Infertility can be a hard topic to talk about in general, but especially on my business’ platform. I love that my profession and our resulting platform has the ability to bring joy, and hope, and comfort to our couples when things are hard, by the very nature that their wedding photographs represent the very first day of their journey in marriage.

Visual proof of where they began, and that no matter how difficult things might be in the moment, that Day 1 began with a series of vows. I love how positive that is, and that my business is based on capturing joy that might one day serve as a catalyst for redemption, whenever my couples ever need it!

So then, how on earth do I talk about something as crushing & seemingly hopeless as this nearly-three year journey of infertility?

I’ve had to learn that just because there’s not a pretty Insta bow to be tied around our story, that doesn’t mean there isn’t beauty, redemption, and GOODNESS to be found in our story!

Hard truth: the longer we’ve walked this road, the more I realize things may never come to be resolved how I’d like them to be. Despite the intense process and higher success rates of treatments like IVF, there’s still a ~60% chance we could come home without a pink-faced little one, wrapped in a gauzy newborn blanket. That outcome, the one I want so deeply, was never guaranteed, no matter how entitled I feel to it.

And yet, I still have hope! Only now, I’ve come to understand that true hope isn’t in circumstance, or in gifts received or withheld:

My hope is in the promises of God. My hope is in the fact that I was lost, a slave to sin, and that I am now whole, free, and redeemed through Jesus.

It something that won’t make sense to anyone whose faith isn’t in Jesus. It doesn’t make sense how in the face of sorrow and mourning, we can still lift praises to a God whose perfect love NEVER abandons us, even when our deepest longings aren’t met. We are NOT forgotten, and I know the joy of sitting at the feet of Jesus in worship is enough! If nothing ever went “my way” again, He will still be enough for me. 

That doesn’t mean my sorrow isn’t heavy; it IS. It’s heavier than I can sometimes put words to, the sort of sorrow that sometimes makes you feels like it’s going to devour you whole.

But still: in all my sorrows, Jesus is better.

I was lost, but now am found: the good news of the Gospel gives more life + hope than can be drained away by sadness.

That doesn’t mean the sorrow and sadness don’t exist anymore, but it does mean that grief and hope can somehow exist alongside one another.

We’ve had a few friends ask about where we are in the process these days, so here’s where we’re at: we had hoped to start IVF in March, but after receiving the final cost information from our fertility clinic and realizing just how much of a financial burden it’s going to be once all is said and done, we’re holding off for the time being. Which is, in its own way, another set-back.

We’re almost three years into our wait to start a family. Now we’re waiting again, this time to begin whatever the next step is, whether IVF, or moving onto something else. And even still, within those first two frames, there’s still the monthly wait of “…maybe this time?”

I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to put it off any longer, and I keep battling with the internal refrain of “Haven’t I waited long enough at this point?!”

In all candor, I have never known heartache like this before.

But neither have I ever come to know hope and peace like this, either. 

And even if we never get to see two lines on a pregnancy test, that has made it all worth it.

Than all my sorrows, Jesus is better.