A Quarterly Reflection

This morning as I sit to write, I've been awake since 4AM, feeling ever so tired, yet unable to will my body to fall back to sleep.  I have a hot cup of decaf coffee next to me and my Bible open to the book of Isaiah, where I find myself seeking comfort from ancient words from the Lord as well as guidance. Our seedlings that will turn into our vegetable garden later this spring sit beside me, reaching upwards towards the sky, sheltering from the winter weather that has returned to western NC. They are a reminder to me of the never-ending to-do list I have running through my head as I watch them outgrow their containers, wondering when I will have time to plant them in the ground. That in turn reminds me that I need to make time for mowing the lawn, or delegating that to Scott to mow the lawn, that I need to pull weeds.  The to-do list continues on and there are reminders of it everywhere. 

I used to think that my to-do list was something I could, at some point, truly conquer. What I've learned instead is that it's a running list that continues on forever, a list that grows and stretches and shrinks down at times, but is never full "done." I have never described myself as a perfectionist, but my counselor has lovingly pointed out some traits of perfectionism that I carry in certain aspects of my life. No, my house isn't always sparkling clean, and no, I can't always find my keys (they're almost always in the bottom of my purse, yet I insist on turning the house upside down as I deem them "lost"), but there are signs.  Like how I won't start a task if I don't have everything I need to get it accomplished, even if I could make some progress on it without calling it completely finished. My patient notes in charts reflect that of both a perfectionist and a writer-- I want to tell the complete story and I want all of the details to be right there for others to read.

I don't write much lately, and it's a surprise to me considering how cathartic it is to put words on a page, how much lighter I feel after having shared burdens and blessings together on paper.  A few weeks ago I was having a really hard time sleeping after a difficult conversation; my life seems full of difficult conversations recently.  Conversations about expectations for when our baby arrives, conversations about my job and what my work will look like in a new season, conversations with friends that have been challenging but necessary.  After this particular difficult conversation, I was angry.  I felt like expectations were being put on me that weren't appropriate, felt that I had been "dumped on" with problems that really should have been addressed directly versus pulling me (a third party) in, and I just couldn't turn my brain off. So I got up and wrote about it for two hours from our guest room. I wrote about it as if I was going to share it with someone, but I never did.  Just the simple act of writing out my feelings and getting them out of where they were living in my brain was so helpful. 

Today is maybe some of that, but maybe it's also a way to connect after only really talking about hard things in this space lately. My 4AM wakeup today was filled with rehearsed conversations that I'll never have, mixed with prayer to ask for God to help me in humility, to avoid the trap and temptation of being self-righteous. 

I'm sitting in a season of immense gratitude that is also tainted with guilt that I cannot shake.  I am grateful to be approaching a season of motherhood while also feeling incredibly guilty about it as I continue to ask the Lord to fill other wombs that have remained empty alongside mine, some that have never carried life, some that have but maybe not in a long time, and some that have carried life and death-- wombs that, like mine, has also been know as a tomb. I don't think that this guilt is warranted but it's there-- it's a self-consciousness that I carry as I interact with the world around me.

On Monday of this week I went to Target to take care of some registry returns for duplicate items we have received and also to look for some items I still needed for my hospital bag. As I walked through the baby section at Target, I stopped for a moment and snapped a photo as a reminder for myself of God's faithfulness.  You see, there was a time over the past two years when I walked past this section of Target after a D&C and had to look away as tears filled my eyes. Scott was with me and grabbed my hand, recognizing that I was sad because of the section we were walking past after I had just lost another pregnancy. The Target baby section certainly isn't The Promised Land, but this week when I walked through it, it certainly felt like a gift that the Lord was reminding me of that I now had the privilege and right to be walking through it to purchase items for myself and our unborn child. 

There have been times on this journey when motherhood, children, pregnancy have all felt like idols. I sat at the altar at church in early January 2024 surrendering this idol from my knees, asking God to please take this desire for children and motherhood from me if I could not handle it.  In 2021 when our marriage was struggling, I laid the desire and title of "mother" at the feet of Jesus almost daily; at that time, it was very unclear if we would ever become parents together and there was much uncertainty in our day to day.  I felt like I was bargaining with God at the time-- if He would just restore my marriage, I would never even ask for children again. But of course, as He healed things in our marriage, that desire crept back in.

