Author: mabbat

And Sometimes, You Are a Mutant

Wednesday morning I got a phone call I wasn’t expecting.  The nurse from the fertility specialist’s office called to tell me about my lab results.  Our appointment is next week, and based on what the doctor said at our last consultation, we wouldn’t be hearing anything until then.  I have been distracting myself from all thoughts of lab work and follow-ups until next week so that I wouldn’t worry about it.  I have also been telling myself that we wouldn’t be getting any new information from these tests since every other test we’ve done indicated that I am “normal.”  But as it happens, sometimes you turn out to be a mutant.

The nurse was calling to tell me that my blood work showed an enzyme that indicates a genetic mutation that causes clotting and thicker blood, which can cause miscarriage.  We will get more details on Wednesday when we go back to see the doctor, but they immediately put me on daily baby aspirin and a super dose of folic acid to combat the clotting factor.  There is a good possibility that I will need to take heparin shots whenever we get pregnant again, although this is a detail I’m sure we will discuss with the doctor next week.  (Of all the injections potentially involved with fertility issues, heparin is sooooooo not a big deal.)  There may be other issues we have to deal with, and it may turn out that this isn’t the issue at all, but I am hopeful for the first time in three years that we could actually have a successful pregnancy.

For those of you who have been praying for us to get some direction, God emphatically answered us – a week early, too!  I’m not sure I can adequately describe how incredible that feels.  I was fully prepared to hear next week that there was no news, and we would just have to try again and see what happened.  “Surprised by Joy” is a poem I remember reading and discussing in a college lit class, and the gist of it was the author had been grieving the loss of a loved one and was surprised to find himself feeling joy again.  Multiply that idea by about a thousand, and it comes close to what I’ve been trying to wrap my head around for the last two days.  Perhaps “Surprised by, Swallowed up, and Walloped over the Head by Joy” would be a more accurate title for my poem.  I remember thinking on Wednesday night, this must be what the great psalmists felt when they wrote such rapturous praise songs to God.  I tried all that night to think of words for my own poetry, but I have been at a complete loss, I am so amazed.

God has been faithful to me in bringing me through the pain and hard work of each miscarriage; providing a possible solution to the physical problem is a blessing above and beyond what I could imagine.  My best friend said that I deserved to finally have some hope, and I can’t say that I disagree – I guess I just want to qualify it a little.  We all deserve “a hope and a future” that God promises to those who follow him, but none of us is entitled to anything.  I feel with all my heart that no one deserves to deal with miscarriage or child loss of any kind, and everyone deserves to have hope for the future.  Enduring five miscarriages does not mean that I am any more deserving of a baby than anyone else, even if that idea does not appeal to my sense of justice and fair play.  It does mean that I am overwhelmed by the hope that we probably can have a baby now that we have an identifiable problem to fix.

I was surprised to find that this news is a mixed bag of emotions (just like everything else in life, I guess).  I am beyond excited that we may finally have an answer and a solution.  There are no words for the desire I feel to have my own child to grow inside me and to love and hold and share diaper duty with my husband; there are certainly no words for the joy that this might actually happen in the next year.  Armed with a new plan of action, the prospect of a new pregnancy is slightly less terrifying, but I know I’ll still be clinging to God for dear life when it does happen.  I feel a little guilty that I am so excited about an answer, as if I may let this good news eclipse the loss of the babies that came before, somehow diminishing their existence.  I also feel a little guilty that we may have an answer while so many others have no idea what to do next.  Having been in that exact position for so long, I know the frustration that comes with hearing that someone else has an answer while you continue to wait.  I will, however, refuse to tell anyone else that their answer is coming (just as I have refused to repeat the phrase, “I know exactly how you feel” to someone who loses a baby).  Every person who deals with loss experiences it differently since we are all unique people in unique circumstances; I can empathize with your loss, but only you can know exactly how you feel.  The reality is that not everyone has the exact same problem getting or staying pregnant, so me telling someone else that they must be a mutant, too, and blood thinners will work for them is both medically and emotionally dangerous.  Pushing false hope on someone is like taking them to a giant cliff and telling them to float gently to the bottom; they will end up more broken and battered than they were, and you have done nothing to walk with them where they are.  At any rate, I know very well the pang of jealousy when someone else finds an answer, and for those of you in that situation right now, I pray for you every day, and it’s okay to feel that way.

