Hello, Again, My Friend

Sometimes the deep moments happen in the quiet.

It's been hard to talk about the deep moments lately.  December 20th marked two years without Sweet Baby. 

In mid-November, I listened to an interview with Kathryn Whitaker (Team Whitaker).  She discussed the importance of caring for her marriage in the midst of the stresses of illness with her youngest.

It struck me like a thunderbolt what December 20th means to my marriage.  It's two years of holding on through loss, grief, and depression.  It's two years of not losing each other while our world crumbled.  Two years where we didn't let go.

So, I planned a trip and we spent two days alone together, because we made it through a crucible together, and that deserves a room with a fireplace and all the fanciness.

It was two days much needed and well spent.

The last month has also been a step forward in hormonal health.  After my latest consult, the doctor offered me the option to begin taking low dose naltrexone.  Two weeks of research and discussion with others who have taken it, and I decided with some trepidation to begin the medication.

The side effects include fatigue and nausea, so it's been all the fun of the first trimester, without any of the baby-at-the-end benefits.  The LDN boosts my body's production of beta endorphins, meaning my stomach has been taking a hit, but at least I'm happy about it :P

To mitigate the side effects, my doctor has had me slowly increasing my dosage.  After two or three days, my stomach and energy regulate.....until the next increase.  This week is the final increase.  I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  Soon, I hope to have an elevated mood and a peaceful stomach.

With all of the holidays, the inevitable increase in pregnancy announcements, and the general fatigue and nausea, this has been a trying month.  Really more crying than is strictly necessary, but not quite enough to feel better. 

The advent of a new cycle brought all of it, the anniversary of losing SB, the nausea, the feeling that everyone else is pregnant to a head.  The thoughts that had been brewing for months broke free.  It's time to let go of the baby stuff.  I've culled back little by little over the years, but it's really time now.

Not because it's a superstition to become pregnant, not because I'm hopeless for the future, but because it's time.  Deeply, profoundly time to stop living in a moment that isn't here.  Time to face both feet in the direction that is my life. 

With all the clichéd introspection that comes with a new year, I'm making a choice.  Each day, I'm going to pry my hands back open and let go of the life I thought I would have because it is only in letting go that I will find the person God created me to be. 

Today, letting go looked like packing up my Sweet Baby's crib and taking it to my brother's house.  My new nephew will be here within the month.  A baby will sleep sweetly in that bed once again.

Letting go is hard and scary and hopeful and sweet.  Wherever this road goes, I will be more me, more the person I was meant to be.  While that means snotty tears over old furniture, whispers in my soul tell me it's going to be amazing.

The Dark Room

I've had a fascination with old school photography my whole life.  My paternal grandfather was a ground-breaking photographer, developing chemical processes and guest lecturing for a major film company.

He passed away before I was born, and I was always fascinated with his life's work.

The dark room is the tricky part; the moment when you make it or break it.  Unprocessed film cannot be exposed to light, or it will be destroyed.  So, the photographer works in complete dark, a series of practiced motions leading them. 

Hands move without sight, opening canisters, winding film, placing in the processing tank, and sealing the film away again, safe from light and ready for the next step.

In the dark room, you need to trust your hands.  You need to follow the motions you've done before, confident that the practice, the process works. 

It will only be in the final steps that you will know if your hands have been true.  Everything from the moment you step in to the dark room to the moment you see the developer bring your film to life is an exercise in trusting the process. 

It's a leap of faith until the moment everything suddenly becomes visible.  Until then, it's all darkness, trust, and hope.

Since June, I've been sitting in the dark room of my soul.  No breaks of light or foreshadowing of great things.  Just the feel of my own hands working in the dark, moving through the motions I've spent a lifetime learning. 

Practicing blind trust because I feel no hope.  No grace.

In May, I was able to see and touch the relics of St. Gianna.  After the experience, I felt my chronic uterine inflammation (a piece in the infertility puzzle) was relieved.  With that relief, I was one katrillion percent certain a(nother) miracle was imminent and that I would be pregnant shortly.

