Lord Jesus, there is a fear we do not always say aloud.
We whisper around it.
We try not to think about it.
We tell ourselves to stay hopeful.
But sometimes, especially in the quiet, the question comes:
What if we never have a child?
What if there is never a positive pregnancy test?
What if the healing never comes?
What if every treatment ends and there is still no baby?
What if the adoption call never comes?
What if we are never chosen?
What if the nursery remains empty?
What if we grow older and finally realize that the life we spent years expecting is not going to happen?
Jesus, that possibility frightens us.
We do not want to pretend otherwise.
Sometimes people try to comfort us by saying:
“It will happen.”
“You’ll be parents someday.”
“God wouldn’t put this desire in your heart for no reason.”
We know they are trying to give us hope.
But they cannot promise what You have not promised.
And sometimes those assurances make us more afraid because we wonder what will happen to our faith if the promised ending never comes.
So, Lord, give us something stronger than a prediction.
Give us You.
We still ask for the miracle.
We still ask for healing.
We still ask for conception.
We still ask for adoption.
We still ask for a baby.
But underneath all those prayers, teach us another prayer:
Jesus, whatever happens, do not let me lose You.
Lord, we have imagined this child so many times.
We have pictured tiny fingers.
First steps.
Birthdays.
Christmas mornings.
Family vacations.
School pictures.
First Communion.
Confirmation.
Graduation.
Perhaps even a wedding someday.
We imagined growing old and watching the next generation gather around our table.
It is difficult to grieve something that has not happened because the loss is not one single moment.
It is hundreds of imagined moments.
A whole possible future.
If that future never becomes real, help us acknowledge the grief without pretending that a never-conceived imagined child was a person who lived and died.
The distinction matters.
But the longing mattered too.
The dream mattered.
The years of hoping mattered.
Lord, we may also fear growing old alone.
Who will be there?
Who will remember our stories?
Who will sit beside us when we are sick?
Who will inherit the photographs and family recipes?
Who will remember Christmases in this house?
Who will pray for us when we die?
Jesus, children are never guarantees against loneliness.
Parents can be lonely too.
Children grow up, move away, struggle, make choices of their own, and live lives that cannot be controlled.
Help us not place upon a hoped-for child the impossible responsibility of protecting us from every future loneliness.
Still, receive the human fear beneath those questions.
We want continuity.
Family.
Belonging.
Someone to pour ourselves into.
Someone to teach.
Someone to love in the particular lifelong way a parent loves a child.
You understand that desire.
Lord, we may fear that without children our marriage will somehow count less.
That people will see us as an incomplete family.
That holidays will always revolve around everyone else’s children.
That eventually we will become the aunt and uncle, the couple without kids, the people others assume have unlimited time because they are not parents.
Protect us from allowing other people’s categories to define us.
Our marriage is real.
Our covenant is real.
Our family is real.
We did not become husband and wife provisionally, waiting for a child to make the marriage legitimate.
We gave ourselves to one another.
That gift matters before God.
Lord, protect us also from making a child responsible for giving our lives meaning.
A child is a person, not a purpose-generator.
If You entrust a child to us, that child should be free to become the person You created—not carry the burden of justifying all the years we waited.
We want to love a child, not use a child to prove our lives turned out correctly.
Purify our longing without extinguishing it.
Because, Jesus, we still want this very much.
If conception is possible, please let us conceive.
If there is something that can be healed, heal it.
If adoption is our path, guide us to the child whom we can truly serve and love.
If the telephone can ring tomorrow, Lord, let it ring.
If there can be a heartbeat, let there be a heartbeat.
If there can be a baby in this home, please send that blessing.
We are not giving up simply because we are admitting that we are afraid.
But Lord, if someday the answer becomes clear that biological parenthood will not happen, stay with us in that grief.
If we close the door on treatment, let us mourn.
If age closes possibilities we once had, let us mourn.
If we eventually discern that adoption is not going to happen either, let us mourn that too.
Do not rush us immediately toward:
“But look at all the other things you can do.”
There may eventually be other forms of fruitfulness.
But grief deserves honesty first.
Let us say:
“I wanted to be a mother.”
“I wanted to be a father.”
“I wanted us to have a child.”
And let those sentences be heard without someone immediately trying to fix them.
