To the outside world we’re just another crazy family with a lot of kids, but the outside world doesn’t know that we spent four years trying to have our first child and countless doctors’ appointments to have ALL of our children. And that’s ok. They don’t have to know our story.

This past Mother’s Day we were in North Carolina on our first family vacation. I ended up having to go run errands for some things we needed, and while driving along a busy road I noticed just how many churches there were {a lot}, how many filled parking lots {you don’t see that up North}, and the moms standing on church steps with their kids for pictures. I hurt.

I felt gut punched, because, despite my 3.5 year old son in the back seat, the growing baby in my belly and the other 3 with their daddy, that pain is still there. I started to cry. For myself and for the moms and dads that still have not held their little ones in their arms, and may never. The one thing that seems to happen for the majority of the world, most without trying, and yet there are so many of us for whom it doesn’t.

I thought about how many men and women were avoiding their churches that day, because of the pain of inadvertently being singled out as not fulfilling their parental roles {I did}. I thought about how many men and women were avoiding their churches, because of the pain of their own mother-child relationships. I thought, why is it that what should be the safest place in the world for us, God’s house, becomes the single most painful place?

Then something happened…a song came on the radio…

All the bitter weary ways; endless striving day by day; you barely have the strength to pray; in the valley low.

And how hard your fight has been; how deep the pain within; wounds that no one else has seen; hurts too much to show.

All the doubt you’re standing in between; and all the weight that brings you to your knees.

He knows, He knows. Every hurt and every sting, He has walked the suffering. He knows, He knows. Let your burdens come undone, lift your eyes up to the one who knows.

                                                                                    Jeremy Camp “He Knows”

Does God ever do that with you? Speak directly to you through words unexpected, just when you need them?

We all have pain in our life, we all have a story that hurts us and breaks us. It doesn’t matter if your story is infertility or something else, there is pain in this life. If there wasn’t we would have no need for Jesus. But it doesn’t matter if the world knows our stories or our pains, because He knows and He will carry us to and through whatever end awaits.