Adopt-a-Blogger

I began reading blogs about fertility well before I started putting my thoughts into a blog of my own. One of the things that stood out to me in the sea of blogs that I came across was the 'Adopt-a-Blogger' prayer that is published on This Cross I Embrace. The reason it struck me was because it was one of the first really positive infertility thoughts I came across in the sea of despair being expressed on the topic.

It makes sense that no one LOVES being infertile. Not one of us would have signed up for it at a silent auction if it was up for bid. Am I right? Of course I am. What I think is so unique about adopting someone to pray for every month is that it's something I can *do* about infertility. So much of this walk is focused on myself, what I eat, how I exercise, what medicines I take, how they make me feel, what they do, what works and doesn't.... and all of that brings my focus right back to me.

Praying for someone else is something I have routinely seen God's grace in very clearly. While I sit here and struggle with my own prayers for myself and how to wrestle with my faith and my resolve and my struggles....I never struggle in praying for other people. I stand up and wrestle God with fearlessness for other people. Out loud. With gusto. Why is that?! Why does it occur to us to be such prayer warriors for others? I think it is a reminder that we're not supposed to be hyper-focused on ourselves all the time. We're here to help other people and to be supported by them much more than we're here to just focus on ourselves all the time.

That said, I've learned a lot about myself and how to pray because of the prayers I have prayed for others' intentions. My discussions with God have evolved over time because of the effort. And it's more of a dialogue now than me just barking and whining about my problems. Don't get me wrong - God's tough enough to manage that too. I just think I've gotten beyond that most days. Even saying that, I don't want you to think I'm sitting here glowing from all my praying virtue over here. I still think God listens especially attentively to the prayers I can't manage to pray out loud. You know - the ones said in between tears and breathless weeping. And there's lot of that going on in any given month over here.

Praying for people to receive the gifts I most want for myself seems to be the thing God routinely listens to me about. There's something to learn there, isn't there? Hi God, it's me - bonehead....


So, with all of that said - I so very much want a set of twins. You all know this by now don't you? (In my head it reads 'For God so loved world, He gave me twins...'). Anyway, I pray those prayers two-by-two, hoping God listens and just decides He needs to send some extra babies down to Earth and I'm offering free room and board in my womb for as many as He feels like handing me. So given that is the prayer I most often pray, I've decided to pray it for someone else this month. So look out Chateau D'IF - you've got some twin prayers coming your way.

I'll be praying for you every day, all month long. And I hope everyone reading here will join me.

Beyond Ugly

Yesterday I had a complete meltdown. Complete with big, fat, ugly tears and a temper tantrum lived out on the internet in a secret facebook group...typed furiously with wet, salty fingers. It came with that wind-sucking feeling in your lungs and that sense that nothing would ever be ok...no matter how long or how hard I try...

I lost my flipping mind yesterday for what seemed like a very specific and acute reason. I've been waiting for my doctor to weigh in on my salivary adrenal cortisol results for over three weeks.

Anyway, that's what prompted my big, fat, ugly meltdown yesterday. Or so I thought.

A few hours into my own personal melodramatic, tear-stained, wind-sucking misery that came out of nowhere, I magically got my period. Happy CD1! Love, My Body. So that made me look at things in a different light. First, it's clear that things are moving in the wrong direction. The kind of uncontrollable panic and flip-outs that used to be a big (and regular) part of PMDD and PMS haven't been on the scene for a while now. I guess that run is over? As I sit here with hypothyroidism and impaired adrenal functioning (read: I'm low in the morning, lower at noon, lower in the evening, and high at night right before bed)...... I now know they are a big part of what causes these symptoms. There have been months where we got my hormones to sub-optimal (a big improvement over my usual) and my thyroid was fine and I didn't lose my mind. Conversely, there have been months where my hormones were atrocious and my thyroid was fine and I really struggled. I get that it's a big loop and it runs downhill when things are bad in one area.

I'm downhill.

