

I read an article about how different people react to different life experiences in different ways. To someone who has trained his whole life for the Olympics, the “worst” thing may be experiencing an injury before the event. To someone who has walked away from her career to become a stay-at-home wife/mom for 40 years, watching her husband leave her for a younger woman may be the “worst” thing. And to a woman whose sole goal in life has been to love and nurture a child, infertility may indeed be the “worst” thing that could happen.

So, we all have difficult and heartbreaking things that happen in our lives. But never diminish another’s experience just because you haven’t gone through it or fully understand the emotional heartbreak. People wouldn’t dream of telling someone whose parent just died, “It could be worse. Both of your parents could be dead.” Such a comment would be considered cruel rather than comforting. In the same way, don’t tell someone that she could be going through worse things than infertility.

Please don’t judge me – whether you’ve gone through this or not. We all have our crosses to bear. And as we know, they’re all different and unique. The exact same situation for two different people can be experienced in extremely different ways. And you never really know when someone is experiencing that “worst” thing that will happen in their lives as we never know where life will lead us. But we can support and try to understand along the way. Because yes – something “worse” could always happen…but who are we to judge what the “worse” really truly is?

Infertility may be my “worst” thing. Or maybe not. But for now it is…