The Way to Now

Today I surprised the crap out of myself.  I had a thought that was far from what my general line of thinking has been these days.  For the sake of what they call a “baseline,” here’s a sampling of my usual line of thinking these days: baby, career, writing, friends, doctors, visualization, ministry, questioning, waiting, pregnancy, infertility, frustration, distraction. I am starting to be over it – it’s depressing to even write it down.  I had this flash in my mind today as if there wasn’t even a baseline of on-going thoughts at all.  I thought, now’s the time to take a year to travel and volunteer all over the world.  I have to admit, I did just read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and I found it to be a journey we should all take at some point in our lives.  Of course, we all have our own demons and situations that have led us to question everything.  But, what we all share in common is the spiritual journey that is with us whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.  I highly recommend examining the journey because all the gems of wisdom we are able to infuse into our lives come straight from the struggle, the examination, and the honesty of feeling what you’re feeling.  For the last several months I have been practicing feeling my feelings and what I’ve come up with is that I have a lot of goals in my life along with having kids.  There is a certain pressure, however, in thinking of getting older and knowing there is a limited window on having a family, while there’s a wide open door for many other things.  Both of these angles cause me to question my on-going thoughts and my new thought.  For one thing, I do feel like it is time to start a family.  I want that next step in my life.  For another thing, I kind of want a big family and it will require a good portion of this decade for us to accomplish that goal.

From the other angle, doesn’t it sound like the coolest thing to travel and volunteer all over the world?

Yes, I know, I should do it while I have the passion and while I am child free.  I have had all kinds of creative thoughts about how to travel with kids at some point.  However, this long-term journey does not seem like the ideal situation for a squirmy, dirt-eating, vulnerable child (much less fertility-induced triplets).  Now, I do imagine after raising kids will be a really great time to retire early (hopefully), or at least in good health, and travel and volunteer.  But what if I don’t feel like doing it then?  Now might really be the time!  The point of this whole blog is to be in the present moment.  One of the hiccups with that plan is that sometimes being able to be in the present moment takes a little planning.  And that might only be true if you are ambitious and want to accomplish certain things at certain times.  Now, I married a man who loves serendipity.  He could never make a plan in his life and love being continually surprised by what happens.  What I don’t know if he’s figured out yet is that now I plant those serendipitous ideas!  In fact, I had to have a control-freak-check on myself because sometimes I can’t imagine how he got things accomplished before he knew me.  I think the question I am really wondering in all of this is, am I on a journey that will come to completion?

I am currently in a waiting period, a holding zone in the infertility world, where my body is not quite ready to begin another cycle of anything yet and so we wait another month.  This month has been really different than any other month in that I am on a break from my normal routine.  I can sit and ponder all day long!  What I’ve been finding most helpful and therapeutic is to ponder while swimming at our brand new college pool.  Not only is it a gigantic pool, but there are not that many people using it in the middle of the day.  So I can literally float around in a pool of my thoughts.  The other good thing about this is that I’m physically tired at night – a concept I think might be the missing link in our adult lives.  You see, our hearts and lungs get a much bigger emotional workout as we get older, but we often stop strengthening them with physical activity.  No wonder our broken hearts don’t heal as fast and it can feel like we can’t breathe in times of despair.  I think there’s a link between fatiguing our bodies in a good way, the way of physical exercise, and the endurance our hearts require as we encounter this life for ourselves, as adults.

This seems a bit rambly … in summation, new thoughts, different thoughts, and allowing the space to let those thoughts swim.

To put personal thoughts out for the world to see seems just crazy, and perhaps, a little narcissistic.  But, there’s a more profound reason for sharing our stories and deciding to talk about life and the sometimes painful journeys we take, especially in our 30s.  The greater reason for sharing is that one person will read something that resembles them and will feel supported along their own journey of faith and life.  This is what I have been seeking in the past year.  I am only 31 and yet I have felt a tidal wave of new emotions and life situation since turning 30.  I don’t know if it is the age, or simply a coincidence, but I’m pretty sure other women will agree, things change in our 30s!  My primary word for life in my 20s was probably, adventure.  Now, in my 30s, it is, complicated.  How did things go from adventure to complication in only a few years?  For me, as for probably many women my age, I got married at 29 and already knew I wanted to have a family.  After 6 months of blissfully happy marriage, I was thrilled to throw away my birth control pills and see if conception would occur immediately, or shortly thereafter.  I did have in the back of my mind, what if this doesn’t work for me as easily as it should?  What if my irregular periods and previous hunches from doctors about Poly-Cystic Ovarian Syndrome are right?  What if I am the one in six women (or whatever the statistic) who has to deal with infertility?

And so, it’s been a year and a half of complicated, emotional, and very private feelings about how this all might unfold.  I have been faux-blogging in a little Word doc on my computer for the past couple months, just to get my thoughts and feelings out.  So, I’ll put up some of those postings, just to give you a play-by-play of the actual complicated journey.  By the way, I’m expecting this probably only to be interesting to women also dealing with infertility, mostly based on the comments I get from people not dealing with it.  Well-meaning friends and acquaintances say things to me like, “do you really think about it that much?”  and “it’ll happen,” and “you’re young – it hasn’t been that long.”  These are the comments that made me want to start this project.  I know there’s a community of women out there who long to hear about someone’s similar journey and shared emotions, but it’s certainly not my extra-fertile friends, who already have 3 kids and a vasectomy!

There is power in the present moment, if only to say, I will be here now and be grateful for my life.