Hope in a Hopeless Place

Something crazy happened tonight. 

There's been a lot of construction around our new house. A. Lot. The main road in and out of our neighborhood has been under construction since well before our move and recently, the progress on the road has caused it to take longer to get down the hill. One of those worse before it's better kind of situations. 

This evening, I sat in traffic, waiting for my turn to creep down the hill and my thoughts were brewing darkly. 

My surgery in early August is healed, and there's now the potential that we may conceive. In fact, earlier this week, I was feeling really hopeful that maybe this would be *the* month. 

I allowed myself to daydream about the stroller I've wanted for ten years and never gotten that I've promised myself I will splurge on if there's a next time. 

I've thought about what it would be like to tell family and friends. How we could surprise them. What joy it would be.

I've prayed for the intercession of our beloved late priest Fr Logan to bring us a miracle. He loved my husband so much, thought he was so funny. He called me the rose between two thorns when I sang with my dad and another parishioner at healing masses. 

He prayed over me at those same masses when I was pregnant with SP and struggling with complications. I brought him dinner once a week for the months following one of his surgeries.  He was the priest at my first communion, and there when LB made hers as well. 

He was woven in a special way into our lives, and it was him I turned to in intercession this month when the inflammation that has plagued me and been non-responsive to all medications and unknown in cause to all testing remained between me and fertility. 

And, for a bit, I felt hopeful. But, as I've crept closer to the start of a new cycle, closer to what experience has taught me will be a hard reality, I've lost hope. 

It was this lost and hopeless feeling that centered in my thoughts as I sat in traffic waiting.  

The dark thoughts were reigning supreme and I was feeling so done. So over finding a way to have any shred of hope left. 

As some traffic slowly made its way up the hill, I glanced over at a car waiting to turn into traffic. And my heart leapt in my chest with a moment of ecstasy. There, in that car waiting ten feet from me, was my lost girl, my SB, sitting in a car with her dad. She looked good. She looked happy. 

I never knew I could hold so much joy and sorrow simultaneously in my soul. She looks good. Somewhere out there, my baby looks happy. 

What's more, there's this fear I've carried deep down in my soul that I wouldn't know her if I saw her. I haven't seen her in over two years, and I feared she would change so much before I ever saw her again that I wouldn't know her even if I saw her. But, I did know her. 

I'm not sure what to make of all those feelings that were swirling inside me when I looked up and added the feelings of seeing SB to the mix. Perhaps the takeaway is even the most hopeless moment can be redeemed. 

Or maybe it was just a moment of straight gift sewn into a hard season of life. 

In the end, I'm struggling to let the joy win out. But I'll take the tears and sorrow. It was worth it just to have that momentary glimpse and knowledge that she's okay. Just a girl, talking to her daddy in the car. 

Sitting with Uncertainty

Our Little House of Dreams has been for sale for about three months now. We've moved on to our idyllic house in the glen, but yet, our little house sits. 

When we moved, we made the decision to find a forever home without the pressure of an impending sale on our current home. Also, with 800 sq ft and four people, trust me when I say it shows much better without us!

We spent 10 years in our old house, fixing it up and pouring out time, energy and love into it. We spent years paying off all of our student loans, car loans and the like, and then saving up a separate down payment for the new house, as well as a cushion for carrying two houses for a time. 

Along the path to closing on our new home, we had so many moments of blessing and reassurance that we were doing the right thing, that we had calculated our decisions and all would be well. 

When we finally moved, I spent most days at the old house, cleaning, painting, perfecting every surface because surely(!)  someone would fall immediately in love with our special little place of only the walls were soothing tones. 

After two weeks of backbreaking labor l, the house went on the market and I eagerly awaited the news that someone loved it as much as we had. 

I prayed the novena to St Joseph, confident that any minute I would hear the good news. 

And yet, nothing. Very few people have shown interest, and we've had a few silly reasons for passing (a la House Hunters) on the few that have appreciated it. 

Today I went over a tucked St Joseph into the cupboards. 

Not for good luck or an assured sale, but as a reminder and dedication that this house is under his guard. 

We have entrusted this sale to St Joseph. We have done all the prudent things to make a sale successful, and now, we wait. And as much as I struggle with being in control, and as much as its a drag writing out two mortgage payments and two utility bills, I feel a peace over this. 

I feel confident that God has this in hand and St Joseph has my back. When I prayed that novena, I prayed that the exact right person who would be blessed by our house would find it.  

I want someone who feels about our little yellow house how we did. I want someone to wake up, look out at the sun rising over that giant fenced in yard and smile, like I did so many mornings. 

I want someone to smile as they pass an open window at lunchtime or in the evening, because you can hear the bells ringing from the nearby church. Many a day I stood in my garden and heard those bells and felt a connection to all the generations past who stopped their work to pray. 

I loved my House of Dreams hard. I cried when we left. The first morning I woke up in our new house, I felt blessing and grace as I felt this certainty in my soul that this new house was where I should be. 

I slipped into life here like a favorite moccasin, comfortable and formed to me as only years of use could manage. I woke up that first morning knowing I was where I was meant to be. 

That certainty has never left. Through months of waiting on our little house to sell, through feedback on all the flaws of the house we spent so many happy years and have so much love for, the peace remains. 

For me, uncertainty is usually a traumatic place to rest. The biggest thorn in my infertility is the not knowing, the uncertainty on how this will all resolve. So, I know this peace can only be from God. 

The little house will sell when it does. Maybe it'll sell tomorrow, maybe we'll find ourselves landlords for a time. Maybe this house is just waiting for the right new owner and we'll land somewhere in between. 

Whichever way the path goes, I'm trying not to feel the irritation and angst of the double bills. I'm trying to rest in this peace and remember, all my resources belong first to God, and if this is the way they should be allotted for now, the updates and new purchases can wait. 

Obedience is hard. Sometimes yield on to God's will means waiting, which is the very hardest thing of all for me. 

So, off St Joseph went to my little House of Dreams, to remind me he's got this and I am not in control beyond my own actions. 

Where are you waiting in your life?  How can I lift you up in my own wait?