If our spirits enter the body at conception, when do they leave? I am sadly, miserably, waiting for my third miscarriage to commence, and I am wondering when this little soul left or will leave my physical body (and his or her little mass of cells). Do we have to live – even for a day or two in our mothers’ wombs – in order to be granted everlasting life? What is the purpose of this short life that causes tears of sorrow here on earth? How do I process the fact that, while my husband and I are here on earth, we technically have three angel children in heaven to whom we’ve never even been granted a “hello”? When more of us are in heaven than on earth, is that our sign to stop pushing our agenda, our desire to care for and love a biological child in this world?

We are at a major crossroads. Do we do genetic testing and try to unpeel the mysterious layers of how our bodies are failing us again? Or, do we just take this as a sign that our journey does not include those blue eyes lined with my husband’s long, thick eyelashes and his easy grin I’ve imagined on our child’s face?

I don’t know the answer. But, both my husband and I are having trouble feeling in our gut that a biological child is in the cards for us. I think I always had this inkling – and the desire to adopt – so maybe that is as simple as answers get. Putting a dream as close to our hearts as this away forever is a cruel, likely possibility. 

Life was never promised to be easy. However, when will I be broken enough to warrant a change of life course? When will my soul be as ready (wise? pure? reflecting of God’s perfection?) as those three little angels I have – watching over me somewhere in an alternate reality – to permit a break from these heartaches I have been enduring for the last year and a half?

I would like to think I was the loving vessel for these souls to achieve everlasting life. To be born to die in order to live again. I have to believe this because it is the only way to endure something so painful and emptying. I will be holding – since not their hands – the moments of hope they each gave me. I will try to process and unattach from the subsequent afflictions. And, I will keep plopping one sad foot in front of the other, believing (or if not believing…hoping…) the best, surely, is yet to come.