It's that time of year again, or it soon will be, and already there are hundreds if not thousands of charities asking for your help this holiday season. The spirit of giving is especially intense around Christmas, and it seems like people are more willing to part with their cash this time of year for a good cause or even a marginal one. This may make me sound selfish, but I have a problem with some of the requests for donations that I encounter. I'd like to think it's due to discernment, but maybe it's just me being overly critical. Hear me out and let me know what you think.
When we lived in Tennessee, one of my favorite holiday activities was going to the Angel Tree in the mall (or WalMart, or wherever) and choosing a wish or several from the tree. The Angel Tree was a collaboration by several agencies whereby they collected Christmas gift requests from underprivileged children, and people from the community would buy gifts to fulfill the requests. I'm sure there are similar programs all over the country. I liked taking my girls with me and letting each one choose an angel to shop for. My hope was that the kids would get a taste of the joy of giving and possibly even gain a little appreciation for all their own blessings. When I first started doing this, the wishes I found were things like Barbie dolls, new pajamas, warm socks, Matchbox cars, Legos - simple things, and easy ones to add to my usual Christmas shopping.
But in the last few years I've noticed a disturbing trend, and here's where I'm confused/frustrated/insert appropriate word here. And one more disclaimer: maybe I'm just not looking in the right place for wish lists. More and more of these gift requests include really expensive toys and gadgets that I don't even buy for my own kids. Case in point: a friend's department at work decided to adopt a family for Christmas and one of the children requested an mp3 player AND a CD player. Either one is not enough by itself? Am I the only one turned off by a wish from an underprivileged child that lists "extra controllers and games for my PlayStation 3" or "4th generation iPod Touch 16 GB" or "PowerWheels Jeep" among the things they want for Christmas? What happened to baby dolls and Monopoly games? Am I so old now that I'm out of touch? Do these kids have so many other things to play with that the only things they really lack are expensive toys and gadgets? And if that last one is true, do they really qualify as needy? Are there people who submit their children's names for programs like the Angel Tree out of greed? (Boy, do I sound like a Grinch! I prefer "skeptic", thank you very much. :-) Better yet, "discerning".)
One year I actually volunteered with the group who ran the Angel Tree system and I was bowled over by the number of cards we sorted for the trees. Each card represented one child and his or her wishes for Christmas. I remember thinking that surely there couldn't be that many children in our area who were destined to get no gifts for Christmas unless someone chose their name off the Angel Tree. I'm sure that many of the children represented fell into that category, but surely there were many others who did not. And maybe I'm just out of touch with reality, safely ensconced here in my middle class suburban home.
And who decides which kids are "needy" enough to earn space on the Angel Tree anyway? Does anyone verify the information? One year my family was painfully embarrassed to find out that my little brother had received gifts through the Angel Tree. We never did find out who submitted his name and a wish list (that he didn't write, by the way), but our family was doing just fine financially and my brother definitely didn't need any extra gifts for Christmas that year. We couldn't help thinking that someone else could have taken more joy in those presents, and maybe there was someone who didn't get anything at all who would have be thrilled to get them.
So I'm ready to give this year, but is it wrong of me to be cautious about where, how and to whom? I think it's part of being a good steward to give where it can do the most good, so how am I supposed to determine that? How do I separate real need from grasping greed? I know I'm not supposed to give because I expect something (for instance, gratitude) in return and I don't think I do expect anything back. I would just like the satisfaction of knowing that I provided something that was needed and necessary and not just extra fluff. Something useful. To paraphrase Jerry Maguire, "Show me the need!" But here's another situation to muddy the waters even more:
Our church is giving turkeys and accompaniments for Thanksgiving dinner to needy families in the community, something we've done for the past few years. Do we ask for an income statement? No. Is it possible that some people may come and get free food even though they don't really need it in the way I might define "need" (as in, there would be no Thanksgiving dinner otherwise, only PB&J, not "I'll just take the money I would have spent on Thanksgiving dinner and spend it on something else instead")? It's possible. Does that keep me from donating to this event? Not a bit. I figure if someone shows up to collect a free meal, the very fact that they used their time and effort to come means they need something, even if it's not only the free food. Maybe they just need to know that someone cares enough to give them something, no strings attached.
Some situations are clearer than others. Kids in Haiti living in tent cities? Needy. Kids in the US wearing designer jeans and carrying iPhones? You'd think Not Needy, but how do you know for sure? Let's just say Probably Not Needy. Kids living in homeless shelters? Probably Needy. Kids living in my neighborhood? Probably Not Needy, but again, how do you know for sure? They may have parents out of a job and a home on the verge of foreclosure. I guess "probably" will have to do. Ultimately I know I need to share what God's given to me and let Him worry about whether or not a child is truly in need of what I'm giving. But I don't think that excuses me from examining a situation and praying about it instead of jumping in blindly.
One final thought - if I go to the Angel Tree and I see a child's wish for an iPad 2, I'll be leaving that one on the tree and taking the one for pajamas instead. :-)
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Speeding Along
I got caught. There are no two ways about it: I got caught red-handed. Or red-footed. Or lead-footed, more like. And it's my own fault.I was on the way to the grocery store on Sunday afternoon, traveling down a road I use constantly, and I noticed a police officer monitoring the speed of passing cars. I slowed down when I saw him and told myself that I'd better remember that on my way home or I might be in trouble. Sure enough, on my way home I had forgotten all about the officer lying in wait and I was motoring along and singing with the radio when I noticed the flashing blue lights in my rear view mirror. All of a sudden I remembered what I'd seen on my way to the store.
The officer was nice enough, I was duly chastened, and as if it wasn't bad enough to get a speeding ticket (51 in a 35 zone, in case you're wondering), I also got a citation for not having current proof of insurance in my car!
I take full responsibility for my ticket - I own it and I earned it. My sweet husband could have had any number of snarky responses but he chose to give grace (though I'm sure I'll be teased about it many times in the future). The simple fact is there's a law and whether I meant to or not, I broke it. The police officer was just doing his job to enforce the law.
The road I was on is a shortcut from my neighborhood to a shopping area. I travel it almost daily, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day, and I've never paid attention to the speed limit signs. If pressed I would have guessed a 40 mph limit maybe. And if I'd paid attention to what I was doing I might have noticed that I was going pretty fast, even if I was right about it being a 40 mph zone. Now, speeding has become one of those little things that people, some Christians included, tend to brush off as no big deal. But the very fact that I slowed down when I saw that police officer tells me that I knew I was doing something I wasn't supposed to be doing. And here's the thing: I didn't even pay any attention to my speed on that road. I wasn't worried at all about whether or not I was breaking the law by speeding. I was just driving at what felt like a comfortable speed for me. Was I hurting anyone by speeding? Well, maybe not at that particular moment, but if I'd had to stop suddenly my added speed could have made a dramatic difference.
It's so easy to get into the habit of doing what feels comfortable, even if it's not always the right thing. It's like some part of me is tapping on my shoulder and whispering in my ear, "Psst! Are you sure you should be doing that?" and I've gotten so used to tuning it out that I don't even hear it anymore. And then I got caught. And if it hadn't been for that nice officer so pleasantly (and expensively) pointing it out to me, I probably would have kept right on speeding down that road (and many, many others). I was always taught that Christians are to obey the law of the land unless it contradicts or conflicts with God's word or law, which I suppose makes my speeding a sin. Ouch!
So it got me to thinking: how many other "roads" am I continuing to speed down, just because I haven't been caught yet? You know, other sins work that way too. Little sins don't seem like a big deal because no one seems to be getting hurt, but they'll eventually catch up with us in the end. Or we sin by "accident" because we're just not paying attention to the signs around us or what we're doing. It gets to be a habit, just going along doing what we want because we're either unaware, don't think it really matters, or just don't care about doing what's right. But it does matter, because our hearts can get hardened by continually slapping duct tape across that still small voice that tries to steer us in the right direction. And while breaking the law by speeding seems like a small sin, as Christians we know there is no hierarchy of sin - they're all equal in God's eyes. Harsh? Maybe. True? Definitely.
This has been a humbling experience for me, partly because I've been one of those who thought speeding was no big deal and I've had to ask forgiveness for that. I've had to explain myself to my children and let them see that Mommy messed up and now will have to pay (literally!) the consequences for it. I've explained to them that it's important to do the right thing even if no one is watching and there's no fear of getting caught.
Here's hoping this is my final speeding ticket.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Out of Control: Part 7
In February 2003 I had a D & C to "complete" a miscarriage, which turned out to be my final pregnancy. It took a few months for me to work through the worst of the grieving process and start thinking about what to do next. Once again, I was figuring out my own plan and not relying on God or anyone else, or so I thought.
And then two things happened in my life that fall into the category of "before/after events". By that I mean the kind of life-altering events where your life gets divided into before and after. Either of these things alone could have brought me to my knees, but together they forced me to take a good hard look at myself.
The first one happened in the middle of May. Jon was out driving Dana to a concert band event on a sunny afternoon, when my mother called to tell me that my 3-month-old nephew had died. You see, while I was busy dealing with my latest miscarriage, my brother and his wife had welcomed their second child, Andrew. I had only seen him in pictures because so far we hadn't been able to coordinate our life schedules and meet up. And if I'm going to be totally honest, there may have been a part of me that was a bit jealous that they had a baby while I had a D & C, and I just wasn't ready to deal with it. Andrew died in his sleep in what was initially believed to be a case of SIDS, but turned out to be a tragic accident ultimately caused by all four family members napping in the same bed. We went to the funeral and it was the saddest one I have ever attended. I am convinced that it goes against all of nature for a parent to have to bury a child, especially one who had barely even begun to live.
Then less than two months later, on July 1, our telephone rang at 2:30 in the morning and before I even picked it up, I knew I was going to hear something I didn't want to hear. I mean, who calls with good news at 2:30 in the morning? My stepfather, who had raised me since I was 6 years old, had passed away from a sudden and massive heart attack. My mother, who had built her life around his and was still reeling from Andrew's death, was devastated. For quite a while, having another baby was not even on my radar. But the double losses of Andrew and my stepdad did make me step back and think about where my life was going and how I was using my time and energy. At the time we weren't exactly trying to get pregnant, but we weren't preventing it either.
Somewhere around October of that year, I saw a notice that the adoption agency we originally filed our paperwork with in 2000 (before abruptly canceling a week later, when I found out I was pregnant) was having an informational meeting about adoption in November. In fact, it might have even been a notice in our church bulletin that we saw. Jon and I talked about it and decided to go check it out, just in case the pregnancy thing didn't work out.
