Grief, in my own words, is an ache for what is lost.

Grief, in my own words, is an ache for something that is not, or for what is lost. That lack or loss could be a physical one, like pregnancy loss or the death of a family member, or it could be the loss of something that shall not be. In my own story, the latter is where I have experienced grief most profoundly. 

My wife Ellie and I have been married for almost seven years. In the early days of our marriage, we discerned that we had no reason to avoid pregnancy. We were faithful Catholics, involved in ministry, and excited for our future together. We had talked about our hopes for children and we expected we would be able to conceive relatively quickly. When that did not happen, we began to wonder what was wrong, and what we should do. At this point on the path, Ellie and I were dealing with things very differently. For months I struggled with the concept of even asking the Lord to help us conceive. I did not know what to make of the fact that things had not gone according to plan. No one had spoken to us about infertility. No one had prepared us for this possibility, and we were venturing out into uncharted waters together.

After two years of marriage, we decided to pursue some answers and met with a few Creighton Practitioners and eventually Ellie had surgery. Through that process Ellie was diagnosed with stage IV endometriosis, among other things. After surgery, our doctor promised us that we would conceive. We did not. After many methods of treatment over years, countless ups and downs, and more surgeries, Ellie and I have accepted that we may not have biological children of our own. That acceptance, however, has not been without grief.

Through this path of infertility, I have grieved many things. I have ached for the life that I thought I would have – the life I have longed for. I hoped to teach a son the things my father taught me. I looked forward to being there for my children when they needed their father. I hoped to invite my children into my passions and hobbies and see them take a piece of me and make it their own. I hoped to walk a daughter down the aisle on her wedding day. I hoped to have a child that looked like me, and to see my parents and my in-laws love my children and spoil them as grandparents do. These unfulfilled longings of my heart had to be grieved – I had to acknowledge that ache for something that is not. 

That acknowledgement was key for me.

For those of us carrying the cross of infertility, It is tempting to act as though nothing is wrong – like we have it all together and that we don’t have the right to grieve since nothing  “truly horrible” has happened. It can be easy to compare experiences and to think that I should repress my feelings of grief and sadness, because I am not worthy of true grief.  This is a lie from the enemy calculated to prevent us from processing the sufferings of our lives in a healthy way and from uniting them to our Lord – which, ultimately, brings us closer to Him.

While loss, death, and the ache that we feel as we suffer through infertility and loss are results of the Fall, I have come to understand that the Lord desires to redeem even our deepest aches. Through the aches I have experienced, I feel Jesus inviting me to sit with Him in the midst of the pain, and to understand that He longs for union with me like I long for union with a son or a daughter. He desires to sit with me in my aches. He does not wish me to pretend they never happened or to just “move on,” but to bring myself to the foot of the Cross and unite my deepest sufferings and longings to Him and His Sacred Heart. Christ knows our human grief, most famously demonstrated in mourning His friend Lazarus in John Chapter 11. He surely also grieved the death of His foster father, Joseph, which Tradition holds would have occurred shortly before His public ministry began. He is not a Lord who is unable to sympathize with us, but knows our human experiences and desires to encounter us in them (cf Hebrews 4:15). We also have the witness of the many Saints who have gone before us who suffered and grieved well. This week of October, it is fitting for us to look to Saint John Paul the Great.

As a boy in Poland, Pope Saint John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla at the time) lost his mother, and as a teenager he lost his older brother. When he was nineteen, World War II erupted as Nazi Germany invaded his homeland. At age twenty, one year into the War, his father died and he was left orphaned and alone. He saw friends taken and killed. Despite these immense sufferings, he did not despair. He united his sufferings to the suffering Christ. I am greatly inspired by his witness of true human suffering united to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ. I ask his intercession for me, and for anyone else suffering the grief of infertility and loss, that we may follow in his footsteps of redemptive suffering completely united to our Savior.

 Trey Weaver and his wife Ellie were married in 2018 and now live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with their husky/beagle mix, Midge. Trey was a parish Director of Youth ministry for seven years and is now the Coordinator of Youth and Young Adult Ministry for the Diocese of Baton Rouge. Trey and Ellie have been involved with ECHO Community, a Theology of the Body ministry for teens and young adults, since 2015. They love admiring the beauty of Creation, traveling to the mountains, and pursuing multiple shared and individual hobbies, such as film photography, good coffee, classic cocktails and cuisine.