19 is so young!

I keep seeing the images of a 19 year old hiding in a boat, and I can't help but think of what 19 is.  He must have been so scared.  I think of his mother who can't believe what he's done, and I think, what if my daughter grew up to do something so un-imaginably awful.  I wouldn't believe it either.  My baby!  All I would want would be to hold my baby and comfort her.  I feel for his family, for his victims, and victim's families.  But especially for his mother.

Nineteen is so young, and I think back to the year that I was 19.  I was so messed up.  I was lonely, so lonely that I prayed for a boyfriend, any boyfriend, just because that had to be better than being lonely.  That was the year I learned it's better to be alone than with the wrong person.  I dated two guys that year.  The first was, a nice guy.  Benign really, but I wasn't the right girl for him any more than he was for me.  Then I dated the abusive egomaniac.  I remember at 19 telling myself that I really must be something wonderful if he wanted me so much he would try to force himself on me.  It took me a long time to realize I was special on my own.

Nineteen is so young.  He must be so scared.  I have no idea why he did what he did, what he was thinking, what he thought would happen.  But I understand being 19, and young, and confused, and scared and I pray for him, and his family, and his victims, and their families.  I pray for the wisdom of law enforcement.  And I pray for all the other 19 year-old's out there.  We've been there.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

And of course, another disappointment. The good news is, I've gone part time at work just to have some time to take better care of myself and to take some of the stress off.

I keep wanting to cry out, begging, screaming, "God PLEASE give me a healthy full term pregnancy." But I keep reminding myself, "Not my will, but Yours be done."

I'm really trying to mean it.

Terrified, Annoyed - Confessions of wigging out

Ok, so my one and only pregnancy thus far was an unmitigated disaster.  From the Sunday before I knew I was pregnant I started having horrible pain anywhere from 2-4 times a day, and each pain lasted anywhere from 20 minutes to three hours.  This lasted for the entire duration of the pregnancy and only stopped well after my miscarriage was in progress.  I can count on one hand the number of nights I was able to sleep through during that almost three weeks I was pregnant.  Each night I'd wake up with pains shooting across my middle, wrapped around to my back, and sometimes down to my knees.  Unable to get comfortable in any position I paced the house, often for hours at a time.  Of course if they hit during the day when I was stuck in a meeting I was in worse luck.  Sitting made the hurting worse, so I found myself shifting in my seat, unable to concentrate, unable to focus on anything but the pain.

I told one doctor about this and he told me that normal women whose ovaries work right go through this every month.  Right.  I'm not buying that normal women have PMS three weeks out of the month.  If they did there would be a LOT more voluntary hysterectomies.  For another thing, I don't think I'm THAT wussy!  I know what PMS is, I've had it, and it's nothing to write home about. It's DEFINITELY nothing that would keep me up at night. 

And then my world crashed down.  Having a miscarriage the same week Grandpa died... I don't even have the words.  It's been over a month now and I still don't have the words to express how much the world was against me.  I remember one time when I was in middle school, 8th grade I think, and I had the flu on the heels of strep throat.  I was in bed much of that time, and the very first time I went outside in over a week I sat down on a cross-tie next to the driveway and as I straightened up from sitting a bird pooped on the back of my head and down the back of my shirt.  Having a miscarriage?  Worse than that!

So now, a month later, I'm looking at our next steps with more than a little trepidation. I'm terrified, and I feel evil for being terrified.  I'm terrified of getting pregnant and losing the baby, and I'm scared of the pain that I had during my first pregnancy that kept me up at night and made it near impossible to think at work.  And I'm just all around scared and nervous volunteering for this process again.  I came home a few nights back and went straight for the jellybeans and chocolate.  I've really noticed this miscarriage has caused huge stress eating.  The week of the miscarriage I went through a large bag of dark chocolate peanut M&M's in about two days.  And then there were the jellybeans.  Add to this that my doctor asked me to cut my thyroid medicine in half for this try, and I've gained 10 lbs since January, most of it since the miscarriage I'm sure.  Of course I was to upset to go near a scale so I don't really know when all this started.  I'm just now starting to get my focus off the comfort eating and onto trying to be healthy again.

I know I'm just wigging out from nerves.  I WANT a baby, I DON'T want to loose another one.  This is not the same as thinking I can't handle it.  I can handle quite a lot without dying, or throwing myself off a cliff, or staying in bed for the rest of my life, but I know that losing another baby would be very HARD to handle.  I'm scared of the pain that went with my last pregnancy coming back.  I was seriously miserable and couldn't sleep through the night for something like two weeks.  I had people calling me a wuss, telling me to get over it, and telling me to get used to it because this was going to be what motherhood is like.  So, I'm still trying, but I've lost all joy in it.  And I'm scared.  

