All about the cycles

Today I started my period. This is a normal biological function happening to hundreds of thousands of women at this very moment. To some it comes as a relief, and to others, particularly those trying to conceive it is often an event to mourn. Today I am totally conflicted by feeling a sense of everything in that large range of emotion!

We had made the decision to take at least a month off from trying. Two miscarriages in two months was just a lot for my body and my spirit to handle. Our desire to be parents is balanced very much with our desire to stay sane as much as possible in the process! It didn’t make it an easy decision, even to wait one month can seem like forever, but we knew it was right. We found even more peace in our decision when my doctor told us that we needed to be un-pregnant to get accurate test results.

So today marks a strange day. On Friday I will have the last of this batch of blood work. On the 27^th I have another Dr’s appointment to hear the results of all the tests (I guess it can take a while to get results back). We will know then if it necessary to continue on and have two more tests at a fertility clinic to rule out the last possible ‘testable’ reasons for our miscarriages.

I think it is partly the hormones of the day, but I have been prone to out bursts of tears this afternoon. Tears for how it ‘should’ be, and tears for what might not happen in our lives, and tears of fear about all the unknowns of the future.

A friend recommended a book to me that I have been devouring. It is breaking me and healing me all at the same time. It really struck me today that we have no idea what it will mean for us to walk down the journey of parenthood. All of the tears we have cried for these lost babies, are drawing us closer to God, or at least that is my hope. In our suffering we identify more with God and know our need for him more clearly than ever. In the book, Holding onto Hope, a story about finding God’s heart in the midst of our suffering, Nancy Guthrie talks about how we so often pray for healing and then add in a P.S. “if it’s your will.” She asks the question,”shouldn’t we switch that around? Shouldn’t we cry out to God with boldness and passion and persistence in a prayer that says, ‘God, would you please accomplish your will? Would you give me a willing heart to embrace your plan and you purpose? Would you mold me into a vessel that you can use to accomplish what you have in mind?’ And then, perhaps, you could add a tiny P.S. that says, ‘If that includes healing, we will be grateful.” (88)

I want to be praying that prayer. I want God’s will to be done in my life, and in our family. I know friends who have had lost children. I have seen them walk with dignity through something that I can never ever imagine having to do. I know people raising children with learning disabilities and with emotional difficulties and I am suddenly all the more aware that we have no idea what God’s plan is for our family. If we are asking for God to bless us with a child we must be praying for God’s will to be accomplished through us receiving this gift. We have no idea what God may be asking of us but whatever is to come we can trust it is God’s good and perfect will and we can receive the peace He promises us comes with that.

In all the fun we have been having this fall so far, the leaves turning colour are a reminder that this is just a season. Soon enough the pumpkins will be gone and (hopefully) the snow will be falling, and then soon after that, the bulbs will start to break through the cold hard earth to signal spring…and so on, and so on forever. This is a season too. We are enjoying the fall activities and food, time with friends and the reminder to be thankful, but we are also mourning the loss of our pregnancies, and we are grieving that this process is not the simple and joyful experience we thought it would be.

We continue to seek God’s face. We know that there are new seasons coming. We hope it will include a child, (or two or three of them); we know we will see our marriage continue to evolve and transform, yet, we do not know the fine detail of these events. We have no guarantees in life other than God’s faithfulness, and so we pray “Your will be done in our lives Lord.”