Life in the Waiting
I was working on a personal development paper for a graduate class a couple years back and there was a section about childhood and what you wanted to be when you grew up. I remembered wanting to be a figure skater… until I realized that I couldn’t skate backwards. Speed skating. That was next. There’s NO skating BACKWARDS! Since then, I’ve wanted to be a teacher, a counselor, an artist, an art teacher, an art therapist, a children’s pastor, a marriage and family therapist, all in no particular order… I asked my mom while I was working on my paper if she could remember what I’d told her I wanted to be when I grew up. A mom. I was a mom to my friends, a mom to little kids, a natural nurturer.
I am an open book. Most people that know me could tell you that. But this is an on-going chapter in my story that not too many people have been privileged to read.
I have been married now for a little over 4 years. By the time my husband and I got married, people had been asking when it was going to happen. Granted, we dated for 3 years, but everyone was ready to make the grand leap into marriage before we were. Now, let’s be honest. My husband being white and me being black, people were even more ready for us to have kids than we were. Though all babies are beautiful and it’s always a mystery of who the child will look like the most, it’s a whole ‘nother ball game when it comes to interracial marriages. Then for fun, my husband’s a red head. All the beautiful possibilities just waiting to be created.
When we got married, we decided that in terms of a timeline, we would wait 5 years before we wanted kids… but we’d really start trying at 4 years… but really we’d be okay with 2 years. Of course that was if we had any say in it and it all went according to “planned”. Planned. Planning our lives. The thing we learned early on in our lives and relationship was that we write our life’s plans in pencil because it’ll hurt A LOT less than if we write them in permanent marker and God comes in with an eraser and changes it up… and by changes, I mean adjusts our plans to His story for us.
It’s been 3 years since being diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). I knew then it would be difficult to get pregnant. 2 years. It’s been 2 years since we started trying to start a family. It’s been 2 years since getting off of birth control and meeting with my ObGyn. It’s been 2 years since the definition of difficult has become a bird of a different feather, a new realization. In that time we made a major move, moving states away from what had become home–sweet, sweet Waxahachie, Texas–to brand new territory in the perplexing Midwest. Missouri. After being here nearly 9 months, I finally had found a new doctor. [Brief Interjection: the worst part of moving, with packing as a close second and unpacking as a close third, is finding a new doctor. Seriously the. WORST! All the women at the university where I previously worked in Texas went to 1 of 2 “lady doctors”. Here in Springfield, I had 2 HOSPITALS to choose from. Luckily, I’d become full time staff at my new job and was eligible after 90 days for benefits, so they cut out one hospital for me, but still there were a million-and-a-half options just within 1 hospital! Eventually I found one and would you believe her name is Faith? God knows. Anyways. Yea, seriously the worst, doctor hunting.]
I became eligible for benefits at the end of January 2017 and in February scheduled an appointment for the earliest available. April. March came around and I did Whole30, hoping that it served a dual purpose to not only help clean up my innards, but also help with the ol’ reproduction system somehow. The last days of my Whole30, we were in Colorado for my husband’s grandpa’s 80th birthday and I was late for my period nearly 2 weeks. I wasn’t sure if I was finally pregnant given some symptoms I was experiencing OR if Whole30 threw my body off. With PCOS irregular periods are as rare as the last name Smith, but I’d been pretty regular for sometime. I’d decided we would wait until we got back home to Texas to take a pregnancy test, especially since my sister-in-law and brother-in-law were announcing their pregnancy. The timing couldn’t have been less perfect to hold in such a secret… “We’re pregnant!” “Hey! Here comes double; we are too!” Fail.
Sunday, March 26, 2017, I started bleeding like I’d never experienced. I bled through pajamas and sheets and I was initially so pissed cause I didn’t know what was going on. But for the next 3 days, I’d lost so much blood, so many huge clots. I got to work Wednesday and somehow after a meeting some of the girls and I were talking about periods–I mean I can’t really say “somehow”, we’re women; it’s common conversation–and how abnormally irregular this one has been and if I should be worried. One of my co-workers pulled me aside afterwards, knowing Mason and I had been trying for a while, hoped it wasn’t the case but suggested that I might be miscarrying, not just having an abnormal period. In an instant, I knew she was right. I remember texting Mason and he knew it too, but was nervous to say anything. I remember hugging and crying in the arms of our cottage therapist after she said “You don’t look okay”, then having to run to the bathroom so I could get off the floor and cry. I remember God telling me as I cried, “I’ve got him,” And a little over a week later, I remember naming him on my way down to Texas.
