I am ashamed to admit that I did break down and buy a new bible though (all the cool kids are doing it!) I wasn’t really planning on it, I just happened to walk by the book aisle at Target and I found myself looking “just for future reference” (kind of like how, every time I go to Target I wind up perusing the baby aisles. I never intend to [it truly isn’t even in my thought process when I drive there] but then I always manage to pass the baby section on my way to whatever it is I need, and I get sucked in [and often, sucker punched with that reminder that I have no reason to be shamelessly pawing at the beautiful cribs and uber cute strollers… you know, that reminder that it is not “normal” to be longingly looking at baby items 11 months out from even trying to get pregnant].) It was in passing the book aisle en route elswhere that I decided to “guiltlessly” look to see if they had any prettier bibles (with no intention of purchasing, of course). Well, they had two, and one of them happened to be brown and purple:
(my favorite newish trend is the drive to combine every color imaginable with brown. It’s so retro, and I love it! Literally everything I have bought for little E.K. has been brown and pink) and I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave without it. It was only $13.00 (I reasoned) and it was just so cute (and yes, apparently cute bibles are en vogue, which I hadn’t realized until last week’s bible study). Plus, I liked how it didn’t look like The Bible at the outset, so I knew I could get away with doing my homework at work and my boss wouldn’t even think twice about whatever I was doing being non-work related (because, I am a valuable employee like that! Seriously though, the man sleeps at his desk. I refuse to feel guilty about this. I always get all my work done ahead of time [I despise procrastination], and often waste time reading whatever I can get my hands on online until something new comes across my desk. This has to be a better use of my time!) I also just love how it feels (the cover is some kind of faux-leather) and that it almost looks like a journal. My life (as you can imagine) is filled with journals, so the imagery there is of all good things…
At the beginning of the meeting the leader asked if any of us had prayer requests. A few of the women spoke up about husbands or family members needing jobs, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I still hate the idea of asking anyone to pray for me. I feel like (in the grand scheme of things) I have so much more than so many people. It feels selfish to ask for anyone’s prayers when there are people struggling through much worse who need the power of prayer so much more than I do. Plus, I don’t know if I want these women to know what it is I am going through. It’s often a hard thing for me to talk about with some of my very best friends (yet, I am completely at ease typing out my struggles for any number of strangers to read… go ahead and psycho-analyze that one!) I just can’t imagine spilling all the sordid details to these women I don’t even know. And, I am anxious about how they may react to the choices I’m making. I know that technically, the church would probably look down on me choosing to parent on my own. How can I explain how “right” I feel this decision is to someone who isn’t inside my head? I am at ease with my choices, and I believe that I have found peace in making them; still… I’m not comfortable with being judged by church ladies because of those choices (not that I know that they would judge me [or even disagree with me] I just don't think I'm ready to take that risk yet).
We dove right into the readings and last weeks homework (side note: I used to think I knew all about the bible since I grew up in the church. I had no idea. I mean, I have the basic concepts down, but I am so confused by all the random Kings it's not even funny... I'm thinking about making notecards.) There was one question in particular that really struck me from this week’s homework. It said “Can you think of a few potential disasters from which Christ saved you?” I knew the answer right away. I just “felt” it. I have been saved from falling into a deep depression in the face of infertility. I had a friend say to me the other day that she wished that she could be as strong as I am. I told her that I'm not as strong as I appear to be, I just tend to fake it until I believe it. I think it’s easy to read some of the things I write (or even to just have a brief conversation with me where my silliness shines) and just assume that (because I am able to find the humor in my situation) I have always been a strong, happy, upbeat person; but that’s not the case.
It was really hard for me growing up. From a pretty young age I felt unloved, unwanted, and unnecessary; and I had some strong support in feeling that way. On the outside I was always an achiever (good grades, involved in everything, reliable and independent), but in reality, I was a mess. I really felt that there was something defective about me that allowed the people in my life to inflict pain upon me without thinking twice. I thought that I must have deserved a lot of the things that happened to me (things that I now realize no child ever deserves). When I was 13 I started throwing up. I would take multiple showers a day, just so that no one could hear me above the running water. It started because I wanted to get caught (I know that now). I wanted someone to fix me; to save me. I didn’t get caught until I was 16, and by then it was pretty engrained. I learned to lie about it; to pretend it wasn't that big a deal and that I could easily stop. I learned to hide it better. Some nights I would drive to 4 or 5 different fast food restaurants (careful to never order too much from any one place) and I would gorge myself. Then I would dump out the large soda I had purchased and throw up in that. By the time I got home after my binge and purge, no one was the wiser.
