Dogwood, Daffodils and Waiting

In Jesus' time, the dogwood grew

To a stately size and a lovely hue.

'Twas strong and firm, its branches interwoven.

For the cross of Christ its timbers were chosen.

Seeing the distress at this use of their wood

Christ made a promise which still holds good:

"Never again shall the dogwood grow

Large enough to be used so.

Slender and twisted, it shall be

With blossoms like the cross for all to see.

As blood stains the petals marked in brown,

The blossom's center wears a thorny crown.

All who see it will remember Me

Crucified on a cross from the dogwood tree.

Cherished and protected, this tree shall be

A reminder to all of My agony.

 -Author Unknown

Every group of friends has a leader. It's just how people naturally assemble, isn't it? Sure they could be called a motley crew, the dozen of them, but the things that bind friends together were the things that bound them together. You believe in the same things, you answer to the same higher power, you have similar goals. This group of friends was no different in that respect.

Anyone who has ever been a part of a close knit social group, regardless of the specific links they all share together, knows the dynamics I am referring to here. There is banter and rumor and solidarity and brotherhood/sisterhood. It's just a part of our human journey that we relate to each other this way. This group of friends was no different in that respect.

Imagine the chaos that ensues in a group of friends when the leader among them is wrongly accused, imprisoned, and convicted of a heinous crime. We see this story play out many days in the news coverage. Some will immediately cast judgment and distance themselves from their own brother/sister. Some will form allegiances and vow to right the wrong that's been done. Others will sit back quietly, maybe spreading rumors amongst the "herd", never thinking about the impact their own actions are having. Bonds within the group will be tested, stretched, and even broken. Some will outright betray their friends for no apparent reason. And yet others will take the moment as an opportune time to assert themselves as replacement for the social position within their friend group. These aren't foreign concepts to us. We see this today. We saw it yesterday. We will see this again. It's either human nature or fallen human nature, right? This group of friends was no different in that respect.

But all the chaos ends - or rather is suspended - when the persecuted among them dies. No matter where you are in the social construct, that moment is resolutely silent. Seemingly one struggle ends and another begins. Any hope for redemption from worldly persecution is squelched with the finality of death. People fall into despair. The cycle of grieving begins. We live and breathe this pattern whether we like to or not. No matter how hopeful anyone has ever been for things to be sorted out in a case of someone being wrongfully accused, death offers a final decree for us. We know that death is inescapable in our tangible world and any real way to vindicate our brother/sister is now gone. This group of friends was no different in that respect.

The moments following a death (and any hope of righting a wrong before that death) are thick with sadness, rife with despair, and filled with everything that hope isn't. And that's exactly what Good Friday felt like at the foot of the cross. With the blood of Jesus Christ fresh on the wood, those surrounding Him experienced this cycle of grief. I'm certain of it....because we are all human and we share enough with each other through time and space as human creatures to be certain of what that moment must have been like. Son of God proclamation aside, death is something no one had ever conquered, so the finality of that moment would have been palpable. This group of friends was no different in that respect.

Perhaps you've realized that we are channeling the experience of the Apostles here (and those among them) as they lived through the terrible and beautiful and confusing Passion of Christ so many years ago. I can only imagine the utter confusion and agony that witnessing the realities that occurred along the Via Dolorosa must have involved. 

But you and I live in a world today where these painful footsteps have been transformed into artistic depictions that are merely called stations; they are no longer the actual bloody and agonizing footsteps of the redeemer of the world, but more likely detached symbolism. We know all about what happened after Christ died. We know that Good Friday wasn't the end of the story. We know death was conquered. And so with our modern ideas of calendrical hope and our Pottery Barn sensibilities for how to celebrate the Sunday ahead, we use Holy Saturday as merely a staging day for a happy holiday yet to come. A few thousand years is all it took to completely whitewash things, isn't it?

In that context, Holy Saturday is no longer to us a vigil for the most spectacular accomplishment ever achieved between Heaven and Earth. Just like Good Friday is no longer the day when hope seemingly died..... and like Easter Sunday no longer carries any real sense that the pearly gates opened wide for us through the outpouring of blood from the savior of mankind with a rebirth of Divine Hope.

We might be the Easter people, but right now we seem to be for sale at the low, low price of whatever the going-retail-rate-is because of our inability to connect with Christ's Passion.

Distance helps us hide from the truth, doesn't it?

