Relief

So after a few days of heartache, I experienced a little relief tonight.  I stopped by my brother's place and had a chat with him (his wife was at work).  I greeted him with a hug and said I couldn't believe he was really going to be a daddy.  We then sat down and had a wonderful chat.  I learned that he and my sister-in-law did not plan this pregnancy. In fact, this greatly interferes with a mission trip in South America that my SIL was planning on taking this summer.  She would be six months pregnant when she was due to get on the plane and head down there. She has looked forward to being a part of missions in this country since she was a child.  Now she has a lot of factors to consider in deciding whether or not to take on this adventure.

So they weren't hiding anything from me.  In fact, they told me about the pregnancy almost immediately after they themselves found out.  This wasn't their choice of timing.  It must simply be God's choice of timing.

I can live with that.  Though it seems wrong that I feel better knowing this pregnancy messes with their plans as well as mine.  But I think the thing is now that it proves that they didn't betray me. 

I am so glad God understands our humanness.  Lately I wonder, why does He seem to "insist" on using ways that we simply cannot understand?  But then, He could have every reason to wonder why we "insist" on having explanations for everything He does, as if He wasn't the all-loving Creator of the universe.  We humans can be so arrogant at times, thinking we could be capable of seeing everything like He does.  He knows everything there is to know, and He loves every person more deeply than we ever could.  It actually makes more sense that we wouldn't understand everything He does if He is truly who He says He is.

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
^"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:8-9 (KJV)


These verses changed my life a few years ago when I realized that God would never make sense to me.  And that was okay.  It was a huge relief that He would not fit into the box in my mind that I was trying to fit Him in.  It was a relief that He was bigger than that and fully capable of handling what I myself could not understand. 

Thank You, God, for being compassionate and all-powerful, even though at times I cannot understand how that works.  Thank You for understanding my own limitations and having patience with me.  Thank You for having and directing good plans for me and those I love, even if at times from my human perspective they can seem more harmful than good.  You do always reveal the good when the time is right.  I love You, Lord.

A clean hurt: Part 2

I just feel betrayed, but I am not sure who has betrayed me. 

It just seems wrong that she is pregnant when we didn't know they even wanted it, and I am not pregnant, though they knew I did want it.  That is not very fair reasoning, and I know; in fact, it isn't reasoning, but just plain feeling.  So yes, I know it is not very fair nor rational.

But there is no guilt in this hurt, justified or not.  There is no bitterness.  I know that last part could have sounded bitter, but I really have no bitterness. 

For the majority of my life I have strived for being worthy of approval from my parents.  I just want to know that they, in particular my mom, are proud of me.  I have never known them to be. 

Growing up, there were things I learned to have importance in this world, things that gave you status and marked you as accomplished:

going to college
graduating from college
holding a full-time career/job
marrying and staying married
excelling in your job
holding leadership at your church
buying a house
doing well financially
having children...and it goes on. 

This list is obviously skewed by my viewpoint as a lifelong church member from the middle class with educated parentage.

I have accomplished some of these things.  I have made attempts at all of them.  I have failed at half of them.  And I just see the failures, unfortunately.  It is a weakness of mine.  And I imagine that my parents zoom in on the failures as well.  If they have ever noticed the successes, they've never mentioned it to me. 

Having children, in particular, being the first to give my parents a grandchild, was my last ditch effort to win their lifelong approval.  I may still have children, but I cannot be the first.

I adore my grandfather on my dad's side.  He as of yet, despite his age of 80+, does not have any great grandchildren.  Excuse me, as of a month or two ago, depending on when my sis-in-law got pregnant, he did not have any great grandchildren.  I am his only granddaughter.  I am his oldest grandchild.  I wanted to be the first to present him with a great grandchild.  This was a special dream of mine.  It was something I was looking forward to doing, something that would bless him thoroughly.  Now I know I will not be doing that.  My brother will. 

I ache inside because I feel like I am a failure in the eyes of those who love me the most.  I suppose in a way, that is an oxymoron.  But it still hurts.  I feel like someone died, and that someone was a "successful" me. 

This is what it can be like to struggle with depression.  It is not rational.  And the depressed person can even realize it is not rational.  That is a step towards healing, but it is certainly not an instant cure.  Most people don't seem to understand this.  This is why I am writing. 