The night of the meeting we pulled up at a local bed and breakfast we'd never been to before and went inside. For some reason, I felt so conspicuous! But inside there were several other couples like us, representatives from the adoption agency, and couples who had already adopted. We listened to all the presentations and perused the information packet, and then the speakers brought out their own children, who had been adopted from the US and other countries. Once we saw the kids, we were hooked! We spoke to a social worker named Pam, who later did our home study, and told her how disappointed we were that we couldn't adopt from China, because that would have been our first choice. And then (raise your hand if you know where I'm going with this) she told me that China had recently changed their adoption requirements and we were now eligible! We were already making plans as we walked to the car that night and I couldn't wait to get started on the paperwork. Finally, something we could do and KNOW that at the end of the process, we would have a child.
As out of control as I felt trying to get (and stay) pregnant, I was not prepared for the lack of control I felt during the adoption process. In one case I was at the mercy of nature and my own body, but in the other I was at the mercy of various governmental agencies and the US Postal Service. I'm not sure which is worse. There are a LOT of hoops to jump through in order to adopt internationally. Your own country has to approve you, then the country you're adopting from has to approve you, and you're dropping dollars all along the way. You need a home study, which can be as intrusive as... well, a thorough (and I do mean thorough) physical exam. And you have to have one of those too, by the way. In a home study, a licensed social worker comes to visit your home, interview you, and determine if you are fit to raise a child. And before you even get to the home study part, you have to complete mountains of forms relating to your physical and financial health, and write an autobiography. All of this is sent to the social worker who will be conducting your home study and becomes part of your dossier. Our social worker Pam was herself the parent of a daughter from China and was a dream to work with, having been through the process herself. Once you get over the home study hurdle, you (and all the adults living in your household) have to get fingerprinted and file some ten thousand forms with the US government. OK, it wasn't really ten thousand, but it was a lot. At the time I was very thankful for all the things I had to do because I didn't have time to lay around and feel sorry for myself. All of those (ten thousand) forms must be notarized, copied and authenticated by several government agencies, and you become best buddies with your local FedEx drivers because you're always either waiting for a package or sending one out.
And let's talk about the cost. International adoptions usually cost over $20,000 and in some cases, way more. Jon's company had an adoption assistance program in place that would reimburse up to $4,000 of adoption costs once the adoption was complete. It wasn't much, but every little bit helps. It just so happened that while we were in the process of getting all our paperwork together, Jon went to the Human Resources department at his company to inquire about how to use the adoption assistance program. The person Jon spoke to told him that no one had ever used the program before, and since it was time for the company's annual benefits enrollment, he was going to propose that they DOUBLE the amount reimbursed. And they did. Can you believe that? In addition, the US government had a tax credit in place for adoptive parents whereby you could get up to $10,000 in tax credits during the year your adoption is final. Basically, $18,000 of our adoption costs were reimbursed and we ended up paying about $2,000 out of pocket. That's practically unheard of in the adoption world!
A lot of other things just seemingly fell into place during the adoption process too. I started to get the sense that if I would just step out of the way and let go, God would handle everything that needed handling. That's kind of anticlimactic, but there it is. I could only do what I could do, and beyond that I had no control. That's a concept both devastating and freeing all at once.
So in a fast 6 months, we had all our paperwork completed and sent to the placing agency, which happened to be in Colorado. The placing agency would then send our dossier of paperwork to China, where it would be logged in and we would be given a Log-In Date, or LID. That LID is very important because that's how the CCAA (China's adoption agency) will group you to match you to a child. Our paperwork went to Colorado in June, so we expected a June LID. You can imagine my frustration when I found out that our paperwork sat around at the agency for a couple of weeks before getting sent to China. At the time, referrals were coming back around 8 months from LID, and the delay just meant that we would be one month later getting our baby.
The internet is a powerful tool and can be a constructive or destructive force. In our case, it was a blessing. There is a huge online community of adoptive parents and parents in the process of adopting from China, and there was a wealth of information out there. I joined an email group (or four) and settled in for the wait. Oh, how I loathe waiting! There was nothing I could do to speed things up at all, so I spent my days reading emails from all my groups. In between downloading new emails, I concentrated on getting our home ready for the new arrival and started experiencing the sweet sensation of knowing it's all in God's hands.
Because of the availability of information online, I was able to keep track of when referrals came in to our agency from China and therefore had a very good idea of when to expect that oh so important phone call. In fact, I set up our video camera so I could record myself taking the call. On January 7, 2005, our phone rang with the news that we had been matched with a little girl named Min Fu Ya, age 7 months. It was just over 5 1/2 months from our LID, one of the shortest waits on record (beginning with February 2005, referrals started slowing down and the current wait for a referral from China is 3-4 years). In February 2005, we traveled to China to bring our little girl home. (That trip is a whole other story, which I won't go into right now.)
Now, it hasn't been all gumdrops and roses since then, for sure. But I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God chose this child for our family. So many of the circumstances surrounding our adoption made it clear to me. The feeling of peace and completeness that came over me when they put her into my arms for the first time could have come from no one but Him. It was like someone had put the last piece in a jigsaw puzzle and I could finally see the whole picture.
I don't know why I had to go through those miscarriages, but after the dust had settled somewhat I remembered an earlier time when I realized just how little control I have over my life. In 1992 I was divorced from my first husband, which left me the single mother of a 3 1/2 year old little girl. I didn't ask for the divorce and I didn't want it, but there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. The only thing I could do was trust God and move forward.
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a little bit of a control freak. But in reality I'm not in control of ANYTHING. I know this now. Any control I have is an illusion God allows me to have. When it comes to problems there is exactly one thing I can control: whether I try to fix it myself, or lay it at God's feet and trust Him to fix it. I have to believe that the hard things I've gone through happened for a reason, if for no other reason than so I can hold the hand of someone else who's dealing with the same things. That's not to say that I believe God caused my miscarriages to happen. We live in a sinful world and sometimes bad things just happen. People get hurt through no fault of their own. Life is not fair. You can lay down and moan about it for the rest of your life or you can get back up, dust yourself off, fix your eyes on the Father, and trust Him to make something good out of the bad. Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that in all things" (not some things) "God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." I once heard a pastor say that our job is not to work out the good, but to love God and stay called. I would also add, "and stay out of His way."
So why write all this down? Frankly, it helps to talk about it. And maybe, just maybe, someone else can find some comfort in my story. I lived through it and can now look back with a different perspective. Infertility is not the end of the world, although it may feel that way when you're in the middle of it. You are not a failure in any way if your body cannot make and/or carry a baby. A miscarriage is a loss (so is infertility, for that matter), and all too often it's a loss that only the parents grieve, either because no one else knows about it or it's just not discussed. One thing I want people to take away from this series of posts is that there is no shame in being unable to reproduce. There IS sadness, and you might be able to make someone's journey a little bit easier if you offer them a little compassion instead of acting like it's no big deal.
The other thing I want people to take away is that there is great freedom in giving up the illusion of control over our lives. God already knows what my future holds and He knows how to best prepare me for it. Working the plan is pointless unless it's God's plan and not my own. His plans are infinitely better than anything I can think up. The best thing I can do is look to Him for guidance and trust Him to lead me in the right direction.
Now, on to other subjects. :-)
And then two things happened in my life that fall into the category of "before/after events". By that I mean the kind of life-altering events where your life gets divided into before and after. Either of these things alone could have brought me to my knees, but together they forced me to take a good hard look at myself.
The first one happened in the middle of May. Jon was out driving Dana to a concert band event on a sunny afternoon, when my mother called to tell me that my 3-month-old nephew had died. You see, while I was busy dealing with my latest miscarriage, my brother and his wife had welcomed their second child, Andrew. I had only seen him in pictures because so far we hadn't been able to coordinate our life schedules and meet up. And if I'm going to be totally honest, there may have been a part of me that was a bit jealous that they had a baby while I had a D & C, and I just wasn't ready to deal with it. Andrew died in his sleep in what was initially believed to be a case of SIDS, but turned out to be a tragic accident ultimately caused by all four family members napping in the same bed. We went to the funeral and it was the saddest one I have ever attended. I am convinced that it goes against all of nature for a parent to have to bury a child, especially one who had barely even begun to live.
Then less than two months later, on July 1, our telephone rang at 2:30 in the morning and before I even picked it up, I knew I was going to hear something I didn't want to hear. I mean, who calls with good news at 2:30 in the morning? My stepfather, who had raised me since I was 6 years old, had passed away from a sudden and massive heart attack. My mother, who had built her life around his and was still reeling from Andrew's death, was devastated. For quite a while, having another baby was not even on my radar. But the double losses of Andrew and my stepdad did make me step back and think about where my life was going and how I was using my time and energy. At the time we weren't exactly trying to get pregnant, but we weren't preventing it either.
Somewhere around October of that year, I saw a notice that the adoption agency we originally filed our paperwork with in 2000 (before abruptly canceling a week later, when I found out I was pregnant) was having an informational meeting about adoption in November. In fact, it might have even been a notice in our church bulletin that we saw. Jon and I talked about it and decided to go check it out, just in case the pregnancy thing didn't work out.
The night of the meeting we pulled up at a local bed and breakfast we'd never been to before and went inside. For some reason, I felt so conspicuous! But inside there were several other couples like us, representatives from the adoption agency, and couples who had already adopted. We listened to all the presentations and perused the information packet, and then the speakers brought out their own children, who had been adopted from the US and other countries. Once we saw the kids, we were hooked! We spoke to a social worker named Pam, who later did our home study, and told her how disappointed we were that we couldn't adopt from China, because that would have been our first choice. And then (raise your hand if you know where I'm going with this) she told me that China had recently changed their adoption requirements and we were now eligible! We were already making plans as we walked to the car that night and I couldn't wait to get started on the paperwork. Finally, something we could do and KNOW that at the end of the process, we would have a child.
As out of control as I felt trying to get (and stay) pregnant, I was not prepared for the lack of control I felt during the adoption process. In one case I was at the mercy of nature and my own body, but in the other I was at the mercy of various governmental agencies and the US Postal Service. I'm not sure which is worse. There are a LOT of hoops to jump through in order to adopt internationally. Your own country has to approve you, then the country you're adopting from has to approve you, and you're dropping dollars all along the way. You need a home study, which can be as intrusive as... well, a thorough (and I do mean thorough) physical exam. And you have to have one of those too, by the way. In a home study, a licensed social worker comes to visit your home, interview you, and determine if you are fit to raise a child. And before you even get to the home study part, you have to complete mountains of forms relating to your physical and financial health, and write an autobiography. All of this is sent to the social worker who will be conducting your home study and becomes part of your dossier. Our social worker Pam was herself the parent of a daughter from China and was a dream to work with, having been through the process herself. Once you get over the home study hurdle, you (and all the adults living in your household) have to get fingerprinted and file some ten thousand forms with the US government. OK, it wasn't really ten thousand, but it was a lot. At the time I was very thankful for all the things I had to do because I didn't have time to lay around and feel sorry for myself. All of those (ten thousand) forms must be notarized, copied and authenticated by several government agencies, and you become best buddies with your local FedEx drivers because you're always either waiting for a package or sending one out.