So how do we reclaim our Holy Saturday and the vigil of the resurrection of Christ? How do we live the grief of Good Friday in a real way and experience the tension and hope of Holy Saturday and the victory and supreme glory that Easter Sunday should bring us, as a modern "Easter people"? 

I'm getting to that, I promise. You just have to wait a few more moments. Waiting. Get it? Here, I'll give you a lovely poem and picture to gaze upon while you wait!. ;)

The Daffodils

William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud

   That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
   A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
   And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
   Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
   Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A Poet could not but be gay,
   In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
   In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
   Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Let's talk a little about waiting. We can all admit that our sense of waiting is aligned more with the realities of modern technology than it is with our faith. Your call is important to us. We'll be with you momentarily. That's our idea of what waiting is like. It's one dimensional in that we have an expectation the waiting ends. And more than that - we expect that the waiting gets us what we want. Our modern ideas of waiting are so attuned to being entitled to answers, that I hesitate to think we have even a surface understanding of what Holy Saturday felt like anymore at all. And how is Good Friday poignant if we already know it wasn't as final as it must have seemed in the moment? It just isn't, if we are looking at it all through the lens that we are entitled to easy answers.

The creator of the entire world was brutally crucified and left to die on a splintery, wooden cross because of our inability to conceive of His humanity and divinity.... and here we are as a culture upset that our call is being answered in the order in which it was received. The two seem incongruous, don't they?

What if we looked at Easter (and the anticipation of it) through the lens of a more meaningful sense of waiting? What if we used our own understanding of our physical humanity to bring us back to understanding the sacrifice of Christ? What if we were able to own the entitlement to salvation as a victory over death...as children who were purchased at the greatest cost imaginable? What if something we cannot control, manipulate, or overcome is the key to our truly understanding Christ's sacrifice? And the key to understanding the reality of the waiting that Holy Saturday brings us...

As an infertile woman, I think I'm beginning to learn a little bit about what being an Easter people is all about. Infertility really seems a lot like Holy Saturday to me. Cleansing through anticipation. Hope taught through the tension of waiting. I think I'm starting to get it.

And as much as I'm not going to have neat answers for all of the questions I posted above (how Holy Saturday of me...), I'm starting to realize that processing this through my own apparent cross is part of how I'm going to find my Easter with Christ. Yes, He already redeemed this. But struggling with infertility and recurring losses seems a whole lot like the reality that Good Friday must have brought to those at the foot of Christ's lifeless body on that cross (Virgin Mother anyone?). Maybe this is how I find a way to relate to Mary in any real sense? Maybe making it personal - like the relating to the Apostles that I tried to above - is how we find our way out of all of this being just symbolic. 

Infertility also seems a lot like the tension that must have been thick in the air on Holy Saturday as all of mankind waited, with fragile hope. And it seems like my own vantage point of what Easter is on the other side might be a bit like those dreamy Wordsworth daffodils.

No, I don't think my own journey is tantamount to the crucifixion of Christ on Good Friday. I do think one of the only graces of looking inward on this Holy Saturday is that I found real pain when I looked there. And real pain seems to be what Holy Saturday is and was about. That, and waiting.

So without any neatly packaged answers, I end this rambling post still waiting. Not for my own reward. But for the resurrection in every way it can find us... 

The promise of a joyous Easter awaits, even with the weighty realities of our brokenness. Even with the tragedies that we endure. Through miscarriage, stillbirth, permanent infertility, and all the inescapable brokenness that we experience in life and and in marriage. There is still a reason to conceive hope. And Holy Saturday is why.

The Year Ahead

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 Before you read this post, please make sure you read this introduction first.
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So much ground has been traveled in the past year and never before has a year been so easy to recall and recount than the one that began on my wedding day. I walked into marriage with some new diagnoses, aware that my daily realities would be changing just as much from my medical treatments as from my marriage.

The beginning brought with it a lot of opportunities to seek Christ on my knees. I am convinced He hears me loudest when I have no strength in my legs to stand. So with a humble, quivering heart - I encountered my marriage and my spouse and Christ in a new way when I entered into the sacrament of matrimony. None of the journey has been anything but purposeful. All of it has allowed me to see God's purpose for my life. And while very little of it might have been a path I might have chosen myself, there is beauty in the suffering that I walked because Christ has been so very close to me the entire way.

The year ahead will be filled with the knowledge that I have approached God's call to me and taken it on, irrespective of what it required of me. And I know my eternal reward is now tied to the soul of my spouse.

