I recently had my 13th miscarriage. It was a very hard experience. Previous to this I have always had the hope that one day....
But this time I am resigned to the statistics of 11.5 years. At first I felt very desperate and devoid of any hope. As time wore on I found myself striving to put up walls to erase the pain and eradicate the loneliness that was trying to creep into my soul. For most of my life these walls have existed and it is only recently that they have begun to come down. I think this is why number 13 was so painful.
I have come to the decision that 13 is not unlucky though. I have learned things that I would not have learned otherwise - as has been true of the previous 12. I was reading "The Brothers Karamazov" and found the perfect expression of my feeling. It is something I have said to many people over the last month or so, but these words seem to say it perfectly.
"It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy."
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
With that in my heart I felt my friend's 6-month belly for the better part of an hour, I held a 3-month-old baby in my arms and wept. With this hope for healing I embraced the children in my nursery class and sang songs with them and played dolls and trucks with them. Believing fervently that one day my "well of laughter will spring from the bucket of my tears," I seek out the mothers in my life and offer to watch their children while they get a much needed and much deserved afternoon of peace. And do you know, somewhere between sealing 30 daughters to their parents in the temple my heart healed. There is not one more tear - not because of walls - but because of joy....funny, isn't it?
I have made a remarkable discovery: my pain is my sledgehammer to break down the walls in my heart. When I embrace it fully and give it the ache it deserves, walls come down and I somehow heal. Only, I am much more whole than before, for another wall has been turned into powder and blown away by my laughter.