When I was 18 and on my own, throwing up every meal was no longer enough to calm me. I started cutting myself. Even that started out as a cry for help (I blatantly cut my forearms where anyone who cared to look could see), but it progressed into a need that I hid so that no one could take it away from me. When I was stressed, or hurt, or confused I felt a drive to run something sharp across my skin. Seeing blood became the only way to calm myself down. At one point I was seeing a man who was wonderful (handsome, kind, a fire fighter... and I do have a thing for fire fighters!) and we had just had the most amazing date where he had done and said everything right. He made it very clear how much he liked me, and that simple fact led to some of the largest scars I ever gave myself. I can't even explain it now; it was like I didn't feel as though I deserved him or his adoration, and I was angry at myself for fooling this great guy into thinking that I was something special. I never saw him again. I stood him up for our next date and stopped returning his phone calls. I still catch myself looking at those scars from time to time and wondering what I may have thrown away there.
When I was 19 I had had enough of a life that felt so useless. I took inventory of all the pills I had (half a bottle of painkillers from a recent back injury, the sleeping pills I’d been on since I was 12, and every kind of anti depressant and anxiety med I had ever been prescribed), and I took them all. That night, for whatever reason, my best friend at the time showed up at my apartment without calling. She found me passed out next to an 11 page suicide note. Nothing I took would have actually killed me (although, I didn’t know that at the time), but it scared her enough that after she stayed with me forcing her finger down my throat all night, she really put her foot down. She was tired of me wearing my depression on my sleeve (as though that was the only thing that could define me). Tired of my constant break downs. Tired of my inability to see what life really did have to offer me. Tired of how hard it was to be my friend.
I couldn’t go back to work after that. I had taken some vacation days, but then after spending days alone in my apartment (not sleeping at all, just sitting in the dark and watching movies and eating nothing but wheat thins and cream cheese… tell me that isn’t the picture of a woman who has fallen off the deep end!), I literally couldn’t make myself leave. I wound up on a mental health leave of absence from my job (I actually had a really good job at the time with amazing health care benefits that I doubt anyone could find at any job nowadays. Unfortunately, I quit about 2 months later. I was just too embarrassed to go back.) My dad forced me into therapy, and slowly but surely I started to pull myself together. I still can’t name off any one turning point. It was a lot of things that pushed me in the right direction, but at the time I really had hit rock bottom.
It’s been years since I’ve been on any kind of psychotropic medication (a soapbox of mine; I am very anti putting teenage girls especially on any kind of drugs... Hormones change, and teenage girls struggle, but if you give a label of "depressed" and "anxious" to a child, that label then becomes very hard to shed); years since I have felt the urge to cut or throw-up. I worked really hard to build myself up into a strong and happy woman, but I was given a lot of blessings along the way too. I had a lot of friends come into my life that literally held me up until I could stand on my own. I had support around me that I cannot even begin to describe. I had a lot of opportunities come my way that most people may never be lucky enough to see (a trip to Australia on my own for 5 weeks was particularly perspective changing). I’m not saying it was easy (because it was anything but that) but… Today I can say that I don’t even recognize that girl that I was. I really am a pretty happy person, and I really do believe that everything happens for a reason.
Still. This last year has been hard. I have battled with negative thoughts and feelings, and I know I haven’t always been the easiest person to be around. I've asked a lot of "why me's", and I've thrown myself to the ground in frustration. I've allowed myself, from time to time, to forget how lucky I really am. But, every time I’ve gotten one more piece of bad news (and unfortunately, it has happened frequently since this all began) I have stumbled for a moment, and then I have pulled myself up… stronger. It seems like every hurt has resulted in that much more determination. After the news from my last surgery though, it was pretty touch and go. For a solid 2 weeks, I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I just hurt so badly, and I didn't know if I was ever going to be able to pull myself out of it. If ever there was going to be a moment when I was going to revert back to that girl who was incapable of caring for herself, that was going to be the moment. Yet somehow, here I am, 2 months later: happier, more optimistic, and more hopeful for the future than I have been in such a very long time. I still cry every day (I blame the hormones… there is not a day that goes by now when something doesn’t set me off out of the blue), but that typically lasts no more than 2 minutes, and then I find myself laughing about what a big baby I’ve become.