Another thing I will not say is that God has finally answered our prayers and we have finally discovered God’s plan for us (to have a baby).  I have so many problems with that line of thinking (and I promise this will be the last rant – for today).  You will find those statements on a lot of Christian web forums that deal with miscarriage and in a lot of Christian books.  My greatest problem with that theology is that God has answered all of our prayers all along, not just this one prayer.  It also implies that what preceded this particular answer was somehow not part of God’s plan, and I refuse to believe that.  The bottom line for me is that God has always been faithful and will always be faithful, even when I can’t see that.  This is an extra blessing that I praise him for with all my heart, but if this single moment is my only testimony to God’s enduring love and faithfulness, then I have failed miserably.  The greater statement of God’s love is getting through the pain and to a point where this is just icing on the cake that is my life.  I am immeasurably grateful for the possibility of a healthy pregnancy, but I don’t want to be more grateful for that than I am for God’s presence in my life and all of the things he has already given me or taught me.  (But it is terribly exciting to find out that God made me a mutant!)

The Life Abundant

Jesus promised us that he came so that we might have abundant life.  So, I’ll choose abundant as the only polite word to describe my life over the last three years, with a special focus on the last two months.  There has been abundant joy concurrent with abundant heartbreak.  Whatever my life has presented – joy, stress, pain, beauty, loss, comfort – it has certainly been in abundance.  Of course it hasn’t all been bad, and the bad has been instructive on appreciating the good and accepting anything God sends my way.

Perhaps as a result of living the Life Abundant, there are days when I feel like I’m almost too full.  I can be full of deep, almost tangible joy, or I can be so full of dread and sorrow that my feet become lead and every step is an effort of will just to keep moving.  Some days, I feel both or everything in between all at once.  Not only do I feel like all seven of the dwarves simultaneously, but I can almost taste the duality – sweet and salty at once, like good trail mix.  As much as I love to eat trail mix, I am one of those people who will eat one thing at a time from the bag.  You can tell when I have been eating from any kind of mixed snack bag because there will be a shortage of a single part of the mix; most of the pretzel sticks or almonds or yellow M&Ms will be gone as I work my way through the bag one item at a time.  At dinner, I eat one thing at a time, saving my favorite thing for last.  You may have guessed that I don’t multi-task well.

While I prefer to focus on one thing at a time, God is the definition of multi-tasking perfection (Microsoft, take note).  And abundant life, among other things, is learning to accept all of life while we work through every circumstance to find God behind them all.  I may not understand or even like my circumstances, but that doesn’t matter.  My job is not to understand, it is to continue working through the details in a manner worthy of God.  For the record, this only happens about a fraction of the time in my life; I desperately want to understand, and I often loudly complain about the circumstances I don’t like.

Although, I have stopped wondering about what lurks around the corner for me.  Some people don’t want to think about what may happen next, acting out a superstitious ritual that we have all participated in at some point.  You’ve dealt with one difficult thing after another and you start to ask, “What else can possibly go wrong?  It really can’t get any worse.”  Until it does, and you wish you’d never uttered those famous last words.  I’ve stopped wondering about the potential for further disaster because I know it’s going to happen, and I can not only do nothing to prevent it, but I know that the only way out is to trust God through it.  I think I’ve heard this described as “protective pessimism,” but it is reality.  The existential Life Abundant is both abundantly good and abundantly bad with no promise of good until we have transcended into the eternal Life Abundant.  We are promised peace and rest in Christ here on earth, but unadulterated goodness is only possible in God’s presence, and that promise is waiting with open arms in heaven.

