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 1st 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?!”