I can recall last New Years Eve, December 31, 2015, when each member of my family chose a word to focus on for the coming year. We’ve done this for the last few NYE. Last year, I chose Health and Play. Health, to get to a point where I could go several days in a row feeling normal and, as I announced teary-eyed, to have a child. As this new year passed, I couldn’t help but feel as though I didn’t accomplish what I set out to.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. – The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Since my last post To My Almost Baby, I’ve been searching, in vain, to find what to say next.

I was blown away by how many people reached out with their prayers and support for our family and cannot thank you all enough for it. I feel immensely blessed to be incorporated into that very intimate part of anyone’s life and to be able to say something that might comfort or ease the pain of infertility.

My family has surrounded both Anthony and I with more love and support than we could ever hope for. We’ve held each other up, like two logs leaning in to create a structure, falling and being caught simultaneously.

I didn’t write over the holidays because it was too painful. As much as the holidays are a time for celebrating blessings (of which I have many), they also highlight loss. After another round of failed pregnancy testing and inaccurate ovulation kits, I felt defeated to say the least.

So when my family asked if I would be choosing a word for this year, it had been a hard, “no.” And then, just a few days before this past NYE, a word kept coming to me. Without question, I knew where the word came from.

I wrote J-O-Y on our family whiteboard, recording each of our words. “Joy,” I said it to my family as much as to myself. I did not want just any generic happiness, I wanted the joy I felt when I was a child–uninhibited, abounding, unapologetic, pure. As a kid, I wanted to experience every beautiful part of the world. All of God’s creations were an opportunity for exploration. It’s something that I haven’t felt in a long time, not in the way that my heart is aching to–it’s the kind of joy that only a child can bring, but maybe that child is me.

I pray to experience joy like a child, with a child in 2017. I pray that God helps me find my joy again.