1000 Page Views Day

I promised myself I would post something special about getting one thousand page views on my blog (if it ever happened, and I have never been convinced that it would).  It actually happened Thursday night, but I had a few other things written that I wanted to post first.  In case you’re wondering about page views, WordPress counts the number of times each page/post on the blog is viewed and shows them to me in glorious graph form on the “Site Stats” page.  1000 page views do not mean that 1000 people have looked at my blog; it could be the same two people clicking on it over and over again.  Realistically, 1000 views isn’t so many when some sites get more traffic than that in a day, but it doesn’t matter to me – we passed the 1000 mile marker, which is 1000 more than I ever imagined, and we should celebrate.  (Insert your version of the “Happy Dance” here – even if it looks a little weird like mine does.)

I have a sidebar that I’ve sort of wanted to post for a while, but I just haven’t gotten around to it (and it really doesn’t deserve its own post, anyway).  You may have noticed that I don’t refer to anyone directly by name, and there are two reasons for that.  First, I prefer that my family and friends retain as much of their anonymity as possible since they did not choose to write or participate in this blog (I chose it for them).  Their identities are really not a mystery to 99% of the people who read this, but at least they are not exposed to strangers on the interwebs.  Second, I try not to write directly about anyone but me, not for selfish reasons, but because I can only speak to my personal journey.  I may venture a guess at what someone else thinks or feels, but ask my husband, and he’ll tell you I’m usually wrong at reading his mind.  I will also never write specifically about work or personal relationships except in the broadest and usually most positive terms.  It’s not that those things are perfect or even perpetually positive, but those things are the domain of others and not really appropriate for web-wide consumption.  I know that there are people who blog every detail of their lives even when it includes other people, but I will not share someone else’s life for them.  And that’s about all I have to say about that. 😉

I don’t really know what I wanted to say about having 1000 page views except thank you for reading my blog.  It is very special to me to know that you are out there reading my heart, and I hope at least one thing I have written has touched you the way the knowledge of your presence touches me every day.  I know you are there because the stats keep climbing, but I am always surprised when you tell me who you are.  So, September 30 will always be 1000 Page Views Day for me.  You are cordially invited to keep reading and celebrate again with me next year.

“Some Day, When I Am Your Mother”

Some day, when I am your mother,

I will hold your hand in mine,

And we will walk together,

And you will tell me about your day.

Some day, when I am your mother,

I will sing you a song,

And we will laugh together,

And you will tell me I am old fashioned.

Some day, when I am your mother,

I will teach you how to draw,

And we will paint together,

And you will create beautiful pictures for me.

Some day, when I am your mother,

I will touch your face,

And we will smile together,

And you will show me all around heaven.

There Is No Try…

I find myself most often caught between knowledge of faith and practice of faith.  I’m also fairly certain that my practice of faith is most often an attempt to earn something from God rather than merely following where he leads.  It’s extremely difficult for me to balance verses like Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart” with Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”  Theologically, there is really no conflict there: the Psalm implies that by delighting yourself in the Lord, he becomes the desire of your heart; and Ephesians is explaining that the relationship that we can have with God comes only from his grace and our faith, so it cannot be earned.

What a worker bee like me sees instead is an if-then clause in the verse from Psalms: if I delighted more in the Lord or had more faith, then he will give me the things I long for.  And then Ephesians brings me back to reality: there is nothing I can do to earn God’s love and grace.  This can be a sticky point for most honest Christians.  We tend to think in terms of direct cause and effect.  Not only that, but we all compare ourselves to the people around us, whether good or bad.  “At least I’m not as bad as that guy,” or “Why can’t I be tall and thin and graceful like her?”  No matter what I attain to by comparing myself to someone else, nothing good ever comes of it.  In fact, it most often leads to the “life’s not fair” argument between me and God.  You know the one: you are convinced you are a better person than someone else, but they get what you want while you wonder what you did to deserve the mess you ended up with instead.  At least that’s the way it unfolds for me.  I’m always trying to figure out what I can do better, how much more I can do, how much faith I need to have to earn the life that I think I want.

