Wholly Broken...

"We're going to call off this round, I'm really sorry", the nurse said yesterday as I stood with two minutes between my appointments to return the call to the doctor.  "Take one more shot, the Ovidrel, and you should pass all those follicles".  I said ok and thank you and stared up at the ceiling to hold the tears back.  11 months of trying, another failed attempt.  Close to $1000 gone that could have paid for a week away on a cruise to Mexico but instead went to pay for injections, blood draws, pregnancy tests, and infertility consults.  And I finished my work day, but I feel like I got sucker punched in the gut, like my throat was on fire, like I could vomit, like I could scream or hit something or just fall apart.  I have been faithful, willing to try the suggested plan, and to not even get to a point where there were good enough eggs were we could try to conceive, well, I just felt broken.

 

The long and short of it is that my body is broken, not responding to meds and unless I want to try another round, pay more money, and spend another month focusing my life around conception, I am SOL.  And I think, at this point in the journey, I just need to sit down and take a break.  The last 6 months, every day I am thinking about everything I do, eat, feel, and experience and I am tired of micromanaging every decision to try and conceive.  I am tired of month after month hearing "no, I am sorry, not now, not this time".  

I have friends who have been on this journey far long than I have been.  Four years, five years, and have spent tens of thousands for just one child.  Usually, their first child.  But I guess I am just not that strong or determined or maybe I should have let myself heal my heart and body well from the miscarriage that came out of no where.  In my heart of hearts I want to spend these fun years playing, laughing and loving on the blessing that I have.  I don't want to be tired, emotional, and stimming and unable to lift our baby.  Second term infertility is a bitch.  You know you can do it if your body is right, but you also feel so much more frustrated every time you find out, it's not this time. 

After our miscarriage, I was on a mission to just try again and fix it, but now my body is so out of whack and so unbalanced that I just don't even feel like me.  And the grief, when I actually sit and type about it, it's suffocating.  I just want to let it go, not focus on it, not dwell in it.  I had dreams of being a mom to a big family, but I can't keep forcing my body to do something it's is too broken to do.  I am too broken.  

Have you ever just had to put something down that your wanted so badly,  not knowing if you will pick up again?  Not knowing if it will ever happen?  I am not that person.  I am not good at telling myself no.  I am not a quitter.  I have fought to complete some things that I wanted to give up on, and I have pushed through discomfort, but I rarely stop myself in the middle of a process and just give up.  But I feel like after this, I just feel like there is no fight left in the dog.  I feel like my body is just shot.  I feel like my hormone levels, my digestion, my heart, and my energy are just at a low, and I need to find myself again.

But in doing that, I let go of a pursuit for a dream.  In that I tell God that He is the only one who can make a miracle.  I want to enjoy my summer.  I want to turn 30 and not be stuck in what I don't have or what's not working.  I want to get well, really well, and stop getting sick all the time.  I want my business to thrive and to have deep meaningful friendships instead of hiding at home sick, broken, and alone.  I want to get back to a place that I was at before I left for Turks and Caicos last year where I feel healthy, look healthy, and am focused holistically on all the blessings of my life, not just the ONE thing I don't have.  

 

This whole journey has given me such a deeper understanding of the world, of our heart, of our emotions, and about how easily it is to get lost in the brokenness of this world.  In the last three weeks, each of the three partners in my practice have experienced a major loss, trauma, blow to their spirit.  We are all picking ourselves off the floor.  It's amazing that the three women who set out to help others heal and see light are finding ourselves in incredible darkness.  Some days it feels like we did something wrong like built a building over an Indian burial ground or something like that.  The energy of our hearts feels like all three of us are fighting just to be present and able to be in the office.  It feels like we are losing love, pieces of ourselves, and some how having to put them back together.  It is such a place of brokenness that we are trying to figure out where to step next, not wanting to fall any further.

Sometimes the seasons of darkness come, and there isn't a reason why.  There isn't a reason why at this time my body is as bad as it is, but I can't keep walking around like nothing is wrong.  I can't keep fighting.  I have to stop, step back, accept the broken pieces of myself, and start to heal them.  I have to give up for awhile.  I have to let go of my dreams for awhile.  I have to find wholeness again, as much as I can, so I can maintain the life I have already been given.  Sometimes it's not about having more, but enjoying what you already have.  And accepting that, loving that, and finding joy in that is what will be far greater than any dream coming true.  