As I sat in Mass, two days after the onset of a new cycle declaring a continuance of infertility, I physically felt my heart break, my soul shatter.

It was in the moment I entered the dark room.  I could see nothing, feel nothing.  Only the absence of miracles.

Since then, every Mass, every Confession, every prayer has been said from practice, from blind trust.  Not from any feeling of grace or goodness.

In the dark room, it's easy to doubt.  It's easy to think that perhaps it would be easier to just open the door and let the film spoil.

In the dark room, there's a lot of time to think.  In the moments when the dark room seems too much, I think about Mother Teresa.

Every time I do, I thank God her confidant didn't listen to her and throw away the letters detailing Mother Teresa's lifetime in the dark room.

She spent decades, acting on a faith she couldn't feel in her soul.  In her private writings, she details the pain of faith without tangible grace. 

The grace there, just outside the door of the dark room, constant and present, but unable to reach through.

I haven't wanted to talk about this darkness.  I've been hoping it would be relieved and I could put it behind me and move on to happier, more cheerful things.

But it hasn't lifted, and I wonder.  Who else is sitting in a dark room?

Do you know you're not alone?  I'm here, sitting in this room with you.  Trust the movements of your hands, trust the prayers spoken by rote but unfelt in your soul.  Trust, friend.  You are not alone.

The dark room cannot extinguish the truth or existence of the light.  The dark room is a part of the process. 

source

We need the dark room to keep the film safe, perhaps here our souls are resting and staying safe as well.  If only we trust the process.  Now our training will be what we lean on, and the stories of those who have braved this place before us.

Hold my hand, friend.  You are not in this room alone.

When Gratitude Comes Hard

Last week, I was talking about how hard waiting is.  It is hard.  So hard.

Then, I went into a full out Anne of Green Gables depths of despair day on Friday.  Complete with self-pity, marathon knitting and TV watching, and the bare minimum of household chores.  I didn't shower, the kids and I ate junk food, and I generally moped all day.

Knitting many many washcloths 

Knitting many many Outlander cowls

A day of pajamas and weird selfies

When Hubby left for work, I was tearfully telling him we were millimeters away from getting a puppy.  I was still mopey at dinner, but Hubby sweetly brought the girls and I pizza.

But, the trick for me is not letting it go to the second day.  Saturday morning, I got up and went to the gym and ran some errands.  I got more done before 10am than I had the entire previous day.  I also killed it at the gym.  I took all the anger/frustration/sadness of this long limbo out on that workout. 

A PR on the 2,000 meter row

I didn't know how much anger I had until it came rushing out.  It was a bit of a revelation.  Physically spent, anger spent, I returned home to get back to life.  Because it's so easy to miss out of life when you're busy looking at what you want instead of what you have.

Then, I went to Mass on Sunday and one line in the homily stuck with me: Being a saint is about letting go of what you want and trusting that God has something better.  The real zinger is the homilist was my dad the deacon (see Dad, I was listening!) :)

I've been thinking about that.  Thinking about what I have and what I want.  What I've wanted for many many years.

I've wanted children close together in age, I thought by now I'd have about five, at least.  I don't.  LB will never have a sibling close in age.  I hope that maybe someday if she's called to marriage, she'll have a sister-in-law who becomes a best friend, like my SIL who is an only child is my best friend. 

Maybe SP will still have a sibling close-ish...we've passed the "close" mark with her third birthday four months away and no sibling on the horizon. 

But here's the deal, here's the point of everything, in order to be a saint, I need to let go and let God.  Cliches become cliches for a reason. 

This week, I'm trying to be more aware of the blessings around me.  I am trying to cultivate a spirit of gratitude.  I am trying to stop looking at what I don't have and look around me.  Take the blinders off and look at this beautiful life I have.

Playing at the gym

Taking in a movie

Goofing around at the museum

This morning :)

I'm taking gratitude one morning at a time.