For instance, I want to be a perfect wife; Proverbs 31 should describe me far more than I feel like it condemns me.  I wish I always had my house clean and ready for visitors; I wish I cooked every night for my husband; I wish I exercised and ate perfectly every day; I wish my work life was efficient and stress-free (maybe not stress-free, but a fraction of the stress it is now); I wish I could have a baby so my husband could experience that joy and love – so I could experience it, too.  Those are the little wishes.  The loftier wishes go something like this: I wish I could volunteer for everything at church; I wish had the money to donate to every organization doing good work; I wish I had the time to write full time and craft full time.  No matter what things I may wish for, I’d settle in a heartbeat for feeling absolutely secure in God’s love and purpose.  I flounder and bargain too much for that to be wholly possible right now, if ever.

Not surprisingly, God frequently reminds me to worry about the plank in my own eye rather than focusing on the sawdust in someone else’s eye.  Occasionally, that requires breaking said plank over my head before I pay attention.  Lately, though, God has been talking to me quietly about finding his desires for me, and they are far grander and far simpler than my feeble brain could comprehend before.  There are days when I can’t hear God’s voice at all, and some days it feels as though we are sitting on my couch talking like old friends.  On one of those old friend days I was sad about our last miscarriage and begging God to let us have a baby.  I heard him answer, “If that’s what you really want, but what if it’s not what I want for you?”  Could I really live with settling for something I want without knowing if it’s what God wants, too?  How many times have I blindly leaped for my own desires without knowing God’s heart?

So what does God want for me?  To have a relationship with him and to follow him.  It’s so simple that I am always throwing things in there that only complicate the plan.  I add tasks that I think will endear me to God and measure my progress: Bible reading, church attendance, volunteer time, plus all the plans I set out to accomplish like weight loss and house cleaning and work goals.  Those things are all important, but they are not the measure that God will use to judge us: whether I read my Bible every day doesn’t even begin to compare with whether or not I followed the instructions in the Bible every day.  Who cares how many times I’ve read the Bible cover to cover or how many verses I can quote if I fail to love God and to share that love with others?  I am far more obnoxious than clanging symbols and sounding brass; I am walking hypocrisy.  But to follow God in every moment is the calling of a lifetime.  To truly commune with God through every second of my life, with every fiber of my being, would be – well, it would be heaven.  But how amazing would our lives be on earth if we stopped searching for bigger pictures and false confidence through earthly comparisons and accomplishments?  How incredible must it be to know more often than not, “Who is God but the Lord?” (Psalm 18:31)  I know the answer to having more faith is not some five step acronym program; it is not to have more faith at all.  It is simply to have actionable faith, or, to borrow the Yoda quote I referenced in the title, “There is no try, only do.”

“In My Field”

Come and lie down in my field,

And tell me what you dream.

Lie down in my field,

And let your body rest between the furrows,

While your gaze rests upon the clouds.

Do you dream of adventures and fame?

Do you dream of Technicolor love?

Lie down in my field

With your bones stretched out on the earth,

With your mind floating above the sky.

Come, and tell me what your soul sees

When you lie down in my field of dreams.

**As proof that context is everything, I put two photos with this poem.  This has been floating through my head all week, and when I finally got it on paper, I started looking for a picture to post with it.  The first one, with the flower, is what you would expect, but the picture at the end (from the Alabama National Cemetery in case you wondered) fits this poem in a very different way.  It gives it a twist I wouldn’t have in the writing.  So, think of the two pictures as a choose-your-own-adventure illustration, and read it with the one you like best in mind.**

One Month from Today

I haven’t posted anything in a little over a week.  It’s been a crazy week, and I needed to drop out for a while and process; a self-imposed writer’s block (more like complete thought avoidance measures).  Today is exactly one month from the actual miscarriage, and six weeks from the day we found out we were pregnant.  Of the two weeks I was pregnant this time, one week was good and full of morning sickness and happy thoughts, the other was spent waiting for the inevitable.  The last month felt like it was a year long.

