The Waiting Period...

Three more days until we know it it's a positive or a negative. We've gotten word that the team in Africa has landed safely in Nairobi, caught up on some sleep, met kids at the first orphanage, and are now on their way through the Rift Valley headed toward Bakura. Meanwhile, as I sit here at home I can't help but wish I was there. I've kept entertained and busy by kayaking and stand up paddle boarding with friends, riding my bike, getting some work done, and spending uninterrupted time with God.

I've noticed that this waiting period feels different than the others. This may be the last time through this process... so I wonder how life will change either way...

If it's a negative, this is the last time insurance will cover an IUI, and we're getting to the end of our savings. So, I'm starting to think this is the end of our assisted fertility journey. I wonder how much longer we can pay $670 per month on acupuncture treatments and I think, if we get a "no" we might just finish out this current package and then move on. I've been trying to be gluten free, caffeine free, sugar free, and have been eating according to Chinese medicine theories for women seeking to be more fertile during the different phases of the monthly cycle. I'm kind of excited to just break free from all this healthy crap and just share a bottle of wine with my husband guilt free... with bread! and dessert! Hell, I'll even have coffee! (crazy that what used to be so normal would be such an unbridled splurge!) The last ditch effort would be to try one IVF cycle next summer after we recoup some funds, but that is in the $5000-$10,000. range when you put together the treatments and the meds. Even after that, there is only a 10-15% success rate for women my age. I've been meeting women in their 30's who have already gone through 7-9 IVF treatments. It breaks my heart to see so many young couples struggling through this every time we go there, especially when I look out my windows and in my classroom and see so many unprepared parents.

I know... this is where my random reader (if I have one) will say, "Anyone who doesn't have kids thinks they can do better!" Stop and listen... There are lots of incredible parents out there and I see that, too!  I'm frustrated by the family next door who sits smoking pot on the front porch with their children and all the other neighborhood kids on a weekly basis. I'm upset by the story of the parent of a student at my school who was mad at her son and intentionally lit his bed on fire. I'm upset every time I'm at work and I have to call a parent to let them know that their child is in danger of failing my class and I find that the 12 phone numbers I have tried are unsuccessful... and if and when I do finally reach a parent they laugh at my concerns, "Art is the least of our worries! I don't know what to do with him either! I'm just trying to get him through High School!"  I'm upset by the 60 children in an orphanage in Kenya who I'd love to meet.... and more saddened that they needed to open up a second location 6 hours away because there is such a dire need for loving stable people to take care of children that have who have been borne of and forgotten by the very people who are supposed to love them most unconditionally. That's not fair.... life is complicated and I don't know circumstances.... but yes... walking into that Fertility Center and seeing how busy the two locations I've been to in Rochester are breaks my heart not just for my own sake, but also for the thousands of other couples suffering through this in this same journey in this very city and across the world. It is said that 50% of couples will struggle with infertility.  That's up from 20% in the 1960's. I'm not going to go into our mass marketing food scandal.... that's a post for another day. Moving away from that tangent now...

If it's a negative...I need to release it all and let it go. Something I read today, "Those who enter into Christ no longer need to live under a black cloud." That's where I've been in this journey. It's been a long lasting slowly and ever more destructive path that I have no control over. I have moments of health, but this process has slowly drained away life and a sense of freedom from within me. Ever since going to the Adirondacks I've been trying learn to go with His flow, and not my own. This may be the next step of that. Something else I read this morning,

"So, don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it yourself life one red cent?

There's nothing in it for us. Nothing at all. The best we can do is give it a decent burial and 

get on with your new life. God's spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go. 

(Romans 8:12-14 The Message)

So if it's a positive.... I'm not even sure what that means? Selfishly, I think, that gets me out of teaching that Graphic Design course that I don't want to teach, and I won't need to organize the arts festival this year (an event where I need to entertain 1300 High Schoolers with art, music and hands on entertainment from 9am-2pm with over 80 events on multiple stages. I also think... Parenthood would be such a life change that I'm not even sure what it would look like, except a whole new framework that is beyond my understanding. At my age I am not niave. I fully realize it's exhausting and thankless work. But I look at the beautiful kids in my life-- friends, family members, students.... and you know what? It's so worth it!  

I need to look at the positives no matter how this works out on Thursday. This could mean a life of freedom, or a new kind of work... but a good kind of work composed of all the parts that make both me and my husband what and who we are. The good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly all wrapped into one---spiced with a little individualism--- the wildcard that could never be predicted! If I continue to focus on myself, my disappointment, or my childlike temper tantrums because this life isn't what I planned it to be I will become bitter and drained of life.  I will not be able to focus on God. I need to grasp fully whatever He gives me and embrace life for what it is, not for what it may never be. God has promised that He is enough. He has to be!

"This  resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave tending life. It's 

adventurously expectant, greeting God with a child like, "What's next, Papa?" God's spirit 

touches our spirit and confirms who we really are...Father and children...And we know 

we are going to get what's coming to us-- an unbelievable inheritance! We go 

through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through hard times with 

Him, the we're most certainly going through the good times with Him.

 (Romans 8:15-17 the Message)