That's my confession, sorry for pouring it out like that, and I'm sure that really is TMI.

Trying to find the bright side of miscarriages

Hot dogs.  They're not allowed when you're pregnant.  They go the way of all processed meats, like lunch meat.  I think it's because of the nitrates.  I've had 23 hot dogs in the last two weeks.

Pain.  I'm not in any.  At least not physically.  Apparently being pregnant through fertility treatments is a very painful process with all the hormones going crazy and stuff.  I was in pain up to a level 7-8 (on a scale of 0-10) anywhere from 2-4 times a day with each time lasting anything from 20 minutes to two hours.  It woke me up at night, and kept me from working in the day.  It hurt to sit, it hurt to lie down, about the only thing that helped was to get up and pace my house.  Which I did.  For HOURS.  That stopped with the miscarriage.  The doctors didn't seem to think it was anything serous.  Hmmmm.

My husband gets to keep his car a little while longer.  Not that he wouldn't gladly trade it in for something with a back seat.  We're supposed to be going to the Atlanta auto show in a few weeks to look for a car that will allow him to have the new baby in the back seat.  This takes the pressure off.

Basil.  It's my favorite herb.  It's thought to trigger contractions so pregnant women shouldn't have to much, at least until they're ready to give birth.  Course when my sister-in-law was overdue we went out for Italian so that she could get all the basil she wanted to trigger labor.  I gave it up while I was pregnant.  I missed it.  Tonight I'm having lasagna made with home made sauce.  The sauce has a cup and a half of basil in the recipe.  There's basil in the meatballs too.  Mmmm, basil.

Vodka.  It helps you forget.  It helps you feel good.  I'm trying not to drink to much because I have a feeling that I could EASILY fall into a depression if I had to much right now.  But a little bit helps a lot.

4 years, 5 doctors, where are we now?

Four Years.

That's how long it's been since my husband and I decided we were ready to start our family. We actually made the decision earlier, at his cousin's wedding. I remember lying in bed with him in the hotel that night after the reception. Talking. We always lie in bed and talk. It's the place we go to solve the worlds problems and our problems. It's hard to be mad at each other when you're wrapped in the other's arms, faces inches apart. It's intimate, both physically and emotionally. It's hard to fight in this position, and easy to cry. But there was no fight this night, nor any tears. We'd been married a year and a half, and loved our time together, but thought it was time to invite someone else into the family. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't apprehensive. We couldn't agree on much about names, we both vetoed the other's favorite girl names. I didn't know if I would be a good parent, but I knew I would try.

Five Doctors.

I knew heading into this there were problems. One doctor had suspected I had Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and had told me that I probably had never ovulated on my own. So when I went to her to tell her we were ready to try I was VERY surprised at her plan of attack. She wanted us to try on our own for a year. This seemed like a total waste of time to a person who'd been told only a year before that she probably didn't ovulate on her own. But we tried. For a year. And nothing happened, just as I suspected. So I went back and we tried fertility drugs. Three months I spent on Clomid, with migraines so bad I would come home and go straight to bed crying. I couldn't stand light, I couldn't stand movement. It's really hard to get pregnant when you can't stand for your husband to touch you.

So I went back, a glutton for punishment. She told me that sometimes women with PCOS need to loose weight before they can get pregnant.

800 Calories.

She suggested I try Weight Watchers or South Beach. I tried both, and gained weight on them. She insisted that weight loss is as simple as calories in & calories burned. I started out at about 1000 calories a day, but when that didn't have the results I wanted, I slowly found ways to cut down. 100 calories for breakfast. 200 calories for lunch. Maybe a 100 calorie snack in the afternoon, and a small dinner. I never got below 192 lbs. I went back to the doctor to tell her my results, and she accused me of lying.

So I found a new OB/GYN. This one was nice, but completely out of his depth. He suggested I try a reproductive endocrinologist, so I started looking for one. Of course our insurance didn't cover any much closer than twenty miles away, so instead I found a local PLAIN endocrinologist. On our first visit I told him my ultimate goal, to have children. He ran a great many tests. It was during this time that I adopted a new weight loss plan called "give the doctors all the blood they want." It was not unusual for me to give 11-12 vials of blood every few weeks, and for a few months I saw this doctor quite often. After a while I began to feel that tests were being run with little or no definitive results. So I sat down and specifically asked this endocrinologist if we were getting any closer to anything that would result in me being able to have children. His answer surprised me. He said, "I suspect you have PCOS, but if you want to know for sure then you should probably see a reproductive endocrinologist." I looked at him like he had two heads. He had told me pretty much what I knew when I started seeing him.

