Here Again

For a few weeks, there was joy unlike anything I have felt since that heartbreaking afternoon in October when I lay quietly, listening enviously to the pouding heartbeat amplified on a fetal monitor of another mother's baby across the hall while my own two little boys sat still and lifeless on the ultrasound screen in front of my face.

For a few moments, there was hope and possibility and a heart bursting rather than breaking, only to come crashing down with another silent ultrasound. A miscarriage that began, ironically, eight months to the day—the 12th—of our last heartbreak.

Miscarriage. Stillborn. How did these words become part of my otherwise normal life?

I had no idea how far away from hope I had traveled until it came rushing back in with those stupid double pink lines that dared me to dream of a happy ending. A 3-pack of pregnancy tests that I thought held the promise of something so, so good—something that would firmly plant my footing in the future rather than the past.

Eight months to the day, and after all that—eight months of grieving and moving on and praying and healing and really trying to make something good out of something that felt like it would crush me—I am right back where I started.

Here again: trying to make something good of heartbreak.