“Have you been able to find any hope in it all?”

This was the question posed to me at the Advent women’s group I attended weekly last winter. I had been sharing about the challenging rollercoaster of emotions I was experiencing after undergoing laparoscopic surgery to finally receive an endometriosis diagnosis. As a therapist, I know that feeling many emotions at once is normal, yet it can still be incredibly overwhelming. There was joy that I finally found a doctor who took my symptoms seriously. Relief that I wasn’t crazy and the pain I had been experiencing for years was truly not normal. Intense anger at the previous doctors who dismissed my pain and refused to explore any underlying causes of my symptoms. Fear of the unknowns of a future of managing a chronic illness and exhaustion at the thought of doing so. A growing feeling of apathy whenever I considered that our family may not look like what I had planned. And under it all, there was a growing frustration with God. After a year of pain, grief, and exhaustion after experiencing a heterotopic pregnancy and losing my twins, Marigold and Micah Iris, and my fallopian tube, another diagnosis felt heavy. Advent didn’t feel like the warm, cozy time of preparation and prayer that I wanted it to be. Instead, I was in survival mode, mentally and physically. At this particular women’s group meeting, I was trying to express all of this honestly while putting on a brave face so that the women would think I was “okay,” when the question came:

“I know this has all been hard, and it’s easy to get caught up in the appointments and everything, but have you been able to find any hope in it all?”

Hope? Hope had been something I’d grappled with since last Advent. I’d been trying to understand how it “should” fit into my life and feeling as though I am a bad Catholic for struggling to hope. I felt as if it’s entirely my responsibility to be able to choose to hope in the midst of anger, grief, and depression, and the fact that I was failing to do so must mean that I’m failing God.

Throughout this struggle, I would think of the verse from Romans 5:5 that says, “Hope does not disappoint.” I wanted to believe this, yet I continued to fear hope due to fear of disappointment. I remembered feeling so hopeful prior to getting pregnant with our twins, and the positive pregnancy test only increased that hope. I would think to myself, “I had such great hope and joy, and it all ended in pain and grief. Lord, how can you expect me to have hope now?”

After wrestling with hope for months, it finally clicked for me sometime in the spring: my hope is in Heaven. I realized I had been missing the second half of Romans 5:5: “Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Hope is a gift and a virtue that we obtain due to the grace of God. Of course I had been struggling to hope in the midst of depression and grief – I was trying to guilt myself into having hope instead of being receptive to the gifts of the Holy Spirit! Now, I know and believe that regardless of my emotions or trials in life, my hope is found in the belief that I will be united with the Lord for eternity. My hope is that I will get to hold my babies in Heaven, and until then, I believe they are held by Mary and Joseph and are actively praying for me and my husband.

So, no, I haven’t found hope in my surgeries, diagnoses, or supplements. I haven’t found hope that I will be able to get pregnant again or have a living child. Instead, my hope is in Christ, not conception. I have found hope in the closeness of Christ in my pain, even when I can’t understand why God would allow it. My hope is in the goodness of God, even when I struggle to talk with Him. I have found hope in that the Lord weeps with us, but then takes our suffering and brings good out of it if we let Him. 

My hope is in Jesus, who overcomes evil in the end, even when the pain of our broken world wears on me and feels so heavy. This is the kind of hope that does not disappoint.

Lauren Braun is a mental health therapist licensed in Wisconsin and Iowa and owns her private practice, Marigold & Iris Mental Health & Wellness. She lives in Wisconsin with her husband, Jacob, and together they are parents to twins in Heaven, Marigold & Micah Iris. In her professional work, Lauren works with women experiencing mental health challenges through infertility, loss, pregnancy, and postpartum.