To recap the last week alone: my niece was born last Tuesday, Wednesday I hit and killed a dog with my car (that’ll be another post), Thursday I shot pictures of my honorary nephew and his beautiful mom as well as my niece coming home for the first time, Friday I picked up a cow with my mom (we each got half, and I now have about 200 pounds of beef in my freezer – yum), the weekend was full of more baby time, Monday we had to take our very sick cat to the vet where she will be until at least Friday afternoon with possible kidney failure, and the rest of the week I have battled the stomach bug.  The icing on the cake is that the next few weeks will be among the hardest for me in dealing with the miscarriage.

Believe it or not, the first few weeks are “easy” compared to what the next several weeks will entail.  I’m not sure why it is so, but I am apparently not alone: several great sources of information about grief and miscarriage point out that it can often be harder to deal with the loss around six weeks to six months afterwards.  My theory is the first few weeks are just survival, and then you get back to the daily routine over the next few weeks.  At some point you start to feel a little normal, and then it hits you that you shouldn’t feel normal at all, raising all new feelings of loss and guilt, etc.  To me, the especially difficult part of pregnancy loss is marking the milestones you’re missing.  By this week, we should have heard a heartbeat and seen a distinct baby on the ultrasound; another few weeks, and we’d be entering the second trimester.  Seeing my husband hold my niece makes my heart ache that much more with the desire to have our own baby for him to hold.  It’s so hard not to want that when you can see it right in front of you.

It is beautiful to watch my niece and her parents: their transformation from a regular couple into doting parents overnight is amazing, and I pray they keep up the good work for the rest of their lives.  I hope to be similarly amazing some day.  In the meantime, here are a few of my favorite pictures from the last week:

Conflict of Interest?

My niece will be born today.  There is a world of words fighting for expression, but that’s all I can think of immediately when I look at the otherwise blank page: my niece will be born today.  Today, I will meet the little girl we’ve been waiting for, and I will fall in love with her tiny face, her fingers and toes, her every wiggly move.  Today, my heart will break wide open at the sight of one tiny, little girl; all the things I’ve managed to keep at bay for the last few months won’t have anywhere else to go in the face of this precious little one.  Today, I will have to find feet for my faith when they only want to run the other way and cry.

This being the first grandchild in our immediate family brings a host of things to mind: we should have already done this two and a half years ago; I should have at least heard our last baby’s heartbeat by now if she weren’t gone; I’m so happy for my in-laws that they get a granddaughter to spoil; I’m going to be the best aunt ever (unless my sister ever has the opportunity); the timing couldn’t be more hurtful.  Why God saw fit to let us get pregnant and lose it just before my sister-in-law’s due date is so far beyond me, Hubble has a better chance of finding a clue.  Why couldn’t we wait another month or two (or six) to repeat the process?  Why couldn’t the process end happily just once?

I don’t want to ever greet my niece with all of the turmoil her presence stirs in me; it’s not her fault, and I know I will never really associate her with anything other than her own personhood.  It’s just hard right now to see that side of grace.  Her birth is just too wrapped up in all the fresh feelings of inadequacy I’m still fighting right now: fear that we will never have an answer, pain that we might never experience the birth of our own children, embarrassment that I failed yet again to carry to term, anger that I am at such a loss to control anything, and the list goes on.  All of those things are just too close in the rearview mirror not have a foothold in my thought pattern.  They are getting easier to vanquish, but maybe not today when faced with such a contrast of new life being born against the backdrop of my too recent loss.  It is not a simple thing to defeat the knowledge that I have brought nothing but death from my womb in spite of my biological purpose in being a woman and my spiritual calling to evidence life; I don’t feel like a life-giver.  I don’t feel like the Grim Reaper either.  I feel – I don’t know exactly what I feel – maybe jealous that I don’t yet know what my sister-in-law is experiencing today.  I know it’s not so simple as jealousy, but there are too many things swirling around it to identify, and the desire to compare our situations is overwhelming.  I certainly feel like I’ve failed my family.  Even though there is absolutely nothing I could have done to change things, that feeling is inescapable when viewing the pride and joy on my in-laws’ faces.  That’s how we all should have looked so many times by now that my head splits open when I think of the sheer volume.  How many times do we have to be disappointed before my parents, my siblings, my husband and I can share that kind of joy?

