Shame and Holding Space For Conflicting Emotions

Early morning blood work

I’m now currently fourteen weeks, and my hope is buoyed by a beautiful ultrasound yesterday. I wrote the below at nine weeks and had never gotten around to posting it, but I feel comfortable enough to do so now:

Call it pride or call it trauma, but I’m not handling this pregnancy as well as I’d hoped. I suppose I just thought that by now I would be familiar enough with the anxiety and challenges that I could rise above at least some of it.

Instead, I find myself not just succumbing to the fear and despair, but I’m irritable at all the bodily changes and b*tching about my new diet to Peter every other sentence. Instead of meeting this miraculous yet terrifying gift that I prayed for with all of my heart with the grace and poise of a saint, I’m struggling to sacrifice it all.

“What a shame,” I thought to myself, staring up at the ceiling yesterday. “Here I have a little audience of women, an opportunity to show the Lord’s goodness and to grow in trust, and I’m just failing.”

Martyrs went to their deaths singing. Some even laughed. Many saints embraced their sufferings with gratitude and even joy. And there’s so many Catholic influencers I admire who have given such powerful public witness during their husbands’ terminal illnesses or their children’s untimely deaths.

Yet here I am, able to keep at least some of my anxiety in check from my past experiences, but I’m living with the darkest, heaviest cloud of dread hanging over my head. The entire day before an ultrasound, I can just feel my body bracing to hear those piercing words: “Unfortunately, I can’t find a heartbeat, but…” (Nothing matters after the ‘but.’) It’s like I’m living with my brain severed from my body: two entirely different entities.

I have my reason and my faith locked in, at least: I know with full certainty that the Lord has His hand over us. That Heaven awaits. That His will is all for the best. But that doesn’t translate in my heart, and right now, I’m very much ruled by feeling.

But then, praise God, we go to the ultrasound, and for a few minutes the deafening silence is only punctuated by the clunky keys as the technician does what she does, and Peter is stroking my arm, and then suddenly there Baby is: alive.

And nothing else matters. I collapse in relief in Jesus’ arms, and He holds me so tight against His chest, and we smile and laugh together, and He just keeps whispering, “I have you. I have you.”

So we go on.