And let's talk about the cost. International adoptions usually cost over $20,000 and in some cases, way more. Jon's company had an adoption assistance program in place that would reimburse up to $4,000 of adoption costs once the adoption was complete. It wasn't much, but every little bit helps. It just so happened that while we were in the process of getting all our paperwork together, Jon went to the Human Resources department at his company to inquire about how to use the adoption assistance program. The person Jon spoke to told him that no one had ever used the program before, and since it was time for the company's annual benefits enrollment, he was going to propose that they DOUBLE the amount reimbursed. And they did. Can you believe that? In addition, the US government had a tax credit in place for adoptive parents whereby you could get up to $10,000 in tax credits during the year your adoption is final. Basically, $18,000 of our adoption costs were reimbursed and we ended up paying about $2,000 out of pocket. That's practically unheard of in the adoption world!
A lot of other things just seemingly fell into place during the adoption process too. I started to get the sense that if I would just step out of the way and let go, God would handle everything that needed handling. That's kind of anticlimactic, but there it is. I could only do what I could do, and beyond that I had no control. That's a concept both devastating and freeing all at once.
So in a fast 6 months, we had all our paperwork completed and sent to the placing agency, which happened to be in Colorado. The placing agency would then send our dossier of paperwork to China, where it would be logged in and we would be given a Log-In Date, or LID. That LID is very important because that's how the CCAA (China's adoption agency) will group you to match you to a child. Our paperwork went to Colorado in June, so we expected a June LID. You can imagine my frustration when I found out that our paperwork sat around at the agency for a couple of weeks before getting sent to China. At the time, referrals were coming back around 8 months from LID, and the delay just meant that we would be one month later getting our baby.
The internet is a powerful tool and can be a constructive or destructive force. In our case, it was a blessing. There is a huge online community of adoptive parents and parents in the process of adopting from China, and there was a wealth of information out there. I joined an email group (or four) and settled in for the wait. Oh, how I loathe waiting! There was nothing I could do to speed things up at all, so I spent my days reading emails from all my groups. In between downloading new emails, I concentrated on getting our home ready for the new arrival and started experiencing the sweet sensation of knowing it's all in God's hands.
Because of the availability of information online, I was able to keep track of when referrals came in to our agency from China and therefore had a very good idea of when to expect that oh so important phone call. In fact, I set up our video camera so I could record myself taking the call. On January 7, 2005, our phone rang with the news that we had been matched with a little girl named Min Fu Ya, age 7 months. It was just over 5 1/2 months from our LID, one of the shortest waits on record (beginning with February 2005, referrals started slowing down and the current wait for a referral from China is 3-4 years). In February 2005, we traveled to China to bring our little girl home. (That trip is a whole other story, which I won't go into right now.)
Now, it hasn't been all gumdrops and roses since then, for sure. But I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God chose this child for our family. So many of the circumstances surrounding our adoption made it clear to me. The feeling of peace and completeness that came over me when they put her into my arms for the first time could have come from no one but Him. It was like someone had put the last piece in a jigsaw puzzle and I could finally see the whole picture.
I don't know why I had to go through those miscarriages, but after the dust had settled somewhat I remembered an earlier time when I realized just how little control I have over my life. In 1992 I was divorced from my first husband, which left me the single mother of a 3 1/2 year old little girl. I didn't ask for the divorce and I didn't want it, but there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. The only thing I could do was trust God and move forward.
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a little bit of a control freak. But in reality I'm not in control of ANYTHING. I know this now. Any control I have is an illusion God allows me to have. When it comes to problems there is exactly one thing I can control: whether I try to fix it myself, or lay it at God's feet and trust Him to fix it. I have to believe that the hard things I've gone through happened for a reason, if for no other reason than so I can hold the hand of someone else who's dealing with the same things. That's not to say that I believe God caused my miscarriages to happen. We live in a sinful world and sometimes bad things just happen. People get hurt through no fault of their own. Life is not fair. You can lay down and moan about it for the rest of your life or you can get back up, dust yourself off, fix your eyes on the Father, and trust Him to make something good out of the bad. Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that in all things" (not some things) "God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." I once heard a pastor say that our job is not to work out the good, but to love God and stay called. I would also add, "and stay out of His way."
So why write all this down? Frankly, it helps to talk about it. And maybe, just maybe, someone else can find some comfort in my story. I lived through it and can now look back with a different perspective. Infertility is not the end of the world, although it may feel that way when you're in the middle of it. You are not a failure in any way if your body cannot make and/or carry a baby. A miscarriage is a loss (so is infertility, for that matter), and all too often it's a loss that only the parents grieve, either because no one else knows about it or it's just not discussed. One thing I want people to take away from this series of posts is that there is no shame in being unable to reproduce. There IS sadness, and you might be able to make someone's journey a little bit easier if you offer them a little compassion instead of acting like it's no big deal.
The other thing I want people to take away is that there is great freedom in giving up the illusion of control over our lives. God already knows what my future holds and He knows how to best prepare me for it. Working the plan is pointless unless it's God's plan and not my own. His plans are infinitely better than anything I can think up. The best thing I can do is look to Him for guidance and trust Him to lead me in the right direction.
Now, on to other subjects. :-)
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Out of Control: Part 6
Somehow I made it through that weekend, but I have to admit that by Monday morning my optimism was losing ground to cold hard reality. Every time I answered the call of nature there was more and more visual evidence that things were not going well. Nevertheless I rubbed my belly and prayed like I had never prayed before that the baby would be OK.
I went back to the doctor's office, climbed on the ultrasound table and waited breathlessly to hear my hopes confirmed. Instead, I heard the dreaded, "I'm sorry...." The nurse led me, weeping, past the inner waiting room, which just happened to have quite a few pregnant ladies in it, and into an exam room. Talk about a nightmare! Just seeing all those pregnant bellies drove home the point that I wasn't going to have one any time soon. My very compassionate doctor came in and very kindly explained that because I was so far along and the miscarriage was not "complete" I would need a procedure to clean out my womb called a "D & C". The first date she suggested happened to be my baby's second birthday so I asked for it to be scheduled a day earlier because I didn't want K's birthday to be associated with such a sad event.
I don't remember a lot about that day but I can still see flashes. I was just so incredibly sad that the word "sad" doesn't even cover it. I was bereft, sorrowful, grief-stricken. I was in a daze and on the verge of tears until the anesthesia took hold, and again when I woke up. I felt physically empty once it was done. I wish I could say that I bounced back quickly and that my love for the two daughters I already had chased my grief away, but of course it didn't. Looking back, I feel bad for my poor husband. Men want so much to "fix" problems, and this was something he could do nothing about. It was probably not helped when he wasn't allowed to go back with me while I was waiting for my surgery - he had to stay in the waiting room until I was in recovery. And then he was left with a broken wife that seemed beyond comforting. When the doctor called a week later to tell me that my lost baby was a "perfectly healthy baby girl" and there seemed to be no medical explanation for what happened, that just made things worse. At least there might have been some consolation in a chromosomal abnormality or something, but this seemed to be a pointless tragedy.
I've personally always struggled with finding the right words to say to someone who has suffered a loss, and apparently other people share my struggle, based on my experience. What can you say? From the outside you wouldn't know I had suffered a loss at all. I hadn't been obviously pregnant so if you weren't in my inner circle you might not have even known that I was. And a miscarriage is not something you announce to all your friends like you would a birth, or even the loss of a parent or other family member. So once the D & C was done I had to contend with somehow passing along the information to those who needed to know, while trying to gently enlighten people who were still congratulating me on my pregnancy. In case you're wondering, a nice thing to say to someone who has suffered a pregnancy loss is this: "I'm sorry for your loss." And if possible, give them a chance to talk about it. Too often people like to act as if it wasn't a "real" loss since the baby never even took a breath, but it's a loss all the same. Usually a woman who finds out she is expecting a baby has already (consciously or subconsciously) visualized the next 18 (or more) years with that baby. And then to have that future disappear... well, it takes the rug right out from under you.
After that loss I never became pregnant again, despite using zero birth control. In fact, my doctor told me a couple of years later that she doubted I could get pregnant, based on my past history.
Coming up: Out of Control: Part 7 - Happily Ever After. Sort of.
I went back to the doctor's office, climbed on the ultrasound table and waited breathlessly to hear my hopes confirmed. Instead, I heard the dreaded, "I'm sorry...." The nurse led me, weeping, past the inner waiting room, which just happened to have quite a few pregnant ladies in it, and into an exam room. Talk about a nightmare! Just seeing all those pregnant bellies drove home the point that I wasn't going to have one any time soon. My very compassionate doctor came in and very kindly explained that because I was so far along and the miscarriage was not "complete" I would need a procedure to clean out my womb called a "D & C". The first date she suggested happened to be my baby's second birthday so I asked for it to be scheduled a day earlier because I didn't want K's birthday to be associated with such a sad event.
I don't remember a lot about that day but I can still see flashes. I was just so incredibly sad that the word "sad" doesn't even cover it. I was bereft, sorrowful, grief-stricken. I was in a daze and on the verge of tears until the anesthesia took hold, and again when I woke up. I felt physically empty once it was done. I wish I could say that I bounced back quickly and that my love for the two daughters I already had chased my grief away, but of course it didn't. Looking back, I feel bad for my poor husband. Men want so much to "fix" problems, and this was something he could do nothing about. It was probably not helped when he wasn't allowed to go back with me while I was waiting for my surgery - he had to stay in the waiting room until I was in recovery. And then he was left with a broken wife that seemed beyond comforting. When the doctor called a week later to tell me that my lost baby was a "perfectly healthy baby girl" and there seemed to be no medical explanation for what happened, that just made things worse. At least there might have been some consolation in a chromosomal abnormality or something, but this seemed to be a pointless tragedy.