So... I guess it's time to let go.  I guess this is me letting go.  This is my surrender.  My cancellation.   It can only go up from here because now I just have to heal.  Get balanced again, and just enjoy the sun, this cute little kid I made, and regrow.  And who knows, maybe when I finally do that, God will bless us, use us, or reveal to us why he said "I'm sorry, no, not now..."

 

Endometriosis is a very hard disease to have.   The more I read about how it affects a woman's life, the more I grieve over my body's brokenness that will never heal.  There are treatments, but I will always carry a broken body.  I hold such joy, gratitude and reverence for my sweet baby girl, but I grieve, feel lost and broken that I will never be healed in my life time.  Like all auto-immune diseases, it's just a part of me.  So I just have to admit, I am broken, and I need to take care of myself.  I need to fill myself.  I need sunshine and joy and hope.  And today, I need to surrender my dreams of being a tough girl and going another round.  I need to build myself back up.  I need to physically, mentally and spiritually let myself heal.  And somewhere in there, I hope I learn how I am suppose to move forward.  Family of three, adoption, or unexpected miracles....  But for now, I just need to breathe again...

I think I will look back on this post some day in my life, and know it was all for.  I will know what God had me wait for.  And I have to hold on to that Truth that He has said "yes" in my life and He has said, "no", but everything I need, I already have.  And I have to let go, let Him be the artist of my life, and faithfully follow rather than seeing every "no" as another broken place.  Even this disease in another way helps me.  It help me grow in my compassion.  It helps me love more deeply.  By saying "no", I need to find the places where I am better for it.  By saying "no" I have to see where He has said "yes".  And as painful as it is to hear "no", yet again, it isn't going to change.  So I have to find the best yes in myself to keep going, accept this broken piece of my life, and continue to hold all of the other parts with some kind of peace, joy and strength. 

Here Comes the Sun...

It's a beautiful day outside.  I am in bed for a moment of calm during nap time.  The sun is shinning, the birds are singing, the waters and sparkling across the water of the pond.  The trees are starting to bud and the air is pleasant enough to open the windows up and take it all in.  This is the kind of weather I was created for.  This is my element.  70 degrees plus and sun.  Despite being flat on my face yesterday and down on my knees for what seems to be like an eternity, I have found the sun is my constant reminder of hope, renewal, new beginnings.  Sometimes just the sunshine on a warm day is enough to make all of the despair of anything feel measurably smaller. 

I am not sure why there needs to be darkness in the world.  Sometimes I think, "God, you made all this.. why have a world with sin or pain or love and loss?  Why have a world with cancer?  Why have a world with infertility, drug addiction, mental illness, sexual abuse, hunger, poverty, sex trafficking, pollution, greed?  Why do we have to even experience this cruel world?"  I feel like as a parent I fight every day to keep my child from things that would make her feel bad.  I watch for sharp objects, I feed her yummy food, and I cloth her in warm and comfy clothes, but then I wonder, why doesn't God do that for us?  What's the point of this little rat race and why does it have to be so hard some times?  If he could give us a life of sunshine and spring and warmth, why wouldn't he?

Most of the people I see in therapy are wrestling with that, too.  Someone young dies or a child has severe autism.  My response is never, well, if God really loved you he would give you all sunshine and flowers... The way I respond is empathy, it's sadness because I know all to well and have never quite understood why the God of the world would let people go for sometimes even their whole life time smothered by brokenness.  Some people never see the sun.  Some people only know pain from birth until death.  Why is that?  This dichotomy when you look at human lives can span infinitely but no one is exempt from any pain, loss, or brokenness.  No one human being gets the peace of only having sunny days... no matter how bright their world is...

