Promises

I think what Mr. T was trying to say was that I was entitled to whine. I bet (although Mr. T wouldn't, and that's another story). He's fine at communicating, but I'm perhaps not always good at listening. And he's probably not wrong. But I think I'm too good at whining as it is.

I whined a lot this weekend. About how my back hurt, a headache, how I was doing something for others and no one was doing anything for me. I whined about what we didn't get done, I whined about a meeting, I just whined. Nothing was good.

I whined about everything but what I don't want to whine about.

What's the point? Really. Whining is not going to change anything. It won't make any difference. What is, is. And perhaps more than that, it hurts to poke that area. It hurts that I keep losing what I want so much. It hurts that other women get pregnant and stay pregnant. It hurts that babies are born addicted to drugs. It's hard to find God in this place. He just doesn't seem to be here.

He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children.

I'll save you the trouble, I've looked it up in about 15 different translations. They all more or less say the same thing. Psalm 113, verse 9 says that God is going to make me the happy mother of children. (I'm the mother of a child, but I'm not exactly happy about how that turned out.)

Now, I know I've read that psalm before. I've read it a lot, I suspect. I've read the psalms a lot in the last 2 or so years. Somehow, I've never seen that verse. I read it, caught my breath, read it again, and marked it. For the next few weeks, I kept finding myself returning to it. For someone as terrible at remembering the chapter and verse of well, anything, I remember it.

And for a little bit, I thought I understood the meaning. And then, all at once, I was back to walking by faith, and not by sight. This is hard. For every woman who waited for her baby, I can find another who waited, and never did get her child. I can hold up women who waited and lost, or waited and never did get a child. For every Sarah, for every Rachel, there is another woman, who 'chose' to live without children. I am not so foolish as to blindly believe that eventually a baby will turn up in the midst of the tomato patch (Mrs. Spit really hates cabbage). I know that some stories don't ever have a happy ending.

I'll read the verse again tonight, tomorrow night, other nights. And I'll hold it up. I want to believe it. I really do. I want to believe that somehow, in all this mess, this blood, this fear and hurt and anger, somehow another baby will find its way not just to my uterus, but home in our arms as well.

And I half-way do. Half of the time I totally believe it, and half of the time I do not believe it at all. And maybe that's ok. There's a verse for that too.
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And thank you for reaching out. Thanks for telling me that you were with me. In the end, the bleeding has mostly stopped, I am feeling better, if a bit sad and a bit angry and a bit confused. I will manage for a while, and then I will thrive.