An odd title, you may be thinking. Aren’t you in your late thirties? Well, yes. But today is my first Mother’s Day as a mother. My child may still be young enough to be aborted in Mississippi under the law under review in Dodd, but I am finally a member of the sorority stretching back to Eve.

I won’t spout any cliches about how “it’s only when you stop trying that it happens.” For the person desperate to be a parent, that offers no comfort whatsoever. I will say that when you accept that children are a gift from God that He simply doesn’t give everyone without that lack of a gift being a comment on your worthiness as a person (if the rain falls on the just and the unjust, so does the drought), that a childless life can still be one of meaning and purpose — when you can achieve that level of spiritual enlightenment and release, then the marriage bed can be freed from the sorrow, guilt, betrayal, despair, and pain that made it a mockery of its intended purpose. As much as every barren tear over the last decade scourged my heart as they carved their way into wrinkles around my eyes and bleached my brown hair silver, I can’t deny that they made me a better person, one who has a much better grasp of what is and isn’t in my control.