Part 1: God of the Hills

It’s been 5 months since the last time I wrote a blog. That’s not to say that I haven’t had the words; I’ve had more words than I can actually express, without the capacity to write them all out.

So. Here’s to breaking the writing hiatus.

It’s been 5 months since I wrote a blog, March 26, 2018. It was Malachi’s 1st birthday in heaven, the first anniversary since my first miscarriage. The next day I received an email from my dad addressing my blog and informing me about a faith-based infertility support group, Moms in the Making, headquartered in Dallas that has a local chapter that meets at my parents’ church in Louisiana. He proceeds to find one in Springfield, MO where I live. I look them up on Facebook and join the main group page. I complete the introduction “assignment” to introduce myself and tell the most brief version of my fertility journey story I’ve ever told, though, unbeknownst to me, the hardest part of that journey hadn’t even begun.  The next day, March 28, the local chapter leader, Melissa,  invited me to attend group the next evening, Thursday, March 29. Now, if I had stopped to consider if I was ready to join this group of stranger women at someone’s house to talk about our journeys through infertility, I can’t tell you I would have been on board to go the very next day. I’d been in the graduate class Group Counseling, and I’d been a client in group counseling, but I had no clue what a ‘support group’ would look like. So I said yes and showed up before my head got a chance to stop me. In retrospect, I made one of the best life decisions that day, showing up to Moms in the Making – Springfield.

I was the new kid on the block, so when I got there–late mind you, cause Winston (the equine canine-our Great Dane) had poop exploded so we had to give him an unplanned bath–to Melissa’s house and it was just the 3 of us. I introduced myself and told my story in brief; they told me theirs in brief. We went through the devotional chapters from In Due Time, the devo the Moms in the Making creator wrote. And we shared a praise report, a prayer request, and what Bible verse spoke to us that week. At that point, we were on our 2ww–2 week wait; that wonderful time period of waiting post-ovulation and pre-cycle day 1. Basically means: Are we pregnant or not? So that was my prayer request; renewed hope and peace in that waiting period. My praise report was the reminder that God is still doing miracles after finding out the guy at my pharmacy that always does my transaction at the drive-thru window, after trying for a while, he and his wife were pregnant and due in August. And the verse from scripture that had spoken to me was James 1:2-8, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds., for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord, he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” I’d decided in my heart, “Hey! This could be cool. I think I’ll go again.”

The next day was Good Friday and Mason and I drove out to Lake Ozark to get tattoos done. Tattoos memorializing Malachi. Sunday, April 1 was Easter Sunday and also when I was supposed to start my cycle. I didn’t. A week later, I still hadn’t. Part of me wasn’t surprised; I don’t have a history of regular cycles. However, I’d started using the natural FAM (Fertility Awareness Method) method, tracking everryyyything–consider it the calorie tracking of fertility–and my basal temperatures had remained elevated (the basal temp. decreases when you approach your new cycle if you’re not pregnant). I knew my body fooled me in the past, but is this FAM method fool proof? How jacked up is my system? That was my honest thought.

One of my best friends, Kristin, and I had planned that I would take a pregnancy test at her house on Monday and she would record it, so that positive or negative I’d have the positive to share or the negative to delete. So Monday, April 9, Mason left for work and shortly after I peed in a container to take with me so she wasn’t recording me peeing on a test–though I would not put it passed me, y’all. I grabbed the container, stopped by Walmart to pick up a digital test for backup just in case, and headed to my girlfriend’s house. I sat down at the table with the container, she got the kiddos occupied, and got ready to record. Purely one of the most nerve-racking moments of my life. I had a feeling it could be positive, but I wasn’t sure at all. I dipped the test in, capped it, and then began the longest 3 minutes of my life. While telling Kristin how I felt waiting for my timer to go off, I caught a glimpse of the test in my peripheral. Two pink lines. Two pink lines?! What?!! Sheer joy, excitement, surprise, shock all simultaneously being reflected on my face and lack of words. “What does it say, Charis?” Kristin asks. “Show me!” I show the positive pregnancy test to Kristin and the camera. That moment my heart will remember forever. I cried… laughed. Those two typically go hand-in-hand for me, in sadness, in joy, and most emotions in between. To double-check, I did the digital test. “Pregnant”. It couldn’t get any clearer; it was written out in black on a screen. For 982 days, we’d prayed and countless friends and family had prayed for this moment. God was answering a major prayer right before my eyes. See, last November, I prayed, “Father, You know my heart. You know the desires of my heart. But I place my desire to ever get to carry my children in Your hands. Father, Your will for my life is what I desire, so I give this desire to You.” That prayer to me felt like the last of my desires to be surrendered. So when I saw those solid pink lines, I was surprised. I didn’t think I’d get to be pregnant.

“I can’t go to work today! How am I gonna tell Mas?!” I told Kristin. We started trying to think of how I’d surprise Mason, cause I’ve always wanted to surprise him not just take it with him in the next room. I then decided I was going to go to work to tell my boss that I was not, in fact, working ‘today’. So I did! And of course told her why I wasn’t working in the process. I also couldn’t work cause I didn’t want Mason to be the last to find out after the exciting news would slowly seep from my pores throughout the day. Actually, I’m not sure that’s what would’ve happened, BUT more people would’ve known than I intended. Ask it was, I gave into the pressure of my lovely friend Fortunate questioning me as to why I was leaving work, where I was going, what I had to get from the store, why I wasn’t probably coming back. Her reaction, however, when I burst from my mouth was beautiful and priceless and filled with praise and excitement. Definitely worth it.