On April 7, 2017, our first little Musick note was named Malachi Daijon, meaning my messenger, my angel and God’s gift of hope. I know many won’t understand such a choice, but for 2 people who have been trying and praying to start a family and then miscarries, that child is real. The loss is real. The heartache is real. And real children get named. My son was born into heaven on March 26, 2017, and I became a mom and Mason became a dad. And having nothing to show for him is truly devastating. However, there was a reason we named him what we did. After so long of nothing, after months and months and months of negative pregnancy tests a miscarriage was the furthest we’d gotten on this journey. God gifted us hope through Malachi’s birth into His presence. His very existence to this day still gives us hope that we will be able to conceive and carry in my womb children that we will one day tell of Malachi’s existence. You may call that crazy. I call him Malachi.
April started the next leg of our journey. Fertility treatments. May experienced my first tearful, painful Mother’s Day. June Mason experienced his first Father’s Day with his son in his heart. Both, with no child, no growing belly to show for it. Fast forward to July and August, when my doctor’s told me that if after the third treatment we still didn’t have a positive pregnancy test, then we’d undergo a physical test for Mas and a hysterosalpingogram for me. I was praying during this third round of treatment and God warned me of becoming a skeptic, a trait far from my character and who I am. So Mason and I decided that we would not let this process callous our hearts and be pessimistic about the possibility of a positive pregnancy test. We decided to be excited. To wait in anticipation for a positive pregnancy test when I didn’t start on Sunday. Then still hadn’t started on Monday. We allowed ourselves to feel. This could be the one! Until I started 2 days late on Tuesday. I took that one so hard. When you allow yourself to feel, you also welcome the potential for disappointment and hurt. And you have to choose to accept such emotions and not let it deter you from allowing yourself to feel again, knowing that whatever the situation, there is great potential it will not go the way you hope… but it’s still worth feeling. All that feeling and I had to see the cottage therapist. I believe in therapy, y’all! If there is one place that should always be safe, it’s therapy. Release the crazy and let out your inner psycho. Sorry for how insensitive that may sound. But pent up emotions and thoughts can make you crazy and feel psychotic, so don’t lock ’em up! Find a safe place to release them. Into the wild. Your heart and mind and soul will thank you.
August 21, Mason has his exam, and August 22, I had that doggone hysterosalpingogram. And can I just say, women have to endure some pretty invasive procedures. I do not at all feel bad for men who dislike physicals cause they have to check their “bat and baseballs“. Sorry, not sorry, fellas. Try a pap smear or a hystero-blahblahblah, then let’s chat.
And now. Round 4 of fertility treatments. Round 4 of “take the Letrazole days 3-7 of your cycle, then ovulation test kits days 10-16”. Round 4 of a lack of spontaneity and ovulating on what feels like the wrong days, like when I go back on shift for working 40 hours in 3.5 days. Round 4 of being told, “When we stopped trying that’s when it finally happened for us”–but with PCOS and doctors and meds to make sure your ovulating, it’s hard to fathom the concept of “stop trying”. Nevertheless, round 4 of hope. Round 4 of forever of trusting in our God who’s timing is perfect and though pregnancy tests have failed us and I often feel like my body is betraying me, He does not fail and will never betray me. Round 4 of the deep heart knowledge of knowing that there is not one experience or heartache, no rocky, jagged-rock-laden stretch of my life’s journey that God will not use to help someone else either while I’m still climbing, crawling, making it through or on the other side of the struggle. These have been some of the most difficult times in my life, in our life, but some of the most powerful moments that bring Mason and I even closer together and stronger together. There is something about not forcing yourself to be alone in your pain, but finding strength when you choose to include your teammate or whoever your rock/pillar/other half may be to feel with you, even if they feel a completely different mix of emotions.
There is nothing like being able to feel what you’re feeling, then get up and keep going in life, knowing the feeling isn’t gone, but your heart needs to rest and it’ll feel again. But to know that even in that place, Father God has been forever present, never far, ever comforting, and Mason has been the tender strength God knew I needed. This journey is not over, this is our life in the waiting; we are still in the midst of the jagged rocks and tearful nights, but I’m not alone and there is yet still hope.
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:11-13
Wherever you are in life, whether you’re in the midst of a tough chapter, the beginning of a fantastic one, or the storyline is making a strange twist and you’re all in your feels, don’t go the road alone and adventure on, my friends.