I was sure I could force a yes from Hashem if I proved myself worthy
I looked up for a second to stretch and to rub the tiredness out of my eyes. The masechta I was learning was delving into one aggadeta after another — Yechezkel’s vision of the Merkavah and malachim rising and falling came and went from my mind interchangeably. I was finding it increasingly difficult to keep my focus. I need a chavrusa for this, I thought to myself lazily. Yet I knew that was a long shot. Who would be willing to learn with me this early in the morning at a fertility clinic?
When my wife and I were first married, we — like most young couples — didn’t give a second thought to any fertility complications. Even as the early months passed with “no news,” we just assumed it would happen eventually. Soon enough, we thought, soon enough.
But as the years passed and every new month met with dashed hopes, our worries began to grow. Our quiet nights and mornings, our peaceful Friday afternoons, and our uninterrupted Sundays had become deafening. Still, we put off considering any fertility treatment. Both fear and faith kept us on the natural path. Fear of invasive and painful medical procedures, and faith that our yeshuah lay purely in the spiritual.
Eventually, as the years continued to turn, the fear of the alternative became an aggressively bigger monster. And as for faith, well, this type of faith felt reserved for those much more pious. Many people with kind hearts but indelicate minds would compare our struggle to that of our Avos and Imahos. But I was under no such delusion that I could stand where they stood. I was purging constant shortcomings every Elul, and the comparison of my situation with the Avos started and stopped at infertility. No, we knew that it was time we turn to the bleak world of hishtadlus.
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