The Way to Now

There’s something I experienced first hand this winter that I did not realize was so scary and uncontrollable.

Depression.

I wouldn’t even want to talk about it, because now I can pretend it never happened, but I realize how un-talked about it is.  Probably more women in their 30s experience depression as a result of infertility than from any other cause.  This is only what my intuition tells me, but I have a feeling it’s true.  I have been dealing with what infertility does to a woman’s body, psyche, spirit, and lifestyle for over a year and a half.  I know that does not even touch on how long many women have dealt with it, but eighteen months can seem like an eternity when you want to start a family.

So, what’s the disappearing act?

Well, I don’t know where the depression goes, but it’s not a present reality in my daily life anymore.  I am not under any illusion that it will never return, but I think there are steps I took to create some places of sanctuary in my life.  First, I recognized last fall that something was not right.  I felt hopeless, I had no interest in my work, I did not want to see my friends.  To anyone who knows me, that does not sound like me.  I only sought out a therapist because I knew I should seek out a therapist.  But, talking it out really does help.  The steps I needed to take included finding a doctor who specialized in reproductive medicine (the closest one is four hours away), finding a local acupuncturist, and finding a way to take some time for me.

In the beginning years of my career, all I wanted to do was nurture it and grow it, and build something that meaningful.  Throughout high school and college, I guess you could say I was an overachiever.  I always had a goal of blowing away the expectations.  I don’t even know where that comes from – I haven’t gotten that far in therapy!  I was president of Future Community Leaders of America by the time I started my sophomore year of high school.  I was president of my youth group my senior year.  In college too, I was hired to lead the group that designed activities for the students living in the dorms.  I was editor of the English department’s undergraduate literary journal.  So, for my body to tell me that I couldn’t achieve motherhood at exactly the time I planned for it to happen was unacceptable.

There’s a show on TV right now called Life Unexpected and it takes a really honest look at life for several adults in their early 30s.  Two of the characters find out the kid they had in high school is now 16 and seeking emancipation.  Since they had given her up for adoption, they never expected to see her again.  In fact, after the mom found out she was pregnant, she never told the father.  He was the quarterback of the football team and never thought in a million years he fathered a child.  The 16-year-old kid, Lux, shows up seeking emancipation from the foster care system and they discover a life they never expected.  All the mom’s issues from her own father abandoning her, to her current distance from the rest of her family play out now in meeting her daughter.  Lux’s dad, the quarterback, can’t seem to get his life together – his father has never been emotionally unavailable to him, and he has a hard time making himself available to others … until Lux.  His daughter changes him.  They all have to confront their issues and it never comes out in a neat package tied with a bow, but they allow themselves to open up to each other.

We are all living unexpected lives in some way or another.  Think about your life for a moment … did you expect everything that has happened?  And, even the disappointing realities have taught you something, right?  Well, that’s where I’ve come … to a place of trusting the unfolding of my life, unexpected.  When I felt really hopeless and forgot that God had a future set out for me, I needed other people to remind me of the huge track record God has had in my life of giving me everything I’ve wanted.  Was now really the time to lose hope?  Since I wasn’t sharing any of this with most of the people I know, the circle of people to give me hope was pretty small.  But, for me, a few voices pulled me to a new place, a place of healing.  A couple of the voices were authors I read at that time.  Then there was my therapist, whom I only needed to see five or six times, and then a couple of minister friends, and of course, my family.  I chose not to be on any kind of medication for depression, and within a matter of three or four months, I began to feel better, more like myself.

With my medical doctors being four hours away, I set up some time away from work as well.  It was time to follow the protocol they set up for me, but even better, time to spend with my family on the Front Range.  I really needed some weeks of unscheduled, uninterrupted time to do what my spirit asked of me.  I truly rested.  I cooked with love and ate with family.  I just stopped putting so many expectations on my body.  At the end of my time off, after I followed the doctor’s plan, did everything work out perfectly?  No.  I am still waiting for my time of impending motherhood.  Maybe even better than being able to put my infertility behind me so quickly, I succeeded in listening to myself and renewing a right spirit within me.  I have not felt that awful, lifeless feeling of depression in a long time.  That was the real gift of giving myself some time.  Even more so, sharing with others the challenges and new understandings I’ve learned spread far beyond just what I’m going through.  It’s a matter of living and experiencing life.  We either choose to do it all by ourselves, or we share it, because that’s one of God’s gifts to us – community.  It is easier to carry something that 200 people are holding up, than to carry it all by yourself.