Then, slowly, show us that a life without the child we hoped for is not therefore a life without love.
Do not ask us to call infertility good.
Do not ask us to pretend childlessness was what we wanted.
Instead, show us how grace can grow even in ground we did not choose.
There are people who need love.
Children who need safe adults.
Godchildren who need godparents who take their promises seriously.
Nieces and nephews who need presence.
Young couples who need encouragement.
Families in crisis who need practical help.
The lonely.
The elderly.
The poor.
The frightened.
The forgotten.
The Church.
Our community.
Our marriage.
Our home.
Our talents.
Our time.
Our lives can still be poured out.
Not because any of those people are replacements for the child we wanted.
They are not.
Every person deserves to be loved for who they are, not used to fill someone else’s absence.
But love does not become useless because it cannot take the form we originally imagined.
Lord, teach us the fruitfulness of the Holy Family.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph lived a hidden life at Nazareth where holiness was built from ordinary things.
Meals.
Work.
Prayer.
Sweeping.
Repairing.
Walking.
Talking.
Serving.
Resting.
Loving.
Teach us The JMJ Way.
If our home someday contains children, make it holy.
If our home remains the two of us, make it holy.
Let no room be wasted because a crib never stood there.
Let no table be wasted because fewer people sit around it than we imagined.
Let no love be wasted.
Fill this house with prayer.
Hospitality.
Service.
Laughter.
Friendship.
Mercy.
Beauty.
Generosity.
And the presence of God.
Mary, if I am a woman afraid I will never become a mother, hold that fear with me.
Do not let me believe my womanhood has failed.
St. Joseph, if I am a man afraid I will never become a father, remind me that masculinity is not measured by biological fertility.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, cover every couple standing at the edge of this fear.
Blessed Fulton Sheen, intercede for us before Jesus in the Eucharist.
Teach us to remain with Christ even when we cannot see the ending of our story.
And Father, if You do give us a child someday, let this fear make us grateful rather than anxious.
Let us remember how impossible the ordinary things once seemed.
The crying.
The mess.
The interrupted sleep.
The toys underfoot.
The endless questions.
The school lunches.
The doctor’s visits.
The bedtime prayers.
Let us remember that these were once the things for which we begged.
But if the child never comes, Father, do not let us spend the rest of our lives standing at the doorway of the room that remained empty.
Take our hands.
Lead us forward.
Not away from the love we carried.
Forward with it.
Let that love become prayer.
Service.
Hospitality.
Generosity.
Spiritual parenthood.
Faithfulness.
Holiness.
And deeper love between husband and wife.
Lord, there is one thing infertility cannot take from us unless we surrender it:
Our capacity to love.
So whether our future contains a positive pregnancy test, an adoption call, a child arriving unexpectedly into our lives, or a road we never imagined choosing, keep our hearts alive.
We do not need to know today how the entire story ends.
We only need enough grace to live this day faithfully.
So when the fear comes tonight—
What if we never have a child?
—help us answer not with false certainty but with faith:
I don’t know.
But God will still be God.
My spouse will still be worth loving.
My life will still have dignity.
My vocation to holiness will still remain.
There will still be people to love.
And Jesus will still be with me.
Then let us add one more sentence, because surrender does not mean we stop asking:
And Lord, if it is Your will, please—please—let us have a child.
We place both the hope and the fear into Your hands.
Hold them.
Hold us.
And whatever our story becomes, do not let infertility have the final word over our lives.
Let the final word be:
Love.
Jesus, we trust You with the child we hope for and the future we cannot see.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.
St. Joseph, pray for us.
Blessed Fulton Sheen, pray for us.
Always remember Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
Holy Family! Help us to be a holy family and pray for us!
Amen.
46. Prayer Title: A Prayer for Preserving the Marital Embrace When Infertility and Trying to Conceive Threaten Its Tenderness
Lord Jesus, protect the intimacy of our marriage.
Something that was meant to say:
“I love you.”
“I choose you.”
“I give myself to you.”
can begin, under the weight of infertility, to feel like something very different.
A schedule.
A treatment.
A responsibility.
A window on a calendar.
A means to an end.
We want a child so deeply that sometimes even the most intimate expression of our marriage becomes surrounded by calculation.
What day is it?
Is this the fertile window?
Did we wait too long?
Was it too early?
What did the test say?