The year ahead will be filled with more medical unraveling, more answers, maybe some more mysteries, and hopefully some big successes. The focus will remain on my health. Anything more is welcome, but it is not expected.

The year ahead will be lived with gratefulness for how sweet life is even in its most minimal, tiny moments. And how overwhelming it is in the big moments. And how lucky we are to be able to experience the carousel that is all of them weaved together.

The year ahead will bring remembrance off the humble beginnings and underpinnings of the thing that is my marriage. It won't be taken for granted, because we know all too well how fragile and resilient it can be and has been.

The year ahead will bring good things because I will choose to see good things. And those things will be fruitful. And my marriage will be blessed exponentially because of that effort - no matter how exhausting that effort may make me.

The year ahead will be dedicated to finding the good, the holy, the infinite, the kind, the necessary, the timely, the graceful, and the beautiful things. It will be spent in that effort more than any selfish want I otherwise have. I will be grateful for what that exploration brings, even (and especially) when I cannot conceive of it.

The year ahead will be focused on hoping, however futile that mission may seem or be at this time next year. Our days are numbered on Earth and we are not in possession of the counter and I may never get another chance to look back in hope for greener pastures. Paul didn't get to do that, neither did Nathan, neither did my godmother, and perhaps Zulma may not be able to as well.

The year ahead will be under the spiritual direction of my children, who have gone before the Lord ahead of me - to speak on my behalf and intercede for me. Any endeavors that I undertake - professional or otherwise - will be done so keenly aware of the cause for Life and in support of it in some way.

The year ahead will be focused on living a more Christ-like existence because of the opportunity to suffer this past year. My prayer life will be expanded. My direction will be changed. My love will be cultivated and given more freely. My words will be more careful. I will be quicker to humor and slower to criticism. I will be faster to forgive and slower to condemn. I will spend this next year in search of virtue instead of success.

There is no competition that can attract me in the days head. My eyes are focused on God and my marriage and in the purification both can offer me - being one through the other and one in the same.

Jesus died on the cross so that I might find my way home someday. He knew my struggles before I bore them under my own weight. He knew my pain before it was felt. He knew my hopes and dreams and desires before I was even knit together and able to have them.

In the year ahead, Christ will rejoice with me. And I will look back at the next 365 days as a different person, with a changed heart, living in a marriage that I made with the hard work and nurturing I offered it. The struggle will be beautiful and worth the promise of the eternal reward.

And all of that will be Truth that I can see. Because all things are possible...

A Year In Review

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 Before you read this post, please make sure you read this introduction first.
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*** triggers mentioned: surgery, miscarriages, murder, abduction, sudden death ***

Last year on this day, I was recovering from surgery. I had stitches from a laparoscopy in my stomach in multiple places and some of them were black, itchy, and oozing blood. I had my period and everything that came with it. I was wearing a corseted, bone white satin gown. My pain medicine had been lost and no one could find it. My ankles were hot and swollen and stuffed into compression socks that barely held up under the pressure of the edema. My neck was swollen and my thyroid throbbed like someone had taken a ball-peen hammer to it. I was weeping and wincing in pain with every movement. Emotionally exhausted and overwhelmed. My entire body shuddered for hours from the physical and emotional manifestations of that pain, but everyone thought I was just nervous. My mind was a complete fog. And I had a fever and a rash creeping around my mid-section that itched like Satan had taken up residence in the layers of my epidermis.

It was also my wedding day.

I could lie and pretend that I sit here as a happy person today....wistfully looking back at the joy of such a wonderful day. I could tell you that a smile comes to my face when I look back at the me of last year who didn't know about all of the wonderful things ahead. And this being the internet, you'd just sit there and read it and pass right by it like every other Catholic retelling of the joyous life of newlyweds.

But that isn't my story. And telling tall tales about it isn't going to change how I remember that day, or the 365 that came after it. And it isn't going to get me or my spouse to Heaven. I might as well be honest so that anyone who can even marginally relate to this knows that they aren't alone. And maybe also so that I can find a bit of peace in finally admitting it all out loud.

I was diagnosed with endometriosis a couple weeks before my wedding. It was a leap of faith to say yes to surgery a few weeks before I would hop a plane to Ireland to get married. If things didn't go well... well, there wasn't even time for a back-up plan. Things either were or weren't going to be OK.

