Sea Legs

The mind is so funny. Actually it’s sometimes funny, but mostly it's a pain in the ass.  It spins and weaves tall tales and elaborate stories, mostly about me…and my fate, and spends most of its time tying to convince me of the palpability of it’s tapestries…as if to say “look what I’ve made, you’re bound to touch it soon!” And I take its finely woven piece and I drape it over my shoulders, and I wear it. I do life with it wrapped around my neck. And as heavy as it may be, as much as it weighs me down and slows my pace, I find some kind of contorted comfort in its presence. As if by living with fear of the dreaded thing(s), I will somehow be more prepared in the case of it actually coming to life. Sound crazy? It is.

And my heart flutters and the heat rises to my cheeks, and the moment, the one that’s actually real, is stolen away, lost forever.

What is it about uncertainty that the mind hates so much? Why must it replace the unknown with narratives of the future? Why does it dwell on impeding doom, terrorists’ attacks, melting ice caps, disease, and political unrest?

To give the mind some credit, occasionally what it imagines really does happen. Sometimes we live out our worst nightmare. But the difference is, the mind, in its spinning and weaving, always fails to include the grace and peace of God. It never remembers your strength and steadfastness. It forgets that you’re a warrior and an experienced sailor who has already weathered many storms. And in the midst of the battle, I don’t look the way I did in my mind, and either do you. It’s true that bad things happen, but why do we insist on living out these experiences over and over again in our heads when the probability of them coming to pass is small. Like really really small. I mean, take some inventory…how many of the terrors you have imagined have actually happened? For me it’s probably about 0.00001%. And thank God because if not, I would have died a million deaths in fiery car wrecks, roadside bombs, plane crashes, and cliff jumps. I would have been diagnosed with every disease WebMD has to offer, lost everyone I love, grown old alone or not at all, and been a victim of tyranny. Yeah, that has all happened in my mind. Whew!

So why do we fall prey to the minds eye time and time again? Why do we subject ourselves to so much unnecessary suffering?

 The truth is we don’t like uncertainty any less than our minds do and we are seeking a kind of comfort and predictability in all the wrong places. Find a bump? Google it. Hear about a mass shooting across the country? Google it, and make sure to read the whole article then do some background research on the killer. Oh and the tornado in the Midwest, Google that too, and then watch some of the footage on YouTube.

We inundate ourselves with disaster of every kind and give our minds, which are for reasons known and unknown, already prone to disastrous thinking, a mighty foot hold to hang on to.

So shall we bury our heads in butterflies and The Office episodes? No, absolutely not. But when we go into the enemy’s territory, we go in suited up, with a sword in one hand and a flare in the other, ready to fire it off the moment you feel yourself sinking, and your conscious, sensible self will come to the rescue. And sometimes we just don’t go. Sometimes we’re not ready.

And most importantly, we have to get our sea legs. Our sea legs give us the ability to walk steadily on a ship being tossed in the wake of a large and endless sea, with erratic swells swayed by fickle winds. When you have your sea legs you no longer fear the unknown, you’ve come to terms with the flightiness of the open waters, and have even learned to embrace its uncertainty. Because this, the promise of change from one second to the next, is really the only thing you can be sure of. So you live your life in accord with the universe, taking each drum and roll as it comes to you. And come hell or high water, you sail on.

" All that I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen." - 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The Capacity to be Seen

I have to admit, sharing this journey with you sometimes leaves me feeling very exposed. 

There was a time when I carried my “infertility” deep deep down inside of me. It was a wound so fresh I had to shield it from the open air and the well intentioned people whose words often stung like salt. Sometimes it would bubble up inside me at unexpected times, in a crowded room, or alone in the car. Emotion would be triggered by a scene in a movie or a song on the radio, and despite by fight to keep it down, feeling arose.

This jourey has taught me many things, but one I hold dearest to my heart is vulnerability. The capacity to be seen.

I learned to let go. To grieve when I needed to grieve, cry in front of strangers, and allow myself to “get into the deep, beautiful melancholy of everything that happened.” And that’s when healing came like the dawn. People still said stupid things, and I have, many times, been left to absorb the blow. I still had moments of insecurity, and even now, sharing my story can leave me feeling naked in Times Square…but I am FREE. 

There are no demons to thrive in the darkness of my soul, telling me tales of inadequacy. The heaviness I once carried is now shared by people who love me and have taken on my burdens. I feel accepted and loved, and my story has connected me with people and places that my path may have never crossed had I been in hiding.

Pain and rejection are apart of the human experience and I no longer fear them or walk around them. I walk through them, allowing my identity to flex its muscles and my desperation for Jesus to grow. I am better because of it.

And so I write. For me and for the people who will find comfort in my words. For my unborn child who will one day read back on these posts with the revelation of how deeply loved and desired they are. Before they ever did anything wrong or anything right, they were loved. 