I've personally always struggled with finding the right words to say to someone who has suffered a loss, and apparently other people share my struggle, based on my experience. What can you say? From the outside you wouldn't know I had suffered a loss at all. I hadn't been obviously pregnant so if you weren't in my inner circle you might not have even known that I was. And a miscarriage is not something you announce to all your friends like you would a birth, or even the loss of a parent or other family member. So once the D & C was done I had to contend with somehow passing along the information to those who needed to know, while trying to gently enlighten people who were still congratulating me on my pregnancy. In case you're wondering, a nice thing to say to someone who has suffered a pregnancy loss is this: "I'm sorry for your loss." And if possible, give them a chance to talk about it. Too often people like to act as if it wasn't a "real" loss since the baby never even took a breath, but it's a loss all the same. Usually a woman who finds out she is expecting a baby has already (consciously or subconsciously) visualized the next 18 (or more) years with that baby. And then to have that future disappear... well, it takes the rug right out from under you.
After that loss I never became pregnant again, despite using zero birth control. In fact, my doctor told me a couple of years later that she doubted I could get pregnant, based on my past history.
Coming up: Out of Control: Part 7 - Happily Ever After. Sort of.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Out of Control: Part 5
Now, where was I?? Oh yes - we had our long awaited baby. By the way, I previously referred to her as "difficult" and up on further reflection I don't like that word in association to baby K. Let's call her a "challenging" baby, as in challenging everything I thought I knew about babies. As in how they eat, sleep and just generally approach the world. Someone forgot to give her the "rules" because she was making hers up as we went along!
One day in mid-2002, I looked up and realized I was no longer in a sleep-deprivation induced fog. Once I reacquainted myself with the world around me and shook off the cobwebs, Jon and I started discussing that third child we had agreed upon. When we found out we were expecting child #2, we called the adoption agency and asked them to keep our information and just put it all on hold until the baby was a little older. However, now that the baby was a bit older (and we had all survived intact, more or less), I was having second thoughts. If we had another biological child it would cost less than an adoption (which was running anywhere from $20,000 up) since we had health insurance to pick up most of the birth costs. It sounds so cold to bring money into the equation, but there it is. We really had no idea where we would get the money for an adoption, if that's what we chose to do. So, I made a plan. (Yes, again) We would "let nature take its course" for a year, and if nothing happened, we would adopt. We weren't using birth control anyway - why bother, considering what it took to get pregnant last time? So I pulled out the thermometer and the temperature charts and set out to make a baby.
It didn't take long this time. By September 2002 I was pregnant, and I was overjoyed! I thought this must be God's sign that we should give up on adopting. At least I was overjoyed until the day I started spotting, around 9 weeks. I went in to see my doctor and she told me that I was having a miscarriage. Because it seemed to be well underway, she sent me home to let it happen naturally. Believe me, it feels anything BUT natural! And it hurt a LOT, both physically and emotionally. I grieved, although with a toddler and a teenager to take care of I didn't have much time to wallow in my misery. And even then I was trying to be the tough guy. I remember that while I was having some of the worst cramping in history, I got myself up off the couch and took myself and the baby to the bookstore for a frozen coffee, in hopes that the caffeine would make me feel at least a little better. I made it there and back home to the couch, but trying to herd a toddler through a store while doubled over and sweating in pain is not a good plan at all. Luckily my girl was deeply in love with Elmo at the time so episodes of Sesame Street kept her occupied while I recovered from my second loss. I couldn't help but think it was unfair. And furthermore, was God trying to tell me something? I don't believe that God causes "bad" things to happen to us, but I do believe that He allows us to reap the consequences of the choices we make. But this situation didn't really fit into that, because God wouldn't harm an innocent baby, would He? And I wasn't engaged in anything really wrong, was I? I don't have the answers to these questions, even now. The best explanation I've heard for why bad things happen to "good" people is simply that we live in a sinful world. Sometimes bad things just happen. That's not a very satisfying explanation, if you ask me. My doctor gave me the go-ahead to proceed with the baby-making once I had my next regular cycle, and go ahead I did.
Around the end of 2002 I discovered that I was once again pregnant. I was cautiously ecstatic. *Surely* I couldn't lose a third one, right? But then again, there was all that superstition about bad things coming in threes. Yikes! Once I passed the nine-week mark I started feeling a little better since nine weeks was when I started bleeding with the last pregnancy. In fact, I even started feeling a little sickly, which was new for me as I'd never felt sick with my other four pregnancies. I thought maybe that meant this one was a boy. I pulled out all my pregnancy and baby names books, inventoried my maternity clothes and settled in to enjoy what I knew would be my last pregnancy.
At eleven weeks, I started spotting. I told myself all the benign reasons it could happen, but nothing could slow my racing heart. Off I went to the doctor's office, where they ushered me into the ultrasound room. When the tech left the room to get the doctor, the tears came in earnest. The tech doesn't usually go get the doctor unless something is wrong. The doctor came in and told me that the baby was still alive and its heart was beating, but it was beating very slowly (roughly 50 beats a minute as opposed to 100+ beats per minute in a normal pregnancy). He said that about half the time, this will correct itself and the pregnancy will continue normally. No one needed to tell me what happens the other half of the time. But for someone who came into that office expecting to hear that she was miscarrying, that news was incredibly hopeful.
I drove myself home and I have no idea how I got there safely, considering that I was crying and praying the whole way. (OK, yes, I do know how I got there safely. "Got His angels watching over me...") Let me say out loud that I don't do well with uncertainty. I have a need to plan (obviously) and being in a holding pattern is wildly frustrating for me. This was Friday and I was supposed to go back on Monday for a follow-up ultrasound. However, I had the feeling that God wanted me to trust Him to take care of things, and naturally I figured His way would be the same as mine, right? What else could He want but for me to go on to have this baby, this gift from God? I went home and shared the news with my family, who didn't share the soaring hopes that I had. I guess they were feeling a little more cautious than I was. I did something that day I had never done before: I put on some music ("I Could Sing of Your Love Forever" just happened to be the song I played) and I danced for joy before the Lord in my living room, like David (but with clothes). I was just so sure that He was going to make this problem go away, and that one day I could look back at this day (while holding the healthy baby that was now growing inside me) and mark it as the day that I put it all into His hands.
Part 6 ties it all together, I promise. And I won't take as long to write it as I did this one.
One day in mid-2002, I looked up and realized I was no longer in a sleep-deprivation induced fog. Once I reacquainted myself with the world around me and shook off the cobwebs, Jon and I started discussing that third child we had agreed upon. When we found out we were expecting child #2, we called the adoption agency and asked them to keep our information and just put it all on hold until the baby was a little older. However, now that the baby was a bit older (and we had all survived intact, more or less), I was having second thoughts. If we had another biological child it would cost less than an adoption (which was running anywhere from $20,000 up) since we had health insurance to pick up most of the birth costs. It sounds so cold to bring money into the equation, but there it is. We really had no idea where we would get the money for an adoption, if that's what we chose to do. So, I made a plan. (Yes, again) We would "let nature take its course" for a year, and if nothing happened, we would adopt. We weren't using birth control anyway - why bother, considering what it took to get pregnant last time? So I pulled out the thermometer and the temperature charts and set out to make a baby.
It didn't take long this time. By September 2002 I was pregnant, and I was overjoyed! I thought this must be God's sign that we should give up on adopting. At least I was overjoyed until the day I started spotting, around 9 weeks. I went in to see my doctor and she told me that I was having a miscarriage. Because it seemed to be well underway, she sent me home to let it happen naturally. Believe me, it feels anything BUT natural! And it hurt a LOT, both physically and emotionally. I grieved, although with a toddler and a teenager to take care of I didn't have much time to wallow in my misery. And even then I was trying to be the tough guy. I remember that while I was having some of the worst cramping in history, I got myself up off the couch and took myself and the baby to the bookstore for a frozen coffee, in hopes that the caffeine would make me feel at least a little better. I made it there and back home to the couch, but trying to herd a toddler through a store while doubled over and sweating in pain is not a good plan at all. Luckily my girl was deeply in love with Elmo at the time so episodes of Sesame Street kept her occupied while I recovered from my second loss. I couldn't help but think it was unfair. And furthermore, was God trying to tell me something? I don't believe that God causes "bad" things to happen to us, but I do believe that He allows us to reap the consequences of the choices we make. But this situation didn't really fit into that, because God wouldn't harm an innocent baby, would He? And I wasn't engaged in anything really wrong, was I? I don't have the answers to these questions, even now. The best explanation I've heard for why bad things happen to "good" people is simply that we live in a sinful world. Sometimes bad things just happen. That's not a very satisfying explanation, if you ask me. My doctor gave me the go-ahead to proceed with the baby-making once I had my next regular cycle, and go ahead I did.
Around the end of 2002 I discovered that I was once again pregnant. I was cautiously ecstatic. *Surely* I couldn't lose a third one, right? But then again, there was all that superstition about bad things coming in threes. Yikes! Once I passed the nine-week mark I started feeling a little better since nine weeks was when I started bleeding with the last pregnancy. In fact, I even started feeling a little sickly, which was new for me as I'd never felt sick with my other four pregnancies. I thought maybe that meant this one was a boy. I pulled out all my pregnancy and baby names books, inventoried my maternity clothes and settled in to enjoy what I knew would be my last pregnancy.
At eleven weeks, I started spotting. I told myself all the benign reasons it could happen, but nothing could slow my racing heart. Off I went to the doctor's office, where they ushered me into the ultrasound room. When the tech left the room to get the doctor, the tears came in earnest. The tech doesn't usually go get the doctor unless something is wrong. The doctor came in and told me that the baby was still alive and its heart was beating, but it was beating very slowly (roughly 50 beats a minute as opposed to 100+ beats per minute in a normal pregnancy). He said that about half the time, this will correct itself and the pregnancy will continue normally. No one needed to tell me what happens the other half of the time. But for someone who came into that office expecting to hear that she was miscarrying, that news was incredibly hopeful.
I drove myself home and I have no idea how I got there safely, considering that I was crying and praying the whole way. (OK, yes, I do know how I got there safely. "Got His angels watching over me...") Let me say out loud that I don't do well with uncertainty. I have a need to plan (obviously) and being in a holding pattern is wildly frustrating for me. This was Friday and I was supposed to go back on Monday for a follow-up ultrasound. However, I had the feeling that God wanted me to trust Him to take care of things, and naturally I figured His way would be the same as mine, right? What else could He want but for me to go on to have this baby, this gift from God? I went home and shared the news with my family, who didn't share the soaring hopes that I had. I guess they were feeling a little more cautious than I was. I did something that day I had never done before: I put on some music ("I Could Sing of Your Love Forever" just happened to be the song I played) and I danced for joy before the Lord in my living room, like David (but with clothes). I was just so sure that He was going to make this problem go away, and that one day I could look back at this day (while holding the healthy baby that was now growing inside me) and mark it as the day that I put it all into His hands.
