I’ve been avoiding this. I’ve come up with every excuse in the book as to why I don’t have time, energy, want, and on and on to write. The truth is I’m tired.

I’m exhausted and defeated. And that’s not really the kind of story people like to tell. But since I don’t have any others, I’ll do my best.

These last few months have felt heavier than ever. The pain isn’t necessarily in degrees of worseness or betterness, it just evolves into some new, excruciating thing. With us moving to our fourth fertility clinic, and me to…well, I’ve lost count, probably upwards of 10th specialist who believe he knows whats really wrong with me (I’ve heard this a few too many times before), I’ve lost my hope. I’ve lost my way.

I’ve sat down and tried to write what this feels like a hundred times. What this moment feels like and how it is so different and so much the same as what I’ve been feeling through this trial, how the pain has grown to a state so unbearable that I wonder if I can survive. I’ve cried out to God so many times that I cannot take this, that I am so close to what I can only describe as death, that I’m losing all faith and hope and love, that I’m losing myself. I’m losing my mind.

My prayers have stopped being for a child and changed to pleas that He would tear out this desire from my being–that He’d rip out the want, the need to be a mother, to bear my husband’s children, to meet and know them. I’ve prayed to feel nothing at all. I’ve asked for an end to this, whatever kind. I’ve begged for it.

And I have been greeted with silence. With His resounding decision that it is not my time. Not yet. I just want to rest. I want to let go, but He has not even given me that peace.

Even in my anger, I can’t seem to stop believing in God’s goodness and His love. I’ve been told so many times that we are God’s children, that He loves us as a parent does their child. Hearing this is far more painful than I can explain.

I am spent. I quite literally have nothing left to give. Nothing to light a fuel on my faith. My faith is ashes. My heart is freezing and the only thing that I can hope is to stop feeling anything at all.