Happy Friday!

It's been a long week.  I won't say it's been a necessarily tough week, but it's definitely been long.  Returning to work after a holiday weekend is always hard.  It's ten times harder when you worked most of that "holiday" weekend.  After returning to work I thought things were going fairly well, then I started feeling "off".  I was crazy emotional and felt the urge to cry at the drop of a hat.  This is not usual for me; far from it in fact.  As most of you who have been following this blog for the past year know, Mr. Darcy and I have been trying to get pregnant for almost 2 years now.  Feeling strangely hormonal can indicate that a woman is pregnant.  Being the logical creature that I am, a small tiny hope crept into my mind - "What if this is it??".

Then, two days into my week, by basal body temperature dropped.  For those of you who are not familiar with fertility and how a woman's body works, a drop in your basal body temperature towards the ends of a woman's menstrual cycle is usually a sign that any egg that was released was not fertilized and the uterus should start shedding it's lining in preparation for the next cycle.  This is not good news for someone who is trying to conceive and is hoping they are pregnant.  My ever hopeful self desperately hoped that the drop was a fluke and that the next day my temps would be back up and I could still possibly be pregnant.  Tuesday was filled with more hormonal ridiculousness - headaches, nausea, high levels of emotions.  Wednesday morning my temp was down again.  It was a sure thing now.  All hope of being pregnant was completely gone.  All there was to do now was wait for this cycle to end and the next one to start.  The headache and crazy emotions hung around.

Thursday morning I woke up to a searing headache and another drop in temperature.  By this point I knew the headache was hormone related and all I could do was wait until my cycle started and hope the hormones would balance out.  I took the first half of the day off so I could rest.  While resting, I decided I had had enough of letting my body run my life.  I got up, got dressed, and went to work.  It was a slow day at the office and most of my clients ended up cancelling their appointments any way.  By the end of the work day my headache had subsided substantially and I decided to go ahead and go running as planned.  Physical exercise can help balance your hormones, and I was hoping it would help with mine.  Plus, I have been running consistently now for that past 7 weeks and I was determined to not let anything get in the way of my continuing this, including feeling crappy. (Side note: I ran my first 5k on Thanksgiving morning.  I actually ran 2/3 of the course and was super proud of myself for doing it.  Big shout out to my wonderful husband who pushed me to do it).

So, after work yesterday, I went running.  As I started running, I began to feel better.  I hit a mile and barely felt winded, so I kept going.  I kept going until I had done 2 miles, and when I finished I realized I had shaved 30 seconds off my mile time.  As I was running, I focused on pushing through everything I had experienced this week.  As my feet pounded the track, I imagined pounding into the ground all my frustration, all my fears, all my sorrows.  Got a headache - pound, pound, pound.  Feel like a weepy, weak lump of a person - pound, pound, pound.  Still not pregnant - pound, pound, pound.  I will keep going - pound, pound, pound.  I refuse to be a sad, mopey wreck of a person - pound, pound, pound.  I will fight to be the best version of me I can be - pound, pound, pound.

After my running/therapy session, I went home feeling super proud of myself and physically feeling much better.  With the mental clarity that running brings, I found myself laughing at the humor in the long week.  I don't know about any of you, but, when I'm tired or hormonal, some really silly things happen.  So, despite the fact that this week was a long week, there were some really funny moments.  Maybe you can relate to some of these:

It might have been a long day if you hear Dean Martin sing "Rudy the red-beaked reindeer" as something entirely different, and then realize with a sigh of relief that a song that old could not really be that inappropriate.

You might be crazy hormonal if you find yourself getting weepy-eyed over the words to "Hark the Herald Angels Sing".  That is a happy song, right?!?

It might have been a long week if you find yourself laughing gleefully and doing a little jig when your last client of the day calls 30 minutes before their appointment to say they are not coming.

You *might* have run away hormones if, while watching a documentary about Arctic animals, you start crying uncontrollably when a baby beluga whale is stranded on a beach and might die, and then what to cheer madly when the tide comes just in time to rescue him.