Part 6 ties it all together, I promise. And I won't take as long to write it as I did this one.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Out of Control: Part 4
Sometime during early 2000 or late 1999, I became part of a praise team for the women's ministry at my church. Once a month we women would meet as a large group for worship and to hear a speaker, then break into smaller groups for prayer and discussion. For some (divinely inspired, I'm sure) reason I was placed into a breakout group with what I considered to be some real "powerhouse" Christian ladies. I surely didn't consider myself to be on the same spiritual maturity level as they were and was a little bit awed about being in their group, and therefore didn't say much. This will be important later, so bear with me.
After a couple of months with no success, my new doctor decided to try a new plan: stay on the same fertility drug, come in for ultrasound on a certain cycle day, take a shot in the rear at a specified time on a certain day, and do what should come naturally on a schedule that she set up. Then I was to come back in a week and a half later for bloodwork to determine if I was pregnant. Not that I would wait for that - I still had an arsenal of HPTs at home! I was fine with the plan, but who was going to give me that shot? Not my husband, who is pretty squeamish about LOTS of things. I finally asked a friend of mine who used to be a nurse if she would mind giving me the shot, and I told her that I would work around her or whatever, just so I could get it done.
Round 1 (ding, ding, ding): My friend was recovering from surgery at home (not the surgery, the recovery, silly) when the time came for the shot, but she gamely roused herself up off the bed to shoot me in the behind. Everything went right that month but no pregnancy. That was OK. I was still feeling hopeful.
Round 2: Her daughter was in a concert at my church (God has a sense of humor, for sure) and I met her there. We went into a preschool classroom, closed the bathroom door and she gave me my shot. Again, everything went right but no pregnancy.
Round 3: She was helping with vacation Bible school at a local elementary school. I met her there and the only place we could find with any degree of privacy was the school office. I wonder what the principal would do if he knew what went on in there! I almost didn't get the shot at all that month because at my ultrasound I was told that there were cysts on my ovaries and "it's not going to happen this month" (yes, I remember these things word for word). The doctor decided it couldn't hurt to try anyway, just in case they missed something on the ultrasound. I wish I could describe how defeated I felt leaving the office that day but words just can't capture it properly. Dejected? Hopeless? Pitiful?
This was also the month when two people very dear to me called me within a week of each other to report that they were pregnant. Both of them told me of their reluctance to call me and make me feel even worse than I already felt, since they knew I had been trying (and trying and trying...). I said all the right things on the phone each time, then I hung up and had a good cry. It makes me sad to think that I might have stolen some of their joy and that they were concerned about how their good news would make me feel.
Two days after that shot was our monthly women's ministry meeting, and I almost didn't go. I don't remember who the speaker was, what we sang, or anything else. I remember meeting with my breakout group and thinking, "Let's get this over with so I can get home and feel sorry for myself some more." I sat there quietly while the other ladies talked and finally one lady asked if there were any prayer requests. I was hoping that no one would say anything and we could just get out of there, when all of a sudden my mouth opened and I started pouring out all the junk that was going on with me. And I do mean ALL. I cried. No, I wept. Even as I was spilling it all out there, part of me was embarrassed. I like to think I have an independent spirit and I can handle just about anything life throws at me, and like I said, I didn't even share how desperate I was with the people closest to me. And now that I remember that night, I'm actually embarrassed that I was embarrassed! It was like a dam had broken, which I guess it had, in a way. Anyway, those sweet "prayer warrior" ladies cried with me, laid hands on me and prayed over me. I don't even remember what they prayed for. Maybe it was peace, because from that night forward, I can honestly say I started to feel more at peace with the whole fertility situation. Not perfectly at peace, but if I had to pinpoint the time when my attitude started to change, that night was it. I accepted that I had done all I could in the pursuit of a baby, and that it was out of my control.
Just days after that, we finally completed all the paperwork (and there was a ton of it!) to start our adoption homestudy and we mailed it to our chosen agency to get things rolling. I still felt like I had to DO something, and I felt like by mailing in that paperwork, I was moving on from my pregnancy obsession. Exactly one week later (God SO has a sense of humor!), I noticed some strange things going on with my body. I almost didn't dare believe it. I mean, the doctor herself told me that this month was most likely a bust. But I pulled out one of my millions of HPTs and..... it was very faintly positive! I don't know how I kept from telling Jon right away, but I did. I went to the doctor's office, had my blood drawn and by lunchtime the nurse had called me to confirm what I already knew. I was pregnant! This time around nothing went wrong, and I spent nine months cherishing every minute (OK, almost every minute. Those last 2 weeks are hard!) of my pregnancy, knowing that according to our "plan" this would be my last one. In February 2001, daughter #2 was born, and she was beautiful!
And thus began the period of time we shall refer to as "The Adam Sleep Deprivation Experiment". To say that she was a difficult baby would be putting it mildly. She ate poorly, and worse than that, she slept poorly, if she slept at all! I cannot count how many hours I spent in the glider rocker in her nursery, half asleep myself and worrying that I would fall completely asleep and drop her! I learned to function (barely) with a minimum amount of sleep, and it was only with God's help that we all survived those years somewhat intact. And yet it was such a sweet time. I know, I know - I'm not making much sense. I was tired and delirious but I loved (and still love) holding my baby girl.
I'd love to be able to say that I learned my lesson and that I don't feel like I need to be in control anymore, but that's not entirely the truth. I definitely have my "control freak" moments, for sure. But I learned a few things from this experience. First of all, God isn't interested in my "plan" - He has a plan of His own and it's far better than anything I could imagine. He sees my future and knows infinitely more than I do about what's best for me, while I sometimes can't see past the end of my own nose. His timing is perfect (with Him a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day). And doctors don't know everything. I think it's particularly delicious that He chose to say "yes" in the month that the doctor told me "no". How better to show His power? I learned that it's OK to be vulnerable, to weep in front of my Sisters, and to accept their kind offer to pray over me. I learned that PRAYER WORKS, but it's not necessarily like waving a wand over your problems and making them disappear.
And they all lived happily ever after. Well, not exactly. There's more to the story.....
After a couple of months with no success, my new doctor decided to try a new plan: stay on the same fertility drug, come in for ultrasound on a certain cycle day, take a shot in the rear at a specified time on a certain day, and do what should come naturally on a schedule that she set up. Then I was to come back in a week and a half later for bloodwork to determine if I was pregnant. Not that I would wait for that - I still had an arsenal of HPTs at home! I was fine with the plan, but who was going to give me that shot? Not my husband, who is pretty squeamish about LOTS of things. I finally asked a friend of mine who used to be a nurse if she would mind giving me the shot, and I told her that I would work around her or whatever, just so I could get it done.
Round 1 (ding, ding, ding): My friend was recovering from surgery at home (not the surgery, the recovery, silly) when the time came for the shot, but she gamely roused herself up off the bed to shoot me in the behind. Everything went right that month but no pregnancy. That was OK. I was still feeling hopeful.
Round 2: Her daughter was in a concert at my church (God has a sense of humor, for sure) and I met her there. We went into a preschool classroom, closed the bathroom door and she gave me my shot. Again, everything went right but no pregnancy.
Round 3: She was helping with vacation Bible school at a local elementary school. I met her there and the only place we could find with any degree of privacy was the school office. I wonder what the principal would do if he knew what went on in there! I almost didn't get the shot at all that month because at my ultrasound I was told that there were cysts on my ovaries and "it's not going to happen this month" (yes, I remember these things word for word). The doctor decided it couldn't hurt to try anyway, just in case they missed something on the ultrasound. I wish I could describe how defeated I felt leaving the office that day but words just can't capture it properly. Dejected? Hopeless? Pitiful?
This was also the month when two people very dear to me called me within a week of each other to report that they were pregnant. Both of them told me of their reluctance to call me and make me feel even worse than I already felt, since they knew I had been trying (and trying and trying...). I said all the right things on the phone each time, then I hung up and had a good cry. It makes me sad to think that I might have stolen some of their joy and that they were concerned about how their good news would make me feel.
Two days after that shot was our monthly women's ministry meeting, and I almost didn't go. I don't remember who the speaker was, what we sang, or anything else. I remember meeting with my breakout group and thinking, "Let's get this over with so I can get home and feel sorry for myself some more." I sat there quietly while the other ladies talked and finally one lady asked if there were any prayer requests. I was hoping that no one would say anything and we could just get out of there, when all of a sudden my mouth opened and I started pouring out all the junk that was going on with me. And I do mean ALL. I cried. No, I wept. Even as I was spilling it all out there, part of me was embarrassed. I like to think I have an independent spirit and I can handle just about anything life throws at me, and like I said, I didn't even share how desperate I was with the people closest to me. And now that I remember that night, I'm actually embarrassed that I was embarrassed! It was like a dam had broken, which I guess it had, in a way. Anyway, those sweet "prayer warrior" ladies cried with me, laid hands on me and prayed over me. I don't even remember what they prayed for. Maybe it was peace, because from that night forward, I can honestly say I started to feel more at peace with the whole fertility situation. Not perfectly at peace, but if I had to pinpoint the time when my attitude started to change, that night was it. I accepted that I had done all I could in the pursuit of a baby, and that it was out of my control.
Just days after that, we finally completed all the paperwork (and there was a ton of it!) to start our adoption homestudy and we mailed it to our chosen agency to get things rolling. I still felt like I had to DO something, and I felt like by mailing in that paperwork, I was moving on from my pregnancy obsession. Exactly one week later (God SO has a sense of humor!), I noticed some strange things going on with my body. I almost didn't dare believe it. I mean, the doctor herself told me that this month was most likely a bust. But I pulled out one of my millions of HPTs and..... it was very faintly positive! I don't know how I kept from telling Jon right away, but I did. I went to the doctor's office, had my blood drawn and by lunchtime the nurse had called me to confirm what I already knew. I was pregnant! This time around nothing went wrong, and I spent nine months cherishing every minute (OK, almost every minute. Those last 2 weeks are hard!) of my pregnancy, knowing that according to our "plan" this would be my last one. In February 2001, daughter #2 was born, and she was beautiful!
And thus began the period of time we shall refer to as "The Adam Sleep Deprivation Experiment". To say that she was a difficult baby would be putting it mildly. She ate poorly, and worse than that, she slept poorly, if she slept at all! I cannot count how many hours I spent in the glider rocker in her nursery, half asleep myself and worrying that I would fall completely asleep and drop her! I learned to function (barely) with a minimum amount of sleep, and it was only with God's help that we all survived those years somewhat intact. And yet it was such a sweet time. I know, I know - I'm not making much sense. I was tired and delirious but I loved (and still love) holding my baby girl.
