My Friend Heather

A few days before Nathan was born, I received a package. I opened it up. Inside was a soft, warm blanket for the new baby and a book for the soon-to-be big sister. As I saw who it was from, I started to cry. It was from my friend Heather.

Heather and I met at the end of third grade when I moved from one side of town to the other. We became friends quickly. She is only a few months older than me, but she was tall for her age, and I was short. People asked us almost every time we were together if we were sisters.

I remember a time in our eighth grade English class where our assignment was to draw a picture of a past event we would want to watch, if we could go back. After a few minutes of walking around observing our work, our teacher quietly grabbed my paper, showed it to Heather, and showed her paper to me. We looked at each other and giggled because we had drawn the same thing.

In high school we loved to stop and get ice cream cones from McDonald's on our way to the temple, where we would sit on the grass and talk about anything - frustrations, boys, family, or our aspirations for the future - as we would watch people come in and out of the big, rotating door at the front of the building.

We graduated from high school. Heather traveled to Austria with her choir, sent me a postcard, and brought me back a scarf. We had one final sleepover that summer, and I left for college. She went to a different school in September, and by December I was engaged. On my way home to get married in April, I stayed a night at her apartment, and she took me to the airport the next morning. On that trip I met the boyfriend that would become her future husband.

By the time her and Greg were married in October, we were expecting our first baby. I still remember her reaction when I told her, offhandedly, outside the BYU library on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Provo. She was surprised, but excited for me.

When I found out I was pregnant with baby number two when our first baby was 9 months old, I couldn't tell her. I played out a million scenarios in my mind, but none of them seemed right. You see, she had recently told me that she and Greg had been trying for a baby for 9 months. Nine months. I had a 9-month-old. And I was pregnant again. How was that fair?

When I was well into my second pregnancy, I talked to Heather on the phone. We talked about my pregnancy, her job, the weather, classes, good books. And then she told me that in May she had found out she was pregnant - with twins! I was getting excited! But I could tell by the tone of her voice that something wasn't quite right. She had lost the babies. I didn't know what to say. What do you say when you're sitting there, a few months away from delivering your second baby, and your best friend tells you she has just lost everything you are about to gain?

I said I was sorry. I babbled about a neighbor who had just lost a baby, and another who had been trying for a year. I held back tears. I wanted to help. I wanted to comfort. Needless to say, I was neither helpful nor comforting. How could I know what she was feeling? I couldn't.

She had just listened to me cheerfully talking about my own pregnancy - feeling the baby kick, growing out of clothes, getting uncomfortable - and all the while, she had been mourning. And I was rubbing it in.

When I opened that box a few days before Thanksgiving - that carefully packaged box with its folded blanket, and its hand-picked book, topped with that familiar handwriting - I pictured Heather. I pictured her in the store navigating aisles filled with bottles, tiny pajamas, and diapers, longing to be shopping for her own babies, but shopping for mine. "It's not fair!" I kept telling Sam. But a phrase my mom often told me when I was little kept coming to my mind: "Life isn't fair."

But why? Why isn't life fair? Why aren't Heather and I sitting on a porch, rocking our babies and watching our similar-aged kids play in the grass between our back-to-back houses like we always dreamed? Why do I get to wrap my baby in the blanket she bought? I don't know. I wish I did. I wish life was fair.

She mentioned in her blog post here that her babies would have been four months old today. Every time I post a picture of my baby to the internet, I can't help but think about how hard it must be for her to see it. Our babies would have been not quite two months apart. How is that fair?

I wish I could relate more. I wish I could offer comfort. I wish I knew more of what she is going through, but I don't. And it makes me feel terrible. Friends are supposed to be there to offer relief. But I don't feel like I can because our situations are so different. I feel like I'm a hypocrite when I try. How could I possibly know her pain?

And that is where the phrase "life isn't fair" comes in. It's not fair. And as much as I wish it was, it never will be. Besides, wishing life was fair may not be the right thing to do. I just have to have faith. Faith that the Lord knows what He is doing. I believe He works through natural means. Infertility and miscarriage aren't punishments, or signs that a couple is not yet ready for a baby. I don't fully understand them or the pain that accompanies them, but I do know that they are part of this mortal experience for some couples - and they can be painful.

I may not know the pain of infertility or the emptiness of losing a baby, but I do know that the Lord has greater things in store for all of us. I am grateful for the comfort that comes from reading Revelation 21:4, "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no...more pain: for the former things are passed away." I know there will be an end to sadness. There will be an end to pain. The Lord is merciful, and He loves us. He knows us. He will care for us. And we can go to Him.

And for that I am grateful.