Regretting Hope

I just started taking hormones again today.  After they retrieved the eggs last time I was on two other medications, then I had two days off, and I’m back on some other hormones getting ready for them to implant.  In my normal life I don’t even take Tylenol, but for now I’m a pill popper.

This time feels different. We have one good embryo, which has better odds for a successful implantation, so I’m more hopeful.  Which means I’m more afraid, because of course to hope is to fall farther. I think though, that even if it fails, I won’t regret hoping because it was the only honest thing I could do. That is what this process has taught me. 

I came up to the mountains for the weekend to spend some time with two of my sisters and their kids.  Just for reference it might be helpful for you to know that all three of my sisters and my two best friends from college are all pregnant right now…at the same time. Every time they announced their pregnancies they did it with pity in their eyes and a gentle tone in their voices.  It was an effort to be comforting, but I mostly didn’t need to be comforted because our situations were apples and oranges, it felt like different worlds.

But then today my sister was telling me about one of her friends who I know a bit and have followed along in her and her husband’s adoption story.  She struggles with infertility but it turns out she’s pregnant, even after a doctor told her she miscarried and she even took pills to help her body completely clean out the failed pregnancy.  Then she went into a doctor to discover that there was still a heartbeat, pumping along like the little miracle it was.  I love this story, it’s the most beautiful tale of miraculous life, but I walked into the bathroom and cried big ugly tears over my emptiness.  We were in the same category, the ones who struggle to have children.  She got a hall pass though and I didn’t.

For the first time in a while I told God how I felt.  I didn’t try to talk myself out of it by telling myself how little I actually deserve, or tell myself I’m crazy to be sad over someone else’s miracle, I just heaved on the wood floor and said, “why not me.”  Just like a five year old. 

I remember myself last time I went through IVF and I was trying desperately to control my feelings so that I could be the most prepared for whatever outcome.  Of course it was a big charade because all I was really doing was ignoring what was there, and it didn’t prepare me for disappointment anyways. I told myself I was being realistic, that I was controlling my expectations, which is actually a healthy practice in normal life to a certain degree. Then there is just fooling ourselves which is what I was doing.  I was living in this fake alternate universe where everything was dictated by a struggle to avoid hope via spiffy phrases I repeated that were all an effort to say, Brook you’re fine.

Today I’m a little better at facing an unknown future with an honesty with myself and with God.  So I pray all the time, I pray for mercy, I pray for a miracle, and I hope. 

I’ve been reading through the gospels and the parables about asking keep sticking out to me.  Particularly the one about the man waiting outside his neighbors house asking for loaves of bread so persistently until his neighbor finally does it just because the man won’t stop.  I typically think in prayer, well God knows what I want because I’ve asked before, it’s up to him now.  But now I don’t even care, I just keep asking and asking and asking, and I keep hoping.  I’m bracing myself for the fall of potential disappointment.  But I won’t regret the hope, I'll finally let it be.  

Irrelevant

Remember how I told you that I was doing ok, that the pain of the failed pregnancy was surprisingly dull? Well that didn’t last long. Thanks to chlomid and other factors, what began as a humming ache progressed into bat. shit. crazy.  I hate to admit that I am not in any way exaggerating this point.  I am literally losing my mind, which is something I said to Trever last night when I crawled in bed after an hour of sobbing hysterically.  I wasn’t even crying about pregnancy or motherhood, I’m actually not thinking about that much.  But the grief of everything and the constant hormonal tweaking is causing feelings to sprout up into my orderly and predictable mind.  This makes a circumstance that might call for a glossy eyed nearly-cry escalate quickly and without any sense of control into absolute and total mania.

It was while I still maintained some semblance of rational behavior before the great melt down that I met with Ash to discuss prayer.  He asked me where God was in all of this.  We were in a loud starbucks and people were walking in and out so I kept getting distracted and looking away, while desperately hoping that the question might itself become distracted and walk away as well.  After a socially unacceptable amount of silence and delay I turned back to Ash and all I could say is, “He’s irrelevant.” 

