Waiting for Jonathan

It's a beautiful day here

2007-04-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

Sunny and bright and I feel like going for a drive.

I remember several years ago going for a drive on a sunny day like this. I was headed from Calgary to Red Deer, all alone in the car, and I was sad. I was sad most of the time those days, whether I showed it or not, the single defining feature of my life being the fact that I was barren. Barren barren barren ...the refrain that beat behind everything else I did.

I slipped a tape of the book of Mark into the tape player. Mark 5. And this story.

25 And there was a woman in the crowd who had had a hemorrhage for twelve years.

26 She had suffered a great deal from many doctors through the years and had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she was worse.

27 She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched the fringe of his robe.

28 For she thought to herself, "If I can just touch his clothing, I will be healed."

29 Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel that she had been healed!

Suddenly I couldn't see the road.

Jesus, I begged through the tears, what do You need me to touch?

I'm apparently a bigger chicken than I thought I was

2006-03-30T21:44:00.000-08:00

well, that's not quite true. I knew this would be difficult.

So we started trying to conceive in November of 1991. I remember this clearly, I remember suddenly feeling horribly young and irresponsible and almost afraid of what could happen - a real baby! We weren't OLD enough! Or smart enough! Or ready enough! We giggled like idiots at the thought.

I went with a very good friend to a fundraising banquet for Outreach For Life shortly after that - I was two weeks late, coffee was making me sick to my stomach, I was exhausted by four in the afternoon, I was hopeful. But I wasn't going to the doctor yet. I don't remember why not. Beanie slipped me a pregnancy test under the table.

The entertainment that night was a singing group - two girls, twins, who'd been singing together half their lives. They clung to each other for support while one of them told us a heartwrenching story of rape and the resultant pregnancy, and the gutwrenching decision to first of all, not have an abortion, and next, to choose to place the baby for adoption. They sang a song that arrowed straight through the crowd to me, and I scribbled it down on a napkin.

"If someone else's treasure
will forever be my loss
then I thank You for the privilege
of carrying the cross."

I shook my head. Babies were so close to my heart - would I be able to thank God for the privilege of giving my baby to someone else? It was courage beyond what I could fathom.

Home pregnancy tests in those days were horrible test tube-y affairs that you had to wait an HOUR for the results. I only had one - I wasn't going to spend a lot of money obsessing. I knocked it over at 55 minutes.

Two weeks later I went to the doctor - negative pregnancy test. Two weeks later, I started to bleed, six weeks late, and I bled for six weeks.

If you're reading this, you know how my journey ended. Was I pregnant? I don't ever want to know. For all the hard things that were to come in the next few years, miscarriage is one pain I did not have to face.

I had always had regular cycles - 30 or 31 days. After those six weeks, nothing was the same. Periods here there and everywhere - sometimes spotting, sometimes heavy. I never knew when it would hit or how long it would last. No-one in the medical profession seemed to think there was anything to worry about. I couldn't get anyone to hear me when I said "Yes, I know some women do this, but I don't. You can tell me what's normal - I can tell you what's normal for me."

That's all I can dredge forward for today. This could take years :)

Who is Jonathan?

2006-02-23T14:57:00.000-08:00

I do not remember a time when I did not want to be a mother. I got married young, while my husband was still in university, and couldn't imagine how I could wait 4 or 5 years to have a baby. I filled the time by dreaming up baby names, and learning to knit, and pestering my long-suffering husband, who was still trying to figure out how to be a grown up, with questions like "Do you like the name Christopher? What about Christopher Gordon?" Etc.

And we both liked the name Jonathan, and Jonathan became The Baby I didn't have. Jonathan Arthur Victor. How I'd wait five years to start trying, I had no idea.

Oh boy, did I have no idea.

Why this blog is here

2006-02-23T14:53:00.000-08:00

My other blog is about where my life is now, not what it was like then. It's a hard place to go back to, and if I'm thinking about sugar-coating the hard real truth for the sake of the people who read my other blog, I won't do what I want to do here.

I've always wanted to write a book about this. Maybe this a roundabout way to begin.