This is a clean hurt, because I am not angry.  I am not bitter.  I am not feeling guilt.  I'm simply grieving my own plan for my life.  It has finally been obliterated.  Becoming a success according to the definition of the word that I developed while growing up can now never be accomplished.  A few years ago, I would have been angry.  I would have hated myself.  I may have even wanted to hate the family members involved.  I would have held bitterness against them for some imaginary wrong they had made against me. 

The Bible says if we die to ourselves we can receive life through Jesus.  But I don't remember it saying it would not be difficult or hurt.   Perhaps I am finally reaching a deeper level of dying to myself, surrendering my last plan to "win" love, which will hopefully allow me to better comprehend the freedom of God's love. 



I have a confession to make.  There is another part of this hurt, the one I hate to admit. 

All of my life I have had little to no interest in children, especially babies.  It was not until this past year that I began to long to be a mother.  Everyone who has known me my whole life knows my reputation for not wanting much to do with children, even at church.  I have been afraid to tell them I finally have a desire for a child of my own, because I can see them getting all excited and making a huge deal of it.  And then I could not face their disappointment, and even more so my own, if it turns out I cannot have children, for whatever reason. 

They don't know how badly I want my own baby.  They have no idea.  I haven't even wanted to realize it myself.  It has become a precious dream to me, one that I probably don't deserve.  But like my counselor said to me today, if God's love only went to those who deserved it, then nobody on this earth would qualify. 

I know there have been many women who have longed to be mothers and it was never possible for them.  In the Bible, women felt cursed when they could not bear children.  I used to think it was only because bearing children gave them status.  But even now, knowing that my chances of gaining status are gone, I still want that baby. 

Some people know my husband and I have been trying to get pregnant.  When they learn about my brother and sis-in-law, they will pity me.  I don't know if I can handle that.  It would be easier to go on pretending I really don't care whether I get pregnant or not.  Except I hate to lie. 

One more grievance, and then I will stop the moaning for now.  I will now be the last young woman in my church to not have any kids.  All of my friends at church have kids.  I know they love me, but when you have children, all of your priorities change.  You have less in common with those who do not have children.  My husband and I will be the only young adults without children.  Before we had my brother and sis-in-law, but no more.  I am afraid of being so alone again at my church. 

That is all for now.  I said I write this to inform others what life is really like for those struggling with depression while still hanging on to their faith.  But I also write to relieve my heart from some of its burden.  Thank you for bearing with me.

A clean hurt: Part 1

This is a relatively new experience for me.  It is pain, but it is a clean pain, which I suppose is comparable to the phrase, "a clean break." 

Last night my brother stopped by to give me a letter from his wife.  She and I have been friends for years, and I have always considered her one of the few people with whom I can share my deepest thoughts and trials.  It was unusual that she would send me a message this way, handwritten through my brother.  I expected it to be a note of encouragement because she does make a point to send me some Bible verses now and then. 

I opened the envelope and the first sentence written on a full notebook sheet of paper explains that she is telling me this news through a letter so that I have time to process it alone and without having to fake an appropriate response that would be necessary in person.  I immediately felt my mind and heart want to shut down, because I know what she is about to communicate, even without reading any more. 

She is pregnant.

Yes, this is not normally something that would hurt someone on perfectly good terms with her brother and sister-in-law.  And no, this is not a soap opera where maybe my pain could be explained by the fact that it was in fact my husband who impregnated her and she is thus revealing such a blow by letter.  Nothing as dramatic as that is happening here, and I am sorry to disappoint any reader who is looking for something scandalous (for your sake, find something with true meaning in life!).

The reason my very considerate and loving sis-in-law knew I would need to find out by letter is because a couple months ago I was sitting across from her in her living room and weeping.  The weeping stemmed from the fact that a mutual friend of ours had just told the world that she (the mutual friend) was pregnant.  I had had a conversation with this now-pregnant friend and learned that she almost immediately became pregnant as soon as she and her husband starting trying.

My sis-in-law knew that my husband and I had been trying for a few months to get pregnant.  This could have been just a minor situation of, well, other people can get pregnant, so we probably can, too, and while I'm a tiny bit jealous that a friend just received the good news for the first time, surely I will, too, soon have that news myself, and meanwhile I am very happy for her, well, it just was not that situation.     