I don’t think prayer changes things, I don’t think God speaks back, I don’t think God intervenes hardly at all, I think there’s a chance He comforts us but I doubt it, and I really don’t think there’s much relationship to be had in that sense.  I have come to terms with God’s existence, I’m making progress in accepting His goodness, I do not however think I can manage to believe He’s relational with us. I told Ash all of this, I told him how I tried to study and practice prayer in faith and it felt disingenuous and false and so I stopped.  Just to give another quick shout out to the psychedelic rave my emotions are throwing in my brain, it is because of them I no longer have a filter.  Was it necessary to clarify that?

Ash asked me if it’s possible that I’m waiting for God to respond to me, but that I’m only allowing Him to respond on my terms.  He asked if it was possible that God was actually right there in the emotions and I wasn’t recognizing His presence.  I contemplated this, I maybe even felt a little convicted by it.  I quietly vowed to practice faith in a relationship with God whatever that might look like.

Then I had an emotional breakdown last night referred to previously, woke up the next morning and felt like I had been drunk on feelings the night before, like they had taken me over and I felt like a fool.  So I took back my vow, if God’s in my emotions He’s really unstable, and if He is in circumstances He’s even more unstable, and if He speaks through visions he has an unhealthy obsession with sail boats, all of these things equally concern me. Let’s all, in hope for my salvation, pray that God tunes us out when we’re on synthetic hormones.

In the meantime I have virtually no control over the way I feel right now, so I will do the only thing I can control which is input.  So I am inputting all the time, as in if I’m not watching Ryan and Marissa quarrel with the passions of a soap opera then I’m hiking or doing yoga or pretty much anything but letting my mind sit still. I will now be leaving to go to Peter’s Canyon where I will hike the hill to the top where there always seem to be a vague scent of maple syrup in the air.   In my thorough assessment the scent is due either to a bizarre maple essence plant or else an elaborate scheme from IHOP to make tired and hungry hikers subconsciously crave breakfast foods.  Either way, the contemplation of the schemes of nature to make us clueless homo-sapiens crave sugar keeps me from being angry, which is really all I’m hoping for at this point, non-anger. Goals.

Haunting Humming

Well the first test was negative.   I’m gonna go watch the OC for the next couple of days, buy a new pair of shoes and maybe get a tiny bit drunk.  See you on the other side.

...

I’ve come out of my cave of mourning which did involve a lot of the O.C. as predicted. I actually took it all pretty well.  I took a pregnancy test on Thursday and it was negative, then I took another one on Friday, still negative.  So by the time Saturday rolled around and they did the blood test I was already fairly certain that I wasn’t pregnant.  I had planned on heading to the beach after the appointment because Trever was out of town for the weekend and I needed to be in a happy place. 

One of my favorite things about the beach is that no matter how many people there are, the waves usually overpower their noise so it always feels weirdly private.  I was laying on my towel raptured in a book when my phone buzzed that an email came through.  It confirmed negative results and I cried for about a minute.  I sent a quick email to family and friends updating them on the results and I turned off my phone and stared at the beach, thoughtless. Then I started reading again, went home, had drinks with a friend, did yoga the next day, made mango sticky rice with coconut milk and went to supper club. It was all normal, and I feel mostly upbeat.

I am thoughtless though, that is sort of how I’ve been all weekend. I had accepted what happened pretty quickly but seemed to have this humming noise of sadness expressed in lethargy and it’s still haunting me. I hardly think about this unsuccessful round of pregnancy and I assume it’s because I have a high tolerance for pain right now. When we found out about our cause of infertility back in November, we were fairly certain we would never have our own children that was real grief, so this is just going through the hassle of maybe making it happen, I can do that. Sometimes though I realize I’m a bit sad in very inopportune moments.  I saw the owners of my yoga studio for my first class post IVF and I told them I could move again and I almost broke down in the lobby.  My friend Natalie came over to ask me how I was and I was hard as a rock, no feels. Trever and I were discussing next steps and I teared up in the lobby of Gulf Stream before our anniversary dinner. 

