A friend recently asked me why I hadn’t written more about our years of infertility. The pert answer is, “Nobody would believe it.” But the truth is, those two years made us the people we are today. They shaped our view of God. When I sat down to write about it, this is the story that came to mind:

I finished college in December. I commuted from one hour away and I had a husband and a job, so I wasn’t on campus any more than I had to be. When I took my last exam, I left and didn’t look back until five months later, when it was time for graduation ceremonies. I had looked forward to that day for years. All of my family gathered in one place, all of the studying finally over…

But the day I returned to campus, I was numb to all of it.

Four hours earlier in a tiny ultrasound room, I’d heard the saddest phrase: “No Heartbeat.”

For six weeks, I’d known The Plan. I’d carried him/her with such joy and anticipation. Because of timing and circumstances, I quit my job. I was queasy. Every day I marked off the calendar seemed to creep by until the first ultrasound.

I remember I was wearing overalls when I went in to see the doctor. (Do people even wear overalls any more?) The room was dark as the machine whirred to life. And then the room was just quiet.

My heart began to thud loudly. My heart knew long before my head could comprehend. We stared at the stillness on the screen, the little life that wasn’t. I begged with somebody to change it, to tell me words I wanted to hear.

But nobody did.

That evening, I went to the reception for history graduates. I was pale and I had a migraine. I don’t know why I even went. My family had driven from distances and we all met at the school. Nobody wanted to make a scene, so we exchanged hugs and I choked back tears. And then we went through the motions.

To a person, every one of my professors asked me what I had done with the past few months. They wanted to know my plans. I hung my head and shuffled my feet while I tried to form some sort of coherent answer. One that made sense. But none of it did. I was receiving a degree the next day and I was jobless. I was childless. I was without a plan.

The next day, I marched with a class of people I barely knew. I was keenly aware of the secret death I carried with me up onto the stage, that sat with me as we baked in our gowns in the sun. We all smiled and carried on with our party as planned, but everything rang hollow.

I don’t have a single picture of my graduation. I’m not sure any of us wanted to remember that weekend.

Andrew held me and I cried. He cried. We put away the stuffed hippo that we bought when the pregnancy test was positive. I spent a lot of time with my arms wrapped around the dog over the next few weeks. I wrote in my journal, I prayed, and we found peace.

Then we thought we found our miracle. Two months later, the test was positive once again. And six weeks after that, my heart was broken… again.

I struggled to make peace with some other identity than the one I’d dreamed of. The Plan was motherhood. And I had nobody to mother.

During this time, I fought to understand God as sovereign. I knew it in my head. But to accept it in my heart was scary. The idea that His Best wasn’t always My Idea of Good took months to ingest. And the raging hormones from all the pills and fertility tests didn’t help.

But I remember sitting on my bed, journal open, tears on my face, with my hands open to the heavens. “Your plans are good, Lord. They aren’t mine. But they are good.”

And lo and behold, they were better than I dreamed.

Not everybody’s story ends happy. I haven’t forgotten how it feels. I don’t think we women ever do. I wish I could wrap my arms around you all and cry with you. But I promise to remember. To honor the babies we’ve never met. And to give thanks, no matter what…