no cheating

So here it is, almost two in the morning. I wasn't going to write this post, then I was, then I wasn't. I'm really quite sleepy and I've not in fact decided yet how much I will write. Probably til I nod off? Who knows. You'll see in a few minutes.

I'm up late because every Saturday night I go out for a drink with my friends from work. It's delightful. Who would have thought, four years ago, when I'd just lost just about every friend I had, was mortified and humiliated, and just looking for a temporary job, that I'd find this. (see self? Things tend to work out OK, even if they suck beyond nightmare at the moment.)

I've been thinking all day about this whole not getting pregnant thing. And about how I've been trying to trick myself somehow over the last few months into not having to feel it. And I've been thinking that that's a mistake. It's cheating. There are some things that simply suck, and to not see or feel that they suck requires a certain bending, warping, changing or squashing of the self. To borrow heavily from one of my favorite CS Lewis quotes, "Wrap yourself up in little hobbies and indulgences. But wrapped up in the casket or coffin of your selfishness, your heart will not be broken. It will become unbreakable. The only place safe from all the pain and perturbations of love is Hell."

This not getting pregnant thing, frankly, sucks. But the only way out, the only way to make it stop sucking, is to stop caring. And this is really a thing worth caring about. The sorrow now is part of the joy then. We see this principle at work all the time, but in reverse. When we're around someone we love, we soak it up, we cling with our fingernails, we drink in every moment because some day, that person will be lost. No way around it. And the sorrow then is part of the joy now. The love now is sweeter because we know we have to savor it. The coming sorrow is part of the present joy. And vice versa.

I've also been thinking, and again, I'm borrowing heavily from Lewis, that this uncertainty is my present cross. I'm tempted to worry about what I'll do if the tests show that I can't ever become pregnant. Or what I'll do if they show that there's nothing wrong, and there's no reason for us not having success. What will either verdict do to me? What version of me will I wake up to? So often I find that the things I've gone through change me not necessarily today, but years down the road. So what if? But that answer is still coming, and when it comes, there will be grace to bear it. Today, I need the grace to bear the not knowing.

I found today, again, that it's not for nothing that we are promised new mercies every morning, and that we're told to pray for daily bread. There is a deep well here and now to drink from. Yes, yes, yes, it is painful and it sucks, but I'm no more alone here than I was in any other dark night I've walked through. It's totally wrong. Infertility is totally wrong. But I can find Him here, too.