I struggle with holding this tension now of being in a season where it seems I am about to become a mother and feeling guilt over it, feeling like I'm being too showy with it when what I really intend is gratitude.  I truly feel in awe that the Lord has done this thing that I thought was becoming an impossibility for us; I remember being told by two different doctors on this journey, "It is very likely that IVF will be your only option to conceive." And to walk into both of those offices with a filled womb without IVF or other advanced reproductive technologies felt like a true testament to the work that God is able to do that mere mortals cannot explain.

A friend recently shared with me that she was concerned that motherhood and pregnancy were idols in my life, and I had to sit with that statement for a long time.  I tried to respond as humbly as I could, sharing that this has been a concern in my life and that it likely would continue to be time and time again, something I may daily have to surrender.  I've sat with that statement for a few weeks now, I've had two baby showers with these words running through the back of my mind the entire time, and what I have felt deeply convicted of is that I am not living in that season of idolatry currently, though I'm certainly at risk for it. I have felt deeply certain that the Lord is, instead, asking me to live in a posture of gratitude in the deep riches of this season.  I instead feel that each time I get a 4AM kick from the baby in my womb, that I am prompted to thank the Lord for where He has us, knowing that we were never guaranteed this opportunity. I have been asking in prayer almost daily for the Lord to examine my heart and reveal if I am again making this an idol, and I have been asking Him to guard my heart against this temptation to make my life all about this season. 

There was a period of time when I talked very vaguely about our struggles openly but shared the more intimate details of our season of loss with those closest to us.  Now, my husband and I both talk very openly about our experience and our season of loss because we feel strongly that it is part of glorifying God and what He has done in our lives.  It is now part of our testimony; I think that this guilt that I sometimes feel is me wondering, "Am I sharing our story in a way that honors God? Or am I gloating? Am I rubbing this in the faces of friends still waiting to be in this season?" 

One of my best friends celebrated our baby with us this past weekend in the midst of sitting in the disappointment of her womb not being filled yet again this month; I am so grateful that she chose to come even though I knew how hard that would be. I remember attending baby showers myself when we had experienced losses, wondering "will we ever have one of these for us?" I remember seeing pregnant women out in public and deeply envying them; I never went as far as the "Why her and not me?" type thoughts, but I did sometimes wonder why it wasn't happening for us.  I'm always aware when at my OB office of what a trigger it once was for me to see swollen bellies and women beaming with fresh ultrasound photos as I sat there waiting for a D&C to remove the pregnancy contents from my own womb; I'm now careful to tuck away my ultrasound photos before I enter the lobby, and during my 3 hour glucose test I sat in the lobby praying that my swollen belly wasn't a trigger for anyone sitting there in grief or longing. 

I guess as I sit reflecting on this quarter of 2025, I am thinking a lot about how different this season is from seasons past, and how different it is from the season ahead, and how I am just so very grateful for it. The first quarter of 2025 has been filled with so many things to be grateful for-- time spent at the beach with friends celebrating a friend getting married, being in the wedding of a dear friend and watching her walk into a season that she has long awaited, celebrating our baby alongside friends and family, preparing our nursery, finishing some home projects, enjoying a last trip to the Midwest--a place we will love forever and can't wait to share with our son.  

It's also held some thoughts about what we do next after having this baby.  We have both desired a big family ever since we started dating.  But what if we don't have that? What if this baby is the only one we can have? What if foster care isn't for us after all? What if it is? This is where my perfectionist tendencies come through-- I want to plan ahead the next ten steps of building our family while we are still on the precipice of waiting to enter into parenthood. I want to know the outcome before we've really even gotten fully started on the journey.  And maybe that's what my friend saw who cautioned me on idolatry-- maybe she saw this deep desire in my heart to jump ahead to the ending, to see how the story unfolds and to be living in that seasons of abundance, of having "arrived." But really, the growing and the stretching, the blessings and the trials, they are found in the messy middle of the story which is where we still find ourselves, even now. 

So I suppose what I am ending this with is a posture of gratitude for where we are in this season and a hope that I will steward it well; I anticipate when I write another quarterly reflection that things will look quite different from now, but I hope that gratitude will still be the underlying theme.