At the time, I barely knew the Catholic surgeon who operated on me, only having met her once before the date of my surgery. I vividly remember the moments leading up to the anesthetic that morning though...where she gave me a rosary that Pope Francis had blessed and held it tightly in between our hands as she prayed over me for peace and healing. I remember waking up and hearing about the endo that was excised from my uterine ligaments and ovary.

I remember my stomach being ripped to pieces by the antibiotics in the days afterwards. And the extreme reactions to my first doses of T3, one of which involved passing out for hours on the floor - only to awake to irritated voicemail messages from the priest who would be marrying us because he couldn't get in touch with me over last minute paperwork before I traveled overseas.

I remember feeling defeated at having to manage so much luggage en route to the airport when I could barely manage walking without using both hands pressed against my stomach to 'keep my guts in place'. I remember the airport staff that took pity on me, the extra luggage fees that were waived, the help that was offered to get me over the Atlantic.

I remember the cantor who tried to charge us an additional 350 Euro the day before the wedding, figuring that we'd pay it like a ransom. And I remember all of the people who selflessly offered help in making things go off without a hitch.

I remember my extremely (read: more extremely than you're taking that to mean) introverted fiance struggling with the social interactions, the demands of last-minute wedding details, and not having any idea how to comfort me as I threw up in a tupperware container while wincing in pain with each heave as I felt my stitches being pulled to their limits against the skin they had been sewed into.

I remember having to drink three glasses of champagne just to manage the stairs walking into my own reception and how often my glass had to be filled after that so I could manage the rest of the evening without feeling like I would pass out.

I remember being nauseated and passing out on our honeymoon and feeling like something was really wrong. And I remember that day at work after the honeymoon when I was stuck in the bathroom - marooned in a stall - bleeding out and miscarrying a child I didn't even know I was carrying.

I remember the ultrasounds after that where I focused on the knowledge that I had more experience with those 10 days of invasive procedures than I did with the sacrament that had made me a wife and a mother.

I remember the weeping so hard that I burst blood vessels in my face. And feeling dead inside. And I remember the next months where that hCG mimicked the feelings of 1st trimester illness I had felt on my honeymoon and how hopeless and lost and utterly shattered each reliving of that and each CD1 made me feel.

I remember the hope of lots of two-week-waits and the confusion when no pregnancy came. And news that we now had a problem. I remember all of the severe side effects of the fertility drugs that I took, the anxiety and panic attacks that they caused, the appetite that disappeared, and the weight that was gained. I remember the changing of medicine doses and the disappointments that came with each one of them, the hormone profiles that made me feel like a death trap, and how all the small victories seemed stale. I remember asking my wedding photographer if there was even one picture with a smile in it and expecting to hear a quick 'no'.

I remember the murder of Paul, the murder of Nathan, the sudden death of my godmother from aggressive ovarian cancer that changed my own treatment plan, our 2nd miscarriage that persisted over my own birthday, and the disappearance of Zulma.

I remember being fired after the 2nd miscarriage because I had taken three days of bereavement leave and the lesbian interim HR director that considered it an inappropriate use of leave time because 'it was not an immediate family member'. I remember having to prove that I hadn't been involved in any misconduct when the unemployment office called to question my dismissal. And I remember the envelope that contained the letter that read 'dismissed after miscarriage, no evidence of misconduct apparent'.

And I remember staring at this once-blank-blog-post - wondering how I could write anything today and yet knowing I had to anyway. Last year we celebrated the Feast of St. Thomas More on June 22nd and I chose to pray a special prayer. This year on June 22nd, we also celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi, so I think it's interesting that I'm in the middle of praying to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This year I renew my prayers for intercession from the patron saint of adoption and foster care, and I add my prayers to Christ and Mary. The celebration of the mystery of the Eucharistic miracle is something we acknowledge and receive each time the bread and wine are consecrated at a Mass. We ought to spend some time in prayerful contemplation of what that means and I'm taking that seriously this year.

Jesus did not die on the cross so that I might live a fairytale wedding day and frolick through the fields of the first 365 days of marriage. He was not born into poverty while whispers of the scandal against His Mother were on everyone's lips so that I could live a comfortable life devoid of pain. He did not pay the price for us with his own suffering and death so that I could sit here and write a glib post about the top ten things I love about the first year of my marriage.

