Waiting on a Baby

This time of year seems especially focused on families: babies that fit snugly in festive stockings, children gathered around the sparkling tree, happy, perfect family photos littered across all forms of social media, and pregnancy announcements left and right. This is a hard time of year if one’s arms are empty.

I walk past the room that will, Lord willing, someday be our nursery.  It is mostly empty, save for a lone futon up against the left wall and some storage bins yet unpacked since we moved in. Someday, hopefully, a crib will replace the futon and a rocking chair will oust the storage bins. But for now, there is only the futon. The door to that room stays closed. We say it’s to conserve heat and “not heat space we don’t use,” but I know in part it’s to conserve our hearts, one way of avoiding the void in our home that reflects the ache in our hearts.

As Christmas draws near, I brace myself for the ache. The Two Week Wait will end right around Christmas this year – giving us an early Christmas gift or an early Christmas heartache.

Our Advent season has, in a very real sense, been spent waiting on a baby.  I can’t help but notice the irony and parallelism… While our offspring can never be compared to the Prince of Peace, I think of the way the world lay in wait for a king, for a Savior – never knowing they’d receive both in the form of a baby. This Christmas season, that feeling of waiting has been an incredible object lesson for my heart. Considering the way I long for a child, long to fill the futon room, long to hold creation that is part Cole, part me, and part God, I am reminded of how I should be longing for the One who came as a baby. That baby is all I need.

Three Days Ago

Three days ago, the bleeding started. Three days ago, the tears flowed. And three friends in as many days have posted adorable, well-executed announcements. Turns out, this is lonelier than I expected.

This was the month. You know how they say it’ll happen when you stop trying?  Well, this was the month I ignored. This was the month I vowed to stop obsessing. This was the month I tried not to care in an effort to protect my heart. But this was the month that he cared.  This was the month his hopes were highest. And, perhaps the only thing worse that being disappointed, yet again, is seeing his disappointment, his father-hopes dashed.

I never anticipated the ache. I never anticipated the feelings of utter defeat. I really never anticipated how it would rend my heart to see that look on his face. He holds my heart so carefully, he protects me so gently, and he loves me so very, very selflessly. But his heart is broken.

Every Wednesday we babysit my niece and nephews. Every Wednesday is paradoxically healing and heartache. It deeply heals that part in us that longs for the chaos, that longs for the sticky handprints on my pant leg, that longs for the sleepy head rested on the weary shoulder. And I hear the way he talks with them, plays with them, and I can’t help but to fall in love all over again with this man and I can’t help but cry for the children I haven’t given him. This man was created to be a father. His children will be so incredibly fortunate, blessed by his leadership, patience, and love – oh the love.

This month wasn’t supposed to be this hard. I tried desperately for the last 29 days to be indifferent, oblivious to timing, trying to keep my hopes in check. This was the month he had finally let his hopes soar. And this was the month that broke my heart.

October 2014

Enough

Month Four. Four months. In the grand scheme of life, four measly months is nothing, a blip on the screen, a snap of the fingers, a breath. In the game of waiting, however, four months feels like an eternity. Four months divided up into two week periods of waiting. Waiting to try, waiting to find out if the trying was successful.  Hopes high, hopes dashed; week in and week out. And so it goes.

In the back of my mind, when the cramping realization hits each month, I wonder: is this it?  (Alongside that thought are also the thoughts that mock: someday you’ll look back on this and laugh at your over-dramatization.) And, laugh, I certainly hope I will. But today, for now, the struggle is quite real. The announcements and pictures plastered all over produce tiny little stabs in my heart and my gut. Joy, jealousy, excitement, and a little bit of “when will it be our turn?” churn through with each grainy image posted, each “Big Sister” t-shirt donned.

I am amazed at the speed in which the switch flipped. The “no, we’re not ready yet,” jumped to “now! and why hasn’t it happened yet?” From one extreme to the other, we careened. And now the pendulum is seeking some middle space. The middle that knows, hopes, it will happen someday, when the time is right. The place of acceptance without despair. The place of “For now, this is enough.”

And I think I mean it. This is enough. We are enough. You are enough.  We are a family, you and I. We are already complete. This is enough: this late night reading, this early morning slow waking, this stressful, carefree, spontaneous, and overplanned life we’ve made.  Someday, let’s add to our number. Someday, let’s have a little boy with your sparkling gray-blue eyes. Or a little girl with your perfect lips and knee-weakening smile.  Let’s fill our table and buy a bigger car and spend too much money on Little League fees. Someday.

But for now, this is enough. And I love this life we have together.

Baby Talk

I laid in bed last night listening to the rhythm of his breathing: in – pause – out, in – pause – out.  With each breath drawn in and released, my heart swelled with overflowing love, awe, and contentment for this man, for the life we have together, and for our sweet, sweet marriage.   Why would we want to mess with the good thing we have going?

It amazes me how entirely dichotomous my posture is towards expanding our family.  In one breath, I am bursting at the seams, ready to swaddle our precious progeny, physically feeling the ache of empty arms – pause – out the next, I’m selfishly longing to prolong this season of our lives and hold close our way of living, our way of relating, our late nights and long mornings.  I know, deep down, we want children – oh, how badly we want children.  And yet, in those all-too-common moments at night, or over breakfast, or during a lingering glass of wine after dinner – I want to bottle ‘us’ up for fear of losing our ‘us’-ness in the next stage of life.

I treasure my title, wife.  I love being his.  And, Lord willing, I will treasure ‘mom’; and I will love being theirs.  But, I never want to lose what we have.  I’m not so Pollyanna to assume that nothing will change and we’ll have our time and our lifestyle and our ‘us’-ness forever and ever and ever.  I know things will change and I know we will change and I know we will have to extend more grace to one another than ever before.  And, as much as part of me is aching to hold that baby, another part of me is equally aching to think of losing what we have now.

I have no bow with which to wrap this up. I just pray that when the time comes – Lord willing – we will joyfully embrace our new titles and roles while striving to hold sacred the beautiful, mysterious marriage with which we have been entrusted.  Oh how I love you, Cole Vernon!