Lord Jesus, You know my heart.
You know how long I have wanted to become a mother. You know the hopes I have carried quietly, the prayers I have whispered, the months I have counted, and the times I have wondered whether this month might finally be different.
You know what it is like to live inside a woman’s body that I once assumed would someday carry a child.
Sometimes I look at my body and feel as though it has betrayed me.
It was created with the capacity for motherhood, and yet motherhood has not come.
I see another woman’s growing belly and wonder what that would feel like.
I wonder what it would be like to place my hand over my own abdomen and know that another little person is alive beneath it.
I wonder what the first flutter would feel like.
The first kick.
The first time my husband placed his hand there and felt our baby move.
The first ultrasound.
The first heartbeat.
The first time someone called me “Mom.”
Lord, You know how much I want these things.
Please do not let me become ashamed of wanting them.
The desire to nurture a child, carry life, give birth, feed, comfort, teach, protect, and mother is not something I need to apologize for.
But please protect that beautiful desire from becoming the measure of my worth.
I am a woman whether or not I conceive.
My femininity is not defective because pregnancy has not come.
My body is not worthless because it has struggled with fertility.
My dignity does not rise and fall with hormones, laboratory results, ovulation, pregnancy tests, or diagnoses.
I am Your daughter.
Help me remember that when I do not feel like enough.
Lord, forgive me for the times I have looked at my husband and quietly wondered whether he would have been happier with someone who could give him children easily.
When that thought comes, help me believe his love rather than my fear.
Do not let infertility whisper that I have failed him.
Protect our marriage from blame, resentment, shame, and the temptation to withdraw from one another.
Help me tell him when I am hurting instead of expecting him to somehow know.
Help me recognize that he may be hurting too, even if his grief looks different from mine.
And Lord, when he cannot fix this, remind me that I do not need him to fix it.
Sometimes I simply need him to stay.
To sit beside me.
To hold me.
To let me cry.
To remind me that whatever happens, we still belong to one another.
Jesus, I ask boldly for healing.
If there is something within my body that can be restored, please restore it.
Guide our physicians.
Guide every treatment.
Help us pursue only those paths that respect the dignity of marriage, conception, and every human life.
And if it is Your holy will, Lord, let life begin within me.
I want to say those words without protecting myself from disappointment:
Jesus, I want to conceive a child.
I want to carry our baby.
I want to feel that little life growing.
I want to give birth.
I want to look into my husband’s face and see the realization that we have become mother and father.
Please, Lord.
If it is Your will, grant us this gift.
But if conception never comes, stay very close to me.
There may come a day when I have to grieve a pregnancy I never experienced and a biological child who was never conceived.
If that day comes, do not let anyone rush me through that grief.
Do not let anyone tell me, “You can just adopt,” as though one child could replace another imagined future.
And if adoption becomes part of our story, purify my heart so that I receive that child entirely for who he or she is—not as a replacement for the baby I could not carry.
Teach me another way of motherhood.
If I do not carry my child beneath my heart, perhaps one day I will carry a child upon it.
If I do not labor to give birth, perhaps I will experience another kind of labor: paperwork, waiting, uncertainty, telephone calls, hope, disappointment, and finally the enormous vulnerability of welcoming a child whose life began somewhere beyond my body.
And if neither conception nor adoption comes, Lord, I do not know what that will mean.
I am not ready to pretend that possibility would not hurt.
It would.
So if I ever have to walk that road, meet me there when I arrive. Do not demand tomorrow’s surrender from me today.
Today, simply give me grace for today.
Mary, Mother of Jesus, stay close to me.
Sometimes devotion to you can even make my heart ache because you experienced what I long to experience. You carried Jesus beneath your heart. You felt Him move. You gave birth to Him. You held Him against your body.
But you are not a mother who stands far away from my infertility.
You are my mother too.
So when I cannot carry a child, carry me.
When another negative test breaks my heart, hold me beneath your mantle.
When I cry because someone else’s pregnancy reminds me of what I do not have, do not let me hide those tears from you.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, you came bearing Jesus within you. Stay especially close to women whose wombs remain empty despite their longing for life.
St. Joseph, pray for my husband. Help me see his longing too and love him tenderly through it.
Blessed Fulton Sheen, bring my petition before Jesus, especially in the Eucharist. Ask with me for the miracle we desire, always according to God’s holy will.
And Jesus, teach me something I struggle to believe:
My motherhood does not have to be proven before I am worthy of love.
My body does not have to conceive before it deserves tenderness.
My life does not have to follow the path I expected before it can become holy.
Still, I ask.
I ask because You told us to ask.
I ask because hope is still alive.
I ask because somewhere deep inside me remains the simple prayer of a woman who longs to become a mother:
Lord, if it is Your will, please let me have a child to love.
And while I wait for Your answer, keep me close enough to hear You whisper back:
You are already My beloved daughter.
Always remember Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
Holy Family! Help us to be a holy family and pray for us!
Amen.