What did the doctor tell us?
Should we today?
Should we tomorrow?
Did we miss our chance?
Lord, somewhere inside all those questions, help us remember:
There is a person here whom I love.
My husband is not a means by which I might become pregnant.
My wife is not a body from which I am trying to obtain a child.
We are husband and wife.
Before there was a fertility chart, there was a love story.
Before there was a diagnosis, there was a covenant.
Before there were doctors, medications, tests, procedures, calendars, and disappointments, there was:
“I take you.”
And Lord, we still do.
We still take one another.
We still choose one another.
Protect that choice.
Infertility can make us feel as though our bodies are failing at something they were created to do.
It can make a wife feel watched by her own body.
It can make a husband feel evaluated by his.
It can make intimacy feel like a test we are either passing or failing.
Free us from that.
Our marital embrace is not graded by whether conception occurs.
A negative pregnancy test does not reach backward and make our love meaningless.
A diagnosis does not make our bodies incapable of speaking love.
Our union is not worthless because a child was not conceived.
Lord, teach us again the language of our bodies.
You created us male and female.
You created marriage as a covenant in which husband and wife give themselves to one another faithfully, freely, totally, and fruitfully.
Help us protect the truth written into that gift.
Let us never treat one another as objects.
Never use.
Never demand.
Never manipulate.
Never make our spouse feel that affection is available only when conception is possible.
Let kisses remain kisses.
Let embraces remain embraces.
Let tenderness exist on days when there is absolutely no reproductive purpose behind it.
Let us hold hands.
Touch one another’s faces.
Sit close.
Dance in the kitchen.
Lie beside one another and talk.
Laugh.
Rest.
Be playful.
Be gentle.
Remind us that physical affection belongs throughout marriage, not merely within a fertile window.
And when we do come together in the marital embrace, Lord, protect its sacredness.
Let it remain an expression of our covenant.
A bodily renewal of:
“I am yours, and you are mine.”
Help us receive one another as persons rather than projects.
Let neither spouse feel:
“I have to perform.”
Let neither spouse fear:
“If I cannot conceive a child, I am disappointing the person I love.”
Lord, sometimes trying to conceive brings pressure even when both spouses desperately want a baby.
One of us may be exhausted.
One may be afraid of missing the fertile window.
One may feel rejected if the other is too tired.
One may feel guilty for saying:
“Not tonight.”
One may think:
“But this could be our only chance this month.”
Give us tenderness in those moments.
Protect the freedom that belongs to marital love.
Let neither of us turn the desire for conception into pressure upon the other’s body.
A child conceived in love is a gift.
A spouse is also a gift.
Never let our longing for one gift cause us to wound the gift already lying beside us.
Lord, sometimes infertility brings anger into the bedroom.
We may have argued about treatment.
Money.
Doctors.
Timing.
Adoption.
Family questions.
Or whose body seems to be responsible for the difficulty.
Do not let resentment silently enter our intimacy.
Teach us to apologize.
Teach us to forgive.
Teach us to say:
“I am sorry.”
“I know this hurts you too.”
“We are on the same side.”
Because infertility is something we are experiencing.
It is not something one spouse is doing to the other.
If the medical cause lies primarily within my body, protect me from shame.
If it lies primarily within my spouse’s body, protect me from blame.
If no one knows why conception has not occurred, protect us from turning against ourselves or each other simply because uncertainty is unbearable.
Lord, sometimes sex during infertility becomes associated with grief.
The same embrace in which we hope a child might be conceived may later be remembered when the pregnancy test is negative.
Month after month, intimacy can become connected with disappointment.
Heal that association.
Let us rediscover delight in one another without feeling guilty for enjoying our marriage.
We are allowed to experience joy even while infertile.
We are allowed to desire one another.
We are allowed to laugh.
We are allowed to be husband and wife without every embrace becoming an examination of whether our bodies succeeded in producing a child.
Lord, protect the wife who begins to feel that her husband touches her only because the calendar says it is time.
Protect the husband who begins to feel that his worth in the bedroom depends upon performance or fertility.
Protect both spouses from loneliness while lying inches apart.
Help us say what is difficult to say.
“I miss you.”
“I feel pressured.”
“I’m afraid of disappointing you.”
“I need tenderness tonight.”
“I want to feel like your husband again, not part of a treatment plan.”
