Life can be both beautiful and hard at the same time, and our task is to learn how to live that reality without hardening our hearts. I have never felt more broken and grateful at the same time. There's a freedom in acknowledging that you can't control everything. Perhaps joy isn't about forcing yourself to feel better, but about taking small, honest steps and allowing both pain and beauty to coexist.

Christ's glorified body bore the marks of His suffering, not as ongoing pain, but as eternal testimony. Our scars from infertility might not be things God erases in eternity, but things He transforms. Not sources of ongoing pain, but testimonies of His faithfulness through suffering. We don't worship a God who erases our stories. We worship a God who redeems them, scars and all.

I sat in the pew, raw and bleeding. How could no one see this wound? Then, during Communion, we began to sing the Anima Christi. I've sung this prayer countless times before, but something shifted when we reached the line: "Within your wounds hide me." The words pierced through me. Why would we ask to be hidden inside wounds? Wounds are places of pain, of brokenness, of vulnerability. They're the last place anyone would choose as a hiding spot.