I don’t know what the hell is going on.  I’m fine.  No I’m not. I’m just going go take a nap because sleep solves all of life’s greatest problems.

Insomniac

Yesterday I sat down next to my pastor and friend Josh and he asked me how my studying was going.  He had just spent the last weekend very articulately and wisely making a compelling and academic case for the Bible. It’s a fine balance, someone who can present at a high intellectual level on huge topics like the trustworthiness of scripture and yet invoke in a congregant the honest truth of questions.  I know Josh has well formulated answers to all my questions, and yet he would so silently listen to my elementary angst and find ways to relate to my struggle.

I told him that this whole contemplative prayer study was not working or I was doing it wrong, but either way I was really missing the lesson in it.  I explained the ways I tried to pray like I believed God listened and responded when I’m just not sure he does, which feels more like pretending and less like faith. I described the only thing that has changed in me which is a deep grief over the brokenness of this world from mass shootings to lost loved ones, and how things have affected me in a disproportionately personal way so all I can utter is, “Lord have Mercy”.

We explored a couple of ideas, the first being that it may be that I am not naturally wired to experience God in this way.  Just like anything else in life humans variate on what ways of interacting with God they’re more inclined towards.  The idea we explored was that contemplation isn’t an end in itself. Prayer is only meant to change us so that we become compassionate for the brokenness of this world. 

I was talking to my friend Annette about this at dinner tonight.  She would tell me sometimes that she would wake up in the middle of the night with a deep empathy for someone and find herself praying for them.  I have been on the receiving end of this prayer many many times before and it has always meant so much to me, so much that I wish I could be that for others.  But I can't figure out how to. 

I’m on these hormones for our IVF treatment and they are giving me insomnia.  Typically I’m the type of person that could pretty much always sleep.  I never wake up in the night, fall asleep quickly and could probably nap every day too if I had time and no goals.  Sleep and I have a happy relationship, we welcome each other with open arms and I’m pretty sure people that have a hard time sleeping hate me, because I brag about my long nights of unconscious bliss.  So Annette hates me a little I think, she would never say that but when we shared a bed in New York and she fell asleep at sunrise I can’t help but think she glared at me across the darkened room for leaving her alone in the wake.

The universe is paying me back for all of my cat-like sleeping so now I get to stare at my ceiling and contemplate life’s great questions while the hours slow to a snails pace.  I got up the other night at 4:00am and started doing lunges around my house, because why the hell not? I read a book, watched a few episodes of Gilmore Girls (don’t judge me, I can’t handle that right now), did some instagram stalking, laid in pigeon pose for a while and finally sleep found me…for a hot second.

When I woke up again I remembered how Annette uses her time to pray for people.  I thought about how generous that is and the great use of the endless minutes in the middle of the night. I thought about using my time wisely like her, then I got mad about being awake and went in the living room to waste more time.  Ok so I failed.

The hard thing about intercession is that is really forces the question of God’s intervention.  I cannot say with any sense of clarity whether or not God intervenes in this life, essentially whether or not prayer changes things.  It seems to passionately pray for someone means that you believe that your prayers will do something, that prayer is not in fact, only a tool used to change who we are but could actually change circumstances.  I told you about this woman I have been following on instagram who has five children and her husband has been sick with stage four melanoma.  They are very young and vibrant and he was a body builder and now looks like a pre-pubescent boy.  I have been watching him slowly loss the battle with cancer via social media and although I have no idea who this woman is I cannot stop thinking about what a tragedy this is.  It’s really weighed on me in abnormally personal ways and when she finally posted that he has passed away I couldn’t sleep.  I kept thinking of her and repeating, “Lord have mercy.”

I cannot say if this prayer mattered or if was just an unharnessed amount of empathy, but if there is anything to say to the brokenness of this world it’s that, “Lord have mercy.”

Don't Look at Me

 A few weeks ago I went on a spiritual retreat, alone, all by myself, alone.