I felt like I'd just lost 5 months of my life, and we were no closer to having children than we were when my doctor accused me of lying to her. Then, upset, I went to see my chiropractor. Not for fertility issues, but she's given me good advice in the past, fixed my TMJ and we'd discussed in passing that I was trying to have children. We discussed how I was getting nowhere fast and she said that she knew two doctors, not specialists, but they focused on hormonal balance. I decided I was faced with two paths. I could drive twenty miles to a fertility specialist and use the brute force method of getting pregnant. Or I could go a more natural and hopefully gentler, closer, but also more expensive (not covered by insurance) way.

I spent a year and a half on the bio-identical hormone replacement therapy. I won't call it wasted time. We found that I had an underactive thyroid (no wonder I couldn't loose weight) and now I'm free to not obsess about food and I've lost twenty pounds. I'm healthier than I've ever been, but after a year and a half and still no sign of a baby (and a job change that resulted in better insurance) we agreed it was time to try the brute force method.

27 days

That's how long it took the fertility specialists to tell me I was pregnant. Of course it wasn't that simple. I'd been hurting for five days, and knew something different was going on. Horrible pains in my abdomen and lower back that would wake me up at night, or keep me from being able to sit at my desk during the day. When they came on there was no rest, no sitting, no lying, and no bending or stooping; just slow pacing in circuits around the house, sometimes for an hour or more at a stretch. On the few occasions I was stuck in meetings when an attack came on I would be completely unable to concentrate. I left meetings shaking and barely holding back tears for the pain. So when I went in for the blood test and mentioned it to the phlebotomist, and she said, "Well that's good, sounds like something's going on, you wanna talk to the doctor?" I said sure. I can handle pain. I don't exaggerate (I had someone at work ask) and I can work through almost anything and still be productive. I wasn't expecting a pity party or anything, but I did expect to be taken seriously. So when the doctor (it's a group, and I haven't seen this guy before) studied my chart and came in and told me that this was probably just PMS cramps and I haven't had them for 5 days before because my ovaries hadn't been working in the past, but normal women whose ovaries work go through this every month; I was a bit skeptical. Because I swear if normal women went through this every month we'd have a LOT more voluntary complete hysterectomies! I promise!

Still, I was reasonably prepared for them to come in and say the test was negative. They said they would call me with the results, but I wanted to stick around and find out, and they said it would only be an hour or so, and I'm not normally at work until 10:00 anyway. So I waited. She walked by and said the results are coming in now, and then I waited a while longer and wondered what was keeping her. She was in with the doctor, who was as surprised as I was when he heard I was pregnant, after just assuring me that I almost certainly wasn't.

3 weeks

That's how long I was pregnant before I miscarried our child. Our first child, the one I've been struggling to have for over four years. I keep telling myself we've made such progress. This is the first time there's been any evidence that I could conceive. I should be jumping for joy at the potential, shouldn't I? But I can’t find that in me. I’m raw, torn; I feel like my emotions have been tied to the back of a pickup and dragged down a gravel road. I find myself staring into space with an expression on my face, horrified, like I’ve just witnessed a gory murder. Well, I’m partially right.

1 miscarriage and I'm devastated.

Following the First Profession (no, it's not what you think)

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” Genesis 1:26 (NIV)

I recently watched a video in which many people in places of leadership in many Christian organizations spoke out against what they called a great evil.  In this short three minute and eight second video "Radical Environmentalism" is credited as being the greatest spiritual battle we face today.  I sat in shock surprise and revulsion as I watched presidents and pastors and directors from organizations I normally respect.  These leaders, one from a denomination of which I am a member, spewed derogatory and judgemental names for people who's greatest crime is trying to take care of this earth that God has given us.  These associations, whose publications I read regularly and whose radio shows I listen to, used names like:
"tree hugger"
cult
"radical environmental agenda"
"own morbid, pessimistic fears"
"exaggeration, myths and outright lies"
"so-called global warming science"

They accused environmentalists of promoting humanism, and then went on to contradict their own statement by saying that environmentalists are "consigning the poorest people around the world to grinding poverty, to disease, to premature death."  Yet it is the humanist movement that works to raise the level of human condition.  Not only are these so-called Christians sitting in condemnation of some stereotypical environmental group, but they're contradicting themselves while they do it.

But my visceral reaction to this video didn't start when I read the article this morning.  This is something that I have spent the last several years studying and trying to understand.  How can so many Christians seem to have a complete and utter lack of compassion, and more personally what does God want me to do with my life. 

I have spent much time in my life wandering, looking for direction.  While my sister seemed to know exactly what she wanted to do from early high school, straight through he PhD, I took the eight year plan flitting through four majors before finally eking out a BS.  And even then I hadn't found my direction in life.  It was more a matter of wanting something to show for all the years I'd spent in college.  I often say I have the best liberal arts education you can receive from a technical school because that's just how convoluted my journey in life has been.  So I continue searching, and what better way to find the will of God than by reading the word he has given us. 