Thankfully, just the knowledge that CD1 was the scape goat for my meltdown helped. It shouldn't, of course, but it did. I'm tired of my monthly cycle feeling like being strapped into solitary confinement. And yet, knowing that hormones were to blame made it easier to process. Maybe I'm not actually losing my mind...maybe it's just my hormones. Again. Wait, when is it NOT my hormones??

I think I might have welcomed the logic stopping there. You know, before I got a giant, itchy rash all over. Sigh. Little else makes me panic as much as a giant, itchy rash. My brain instantaneously moves into complete freak-out mode when I get unexplained rashes. Because fevers are next (which it was). And hospitals are next (which it thankfully wasn't). And abscesses are next (which it thankfully wasn't). And lots of bad medical care is next (which it thankfully wasn't).


My brain knows that bicycle ride better than it knows how to find its way home. How is it possible that I have spent so much time, so much effort, so much money, so much time in prayer, and assigned so much hope and faith to the conquering of this problem and I still sit here, festering in it? How is it possible that my best effort isn't even close to good enough to conquer this? Have you ever felt the anguish of something like that? Because that's what this IF or SF or whatever you want to call this sad journey of mine felt like yesterday.

So in my meltdown, there were a few angels that jumped in front of the panic bus and stopped it like Superman crumpling the asphalt behind his magnificently rooted feet. People online instantly rallied in prayer. One person looked up naturopaths. One person sat with me in private messaging and talked me through the tears and suffered with me. I was reminded of the double novena I had just signed on to do. I prayed my two novena prayers for the day. And I sat there in awe afterward as I felt filled with a little bit of peace from praying with such a broken heart. The words didn't wash over me - they washed through me. Like a waterfall.

 'O Sacred Heart of Jesus, for whom it is impossible not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners and grant us the grace which we ask of you, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, your tender Mother and ours.'

'We trust to your gentle care and intercession, those whom we love and who are sick or lonely or hurting. Help all of us, Holy Mother, to bear our burdens in this life until we may share eternal life and peace with God forever.'

For now at least, I need to accept that I am the sick, lonely, hurting sinner that is in need of prayers. And as much as I want to not be...and as much as this uncomfortable exercise of living my deepest hurts out loud is grueling...I know that I am slowly finding healing from making the effort a priority.

I suffered in silence for a long time. It didn't help anything. So I sit here this morning feeling hopeful. Hopeful because God is allowing me to experience healing to my pain-riddled and weary heart through prayers. Hopeful because my pain, lived out in the the ugliest way I can imagine - publicly - is being met with love and charity and grace and hugs from people who know what it's like to be breathlessly infertile. Hopeful because I am definitely going to hire a naturopath to give these hormones and this thyroid and these adrenals another look. Hopeful because I know Christ lives in this hurt with me. And hopeful because I'm not willing to waste any time lost in God-less agony. I spent years stuck there and if it's anything I've learned from those years of illness and pain - it's that God is easier to find in those moments than at any other times in my life. So I have to remember to look for Him and say hello and weep at His feet. I'm pretty sure he's waiting for me to do that anyway.

Humor Me

From time to time, you're just going to have to humor me and my perspective. I draw pictures. Yes, that is a pile of babies.

Waiting for GOD-ot

Psalm 39:7 "And now, LORD, for what do I wait? You are my only hope."

“The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.” ― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot


It seems to me that there is a lot of waiting associated with hope.

I can't help but look at our fertility struggles as a time for reflection in what we're really expecting to encounter at the end of this journey. I believe in a God that gives generously, despite how wicked we can be as humans. I also believe in a God that promised me He would come get me from this broken life on Earth if I obeyed him.

In my more whimsical moments, I imagine the entire process of infertility as a Samuel Beckett play. We know we can't leave - because we're waiting for someone important. He said He'd be here. And we can't help but talk on and on ad infinitum like a bunch of blabbering sillies - expecting that it'll do anything but pass the time. It's not going to change the day of His return. In fact, the obsessing might even make it pass more slowly, like trying to pour cold molasses. Oh the wonders of post peak philosophies!