I write for the legacy I will pass on...the one of strength and faith, of believing in the face of doubt and learning to weather life's storms. I want them to know their existence in my heart made me brave. It taught to me put myself out there, to contend, to get back up, to have compassion, and to endure.

I write for freedom.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.” 

– Mary Angelou

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"I Have a Dream"

We can all look back on our lives and pinpoint a few big days that changed the course of our history. Days that were so profound we can retrace steps, revoke emotions, and muster up minute details that our mind naturally discards of for the more subtle days.

            I was supposed to have one of those big days last week. Friday, May 30^th 2014. Marked in my calendar as “the big reveal.” The culmination of so many tears, prayers, hopes, and dreams that would all find solace in this. Day.

            The reality is, I don’t know what my uterus looks like. I only know what I’ve been told, and that is that the radiation I received would weaken my uterus, zap it’s lining, and leave a significant amount of scar tissue that would make getting pregnant impossible, or at best risky, with no chance of carrying to full term. I was told that almost 3 years ago, sitting in my gynecologic oncologists office that (big) day, and with the exception of a few open minded, experimental doctors, I’ve been told that ever since. But hearing is different than knowing, and knowing is different than believing, and although I have spent hundreds of days accepting this forecast as truth, there have been days, many of them, that by the power of the holy spirit I have believed for something more.

            It started when after being assured that I would never have a period again on the pretense that I would have no lining to shed, I started to bleed. First it was just a little, than gradually, each month, like clock work, I was greeted with an increasing flow; a manifestation of hope. The lining of my uterus was regenerating. Then passages started to jump out at me from scripture and I claimed them as my own. Friends and family, pillars of faith, began to speak life over my womb with absolute conviction it would one day carry a child. I have memorial stones of moments where it seemed all of heaven was pointing to this truth.

Waiting for the Doc

            This big day, I was scheduled to meet with a fertility doctor, one of the top-rated in the country in Fairfax, Virginia, and for the first time, get a real look at my uterus. I would be getting a hystersonogram, a fancy ultrasound that would give an in depth look at my uterus by filling it up with saline via a catheter that’s inserted through my cervix. The saline separates the walls and can asses the uterine lining, detect polyps, fibroids, any abnormalities in shape, and most importantly SCAR TISSUE. While there is no test that can wholly determine the strength of my uterus and whether or not becoming pregnant would be a safe and fruitful option for me, it would display any red flags and give us an idea of what we would be working with.

            My sleep was restless the night before and I woke up early feeling wired. I was so nervous when we arrived, pacing back and fourth after I checked in, taking glances at my sweet husband who was characteristically calm and steady. The Dr. initially took a regular old ultrasound of my uterus and ovaries, both of which looked good. Then he continued on to attempt to insert the catheter into my cervix. I could tell he was having trouble, and seconds later he said that the opening to my cervix was too tightly closed to insert the catheter and that he would not be able to perform the procedure we had driven almost 5 hours to get. He explained that I had cervical stenosis, a common side effect of radiation to the cervix as well as trauma during birth, ect. The only way to correct this would be to get my cervix dilated manually or potentially undergo a minor surgery to re-establish the hole. He also explained that because of the placement of my ovaries, egg retrieval would be complex. Doable, but not easy.

            I left that appointment feeling overwhelmed and nauseous. I just kept thinking, “I don’t want to do any of this.” It all feels like so much work for something that’s supposed to just happen! Ryan and I talked it out, and he continued to highlight the positives of the situation, and deflate the seemingly prodigious situation we were in. The reality is I didn’t receive any horrible news, and honestly I had already made peace with getting the hystersonogram and being told pregnancy would not be an option for me. What upset me is that we had no news. Nothing new to focus on or move us forward on our journey to becoming parents, and that’s what hurt. I want to be moving.

            On the upside, we were already two days into a vacation that still had a shelf life! We had already spent time in Annapolis, Maryland, and were now staying in a beautiful historic hotel in Downtown Washington D.C. That day, after taking a much needed nap and getting a reset on the day, we woke up and rode our bikes through China Town, and some of the greatest monuments and historical sites America has to offer. When we arrived at the Lincoln Memorial I was in awe. Never had I seen a masterpiece marked by such honor. I stood in the place Martin Luther King gave his famous speech, “I Have a Dream,” and I looked out on the Washington monument and the Sea of Tranquility. I imagined the endless sea of people MLK would have been staring out at as he spoke, and I felt the presence of God wash over me. “I have a dream,” I thought. I said it over and over again to myself, and all at once, I knew everything was going to be okay.

Dinner @ The Metropolitan Kitchen & Lounge in Annapolis

Arlington National Cemetery, VA

Bike ride through China Town

camping in Brunswick, Maryland along the Potomac river

canoeing along the Potomac

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