I was staying at a Franciscan Monastery up in the mountains in Malibu, which made for a good distraction from the utter silence of being alone. I went for a six mile run down to the beach the first day I was there and I had a couple epiphanies.  Malibu is the center of wealth in LA and the retreat center is inside a gated affluent community.  From a hill above where the Franciscan retreat center sits, the measly middle class religious types can peer down on the .1% of the world while they play a quick round of tennis after work on their private courts, and hire valet service for their parties, but mostly just walk inside at 8pm and click on the Television for the evening.  A note on the tennis courts, do people really play tennis that much that they need their own court?  I doubt it, I think it’s just a silent nod to their level of wealth. 

So I’m running down this street and a guy in his driveway yells at me to pick up my pace.  I laughed awkwardly trying to discern what he was actually saying to me.  Thinking in my head, this is my pace jack ass, so I run a 10 minute mile I’ve made peace with it you should too. Then as I ran away I realized he was mad I was running on his street (which didn’t have a private sign, I looked) and he wanted me to move faster to get off of it, can you believe it?!? He already had a fence towering around his property that was filled in with hedges twenty feet high to be sure no passing giants would be able see in.  That is a serious need for privacy, he should just get a forehead tattoo that reads– don’t look at me.  

I kept running as Telsas, Bently’s, Ferraris, and a whole lot of Range Rovers zoomed past me in their immaculate uniformity, and I was so pissed, I couldn’t get over it.  I kept going through what I would have said if I went back.  Something like – “well if you don’t want anyone on your street maybe you should add another gate to keep everyone out, if you’re lucky it will resemble a prison and then you will really have made it!” Buurrnnn. (I am the youngest sibling, I have a genetic pre-disposition for being bad at come-backs). I was annoyed at myself for caring so much, it was probably because he made me feel like a criminal and like I didn’t belong, that’s not a good feeling.

So anyways, you remember in Farenheit 451 when Guy is walking and meets Clarisse and she tells him to his complete amazement that her family walks places and that her Uncle sometimes gets arrested for just being a pedestrian? She also tells him they don’t take part in all the entertainment? Remember that? How Guy’s wife spends every evening living as a character in her TV shows, which are projected on all four walls of their living room. Remember how they all have ear buds in for constant entertainment throughout the day not dissimilar from the new iPhone ear buds? REMEMBER?

Malibu is Ray Bradbury’s fulfillment! (sans the book burning). You get stared at if you are not in one of five acceptable car brands but simply walking instead. Everyone is inundated with constant entertainment, from TV to social media or at least some music playing in their headphones. This includes me, thus my second epiphany – entertainment necessitates entertainment.

Note: Ray Bradbury was sort of right, George Orwell was too, who knows, maybe Suzanne Collins has some accurate predictions as well.  DUH Duh duh.

The whole first portion of the afternoon that I arrived I could not settle down. I tried to pray but my mind was still at a city pace and thus restless in the stillness. Reading kept movement in my mind, which helped but I could not for the life of me be still. This is when I went running, got yelled at, spent a couple of hours trying to wordsmith the perfect come-backs for random rich guy, and finally ended back on the hill as the sun set. By that time I had been alone and unplugged long enough I started to settle in.  The view alone became wild entertainment, my eyes balls erratically followed the frantic bats for longer than would be normal, I stopped reactively looking for my phone for updates, and then I finally prayed. I am most connected to God in nature, I have no problem believing that a divine being created mountains and oceans and tiny sing song birds, they’re just too brilliant.  So in the quiet of nature, I prayed like someone was listening.  A.W. Tozer says we can experience God in intimate ways like any other human relationship.  I don’t really think that’s true, but whatever it was that I experienced it meant something to me.

I got in my car to go home at the end of the trip, and the idea of having the radio on felt like an intrusion on my space.  SHHH I wanted to say to the world, you’re so loud.  The caffeine jitters of my mind finally wore of and I was for once moving slowly, with one direction, and with clarity at last. I was perfectly happy talking to myself, slowing meandering through the gardens and smiling up at that beautiful birds.  Crazy? Maybe. At peace? Finally.