After my last post, which I felt was necessary to paint a picture of how my reality has been formed and written over the years (trust me that was the abbreviated version with a lot less guts and horror than it could have included) - I realized that I want to lay a road map that reminds me of the things I've overcome, the glory I've found in God in the process, and the missteps I've made along the way. I want to learn how to have the courage to face any days ahead that don't seem like they are filled with the promise of His return. And I want to remind myself that tunnel vision and a focus on my own wants above His are where I often get lost.

Roots...

The three generations of women before me on my mother's side were blessed with unquestionable fertility. When they wanted babies, they had them. Similarly, the generations of women on my father's side experienced the same gift from God - and not one of those women had fewer than three children each. I, however, in all my middle-child-have-to-be-different-wonderment, am the 4th generation exception to this on both sides of the family. All of my family's infertility rests on me. It's just as lovely as it sounds, promise! :)

I live a life surrounded by the only thing I ever really looked forward to....children. Literally everywhere. And most of the time, climbing all over me like a jungle gym! When I was younger, people used to see how I interacted with their children and rave about what a wonderful mother I would be 'some day'. That message has definitely changed over the years though. I remember exactly when that message changed too - and where I was standing when it did:

A dear friend of mine and I were at a friend's wedding years ago (both still single at the time). We were mingling and enjoying the hustle and bustle of the cocktail hour at the reception. Everyone was having such a wonderful time. An older woman that we recognized from Church came up to us and remarked at how beautiful the wedding ceremony was. We agreed in short order. It was beautiful. The woman proceeded to pleasantly lambaste us both (my friend particularly) on not being married and not making childbearing important enough in our youth. "Were we even serious about having children?" she interrogated. We were both dumbfounded. It was too much for my friend - she had to excuse herself. And as I stood there, a bit shell shocked at the comments that has just danced out of this woman's mouth, she continued to remind me how arrogant it was of me to think that I could 'have babies forever' and that waiting so long to get married 'was a disgrace in her day-and-age'. I don't remember much after that. I think maybe I politely rubbed her shoulder and clinked glasses with her and thanked her for her concern. How else do you receive a person like that in charity?!

Anyhow, the message was certainly changed now. It was clear that not being married was thumbing my nose up at my future dwindling chance at children. Let me tell you though, getting married didn't help the social commentary. Now the question is 'why haven't you two had kids yet?' and 'what exactly are you waiting for?' and gems like 'you know how to make babies, don't you?'. Yes, yes I do. Thank you for asking. I'm glad we cleared that up.

 So what does all of that have to do with waiting? And more importantly - what does it have to do with hope? Just like Estragon and Vladimir, I do think there is purpose in the waiting. I think that anticipation is a part of the process by which we learn to hope. And I think the conception of hope is never rooted in instant gratification. It's never packaged neatly with a bow and hand delivered. Hope, like faith (and most virtues) is something that I know I have to work for to find and have and keep and grow and share. Our dreams for a family that includes a baby in our arms has to be rooted in the hope that God loves us and has remembered us and that He blesses us with His will. And right now, His will seems to include a little more waiting on our part. We aren't asked to understand it, but we are asked to abide by it.

I remember reading Waiting for Godot in high school and how silly a book I thought it was. Revisiting it as an adult didn't have to involve rereading it. It did involve living it though! So Lord, I wait for You. And if you happen to have an extra baby hanging around before Your next visit, you can send him or her (or both) my way. I promise that I'll take really good care of them.

But I know that if I am blessed enough to stop weeping over the emptiness and inadequacies that infertility brings with it, that it might mean another woman has taken my place in the waiting line. So instead of weeping, I'm going to try to do a lot more laughing. Because Samuel Beckett said so.

I shall leave you with the real answer on where babies come from and hope that laughter finds you as well.... :)