I'd love to be able to say that I learned my lesson and that I don't feel like I need to be in control anymore, but that's not entirely the truth. I definitely have my "control freak" moments, for sure. But I learned a few things from this experience. First of all, God isn't interested in my "plan" - He has a plan of His own and it's far better than anything I could imagine. He sees my future and knows infinitely more than I do about what's best for me, while I sometimes can't see past the end of my own nose. His timing is perfect (with Him a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day). And doctors don't know everything. I think it's particularly delicious that He chose to say "yes" in the month that the doctor told me "no". How better to show His power? I learned that it's OK to be vulnerable, to weep in front of my Sisters, and to accept their kind offer to pray over me. I learned that PRAYER WORKS, but it's not necessarily like waving a wand over your problems and making them disappear.
And they all lived happily ever after. Well, not exactly. There's more to the story.....
Monday, April 18, 2011
Out of Control: Part 3
I found my new doctor through some friends in my small group, who had consulted her for their own fertility issues. They were very happy with her AND she enabled them to get pregnant, so I figured she could help me too. It was all about what I wanted, remember? It took a couple of months to get in to see the new doctor, and I kept hoping for a miracle pregnancy so that I wouldn't even have to see her. Our health insurance would pay only a fraction of what infertility (ugly word!) treatment could end up costing, especially when you got into the high-tech world of IVF and beyond. Jon and I talked about just how far we would go before giving up, and although "give up" is not really in my vocabulary, even I had to realize that financially there would have to be an end to the trying.
When Jon and I were dating we had discussed how many children we wanted to add to our family and how they would get there, and we had decided one biological and one adopted. Since we were having so much trouble with the bio child, during this period we started working on the adoption angle as well. I had no trouble with the concept of loving a child who didn't come from my body and neither did he. After all, I had a stepfather who loved me dearly and Jon had Dana, who he couldn't love more if she shared his genes, so we felt like we had some experience in that area. We knew we didn't want a domestic adoption in the US. Even though most families who go that route do so with no lingering problems, we personally knew a family who had adopted a baby, had him home with them for a week, then had the birth mother reclaim him. We weren't willing to take ANY chance of that happening. Our other option was international adoption. My first choice was China, and to explain why I'll have to tell you a story from high school.
It was the second half of my senior year and I was in my first period Economics class with Mr. Nelson, who was in his first year of teaching after college. Poor guy - he really wasn't that much older than we were and we gave him a hard time. He was trying to make a point about supply and demand and he used China as an illustration. In China they don't have Social Security - sons are expected to take care of their parents as they age, and in most cases they all move in together. Daughters become part of their husband's family when they get married, so if you have a daughter you are basically raising her only to give her away to her husband's family later on. At that time in China there was a strict one-child policy. Violators could be fined the equivalent of a year's wages if they defied the policy whether accidentally or purposefully. Because they needed a son to take care of them in their old age, it was not uncommon for a couple who gave birth to a daughter to abandon her in order to try again for a son. Mr. Nelson used the term, "leaving a baby girl on the trash heap" (which just goes to show you that he didn't know exactly what he was talking about because most abandoned babies in China are not left to die, they are left in such a way that they will be found and rescued, but I digress). I had never heard of such a thing and I was horrified! People were leaving babies to die just because they were girls? I kept raising my hand to ask questions about this, and my best friend playfully teased me about "saving the Chinese babies" for the rest of the school year (and beyond!).
So China would have been my first choice for international adoption, but at that time the law in China would not allow couples to adopt if they already had a child. We did have one and there's not putting that genie back in the bottle, so we had to look at other programs. There are so many factors to consider when you decide where/how to adopt, and lots of them have to do with your own feelings about adoption. There was a part of me that wanted to adopt a child with similar features to Jon and me, just so it wouldn't be obvious that he or she was not "ours" biologically. I guess I was thinking it would be less complicated for all of us somehow. You have to consider whether or not there is travel to the home country required and for how long - can you take time off work to go? And then there's the cost. There's a laundry list of fees associated with international adoption, and some countries cost more than others. China happened to be one of the less expensive options, but we didn't qualify. We did some research and came up with a Russian program that seemed like it would work for us, and in May 2000 we sent the paperwork in to begin our homestudy.
Meanwhile, back at Infertility Ranch, I saw my new doctor in February and loved her! In our very first meeting she assured me that "we're going to get you pregnant". By this time I was beginning to feel like a colossal failure as a woman. I mean, why couldn't my body do what it was supposed to do? Teenagers could get pregnant by accident in the back seat of a car, and I was a stable (mostly), mature (mostly) woman with a loving husband who could provide a loving home. Why not me? I was taking ovulation tests several days a month and spending lots of money on home pregnancy tests because I couldn't stand to wait and see if my cycle showed up. I even considered ordering the HPTs in bulk to save a little money. I didn't - but I considered it. Jon and I were involved in our church and a loving small group and although they knew we were trying to get pregnant and having issues, I don't think they fully realized the desperation I felt or just how consumed I was with getting pregnant. I wasn't getting any younger, and it seemed like people were getting pregnant all around me, just NOT ME. I was praying like crazy for God to fulfill my wishes and to be honest, I couldn't figure out any reason why He wouldn't. It wasn't like I was asking for something bad, was I? There literally was not a waking hour in the day that I wasn't thinking about/planning for/praying about/imagining that baby I wanted. Jon didn't share my desperation because he would have been happy enough to adopt two children and skip the biological trials, but he went along because he wanted to make me happy and that was what I wanted.
So my new doctor started me on a low-level fertility drug, which I had taken before with Dr. Doody, along with a series of ultrasounds and bloodwork to see how things were progressing. I was actually working at this time, and trying to get in all the appointments AND put in the right amount of time at work required a juggling act that I hope I never have to repeat, but at least I felt like I was doing something.
By the way, if you've never been in the waiting room at an infertility clinic, let me describe the atmosphere for you. First of all, anyone who comes there is there because 1) they want to have a baby; and 2) it's not happening naturally; so 3) they have all kinds of emotional stuff going on, none of it good. So you have people (mostly women) sitting in the waiting room reading magazines (no American Baby or Parents in this waiting room!) and studiously avoiding eye contact. No one speaks to or smiles at anyone else. It's like we all pretend to be somewhere else - we're mentally putting our fingers in our collective ears and singing, "la, la, la". Also, the intensely intimate nature of some of the procedures that go on there (do I need to mention the kind of samples that prospective fathers might need to submit?) add another level of embarrassment beyond the whole "epic body failure" kind. At one of my (zillions? hundreds?) of visits, the unthinkable happened: I actually ran into a woman I knew from a previous job. We both knew we spotted each other, debated the possibility of pretending not to recognize the other person (too late - we'd already made eye contact), acknowledged that we must be going through similar circumstances, and enjoyed (not!) a short and lame, "Hi, how are you?" type conversation. Then we went back to ignoring one another. Crazy, I know - if we were as "fine" as we said we were, we wouldn't be here, now would we?
I've always been musically inclined and there seems to be a song to fit any and every emotion I have, but during this chaos I found a lot of comfort in music. One particular song I grabbed onto was "One Thing I Know" by Selah, who was very new on the scene at that time (yes, this was over 10 years ago). I actually had their cassette tape! The chorus of the song went:
And if there's one thing I know
It's that you were never left alone
'Cause you can always call on Jesus' name
And if there's one thing I pray
It's that Jesus helps you find a way
To make a change and listen to your heart
God will take away your pain if you choose to let it go
if there's one thing I know
And to my surprise, I found myself beginning to want to "let it go". I was so overwhelmed by the pressure I was putting on myself to get pregnant that it was becoming an incredible burden. I had built up walls around my heart to keep the pain at bay, and it was working (somewhat) as long as I felt like I was doing something. Sitting around waiting for God didn't count as "doing" something, in my book. I tried very hard to be upbeat and positive with everyone else, and inside I was a churning mass of anxiety. Those who knew me then may tell me that I wasn't fooling anyone, but I wanted to appear strong and independent, and certainly not as pathetic as I was feeling. I would have settled for something in between tough and pathetic, whatever that is. A turning point was coming.
When Jon and I were dating we had discussed how many children we wanted to add to our family and how they would get there, and we had decided one biological and one adopted. Since we were having so much trouble with the bio child, during this period we started working on the adoption angle as well. I had no trouble with the concept of loving a child who didn't come from my body and neither did he. After all, I had a stepfather who loved me dearly and Jon had Dana, who he couldn't love more if she shared his genes, so we felt like we had some experience in that area. We knew we didn't want a domestic adoption in the US. Even though most families who go that route do so with no lingering problems, we personally knew a family who had adopted a baby, had him home with them for a week, then had the birth mother reclaim him. We weren't willing to take ANY chance of that happening. Our other option was international adoption. My first choice was China, and to explain why I'll have to tell you a story from high school.
It was the second half of my senior year and I was in my first period Economics class with Mr. Nelson, who was in his first year of teaching after college. Poor guy - he really wasn't that much older than we were and we gave him a hard time. He was trying to make a point about supply and demand and he used China as an illustration. In China they don't have Social Security - sons are expected to take care of their parents as they age, and in most cases they all move in together. Daughters become part of their husband's family when they get married, so if you have a daughter you are basically raising her only to give her away to her husband's family later on. At that time in China there was a strict one-child policy. Violators could be fined the equivalent of a year's wages if they defied the policy whether accidentally or purposefully. Because they needed a son to take care of them in their old age, it was not uncommon for a couple who gave birth to a daughter to abandon her in order to try again for a son. Mr. Nelson used the term, "leaving a baby girl on the trash heap" (which just goes to show you that he didn't know exactly what he was talking about because most abandoned babies in China are not left to die, they are left in such a way that they will be found and rescued, but I digress). I had never heard of such a thing and I was horrified! People were leaving babies to die just because they were girls? I kept raising my hand to ask questions about this, and my best friend playfully teased me about "saving the Chinese babies" for the rest of the school year (and beyond!).
So China would have been my first choice for international adoption, but at that time the law in China would not allow couples to adopt if they already had a child. We did have one and there's not putting that genie back in the bottle, so we had to look at other programs. There are so many factors to consider when you decide where/how to adopt, and lots of them have to do with your own feelings about adoption. There was a part of me that wanted to adopt a child with similar features to Jon and me, just so it wouldn't be obvious that he or she was not "ours" biologically. I guess I was thinking it would be less complicated for all of us somehow. You have to consider whether or not there is travel to the home country required and for how long - can you take time off work to go? And then there's the cost. There's a laundry list of fees associated with international adoption, and some countries cost more than others. China happened to be one of the less expensive options, but we didn't qualify. We did some research and came up with a Russian program that seemed like it would work for us, and in May 2000 we sent the paperwork in to begin our homestudy.