I am afraid that I will lose it at the hospital today, and I don’t know how to handle that.  I can’t not be there (I know, it’s a horrible double-negative, may the English fanatics forgive me), but I can’t be there either, not completely, not emotionally; some part of me will have to be hibernating to make it through the day at the hospital, to even be in the hospital’s maternity ward at all.  My last visit there was for a d&c, and I can still describe in intimate detail the wreath on the door of the neighboring room with blue ribbons and two doves signifying newly arrived twins.  The truly dumb thing on my part is that I am dreading dealing with the entire scenario, even though I know that God will get me through it.  I’m just not looking forward to facing it with God, and facing it without God would be unimaginably horrible.  I know he’s with me, but I don’t completely trust him enough to see today from his perspective.  I trust him enough not to hide from today, but it’s already hurting my heart.

For those of you who go to church with me, this may look familiar (and to whoever wrote the prayer guide, God had his hand on today’s message for me at least).  Two Sundays ago, everyone was given a 28 day prayer guide.  Today’s message:

“Pray to keep your eyes on Him today.  Pray that every challenge and every difficulty will pass   through His tender hands and that you will be at peace knowing He is in control.”

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change and though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains quake at its swelling pride.  The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold.  Psalm 46: 1-3, 7

So, to my dear niece: I have loved you since I knew you were on your way to the world, and I promise to love you always with the deep and abiding love of Christ.  I cannot protect you from the trials we must all endure, but I promise to be a voice of love and reason when you do face them.  I will not spoil you the way your grandparents will, but I will spoil you with the fiercest love any aunt has ever known.  And today, for a few minutes, I will wish for all the world that you were mine.

“She Has Poetry inside Her”

A note before you read: this poem is a walk on the lighter side, and the photo is one of my favorites.  I shot it outside the Alabama Theater on a weekend stay-cation with my sister.  We happened upon a ballet recital, and I fell in love with this shot with the little girl posing for her reflection in the window.  I hope you don’t find the poem too cheesy because I kind of like it, and it’s fun to read out loud.  :~)

“She Has Poetry inside Her”

 She has poetry inside her-

She is grace personified.

She has poetry inside her-

Her every move is rhyme.

Hyperbole becomes her:

Her eyes contain the sun.

Mere quatrains cannot hold her;

Syntax has met its match.

She laughs in staccato iambs;

She cries in falling meters.

Her voice is an apostrophe to beauty;

Her very smile connotes paradox.

She has poetry inside her-

Her mere expression its release.

Manna

Have you ever had one of those days where you want something, but you have no idea what that something is?  I often find myself physically hungering for something satisfying that tastes remotely like water crackers and milk and honey; I can’t even describe the taste because I’ve never experienced a taste like it.  Maybe that comes from years of an overactive imagination trying to process what manna must have tasted like.  I feel sure that if I were ever party to some Indiana Jones search for the Ark of the Covenant, the thing I would be most interested in is the jar of manna.  What did it look like?  What did it taste like?  Something to look forward to knowing in heaven, I guess.

The word manna is actually Hebrew for “what is it,” which is apparently what the Israelites wondered when God sent it to them for food.  It wasn’t meat or bread or fruit, it was what-is-it.  About once a week (maybe more if I’m dieting…) I crave what-is-it.  But I never bother to look for some kind of food that will taste like what-is-it because I know I won’t ever find it on earth.  That what-is-it longing is just my taste buds yearning for heaven in a way I haven’t learned to do with all my heart yet.  There must be some balance to fully living each moment while waiting for heaven and the perfect love and justice and peace that come with it.  After losing five babies, it is easier to see that life is extremely temporary and should be treasured as such, but it’s also easier to want to be in heaven where I can see the glorified bodies I never got to hold on earth.  Not to worry that I plan to shuck off the mortal coil anytime soon – it’s just learning to balance another weird dichotomy of living on a temporal plane while always watching and waiting for eternity.