It’s the New Year.  New thoughts.  New attitude.  Same emotional nightmare.  I literally heard myself saying this to my husband on the phone the other day.  He was saying, in a round about way, “I thought we’d be having more sex while we’re trying to make a baby.”  And, my response was, “I’m in an emotional nightmare.”  I think I meant, nothing is how I thought it would be.  I never thought it would take this much time or require so many trips to so many different people who poke and prod at you with various types of invasive machines.  I never thought so many of my friends would get pregnant, then have their babies, then have 1^st birthday parties for their babies.  During each day, I can take it in stride.  But when I add it all up, it is like living in an emotional nightmare.  I couldn’t tell you from one minute to the next what I am going to feel like or what’s going to set me off crying.  It’s embarrassing.  I guess the real surprise of it all is that not even my optimistic and out-going attitude have been able to get me through these months unscathed.  I feel scathed.  ewww, I don’t like even thinking about it.  I just wish everything was happening according to plan, and I was happily buying maternity clothes and thinking about how to design the perfect gender-neutral, but still stylish, nursery.  I am doing those things, but without the bulging tummy to necessitate them.

This fall I’d say was the hardest.  From September, when I turned 31, and had the realization that I was not celebrating another birthday, but was, in fact, mourning that a whole year had passed of trying to get pregnant.  Everyone around me, including my husband, was oblivious to the emotional implications of this fact.  I experienced them on a level that I didn’t even know I felt.  Suddenly my bright outlook and my optimistic attitude went down the drain.  I wanted to crawl into bed and emerge in the spring with a big swollen belly.  Not only did I have to deal with this crazy new emotional reality, I still had to work.  My work is not just any work – it’s a performance, but not as a character, as myself.  So, I have to be my best and brightest self in order for everyone to assume everything is all right with me.  The last thing I wanted was to be explaining this ridiculous hellhole to my congregation on Sunday morning.

The part of my job I love most is that I get to work with young adults, with people my own age!  But, at this point in my unraveling, it was almost the last thing I wanted to do.  Many of these people are my good friends, but it got really hard to be around girl-who-accidentally-got-pregnant-twice-and-then-had-a-longed-for-son-like-clockwork.  Her husband got a vasectomy, by the way, before he turned 30.  Then there’s my friend who doesn’t work and decided to start trying at 31, a couple months before getting married, and got pregnant immediately.  Not only is she married to an olive-skinned, dark-haired guy, but the baby somehow looks exactly like her (strawberry-blonde with blue eyes)!  And my favorite, our young youth director who got married in August, and in September, went in for strep throat, and came out with a positive pregnancy test!  Who are these people?

Here’s the real kicker for me: anything I’ve wanted in my life, I’ve attained.  Not this, though.  This is either God’s ultimate lesson in patience for me, or I forgot how to get what I want.  Actually, what I think it is, is that I forgot how long some of those things took for me to get them.  I wanted to go to Ireland with three of my friends – we started planning when we were 15 – and they have all gone (separately) but I still haven’t made it there yet … so that’s 16 years and counting.  But, then there was college — I wanted to finish so that I could get a Masters of Divinity and be a minister.  I did finish my undergrad, although it took an extra semester … so there’s 4.5 years.  I began my Master’s the next fall (9 month wait), and finished 3 years later.  I needed to wait an extra year before I was commissioned as a minister.  And then, I had to work for 3 years before being officially ordained as a minister.   And that’s just getting my career on track.  I also knew I wanted to get married.  I wanted to get married at age 22.  It was a couple years after my first serious boyfriend was ready to talk marriage.  I jumped ship on that one at 19, after 6 months of dating, and freaking out about what an actual marriage meant.  Then, when I was thinking about it, at 22, there was no one in sight!  I wasn’t really serious about it then, but I knew it was something I wanted.  As grad school rolled on, I realized I was getting closer and closer to BEING a minister, and who would want to marry a minister?!  I remember my favorite, “What do you do?” answer being, “I’m a nanny.”  Oh brother, was that ever going to change!

A full year after I had been sent to Grand Junction, a small-ish town, 4 hours from everything I knew, I settled on being single for the rest of my time here.  Who was I going to find in this small town?  Wouldn’t you know it – I found someone I had known as a teenager!  Yep, I had my “husband” list and he matched every criteria on it.  We dated for a year, were engaged for four months, and then got married, in a perfect ceremony, in my tiny town of Grand Junction.  I do feel a bit sheepish, after looking back over my life, thus far, and realizing, I have gotten everything I have wanted.  So, the real question here is, “where is my faith?!”