Today I am supposed to be getting back to normal. I am still supposed to watch my activity level and check in with the still rawness of a freshly scraped womb, but I am supposed to start getting back to normal. I was for a while. I tried to start yesterday, I dressed up and held my head high as I walked into church and went back to work. I tried last night as I led a meeting for our Alaska team. I tried to talk even when the pain of being on my feet for a long time and playing youth group games took some of my breath away. I tried as I realized that I would no longer be carrying a big baby filled belly to Alaska with me. I tried this morning as I tackled the laundry that has piled up in the last couple of weeks. But I soon found myself on the couch covered in my dog and my tears, like some awful country song. It’s probably the hormone fluctuations but I think there is more too it than that. Instead of normal, today I found grief and defeat as I am sure that those who have walked through miscarriage, fertility treatments, and so many other losses have before me.
I wanted so desperately to bring more of God’s joy and love and redemption into the lives around me. This adventure with surrogacy was supposed to do that. I knew it would be taxing and stressful, but it was the kind of stress that came with promise and hope, instead of more bills and more heartbreak. We had enough of those icky kinds of stress. Little thing after little thing with some pretty big things sprinkled in one after another for years, made me long for something different, something new. I thought we had found some of that in surrogacy. It was something cool we could do to help others, to bring life and beauty to the world, and even if pain came with it, at least it would end with joy overflowing and not a debt of yuck. It seemed to do that for a while, it brought excitement, encouragement and hope to a lot of people around us and to our two families.
Yet here we are in the yuck. I thought once the surgery was over, and my body took a few days off to recover, my mind would be in a better place. It was for a bit, maybe just distracted with trying to will my body to strength and my life to normal. Now though, as I try to get back to routine, the grief of it all is hitting full force. The loss of that little life, the end of the adventure. Returning to normal means it really is over.
We knew this was a possibility, but it was tucked way back in our brains. It had to be, for us to try this really. We all were prepared for the embryo not to implant. I think if at the six week ultrasound we had seen no heartbeat, we would have been disappointed, but not surprised, and we would have been able to move on sooner. This though, was much harder to take, much more complicated to deal with, and delays the whole process a lot more. It wasn’t something we really took into account, and I am sure that is for the best.
Many have asked if and when we will try again, this is perhaps one of the most painful parts of the infertility process. That is out of our hands at this point. We could decide not to, but none of us want to do that. To proceed, though, my body has to be evaluated again. The parents have to be willing to wait for me to recover, everything has to sit on hold for months as we wait on my body. Suddenly the adventure that began last winter, may not end until next winter. Now it seems as if we are on an elephants gestational time table. If we do try again my body will be riding hormonal waves for a very long time to come.
Sometimes it’s easier for me to turn to music, than scripture. I know as someone who works in ministry, I am not supposed to admit that, but it’s true. Often thankfully scripture is woven into and inspires the music that makes it so much easier to digest the messages of God’s love, hope and joy in the midst of defeat. So I am clinging to this Rend Collective song today as I cling to the huge black dog that sits with me in grief. He and I take a break from getting back to normal and just sit for a bit. He puts his head up close to mine, when he sees the tears pooling in the corners of my eyes, and he helps me to find some joy, he reminds me of the message of this song, the message of Jesus, that there is redemption, that life can spring from death.
I will wait for that light of my soul to warm up this cold shadow of grief. I have been so blessed over the last two weeks to have my family and my friends remind me of those things too. Through meals and cookies, calls, texts, messages and prayers, there have been little bursts of light, there have been moments of joy and for that I will always be grateful. If we do go through with this elephant pregnancy, it’s those things that will give me the courage to continue and to embrace the rest of this adventure. So I will try to choose celebration. I will work on celebrating the amazing family and friends I have, instead of grieving so much for the little life, and opportunity we lost. I will sit in the arms of this crazy dog and try to understand that I am in the arms of Jesus himself.
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