Just Thinking

I didn’t mean to go this long without updating here. But you know what they say about life: it’s what happens while you’re busy making plans.

About 6 weeks ago, I was diagnosed with Bipolar II Disorder and put on two new medications. I turned out to be incredibly allergic to one of them, and spent a miserable week scratching any part of my body I could reach, missed two and a half days of work, and had a lovely trip to the emergency room.  Then two weeks ago today I was put on a different medication. I’m not, thank goodness, allergic to this one. But it has seriously messed up my sleeping schedule. Due to the rash one weekend, being out of town the next weekend, and sleep problems the next two weekends, I’ve missed church. And I HATE missing church. I long to be there.  I’ve kept adjusting the time I take the medications, but am still having incredible problems with it. A friend of mine is in nursing school, and she is looking them up to see if she can help me figure out the best time to take them that will interfere the least with my sleep schedule.

Today’s been a horrible day, and I’ve spent much of it either in tears or on the verge of tears. There’s no good reason for it that I can figure out; I’m just tired and drained. I asked Joe if we could go to a movie after I got off work, and we went to see Mamma Mia!  I loved it, loved the music and performances, but I still sat there and blubbered like a baby. Seeing the interaction between the mother and daughter just killed me.

If Heavenly Father had tried, I don’t know what trial He could have given me that would have been such a painful one as infertility. It’s just agonizing. I don’t want to be, and don’t think I am, a woman who sits around and cries all the time because she can’t have what she wants. I’ve worked very hard to find the blessings in my life–and there are many–that I have specifically because of the infertility.  But there are those times when it hits me hard right in the gut, and I feel like I can’t catch my breath, and it hurts so much to know that I’m not a mother, I won’t be a mother, not in this life. 

I’ve got a very good friend, whom I love dearly, and it looks like she is finally pregnant. This is her second round of IVF, and she used her frozen embryos. I wanted this for her as much as I wanted it for myself, and I’m excited and truly happy for her. And I feel like such a selfish little whiny crybaby that as I’m writing her to share her joy, this little thing inside me says that I just wish I could have it for me, too. I never want to take it away from anyone else. I never want anyone to have to deal with infertility. It almost takes away from everything you ever thought about yourself, everything you ever dreamed and hoped for. It makes you wonder if you’d be a bad parent, and that’s why you can’t have kids, until you see so many bad parents out there. Children aren’t given to people as a reward for good behaviour, nor are they withheld as a punishment for bad behaviour.

Whenever I think about this, and think about how important the act of creation to me is (and it’s desperately important, which is why I write, why I bake, why I cook), I keep coming back to the words of a primary song.

My life is a gift; My life has a plan. My life has a purpose; in Heav’n it began. My choice was to come to this lovely home on earth; and seek for God’s light to direct me from birth.”  (“I Will Follow God’s Plan,” Children’s Songbook 164-165)

Getting the diagnosis of Bipolar II Disorder didn’t change me. It just put a label on some things that describe me. Being infertile didn’t change me. I’m still myself, still Faith, still a daughter of God, still a daughter, sister, wife, mother. And I know that as empty as my arms feel right now as I long to hold my children, that’s how full they will be on the other side of the veil when I get to hold them for the first time.  There is a purpose to my existence. There is a plan for me. I don’t have to know what the plan is. I just have to trust in my Heavenly Father and be obedient, and I will fulfill that plan as I go.