How does that happen? How is it that I have found hope and salvation in what can only be labeled as one of the darkest periods of my life? I believe that it has been through Christ. I believe that he has given me relief (and you have to understand here, that right there is the biggest declaration of my faith that I have ever given; ten-fold. Any of my family or friends reading now [who all know me to be very private and quiet about religion] are probably picking their jaws up off the floor as you continue to read); and I believe that he is showing me the way out of this every day. He has protected me from the depression that I know I am so capable of; and in that, I find peace. In the face of losing the only thing I have ever really wanted, my faith has been strengthened. There is a reason (I personally like to believe that that reason is that I am meant to bring a perfect little bug into this world right now, rather than 5 years from now like I probably would have done if I had been left to my own devices!) There is a purpose. And there is a plan, even if I don’t understand what that plan is.
Which brings me to the other thing about this week that really spoke to me. During the video last night, good old Beth Moore (who twice in the readings now has spoken about homosexuality as though it is a fixable affliction like addiction – one of my biggest disagreements with religion, which goes back to this unexplainable need to defend my mother’s sexuality, even though I feel no need to defend or accept anything else about her – but I am choosing to ignore this about Mrs. Moore [and probably a million other church people I may encounter] because I feel like she does have so much more to teach me; she and I don’t have to have the same beliefs about sexuality) brought up one more thing that I really needed to hear. She was talking about what she referred to as the great paradox: that healing can flow from wounding. It immediately struck a chord.
I’m not sure that anything has ever happened to me in my entire life that is as potentially damaging as plunging into the depths of infertility (and there was a lot that happened to me that was plenty damaging). My past is something that I know I will one day be able to let go of entirely (after all, I’ve seen myself rid my life of so many of those burdens already), but I am not sure I will ever fully recover if I truly do lose this. That may be hard for someone else to understand (as they think to themselves “there’s always adoption; you can always be a mother that way"), but to me; this is one of those things that kept me going at a point in my life when I felt as though there was nothing left to hope for. I have dreamed about being a mother since I was young; dreamed about creating that family for myself that I longed for as a child. I have watched as my friends bodies have changed and their stomachs have expanded and grown (and I’ve waited patiently for my turn) but I’ve always known how badly I’ve longed for that change. I want to feel like something is that much a part of me; like it actually grew and came to life inside of me. I'm not sure that's an accurate description of this urge or not, but it's the best way I know how to explain it; this need I feel inside of me to carry a child.
And so, facing the possible loss of that dream is easily one of the hardest blows I have ever taken. Yet, it took hitting that point of utter fear and panic and dread to get me back into church. When I wandered into that building two months ago, it was solely because I didn’t know where else to look for answers. I had to hit the point where I was literally so afraid of falling into old patterns that I was willing to try anything. I was facing either becoming that woman I once was, or searching in the last place I had ever dreamed of for solace. I was always solid in my faith, I never questioned whether or not there was a God, but I had no real interest in ever really returning to church or in entering into a stronger relationship with him. But there I was, in the face of the hardest thing I could ever imagine dealing with, walking through those doors.
To take it a step further, if I hadn’t so thoroughly scared the ex off, I don’t think I would have gone to that church at all. I would have sought solace in him instead of the Lord. I would have curled up next to him and allowed him to hold me together until I probably wouldn’t have been capable of doing it on my own at all. I would have looked to him for all the answers, and in all other ways I would have shut myself down from feeling the hurt of it all. I would have crumbled around him, and depended on him to keep the pieces in order. I know this. I know this in deepest parts of my soul. I would have relied on him entirely, and in doing so I am positive that I wouldn’t have felt the release or the peace that I feel now. I have no doubt that I would have been happy to have his hand to hold, but I also have no doubt that I probably wouldn’t have been able to pull myself out of that painful place. I would have waited for him to do it for me, and I know now that he would never have been able to. I would have sat there, broken and lost, and with him by my side only for as long as he could have handled being around me. Don’t get me wrong; I still want to kick him in the gonads for being such a coward, but at least I now understand what was gained out of his disappearance. I found my own footing, and I was able to reach out for the help I needed more than I knew: The help of God. It took hitting the deepest part of sorrow and feeling entirely alone in this world for me to find peace.
Now, this is all well and good, but I do want to point out that I’m still not sure what the future holds. I believe that there is a plan and that in the end it will all work out, but I’m not sure I’m strong enough to handle it if that plan involves me not carrying a child. I’m going to be up front and honest about that. There is still a strong possibility I could stumble and fall and not be able to pull myself back up. But… if you had told me two months ago that I would be as happy and contented and at peace as I am now; I never would have believed you. And maybe there is solace in that; the fact that you can survive even those woundings that you once would have deemed as insurmountable. There is a plan. There is a purpose. There is peace.
Whew… How’s that for heavy!