Meanwhile, back at Infertility Ranch, I saw my new doctor in February and loved her! In our very first meeting she assured me that "we're going to get you pregnant". By this time I was beginning to feel like a colossal failure as a woman. I mean, why couldn't my body do what it was supposed to do? Teenagers could get pregnant by accident in the back seat of a car, and I was a stable (mostly), mature (mostly) woman with a loving husband who could provide a loving home. Why not me? I was taking ovulation tests several days a month and spending lots of money on home pregnancy tests because I couldn't stand to wait and see if my cycle showed up. I even considered ordering the HPTs in bulk to save a little money. I didn't - but I considered it. Jon and I were involved in our church and a loving small group and although they knew we were trying to get pregnant and having issues, I don't think they fully realized the desperation I felt or just how consumed I was with getting pregnant. I wasn't getting any younger, and it seemed like people were getting pregnant all around me, just NOT ME. I was praying like crazy for God to fulfill my wishes and to be honest, I couldn't figure out any reason why He wouldn't. It wasn't like I was asking for something bad, was I? There literally was not a waking hour in the day that I wasn't thinking about/planning for/praying about/imagining that baby I wanted. Jon didn't share my desperation because he would have been happy enough to adopt two children and skip the biological trials, but he went along because he wanted to make me happy and that was what I wanted.
So my new doctor started me on a low-level fertility drug, which I had taken before with Dr. Doody, along with a series of ultrasounds and bloodwork to see how things were progressing. I was actually working at this time, and trying to get in all the appointments AND put in the right amount of time at work required a juggling act that I hope I never have to repeat, but at least I felt like I was doing something.
By the way, if you've never been in the waiting room at an infertility clinic, let me describe the atmosphere for you. First of all, anyone who comes there is there because 1) they want to have a baby; and 2) it's not happening naturally; so 3) they have all kinds of emotional stuff going on, none of it good. So you have people (mostly women) sitting in the waiting room reading magazines (no American Baby or Parents in this waiting room!) and studiously avoiding eye contact. No one speaks to or smiles at anyone else. It's like we all pretend to be somewhere else - we're mentally putting our fingers in our collective ears and singing, "la, la, la". Also, the intensely intimate nature of some of the procedures that go on there (do I need to mention the kind of samples that prospective fathers might need to submit?) add another level of embarrassment beyond the whole "epic body failure" kind. At one of my (zillions? hundreds?) of visits, the unthinkable happened: I actually ran into a woman I knew from a previous job. We both knew we spotted each other, debated the possibility of pretending not to recognize the other person (too late - we'd already made eye contact), acknowledged that we must be going through similar circumstances, and enjoyed (not!) a short and lame, "Hi, how are you?" type conversation. Then we went back to ignoring one another. Crazy, I know - if we were as "fine" as we said we were, we wouldn't be here, now would we?
I've always been musically inclined and there seems to be a song to fit any and every emotion I have, but during this chaos I found a lot of comfort in music. One particular song I grabbed onto was "One Thing I Know" by Selah, who was very new on the scene at that time (yes, this was over 10 years ago). I actually had their cassette tape! The chorus of the song went:
And if there's one thing I know
It's that you were never left alone
'Cause you can always call on Jesus' name
And if there's one thing I pray
It's that Jesus helps you find a way
To make a change and listen to your heart
God will take away your pain if you choose to let it go
if there's one thing I know
And to my surprise, I found myself beginning to want to "let it go". I was so overwhelmed by the pressure I was putting on myself to get pregnant that it was becoming an incredible burden. I had built up walls around my heart to keep the pain at bay, and it was working (somewhat) as long as I felt like I was doing something. Sitting around waiting for God didn't count as "doing" something, in my book. I tried very hard to be upbeat and positive with everyone else, and inside I was a churning mass of anxiety. Those who knew me then may tell me that I wasn't fooling anyone, but I wanted to appear strong and independent, and certainly not as pathetic as I was feeling. I would have settled for something in between tough and pathetic, whatever that is. A turning point was coming.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Out of Control: Part 2
My last post left off with me abandoned by a husband, left alone to raise a daughter, and praying for God to bring him back to us. Despite the pathetic "How to Win Him Back" book and countless tearful prayers, my husband did not, in fact, come back. In March 1992 our divorce was final and I set out to rebuild my life, a life that was vastly different than the one I had planned. From our wedding day forward, I had visions of what our life would be like as we grew old together, watched our kids graduate from high school and then college, married them off, and had grandbabies to spoil. All of that was gone, and much of the time I felt adrift at sea with no compass and no visible means of moving forward. I did what many people do, when things got tough, I returned to God. Funny how we forget He's there when everything is going well. I visited the church that most of my extended family attended, a small Baptist church where they were unfailingly kind to me when I spent much of the service in tears, as I did most every Sunday. In May of that year my aunt suggested I attend a Divorce Recovery Workshop at a nearby church, and I did, even though I felt really shy about walking through the doors. I figured I had a big scarlet "D" on my forehead that everyone could see. That would be "D" for divorced, but it could just as well have been "F" for failure, "R" for rejected, "U" for unwanted, because I felt like I was all of those things. The workshop was a turning point for me. I came out of it feeling like maybe God did have a plan for me after all, and I joined that church and got very involved in the singles ministry there.
Fast forward a few years with me. I was still very involved in my local church, and I had started attending a singles Bible study one night a week near the office where I worked. One day my friend and I met with our kids for dinner at Burger King before the Bible study. Jon was there (yes, I spotted him right away and thought he was cute), overhead some of our conversation and introduced himself. He had been attending the same Bible study but we'd never crossed paths before. We exchanged phone numbers and made some plans for the coming weekend. I found out later that he was "dating" no less than 4 other girls at the time, and was just enjoying getting to know different people. God gave me a real sense of peace about our whole relationship and I had fun with Jon without feeling like I needed to control things. My friends would ask me how I could stand that he was dating so many other girls too, and I would just say (with a serene smile - or was it a smirk?) that if it was God's plan for it to work out, it would, and if it wasn't meant to be, then I didn't want it anyway. A year later we were engaged, and 7 months after that, in July 1996, we were married. You would think that the experience of trusting God and giving Him the control of our relationship might mean that I learned my lesson. Not quite. In fact, a friend of mine gave me a beautiful framed piece of art that says,
By the time we were married, my first daughter was 8 years old and I was almost 32. During our courtship we had discussed children and agreed that we would have one biological child and adopt one child, for a total of three. Jon wanted to adopt two and forgo the biological route, but I insisted that he needed to have the pregnancy experience at least once. Before our wedding I started using the birth control shot, and by Christmas of 1997 we had decided to stop the shots and "let nature take its course" seeing as how I wasn't getting any younger, and we didn't want a huge gap between kids. Oh, the best laid plans! Not to mention that my family had started ribbing me about all my adamant refusals to have that big age gap. According to my doctor and all the literature I had read, it would take about 3 months for my normal cycles to return and after that we could start trying for a baby. Meanwhile, I started building my baby "hope chest" as a symbol of my certainty that the baby would come.
A full year later I was still waiting for my cycles to restart, and I was getting desperate. It wasn't pretty, people. I decided to consult a fertility specialist, who advised me to wait it out. The guy's name was Dr. Doody (I'll wait while you stop laughing). Um, do you know me? I don't do "wait" very well! My goal was to get pregnant by my 35th birthday, because everybody knows that's when your fertility starts to go downhill and your risk of birth defects starts to increase exponentially. Just ask all the so-called experts. ;-) I started doing my own internet research and joined a couple of online groups of people like me who were desperately trying to get pregnant. I knew every trick in the book! I even learned a whole new language, complete with cute acronyms: TTC, AF, HPT, IUI, IVF and many, many more. When we first started the "trying to get pregnant" journey, Jon was very enthusiastic but as time went on, the whole process started to lose its sparkle. It's hard to feel romantic when you're surrounded by thermometers and temperature charts and pressure, and once again I had failed to ask God's opinion of my big plans. In the summer of 1999 I somehow managed to get pregnant, right before my 35th birthday. I was ecstatic! I devised a "cute" way to tell Jon the news, and he was (almost) equally ecstatic! By this time I had a nice sized tub full of baby clothes and equipment, and if I'd had my way I would have already had a nursery set up. Like I said, I'm not good at "wait".
Because I was seeing a fertility specialist, I had to go in and have blood drawn to check my HcG (pregnancy hormone) levels. The first blood draw told me I was pregnant. The second one would be to make sure the level was increasing properly, meaning it was a normally progressing pregnancy. I happily skipped back into the doctor's office a couple of days later to have my second blood draw, expecting only good news. I had my first baby with no issues - why should anything go wrong this time? I had a plan, remember?
I got the phone call from the nurse that afternoon and I can still recall what she said, word for word: "I'm sorry. You're going to lose this one." It may be that because her news was bad that I interpreted the tone as harsh, but this lady was not winning points for her compassion. Sure enough, a couple of days later I started miscarrying. I don't care what the "pro-choice" people say - that was no collection of cells: that was my BABY. I grieved, I raged, I cried - name an emotion associated with loss and I felt it. It was like my divorce all over again in some ways. But most of all, I felt out of control and it was an uncomfortable place to be. Rarely had I ever encountered a situation that I couldn't somehow maneuver into what I wanted it to be. In fact, some of my friends used to tease me by telling me I should write a book called, "How to Win Friends and Manipulate People." Anyway, for a couple of weeks I didn't know which way was up because I was so grief-stricken. Reading all the statistics on pregnancy loss informed me that many women miscarry without even knowing they were pregnant. If we hadn't been trying I may have been one of those, but because I was so actively trying to get pregnant, I knew from my temperature charts that I was pregnant and I took a home pregnancy test before my period was even due. I used to think I was smart for knowing what was going on with my body from one day to the next but I can see now that a little ignorance can be a good thing. I'm sure my poor husband thought I had gone off the deep end. He was a little sad too, but he didn't have the hormones speed dialing his emotions on a regular basis like I did. I imagine he was starting to wonder just what he had gotten himself into.
After that loss, the fertility doctor called us in for a consultation and told us that my womb was just not ready to support a pregnancy yet and it would take more time to recover from the birth control shot I had taken for a mere 18 months, despite the fact that I had finally gotten my cycles back. It would be an understatement to tell you that is NOT exactly what I wanted to hear. So I did what anyone else would do: I found a new doctor.
Part 3: The Rollercoaster (or let me off this crazy thing!)