You might have had a long week and/or be hormonal if all you can think about is getting home to gorge yourself on chocolate and ice cream.  Don't worry, I didn't do this, but it was mostly due to not having enough time to do it, rather than any great amount of self-control. :)

If you have no idea what I am talking about and have never experienced any of those things, well, at least you get to laugh at my awkward moments in life.  And now, the long week is almost over.  I have 3 days of rehearsals and a production at the end of the weekend to look forward to, and then this super long, super hormonal week will be over.  I then get to have more long weeks with, I'm sure, their own hurdles to get over.  However, as long as those weeks offer me more humorous opportunities to laugh at myself, I will be doing well.  Happy Friday, everyone!!  I hope your weekends are a celebration of rest and relaxation from whatever your week brought you. :)

Mother's Day - A Week Late

Last week was Mother's Day.  I didn't really put much thought into it until the day arrived, and then the feelings and emotions came flooding in like a tidal wave.  When you've had a miscarriage, the rest of the world doesn't really consider you a mother. Sometimes, I find myself wondering if I really consider myself as having been a mother.  It's confusing, and painful.  It's complicated because not everyone knows that you had a miscarriage.  It's frustrating because you want to talk about certain things but you can't do it without addressing the miscarriage.  When other's find out they feel awkward around you and don't seem to know how to respond.  When I think about it, I feel guilty that I am confused and don't know what I really think or feel about it.  On the one hand, to not acknowledge that I carried a life inside me for at least 5 weeks seems to devalue the life that I carried.  On the other hand, I feel as though I don't deserve to be called a mom because I didn't finish my race, I didn't complete the course.  It's terrible.  I'm stuck in this strange limbo land that I can't really navigate.

At church, they asked all the mothers to stand so they could honor them.  I couldn't bring myself to do it, even after my wonderful Mr. Darcy urged me to.  I just couldn't stand up.  I felt that standing up would have been more of an embarrassment than an honor.  I felt ashamed that I didn't have any physical proof to let others know I had experienced the joy of being a mother for a brief moment.  And then the sadness came flooding back, and I could feel the loss as though it was yesterday.  The ache was just as painful and the tears came just as readily as they did 5 months ago.

The grief surprised me, and then made me feel ridiculous.  Society tells us over and over that the bundle of cells growing inside a pregnant woman is not really a child until it is born.  If this is true, then the loss of that bundle should not be grieved because it's nothing of consequence.  While this theory might make some women feel better about ending their pregnancies or choosing to not bring a new life into the world, it also serves to shame those of us who have lost a child unwillingly and are grieved by the loss.  It makes us feel as though the pain and the loss we feel is silly, unwarranted, or somehow ridiculous.  The message is that we are just experiencing a hormonal rash of emotions that are not based on any sort of logic, and, therefore, are not legitimate.  The truth is, our bodies were created to bring forth life, and when, in the process of bringing forth life, our bodies fail, we experience death.  Death is a loss.  Death causes grief.  I did not lose a bundle of cells that I could or could not have lived without.  I lost a life that I dearly loved and desperately wanted to experience.  That loss causes me grief as a woman, as a wife, as a mother.  That grief should not cause me to feel ridiculous.

I know last week was Mother's Day, but I would like to take a moment to acknowledge all those women out there who have carried a life and lost it before they had the chance to hold it in their arms and watch it grow.  The world may not acknowledge us as mothers, but I think it takes the love of a mother to grieve over a lost child, to remember the life that was.  You may not have gotten any cards telling you what a great mom you are.  There may not have been any gifts from tiny hands wanting to express the love they have for you, but, I thought of you, and I want to honor you for road you walked, the sacrifices you made, the love you gave to your child.  Happy Mother's Day!

What is Life?