I admitted to myself recently that I might not have another child.  Because in the big scheme of life, having one child is not a loss, its just not getting everything I want.  The sun will still shine in my life.  There will be countless spring days until my life is over and I can hide away and ignore that sunshine and the joy it brings, or I choose joy.  It's amazing how much joy (and sorrow) children bring to your life as a parent.  She can be a sunny day or a tsunami.  She can be sweet and loving and do cute stuff or she can come in like a Tasmanian Devil and turn our world upside down.  She, too, is so much sunshine and yet seasons of drought, but I could never ever trade a day, even the bad ones, and give her away.  And I like her, am probably not always a peach to have as a parent.  Several months of having a mother on hormone therapy is surely going to scar this child in some way :)

I get hit with waves and emotion... sadness, hopelessness, fear, anxiety, pain... and sometimes it's breathless and lonely but sometimes I choose to sit in it.  Sometimes I choose to be in pain because I want to grieve what I don't have.  Sometimes I eat.  Sometimes I sleep.  Sometimes I isolate.  But I keep realizing that grief day in and day out doesn't lead to acceptance until I am ready.  Until, I choose to open up the curtains in my life and see the sun, it exists, but I choose not to see it.  And sometimes the sun is hidden by clouds, but it is still there if I choose to see it.  And sometimes in the middle of the night, when it's hours until sunrise, it can feel like it will never shine again, but it always does.  No matter hold cold the winter, no matter how rainy a season, the sun always returns.  Eventually, joy and peace and love is restored by our Creator, always...  always...

I read over the last year of struggle in the midst of the four seasons, and today, I am still sick with a cold and still grieving loss of no pregnancy, but I still notice the sun.  And for today, I pick myself up off the ground and I choose to see the sun.  I choose today to push past as much of the stuffy nose and cough as I can and just embrace the day as beautiful as it is.  I am going to try and forget the losses, the sickness, the yuckiness of this world, and just be embraced by the sun.  Not because sitting in the sun with make me pregnant or heal my heart or give me the desire of my heart, but because I don't want to sit in the darkness while I await for my heart's desire.  I don't want to keep feeling unloved by God.  I want to seek His face.  I want to know His presence.  He is here, He is alive, and He is so desperately wanting me to run to Him for His love.  Like the sun, His love is always there even when we don't feel it or choose not to see it, or instead it appears like darkness, but it is there.  It's always there, always.

God is not a father who only springs wells of happiness upon us.  How would we truly depend and love him if he just showered us with joy? We would blissfully dance in the rain and only think about ourselves if that were the case.  We would selfishly want more and forget what we have.  We would be like fat, lazy kids who never want to move out and get a job to feel the pride of our days work.  We would take for granted the people He has given in our lives.  It would be sunny but there would be no joy after awhile because we wouldn't know how wonderful we have it.  After being through such a long winter, it feels so good to see the sun again.  And overwhelming how just these quiet moments remind me how broken I choose to let myself feel. It's hard to admit but I recognize that so much of my brokenness is of my own doing.  Even if I never get the desires of my heart, even when He says "no" in big large letters, He still loves me.  He still pours on the sun, and I have to choose to see His provision and His plan even though I so desperately want mine.  Like KK wanting M and M's for breakfast, and when I say "no", it's for her provision.  It's because I love her that I say "no", but I still provide her breakfast.  I still make those pancakes and bananas with love.  And if she wants to choose to sit on the floor mad because she can't eat candy and miss out on the banquet I prepared for her, I can't force feed her those little cakes... I just have to sit by and try to remind her that I love her so very much.  I love her so much that I know down the road she will thank me for not giving her candy every day for breakfast.  And God is doing that for me... Maybe I just have to remember that when I only lay on the floor in sadness, I can't see the breakfast He is preparing for me.  

I am thankful that I have a choice, that I have seen the sun, that I know joy and love and peace.  Because I, too, know what it is like to be lost and in pain and unable to see any sun.  So today, I lift my head, my eyes and my weary heart to the Lord.  For in my brokenness, I am only made whole through him.  No matter how dark this seems to be, I lean on the understanding that some day, maybe even after this life, I will be filled, full, and know what it's like to be in true Paradise where the sun always shines and there is no more pain.  Today, I cling to this sun as it reminds me of all of the goodness, all of the joy, and all of the hope that comes in Christ. 

Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him! Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not against them. Help them see that the Master is about to arrive. He could show up any minute!

 

^6-7 Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.

^8-9 Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.

^12-14 I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am.  -Phillipeans 4:4-14