I'm holding it open right now, to the very beginning, day 6, the one where we're first mentioned.  Man, and the charge God first gave to us.  God said of man to "...let him rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”  I've gone back to the very begging.  I can't find anything that takes precedence over this charge, to take care of the earth that got has made and it's animals.  Does God charge us to take care of the poor and diseased people on the earth?  NO!  Possibly because they did not exist yet.  After all, this predates the fall of man.  We didn't know that we were poor and naked yet, and I assume no one had caught the common cold. 

God goes on to reinforce the idea that we should care for his creation only two verses later.  "'Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.'

Then God said, 'I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.'" Genesis 1:28-29 (NIV)  Here we're told to take care of not just the animals and the fish, but we're supposed to value the plants as well.  While I wouldn't go so far as to say that this is a direct order to go around hugging trees, I also thinks this is a strong indication that we are charged to take care of ALL of God's creation.

I want you do notice here that we're still on the sixth day.  This wasn't on the seventh day where God was resting.  No, this is the job that God has laid on mankind.  The first 9-5 task that God has ever given to people.  I take this to heart.  I accept the charge that God has laid on me and I still think that this is the most important job that we can do.  To care for God's creation is to show our reverence for God. 

This is reinforced in the second chapter of Genesis, "The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." Genesis 2:15.  Here we have the first name given to the first profession.  We are to be gardeners, not yet farmers, there's a difference.  Farmers toil in the soil and eat what they grow.  Gardeners tend the living plants.  This makes it clear to me that it is my job not to re-shape the earth to fit whatever idea I have of it, but to tend it the way God has given it to me.  I am to preserve it, not to strip-log it and build condominiums. 

The Bible continues to honor those people who take car of Gods creation rather than resorting to violence.  The people of the bible understood farming.  Cain and Able learned it from their parents, and Jesus knew that it still applied to the people he was talking to when he told the parables of the Sower (Matthew 13:3-8) and the Tares Matthew (13:24-30). 

The all important job of caring for God's creation, of being God's constant gardener if you will, resonated with the people of the Bible.  They understood that we are so closely tied with nature, and that if we hurt it we are ultimately hurting ourselves.  Why does this seem to be so lost on people today?  Is it because we are so insulated from nature?  Most of us in a post-industrial society spend all of our time indoors, or on pavement moving from one roof to another.  We go days without actually touching a plant other than our house plants.  We're more likely to kill an animal as we run over it with our vehicle than to take into account the source of all that nicely pre-packaged meat in the grocery store.  Most new neighborhoods that are built start with clear cutting the trees and leveling the earth to the point where it becomes unrecognizable. 

We are very disconnected from our environment, but I don't think this is the actual cause of our misunderstanding of God's greatest calling.  I think our disassociation stems from something much more insidious, something more evil than the love of money (though one may cause the other and vice verse). 

Lack of compassion. 

I believe that lack of compassion in many of the most influential and out spoken Christians is the biggest stumbling blocks to people today.  Compassion is what makes us realize that when we over exploit the earth we're destroying it for those who come after us.  Compassion is what makes us aware of needless destruction.  And those of us that have compassion notice these things and hurt.  I hurt when I see a squirrel dead in the middle of the road.  I hurt when I drive by a sign for new development, and stretching behind it a bare scar of red Georgia clay.  I hurt when I hear one more self entitled prig's needlessly inflammatory remarks.  They lump together a diverse group of people and play the blame game.  What makes it worse?  They accuse the others, whoever the others are at the moment, of fear mongering, yet that's exactly what I hear when I listen to them. 

Is this one of the cases where it takes one to know one?  I'm a Christian, a devout one, but one with diverse beliefs.  I don't fit the stereotypical conservative, and I'm not really liberal.  I find that what I abhor most of all is extremism in either direction.  Extremism doesn't lead to understanding.  It leads to opposing sides screaming at the top of their lungs loud enough to make anyone undecided deaf.  It doesn't lead people to see wisdom, it blinds them to the true need.  I won't say I'm all that in touch with nature, and I definitely don't want spiders in my house.  But I also want children, I want them to see the gifts that God has given us, to value them; and to see that the first profession, the most worthy profession, is the one that God gave us on the sixth day. 

I am not the best at this profession, but like any career path I get better at it as I gain practice and knowledge.  Sometimes I think the extreme right is afraid of knowledge, they see it as humanism.  But I would remind you that God gave you that brain, and he expects you to use it.  Use it to think of ways to internalize compassion, and use it to find ways to care for the plants, animals, and world that God has given us.