“I want to feel like your wife again, not a body we are trying to make pregnant.”
Give us courage to hear those words without defensiveness.
Lord, if medical care becomes part of our journey, give our physicians respect for our marriage.
Help us seek treatment that genuinely heals or assists the body’s proper functioning while respecting the dignity of the marital act and every human life that may begin.
When choices are complicated, give us faithful Catholic physicians, priests, and moral counselors who can help us discern well.
Help us understand the Church’s teaching not merely as a collection of prohibitions but as protection of something precious:
the inseparable dignity of spouses, their marital union, and the child who may be conceived through their love.
A child is not a product of our bodies.
Not the result of a manufacturing process.
Not something owed to us because we followed instructions correctly.
A child is a person.
A gift.
Someone whose dignity begins at conception and never depends upon being wanted, healthy, planned, or genetically perfect.
And our marital embrace is not valuable only because it might produce that gift.
It is also the bodily expression of the covenant we made before God.
Lord, when conception does occur, let us receive the child with wonder.
But when conception does not occur, let us still receive one another.
Do not let infertility steal the tenderness of our marriage while we are trying to create a family.
Because this marriage is already a family.
This covenant matters.
This love matters.
This person beside me matters.
Jesus, help us remember our wedding day.
The vows.
The rings.
The altar.
The people who witnessed our promises.
The words:
for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.
We did not know exactly what those promises would require.
Perhaps infertility has become part of the for worse or in sickness we never imagined.
Then help us live the rest of the vow:
to love and honor one another all the days of our lives.
St. John Paul II, who taught so beautifully about the theology of the body, pray for us.
Help us remember that the body speaks a language.
Teach us to let our bodies speak truth:
I receive you.
I honor you.
I do not use you.
I give myself to you.
I remain faithful to you.
I choose you.
Mary and Joseph, guard the chastity of our marriage.
Teach us that marital chastity does not mean coldness or distance.
It means learning to love rightly.
Help our affection become generous, tender, respectful, joyful, and free.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, protect our bodies and our marriage beneath your mantle.
Blessed Fulton Sheen, who spoke so often about love, sacrifice, marriage, and the Eucharist, intercede for us before Jesus.
Help us bring our marriage into the Holy Hour.
When intimacy has become wounded by infertility, place that wound before the Eucharistic Heart of Christ.
And Lord, if we conceive a child, let that little person someday know that he or she came into a marriage where husband and wife first learned to love one another.
If adoption becomes our path, let the years of infertility have strengthened rather than hollowed out the marriage into which that child is welcomed.
And if we never have a child, do not let us someday look back and realize that we sacrificed our marriage while desperately trying to save a dream.
Protect what You joined together.
When the calendar becomes loud, help us hear our spouse.
When medicine becomes clinical, preserve tenderness.
When disappointment makes us withdraw, draw us toward one another.
When fear creates pressure, restore freedom.
When infertility makes our bodies feel broken, remind us that our bodies still possess God-given dignity.
When the desire for a child becomes overwhelming, remind us of the person already standing before us.
Let husband look at wife and remember:
You are not merely the woman with whom I hope to have a child.
You are my beloved.
Let wife look at husband and remember:
You are not merely the man with whom I hope to have a child.
You are my beloved.
And when we come together as husband and wife, let our embrace say again what we promised at the altar:
I choose you.
Not because of what your body can give me.
Not because of whether we conceive.
Not because our future unfolds as we hoped.
But because you are the person to whom I gave myself before God.
Lord, preserve that gift.
Sanctify it.
Heal it where infertility has wounded it.
Protect it from resentment, pressure, shame, fear, and despair.
Let our longing for a child deepen our love rather than consume it.
And when the desire for conception threatens to turn an embrace into a task, whisper into both our hearts:
Before you were trying to make room for a child, I gave you to one another.
Help us cherish that gift.
Tonight.
Tomorrow.
During the fertile days.
During the infertile days.
During treatment.
During waiting.
During disappointment.
During hope.
For better.
For worse.
In sickness.
In health.
All the days of our lives.
Jesus, protect our marriage.
Mary and Joseph, guard our love.
St. John Paul II, pray for us.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.
Blessed Fulton Sheen, pray for us.
Always remember Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
Holy Family! Help us to be a holy family and pray for us!
Amen.