I was crying in my sis's-in-law living room because I had given up some things in order to pursue having a child.  I had just the summer before finally felt like my life was coming together and having meaning.  The previous spring my church's music pastor had resigned, and I had bravely said okay when God asked me to step up and become the worship coordinator at our church on a volunteer basis.  This was huge for me, because confidence in handling real-life adult responsibilities is something I still struggle with, even at my then age 25.  But my moods had finally reached a healthy balance and joy had returned and I had energy and motivation and hope and a calling.  So I accepted the new responsibility at my church and loved it from the start, even if I was somewhat still intimidated.

I referred to my moods because I have what I now understand to be generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder.  Yes, those are the technical terms and I can usually talk about them quite rationally, probably because I have a BA in social work and became familiar with the fact that these issues truly exist and persist even in good little Christian girls, unlike my dad who still has a hard time grasping that mental disorders cannot be easily overcome by simply "trying harder."  (Though my dad has come a long ways since learning that medication and counseling is something I definitely need at this point in my life.) 

I also learned this last spring that I have hypothyroidism and have gotten that under control through medication.  In addition, a visit to urgent care at about the same time revealed that severe pain I had suffered for the past 3 years could be attributed to gallstones.  I promptly had my gallbladder removed.

I will go more in depth later as to how these struggles have shaped my life in other ways, but meanwhile, this past summer was the first time I felt like I could be a "normal" person with "normal" pursuits and goals and dreams.  So for the first time in my life I fully considered becoming a mother and raising a child with my wonderful husband. I began to think that maybe I was "cured" so that when my doctor suggested I go off of my anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications while attempting to get pregnant, I thought, "Sure!  I'll get pregnant in the next month or two, and then maybe my moods will balance out because of the pregnancy and I won't need the meds anyway."  This thinking stemmed from the fact that my moods were also balanced by my birth control pills and the doctor thought maybe pregnancy could have the same effect (even if the depression disorder diagnosis is not accurate, my doctor agrees that PMDD is certainly applicable to me).

Those of you who have tried to get pregnant and failed or had difficulty probably share a sad smile at my thought that I'd get pregnant within a "month or two."  And now I wonder what I was thinking.  My own mother tried for almost ten years before I was finally born to her at age 32, and then my brother followed when she was 34.  Genetics was one of my favorite classes in school, I know these things tend to run in families!

And while this may sound pathetic, I will admit it has only been five months of trying.  And I already hurt badly.  Because it turns out going off of my medications was a bad idea.  I did it because while they had not been proven to cause harm to a fetus, they had also not been proven to cause no harm to a fetus.   A couple months into my medication abstinence, I began to slide downhill, and this sliding increased in rapidity, until I had to quit my job at the church, turn my phone to silent, and revisit many old fears I thought I had said goodbye to for good. 

This is not a good situation in which to attempt pregnancy.  Stress of any kind does not aid in fertility.  Full-blown anxiety and depression is not so good, either.

So it has been a very long five months for my husband and me.  But it all explains why my sister-in-law and my brother realized I may not be immediately joyous to hear that they were in fact pregnant.  My sis-in-law and I had always talked about getting pregnant at close to the same time so that we could raise our children together and hope that they, too, would be close friends.  But I did not know that she was actually trying for a baby the same time I was. 

Those of you who have tried for children and failed will perhaps scoff at my pathetic pain of trying for 5 months with no results.  You may not understand without more explanation what it has felt like to for the first time have a purpose and a life, a life that can be respected and contribute to the good of others, only to give it up by going off of my medications in order to try to create a baby in what I thought would be the safest utero-environment possible. Some women at my church thought me brave.  A few months into it I thought I was just plain idiotic. 

I am back on my medications now.  But not the birth control, so I still fight anxiety and depression to an extent.  But it feels like I threw away my chance to have the "normal" life.  My sister-in-law is extremely compassionate and discerning, so she knows I feel this way.   

I love her and my brother very much.  I am very happy for them.  I just hurt for what I feel like I lost and am afraid to hope to get it back.  This is fairly common for Christians with depression.  I know better and yet I don't, all at the same time. 

This has ended up taking many more words than I anticipated.  I think I will explain the title of this entry further at another time.