The Day I Almost Couldn't Hold On
In the depths of despair I lift my eyes to heaven; in the darkness, mercy is shown.
I. The Loneliest Stretch
In those weeks, I kept feeling like I was about to fall apart.
The first trimester hit far harder than I’d imagined. Every day was a wrestling match with my own body: a stomach frantic with hunger on one side, and on the other, nausea and vomiting set off by the faintest smell of food. I wanted to eat and couldn’t. If I didn’t eat, I felt like I was going to collapse. There was no controlling any of it.
The hardest part wasn’t the physical pain. It was the loneliness of not being understood.
The older generation said: “Everyone goes through this.”
Friends said: “How could it possibly be that bad?”
My husband said: “Then go lie down.”
But I knew I wasn’t being dramatic. I was truly, truly suffering.
I began to question—
- Why me?
- Why do I have to go through this?
- Why does it cost me so much?
- Why does life arrive this way?
In that moment I sank into something I couldn’t name. Anger, grievance, despair, pressing down in waves, layer after layer. And I started to wonder: am I really ready to be a mother?
II. A Pain No One Understood — but Not a Pain No One Saw
During that time, I would go downstairs alone every evening for a walk. Under the streetlights of our compound, I’d tilt my head back at the night sky and say, over and over, inside myself: “Light of this world — can you shine on me? Can you save me?”
No voice answered. But I kept asking anyway, kept pleading.
One day, walking and listening to music, I heard a song. The words went:
“In the depths of despair I lift my eyes to heaven; in the darkness, mercy is shown; who could imagine such great compassion…”
I don’t know why, but in that moment tears streamed down my face.
It was as if someone had finally heard every question I’d been holding down inside. The song didn’t give me a “correct answer,” but it made me feel this: I am not alone, and I have the strength to break through the dark.
Because there was once someone else who was misunderstood, who was rejected, who knew what it was to be worn out in body and soul.
And that light saw me, and lit me, in exactly this way.
It didn’t spare me the pain. It walked into the pain with me. It wasn’t pitying me from far away — it was like someone who knows you well, saying quietly:
“I know. I know all of it, because I have been through it myself.”
That night, something tightly knotted inside me loosened.
For the first time I wasn’t demanding to know why. I was asking, gently: “Then how do I keep going?”
III. An Unseen Strength Holding Me Up
The real turn in how I felt came at the NT scan.
I looked at the tiny thing on the report — already with a clear head, clear limbs, a miniature person lying quietly inside my body. In that moment, everything in me went still.
“So this is what I’ve been carrying it all for.”
I suddenly understood that the vomiting, the sleeplessness, the aching, the swings of emotion — none of it was meaningless torment. All of it was brewing a life, drop by drop, breath by breath.
I didn’t feel great about myself in that moment. But I stopped fighting off the pain.
I began to understand that carrying a life has never been easy. It’s something closer to a journey of laying yourself down.
Like a seed that has to be buried in the soil, has to break open, has to push upward through the dark before a green shoot ever appears. I was only the soil, sinking down for a while so that another life could take root.
I stopped simply wanting to run. I learned to lean on what I believed and get through it one step at a time. Not gritting it out on willpower alone — there was a gentle, steady light shining on me, saying:
“What you’re going through is not for nothing; what you carry will be remembered; the tears you cry will all be kept.”
After that, whenever the pain came back, it still hurt. But I no longer despaired.
Because I knew: I am not carrying this alone.
IV. For You, If You’re Also in Pain
If you’re living through a pain right now that you can’t put into words, I want to say this to you gently:
You’re not weak, and you’re not making it up. You’re on the darkest stretch of the road, doing your best to keep going.
Maybe you often feel scattered, exhausted, even unsure what any of it means. Maybe you’ve asked yourself countless times: “Why me?”
But please don’t forget — you have walked out of darkness before. You have stood up in the low places before.
There was a light that quietly shone on you and drew you back, bit by bit, from despair. This isn’t the first pain you’ve known, and it isn’t the first time you’ve been led through.
So what about now?
Now, facing a new challenge and a new unease — do you really believe that light has suddenly gone?
Look back, and you’ll find: it has been there all along, and it never left.
This time will be no exception.
You’re allowed to be weak. You’re allowed to cry. You’re even allowed to fall apart. But you will not stay down. That gentle, steady light will shine on you again and again, and carry you through the night into morning.
V. The Day I Didn’t Fall
Looking back now, I still remember those late nights alone — the tears, the vomiting, the praying, the struggling.
But I also remember how, little by little, I came through.
Pregnancy wasn’t a torment set against my body. It was a reshaping of the soul.
To lay yourself down is to “die” for the sake of a new life. But don’t forget: after the dying, there is also rising again.
It wasn’t an ending. It was a setting out.
In every moment of not being understood, in every night with no one beside me, there was a strength that never gave up on me.
Maybe the road you’re walking is just as lonely, and just as dark. But please remember:
You are not alone. You are seen, you are understood, and you have been loved all along.
And the deepest of these pains may be exactly where you begin — standing one day in the sunlight, carrying both tenderness and glory.