So I left work, leaving Fortunate to sit on our news, sworn to secrecy. I went to plan out everything with Kristin, then ran around town collecting my surprise supplies. I put together this box and awaited Mason’s return from work…

He finally got home and his reaction was perfectly him. He was surprised and excited and cautious. He asked if I had spoken to Dr. Poppy probably 4-5 times and if I’d taken a blood test. He quickly jumped into protection mode as Winston (our Great Dane) appeared to try to jump on me and said he’s not allowed to do that anymore, we have to protect me and baby… he also included no driving, no tight pants, no bending over laughing. OB-viously those weren’t gonna fly, but it was precious. But then we hugged in the middle of our kitchen as He prayed. Prayed for us. Prayed for me. Prayed for this pregnancy. And dedicated this pregnancy back to God. The most beautiful moment thus far in our marriage.

Over the course of the next week, we proceeded to FaceTime and Facebook Video Call (for those Android users in our life) our closest friends and family and tell them the news. All the pure joy from all of those that love us and have prayed for and with us for years. All the screaming and laughing and a few that said “I knew it!” All the prayers on the spot. My face hurt for weeks from cheek cramps from all the smiling! It was the best pain I’d ever experienced. I can’t help but cry writing this… we just felt so loved. So many people were cheering for our little Musick Note and we hadn’t gotten as far as telling anyone when we miscarried Malachi. We hadn’t even told ourselves! So to be far enough along to tell people was a miracle.

At first I’d wanted to wait until I was out of the first trimester to announce it publicly. I wanted to make sure we were in the “safe zone”. I didn’t want to announce our pregnancy to the world and then something bad happen. However, then I realized if that were to be the decision I stood behind, I couldn’t also stand behind my belief that “God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind.” I can’t walk in faith while living in fear; they contradict each other. So I decided–and by “I decided” I mean, Mason wouldn’t have shared our pregnancy without me agreeing–to share our news on Mother’s Day, the day I usually make an ode to all the mommas… the foster mommas, adopted mommas, spiritual mommas, the auntie-mommas, the surrogate mommas, the mommas who have lost babies, the mommas who have birthed babies into Heaven, the mommas that have loved their babies into adoption, the mommas in the making, the mommas at heart, the pregnant mommas, the mommas standing in the gap, the mommas of all the ages of children, seriously ALL the mommas. But today. That day. Mother’s Day 2018. I had a baby, our baby, growing in me. I was going to be the momma of a baby we could all see and love and that we would raise. And oh the love that was poured out through Facebook comments. My heart grew three sizes bigger that day… just like the Grinch after he stole Christmas… then returned it. God bless that Cindy Lou-Who. And here we were, pregnant with our Christmas baby, due December 12, 2018.

I cannot express the joy we felt on top of this hill… quite the Mt. Everest of hills. God was on that hill with us, as He has always been in every step of the way through our delayed fertility journey. But His presence seemed extra special in these moments. It’s like as a kid when you’ve just had the best time with your parent or grandparent or someone really close to you and you’re floating on cloud nine, as if you now love them even more than you already did, but you wouldn’t have loved them any less if you hadn’t spent that time. Like your love for them grew. That’s what this hill felt like. After all, I had witnessed a miracle.

At 8 weeks pregnant, we met with our midwife for the first time and heard our baby’s heart beating for the first time. The sweetest roadrunner heartbeat I’d ever heard in my life… for a solid few seconds cause then I laughed with joy and messed it up. Laughter is very much an overlapping emotion for me; it pairs nicely with any comorbid emotion. And then the longest 4 weeks of waiting until our 12 week appointment. Seriously, I’d somehow thought the 3 minutes just waiting for the pregnancy test was long. Waiting 4 weeks after waiting 2 and a half years to see those 2 pink lines, the word ‘pregnant’ on a stick like a pH tester, and the flutter on the monitor that is your child’s heart beating, felt like forever. I was so nervous by the time 12 weeks finally came around the heart beat would’ve changed or, honestly, I was afraid there would be no heartbeat. I was prepared for heartbreak and falling on faith. Unbeknownst to me, I expected it. And that’s just the honest truth. It was at church one night the week before our 12 week appointment when just felt off one day emotionally, and God opened my eyes to what was going on inside me… I was living in fear, waiting for this to be another test of my faith, waiting for the ground to be pulled from underneath me and have to fall on faith. Again, I was having to tell myself, “Charis, it’s faith or fear; you can’t have it both ways. You choose to trust Him with it all or you don’t. But you have to choose.”

“God, I trust You.” Laying on the table at our 12 week appointment staring at the ceiling in my midwife’s office, I waited as she searched all over for our little one. She slowed down and there it was. I heard our sweet baby’s heart beating. Exhale. Tears of joy and relief ran from my eyes.

The next 4 weeks of waiting would be easier than the 8 to 12 weeks. It was a busy 4 weeks: working ahead hours to prepare to be out of town; a week and a half gone for a family reunion in Colorado that we were driving to; 4 days of volunteering at Vacation Bible School upon returning from Colorado; 3 chiropractic appointments. June 28 rolled around for our 16 week appointment, and again, that heart beat just changes everything. It was 152bpm. Our midwife tried to see if she could tell baby Musick Note’s gender, but they were squatting with little knees together on my pelvis. Girl? or Boy?

Would we be adventuring on with our son or our daughter? Time would tell…

[Part 2 coming for how our adventure continued…]