Jesus promised that He would be here to suffer with me if I sought Him out. He promised He would comfort me when I felt alone. And that my reward in Heaven would be contingent on the faith I breathed on Earth. He asked me to be faithful because He died, not in spite of it.

So yes, I sit here today with 365 days behind me, broken and numb hearted, with another rash and fever, again with my period and angry uterus screaming to bring down the last bit of resolve I can muster, and certainly with several more grey hairs to count on my head, listening to all the cliches about how newlywed life is filled with unbridled passion and wanton abandon and how these are the best days of my life. Being told to be thankful for this past year and all of the good it must have involved. All of that may very well be the truth I can't see right now.

But you won't find me complaining in my misery. God calls me to live out my faith and I'm trying my best to do it. No matter how ugly it looks from the outside. No matter how ugly it feels on the inside. Trust is trust. And you don't gain it by anything but practicing it. That's how my faith needs to be. And that's very much how my marriage needs to be. The sacrament has meaning beyond and above the pain and suffering. The vocation has worth beyond and above the shortfalls and disappointments. The struggle is worth the promise of the eternal reward.

A Father's Heart

Triggers mentioned (miscarriage, molar pregnancy, ectopic pregnancy, infertility, subfertility)

"O eternal Trinity, You are a deep sea in which the more I seek, the more I find, and the more I find, the more I seek to know You."            -- St. Catherine of Siena

This year is the first time my husband is a father for the observance of Father's Day.

He has not lost any sleep from crying babies. He has not been repulsed by any stinky diapers. He has not spent hours of endless worry. Fumbled with swaddling techniques. Dealt with fevers. Or throw-up. Or any of those things.

We never met our children. We never got to celebrate any good news. We have no stories of hope and wonder and anticipation. We have no baby onesies. Or crib. Not even an ultrasound.

Today doesn't bring us the joy of children; it brings only confusion and a search for meaning.

Instead of oozing fatherly pride, my husband fumbles through unknown territory, struggling to process how he is a father and at the same time lost in what it means live up to that title. I wanted him to experience fatherhood in our marriage, but of course this isn't what I envisioned.

Today, like all holidays and anniversaries - -  we just stare at each other and remember the two times over this past year that we learned we were pregnant while I was experiencing miscarriages. We think about the panic involving opposite Rh factors and the worry involved with whether I would develop destructive antibodies that first time. We think about the horrific bruises on my arms from the blood draws when the phlebotomists blew my veins. We think about how much of those experiences were lived in the bathroom, where our anguish was echoed back to us in an eery cacophony amid the tiled walls. We think about the feeling of emptiness that we both struggle with today and how it is as sharp as it was last year when it happened the first time.

And at the same time, academically at least, we know that we are parents. And my husband knows that he is a father today. We process the spiritual loss like Mary suffered the death of her own Son. We process the physical realities very differently though, but the loss is the same.

There is no life ahead for two babies that most certainly had our dimples. There are no smiles or coos from two babies that definitely had our blue or green eyes. There will be no future for two babies that would have had our pale skin and our wavy hair. And even while we sit here and think of all the things they must have been.... we can't begin to imagine who they were.

How do you grieve someone you can't picture? I've come to the conclusion that the only answer to that question is that my entire faith is based on grieving the loss of a man I never met or saw either.....and so should I be grieving my own children. Maybe more than any other time in my life have I now begun to understand what it is like to have a connection to Mary. Oh how she must have suffered...

So today is Father's Day, the first of many to come for us (and for so many who have walked this path before us). We hope to learn more in the days ahead about how to better process the pain and hurt we feel in such a raw way now. For now though, we are on our knees. And we are mourning what might have been. And yet we are tasked with trying to conceive hope again, if we are to answer God's call in our life to be parents to living children. Anyone who has been in the same position knows what a feat of strength that takes. (That said, I refuse to draw distinction for our lot in life from the reality of so many other couples who struggle with subfertility, infertility, molar pregnancies, ectopic pregnancies, or miscarriage. A void is no less painful because of the circumstances surrounding it and the glory of God and His sacrifice cannot be found in such a distinction - of that I feel certain.)

If nothing else, today has been a reminder to both of us that our strength and hope have only ever come from the death and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that is no different today than it was before we were parents.

Today, this blog is dedicated to all of the fathers  - here and on the other side. And to everyone with a father's heart (thanks Lauren!). And to all of the children not with us (yet or anymore). God bless you. And God bless my broken-hearted husband.