Fast forward a few years with me. I was still very involved in my local church, and I had started attending a singles Bible study one night a week near the office where I worked. One day my friend and I met with our kids for dinner at Burger King before the Bible study. Jon was there (yes, I spotted him right away and thought he was cute), overhead some of our conversation and introduced himself. He had been attending the same Bible study but we'd never crossed paths before. We exchanged phone numbers and made some plans for the coming weekend. I found out later that he was "dating" no less than 4 other girls at the time, and was just enjoying getting to know different people. God gave me a real sense of peace about our whole relationship and I had fun with Jon without feeling like I needed to control things. My friends would ask me how I could stand that he was dating so many other girls too, and I would just say (with a serene smile - or was it a smirk?) that if it was God's plan for it to work out, it would, and if it wasn't meant to be, then I didn't want it anyway. A year later we were engaged, and 7 months after that, in July 1996, we were married. You would think that the experience of trusting God and giving Him the control of our relationship might mean that I learned my lesson. Not quite. In fact, a friend of mine gave me a beautiful framed piece of art that says,
As children bring their broken toys,
With tears for us to mend;
I brought my broken dreams to God
Because He was my friend.
But then instead of leaving Him in peace to work alone,
I hung around and tried to help, with ways that were my own.
At last I snatched them back and cried
"How could you be so slow?"
"My child," He said, "What could I do?
You never did let go..."
I hung it on my wall as a reminder to "let go and let God". Evidently that still wasn't enough to make the truth penetrate my brain and stick there.By the time we were married, my first daughter was 8 years old and I was almost 32. During our courtship we had discussed children and agreed that we would have one biological child and adopt one child, for a total of three. Jon wanted to adopt two and forgo the biological route, but I insisted that he needed to have the pregnancy experience at least once. Before our wedding I started using the birth control shot, and by Christmas of 1997 we had decided to stop the shots and "let nature take its course" seeing as how I wasn't getting any younger, and we didn't want a huge gap between kids. Oh, the best laid plans! Not to mention that my family had started ribbing me about all my adamant refusals to have that big age gap. According to my doctor and all the literature I had read, it would take about 3 months for my normal cycles to return and after that we could start trying for a baby. Meanwhile, I started building my baby "hope chest" as a symbol of my certainty that the baby would come.
A full year later I was still waiting for my cycles to restart, and I was getting desperate. It wasn't pretty, people. I decided to consult a fertility specialist, who advised me to wait it out. The guy's name was Dr. Doody (I'll wait while you stop laughing). Um, do you know me? I don't do "wait" very well! My goal was to get pregnant by my 35th birthday, because everybody knows that's when your fertility starts to go downhill and your risk of birth defects starts to increase exponentially. Just ask all the so-called experts. ;-) I started doing my own internet research and joined a couple of online groups of people like me who were desperately trying to get pregnant. I knew every trick in the book! I even learned a whole new language, complete with cute acronyms: TTC, AF, HPT, IUI, IVF and many, many more. When we first started the "trying to get pregnant" journey, Jon was very enthusiastic but as time went on, the whole process started to lose its sparkle. It's hard to feel romantic when you're surrounded by thermometers and temperature charts and pressure, and once again I had failed to ask God's opinion of my big plans. In the summer of 1999 I somehow managed to get pregnant, right before my 35th birthday. I was ecstatic! I devised a "cute" way to tell Jon the news, and he was (almost) equally ecstatic! By this time I had a nice sized tub full of baby clothes and equipment, and if I'd had my way I would have already had a nursery set up. Like I said, I'm not good at "wait".
Because I was seeing a fertility specialist, I had to go in and have blood drawn to check my HcG (pregnancy hormone) levels. The first blood draw told me I was pregnant. The second one would be to make sure the level was increasing properly, meaning it was a normally progressing pregnancy. I happily skipped back into the doctor's office a couple of days later to have my second blood draw, expecting only good news. I had my first baby with no issues - why should anything go wrong this time? I had a plan, remember?
I got the phone call from the nurse that afternoon and I can still recall what she said, word for word: "I'm sorry. You're going to lose this one." It may be that because her news was bad that I interpreted the tone as harsh, but this lady was not winning points for her compassion. Sure enough, a couple of days later I started miscarrying. I don't care what the "pro-choice" people say - that was no collection of cells: that was my BABY. I grieved, I raged, I cried - name an emotion associated with loss and I felt it. It was like my divorce all over again in some ways. But most of all, I felt out of control and it was an uncomfortable place to be. Rarely had I ever encountered a situation that I couldn't somehow maneuver into what I wanted it to be. In fact, some of my friends used to tease me by telling me I should write a book called, "How to Win Friends and Manipulate People." Anyway, for a couple of weeks I didn't know which way was up because I was so grief-stricken. Reading all the statistics on pregnancy loss informed me that many women miscarry without even knowing they were pregnant. If we hadn't been trying I may have been one of those, but because I was so actively trying to get pregnant, I knew from my temperature charts that I was pregnant and I took a home pregnancy test before my period was even due. I used to think I was smart for knowing what was going on with my body from one day to the next but I can see now that a little ignorance can be a good thing. I'm sure my poor husband thought I had gone off the deep end. He was a little sad too, but he didn't have the hormones speed dialing his emotions on a regular basis like I did. I imagine he was starting to wonder just what he had gotten himself into.
After that loss, the fertility doctor called us in for a consultation and told us that my womb was just not ready to support a pregnancy yet and it would take more time to recover from the birth control shot I had taken for a mere 18 months, despite the fact that I had finally gotten my cycles back. It would be an understatement to tell you that is NOT exactly what I wanted to hear. So I did what anyone else would do: I found a new doctor.
Part 3: The Rollercoaster (or let me off this crazy thing!)
Friday, April 15, 2011
Out of Control: Part 1
I woke up this morning feeling compelled to write this post. Bear with me - this is going to be a long one.
I am a planner. No, actually I am more of a controller than a planner. I don't have to have a plan, but I DO have a need to be in control. If you know me, you recognize this as true. Believe it or not, it used to be worse.
To understand this story, you have to travel back in time almost 20 years. In 1992 I found myself, much to my dismay, divorced from my husband of 8 years and the single parent to a 3 year old daughter. That daughter, I would have been proud to tell you, was the product of a planned pregnancy. And when I say "planned" I do mean planned. As in, I decided what 6-month span I wanted my child born in, taking into consideration future birthday parties and school age cut-off dates, and I allowed myself 6 months to get pregnant. I went off the birth control pill a month before my scheduled "conception window" began and put my plan into action. In the third month of the plan, I was pregnant. Well, of course I was! I had a plan, I did what needed doing, and I got the desired result. I conveniently forgot to run that little "plan" past God, much less ask His approval or consider what might be His will. I just assumed that His will would naturally align with mine.
Nine months and an amazingly smooth pregnancy later (other than my baby's refusal to show her gender during ultrasound and her stubbornness regarding birth position), baby Dana was born. She was absolutely beautiful! Now, I grew up without siblings around me until I was 15, when my little brother was born. I made a point of telling all my family members how I wasn't going to have a huge gap between my children. Uh-huh. My plan was to have about 2, no more than 3, years between my kids. And I would have two of them, preferably one boy and one girl. I had it all figured out. And then came the day in October 1991 (the day before Halloween - yes, I remember) that my then-husband told me he wanted a divorce. For one of the first times in my memory, something was happening that I couldn't control. Oh, I tried. I bought a pitiful book about how to win back a spouse who didn't love you anymore and I put a "plan" into action. I prayed - oh, how I prayed! I prayed for God to bring him back to me - basically for God to enforce my will for me. That was a dark time in my life and I see now that I could have easily slipped into depression except that I had a small someone who was depending on me to get us both through the mess and into the clearing beyond. Complicating my grief at the loss of my marriage (which is - let's be honest- the loss of an entire future) was the fact that my husband's leaving reopened all the wounds from my own parents' divorce when I was 4. I had a wonderful stepfather and a mother who did the best she could in a bad situation, but a kid just doesn't come through that experience unscathed no matter how amicable the divorce may be. Maybe that's one of the roots of my need to be in control.
So I bought the book and I prayed for MY will to be done, and.... nothing changed. At least not right away. And when the change came, it wasn't in my situation - it was in ME.
Part 2: coming soon!
I am a planner. No, actually I am more of a controller than a planner. I don't have to have a plan, but I DO have a need to be in control. If you know me, you recognize this as true. Believe it or not, it used to be worse.
To understand this story, you have to travel back in time almost 20 years. In 1992 I found myself, much to my dismay, divorced from my husband of 8 years and the single parent to a 3 year old daughter. That daughter, I would have been proud to tell you, was the product of a planned pregnancy. And when I say "planned" I do mean planned. As in, I decided what 6-month span I wanted my child born in, taking into consideration future birthday parties and school age cut-off dates, and I allowed myself 6 months to get pregnant. I went off the birth control pill a month before my scheduled "conception window" began and put my plan into action. In the third month of the plan, I was pregnant. Well, of course I was! I had a plan, I did what needed doing, and I got the desired result. I conveniently forgot to run that little "plan" past God, much less ask His approval or consider what might be His will. I just assumed that His will would naturally align with mine.
Nine months and an amazingly smooth pregnancy later (other than my baby's refusal to show her gender during ultrasound and her stubbornness regarding birth position), baby Dana was born. She was absolutely beautiful! Now, I grew up without siblings around me until I was 15, when my little brother was born. I made a point of telling all my family members how I wasn't going to have a huge gap between my children. Uh-huh. My plan was to have about 2, no more than 3, years between my kids. And I would have two of them, preferably one boy and one girl. I had it all figured out. And then came the day in October 1991 (the day before Halloween - yes, I remember) that my then-husband told me he wanted a divorce. For one of the first times in my memory, something was happening that I couldn't control. Oh, I tried. I bought a pitiful book about how to win back a spouse who didn't love you anymore and I put a "plan" into action. I prayed - oh, how I prayed! I prayed for God to bring him back to me - basically for God to enforce my will for me. That was a dark time in my life and I see now that I could have easily slipped into depression except that I had a small someone who was depending on me to get us both through the mess and into the clearing beyond. Complicating my grief at the loss of my marriage (which is - let's be honest- the loss of an entire future) was the fact that my husband's leaving reopened all the wounds from my own parents' divorce when I was 4. I had a wonderful stepfather and a mother who did the best she could in a bad situation, but a kid just doesn't come through that experience unscathed no matter how amicable the divorce may be. Maybe that's one of the roots of my need to be in control.
So I bought the book and I prayed for MY will to be done, and.... nothing changed. At least not right away. And when the change came, it wasn't in my situation - it was in ME.
Part 2: coming soon!
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