What is this thing we call life?   What does it mean?  Why is it so unpredictable, always twisting and turning so that it is difficult to know what it's true purpose is?  I'm writing these questions, and, yet, there is a part of me that doesn't actually care.  My thoughts?  Why waste energy on trying to understand that which is incomprehensible?  Of course, I don't really feel that way, but some part of me does, at least a little.  I always say to Mr. Darcy, "If I could just understand it, then I would be ok with it."  In so many ways that is true, but in so many others it is not.  Or perhaps it's that I have learned there are so many things in this life that I cannot and never will be able to comprehend, so I know that I will never truly be ok with all things.  I don't know.  My head hurts from thinking about it and pondering all the what if's and why's, yet, my desire to understand is not satiated. 

I'm a bit of a mess at the moment, in case you missed it.  My life feels like a vast unknown wilderness that just keeps spreading out in front of me, bringing new meaning to the terms loneliness, desperation, emptiness, and loss.  While I feel so overwhelmed at times, there is this odd steadiness, in the depths of me, that can't seem to be shaken.  I joked to a friend a few weeks ago that I feel like Job from the Old Testament, except that I still have my sense of humor.  I cannot see that there is any hope of an approaching dawn, but something on the inside of me knows it will come.  I do not know where my next footsteps will take me, but I am sure I will arrive at wherever it is I am destined to land.  How strange is this dark, wandering existence I am currently apart of.  I cry, I hurt, I grieve, and still I can laugh, can enjoy, can hope.  I feel like the ultimate dichotomy, but I am still functioning.  Life!  What the heck do I make of it?!?!?

I am truly at a loss for how to make heads or tails of what is happening in my life right now.  I am equally at a loss in knowing how it will affect my future.  Yet, somehow, for the first time in my life, I am tired and weary of the worrying and fretting, and I am content to just ride the storm through.  I have no idea how I will get through this time, I have no idea if I am doing it right or wrong, and I don't really care.  I am finding that what I care most about during this season is living well.  What I mean by that is living with the intention and purpose of doing my best in each area, being pleasing to the God who is ever beside me and always faithful, learning to take each moment and live it to its absolute fullest - be that the fullest depth of suffering, the fullest depth of joy, the fullest depth of sorrow, the fullest depth of knowledge.  I want to experience life, really experience it, and learn and grow from it.  I want to come out of this experience knowing that I have changed, I have traded some of the dark, terrible pieces of who I am for something more wonderful, more reflective of the One who is working on me and in me.

I know that life is a journey and that each person must travel the journey laid out for them.  I just hope that as I am traveling my road, taking my journey, that I am doing it with grace and strength.  I hope that when I finish this journey I will not look back and see the way behind me is filled with more regret and brokenness than it is hope and grace.  No journey is complete without both good and bad; My hope is that, in the end, the balance created by the two will equal a life well-lived.

To My Baby

I never knew you, but I did.

I never met you, but spent time with you.

I never had the chance to hold you, but I carried you.

There are so many things about you that I never got to know – the color of your hair and eyes, the joy of your smile, the facets of your personality

But there are so many things I do know about you – you don’t like sugar; it makes you sick.  And you inherited my passion for hamburgers and Rueben sandwiches.

You kept me up at night and gave the term “aches and pains” a whole new meaning.

You made my skin look great, made each new day a wonder to experience, and softened my heart to everything.

You would have been mischievous and curious, like your parents, no doubt,

And we would have loved you fiercely and unconditionally.

I can hardly believe the short time I had with you is already gone, but I am forever changed by my brief encounter with you. 

You gave us hope and joy beyond belief. 

You gave us the wonder of creating life and watching it grow inside me. 

What an unbelievable miracle you made us a part of!

Your departure made us grieve and experience loss at a whole new level.

You left me with a giant hole in my heart, but I’m not so sure I want to fill it.

There is no way to replace you; there is only grief to bear

But the sadness is a reminder of the blessing you were

And that is not something I want to forget.

I’ll wear the scar of your loss always, just as my heart is forever changed by the love you awakened in me.