“Tonya, you cannot be under any stress while pregnant.”
Those were the daunting words from my infertility specialist—words that felt almost impossible to live up to. After all, I was an American public-school teacher; stress wasn’t something I could simply turn off. It was part of my daily life.
After years of treatments that ended in disappointment, we were both frustrated. I often wondered if I was ruining his high success rate. There seemed to be no explanation of why the treatments were not yielding a successful pregnancy.
But God had a plan that would give me a chance to become pregnant in a stress-free environment.
I had been battling infertility for 19 years when COVID-19 plagued our world. Nineteen years of hoping, trying, waiting, and grieving what hadn’t yet come. COVID-19 shut the world down. Schools closed, routines paused, and life slowed down. And in that unexpected stillness, a thought came to me: This is the perfect time to try again.
At 47, logic told me it was too late. Science and statistics weren’t on my side. But my hope—anchored deeply in faith—whispered otherwise. Around that same time, I came across a post in a marriage group on Facebook. A couple shared their testimony: they had asked God to bless them with a child. Their ages were similar to ours (47 and 51). During the pandemic, God blessed them to conceive and give birth to twins.
That testimony stirred something in me. It reignited a belief I had tried so hard to protect over the years. I never found that couple again to thank them, but their words gave me the courage to try one more time.
When I talked to my husband, he agreed. Together, we stepped forward in faith once again.
And then, against all odds, it happened—we were pregnant with twins.
From the very beginning, it felt like a miracle unfolding before our eyes. The clinic staff, who had walked alongside us through years of disappointment, shared in our excitement. After nearly two decades of trying, we finally reached milestones we had only dreamed of—first the heartbeats, then their body formation, and finally the movement.
Baby A and Baby B were more than images on a screen. They were full of life, already revealing glimpses of their unique personalities. Every ultrasound filled my heart with a joy I can hardly put into words. My husband and I began to believe that our long season of infertility had finally come to an end.
But our time with them was not meant to last.
During the middle of my second trimester, we lost both babies.
There are no words that can fully capture that kind of loss. How do you make sense of a miracle that was only meant for a moment?
At the time, I didn’t understand why their journey ended so soon. It felt like another chapter of heartbreak in a story already filled with so much waiting and loss.
But later, I would come to understand something that changed everything.
Their passing saved my life.
What I once saw only as loss, I began to see through a different lens. Even in grief, there was purpose. Even in heartbreak, there was profound love. My twins were not just a miracle because they existed—they were a miracle because of what their lives, and their passing, ultimately meant for me.
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24, KJV).
