Thinking about last year

Last night (Saturday) was one of those rare and wonderful nights when I was going to bed with a relatively clean house, relatively clean children, and a relatively clean conscience. I even climbed into a bed with clean sheets, as a bonus. And perhaps because I had started fasting for the first Fast Sunday of 2015, I was in a particularly reflective mood as I began relaxing my mind and body to go to sleep. My heart was full of love for the people I was fasting for this month--my sister Rachel and sister-in-law Shayla, who will both be giving birth almost certainly before the end of the month, my sister Eva, who is on her last full month as a full-time missionary in Russia, and the many other family members and friends who are bearing and balancing their individual loads. My heart was also full of love for God. Just that night, I had finished reading the Book of Mormon again. Our bishop had invited us to read it in its entirety before the end of the year, but I always have been a day or two late in finishing my assignments. I read the last four chapters in the Book of Moroni, which juxtapose the most beautiful parts of the Gospel of Jesus Christ--the potential to love as our Savior loves--with the most sickening parts of human history--war, violence against women and children, blind pursuit of power. I found myself aching for the loneliness of a prophet who must witness the fulfillment of his own prophesies. And yet, his final words are truly supernal, as he directly addresses the future descendants of the very people who are destroying the last remnants of his civilization.

Anyway, that's what was on my mind. I don't think it necessarily has much relation to the thoughts that followed, but I guess there was something in the emotional milieu. I found myself thinking about the one piece of unmistakable spiritual guidance that I received in 2014. I should pause to say that I felt a closeness with God much more often than that, as I prayed for strength and love and patience in many situations and received it. But a strong sense of spiritual direction along a certain path came just once, in January 2014 when I saw a teen mom bring her new baby to church to be blessed by the bishop. I had a strong sense of how precious this infant was, and I had a strong urge to help somehow. Within a day, it was arranged that I would watch this little baby when his mom resumed high school and his grandma went back to work. 

That was the start of a wonderful new friendship between our families. Joshey had just turned one, so he and little Sebastian were basically a year apart, and I often felt like the luckiest lady around--all of the joy of cuddling a newborn during the daytime, but no nighttime feedings! My children loved their new little buddy, and I loved the chance to get to know this young woman who was trying to make a better life for her son and for herself. It takes guts to do what she did in church on that January Sunday, and I really admired her for it. I considered it good practice, too, as I was hoping to have another baby sometime in early 2015. 

And sure enough, not long after school got out at the end of June and Sebastian was back with his mom full-time for the summer, I found out that I was pregnant, That was a happy July, as I counted down the weeks till my first midwife appointment and thought about my soon-to-be four children, and whether Joshey would have a little brother or a little sister. But toward the end of July, I started getting significantly sicker than I had been with my other three pregnancies. No worries--that's the sign of a healthy pregnancy, right? And maybe I was having twins! Yea! I started spotting a little bit about a week before my appointment, but the midwife told me that my uterus looked nice and big, and spotting in the first trimester didn't have to be cause for concern. Now I was counting down the weeks until my first ultrasound. If I could just see a heartbeat (or two!), I could bear any amount of sickness. It was a wise and intuitive mother who told me, a couple of weeks after that midwife appointment as the spotting and nausea continued unabated, that I needed to call again and demand an ultrasound. So I did. I called at 8 am on a Monday morning, and by 3 pm that afternoon, I was sitting across from a kind and utterly professional radiologist who told me that there wasn't a baby growing inside of me, only a number of cysts that would continue multiplying until I had surgery to stop this molar pregnancy. They were able to schedule the surgery for the next day, and just like that, I was not pregnant, and I wouldn't be able to become pregnant for another 6-12 months. 

That was right before the school year started. In fact, my mom, who dropped everything and flew out to help me through this, attended Polly's kindergarten orientation in my place. In that first week after my miscarriage, I felt buoyed up by so much love and thoughtfulness from my family and a few friends that knew about it. And that thoughtfulness continued in unexpected intervals for the next month, enfolding me about in arms of love and support as I was adjusting my expectations about the timing and even size of our family. Soon, we were into the rhythm of the school year, and my heart was feeling healed. Part of the rhythm of the school year was watching Sebastian again, and I loved the opportunity to see him learn to walk, start uttering meaningful sounds, and discover favorite places in the house. He's a good baby, and he's a joy in our house. Just a month ago, Dave and I and the kids descended en masse to Sebastian's first birthday party, and I really felt like it was a privilege to be there with his mom and grandma and the assortment of friends and relatives of friends who formed Sebastian's extended family of sorts. 

But as the holidays came, some of that ache from the miscarriage returned. I found out in Christmas cards that friends were having babies right around the time that I thought I'd be delivering. I found out that Dave's sister is having a baby, and I yearned again for my little number four to be part of that bumper crop of cousins. I found out that a woman who is dear to my heart had just had a miscarriage, the second in six months. I thought about my New Year's Resolution from 2014--"Prepare all needful things for a new baby in early 2015"--and the blissful, naive assumption that the bounties of life were arrayed, buffet-style, for me to heap onto my plate whenever I wished. I felt empty, barren, on hold, deficient, lacking, bereft, stalled. 

I don't know exactly why my major spiritual impression of 2014 was to start babysitting someone else's kid. But as I lay in my bed last night, thinking about last year, a new idea occurred to me. Not a particularly comforting one, but it felt true. I wanted another baby of my own. I wanted to keep my every-two-years pattern of childbirth, with its neat stair-steps of siblings, and the constant joy (and yes, constant busyness) of anticipating a new spirit in our home. That was my plan for the year, for my family, for my life. But the message I got from the Spirit was, "I have someone else for you to take care of. He is not your child. But he is also precious to me. You will not get your plan, but this is the work I'm giving to you now." I am not getting my baby, at least, not at the time I'd hoped I would. But God cared enough about someone else's baby to tell me, in unmistakable terms, that my work for 2014 would include caring for him. I guess my take-away is that my life isn't as much about me and my plans for it as I'd been accustomed to thinking it was. This is probably a good thing to learn. 

 I cried into my pillow last night as I thought about these things. I really wanted that little baby. I still do. I really hope that my body cooperates and is able to bear more children. But is it a stretch to say that in a year when I would be experiencing a miscarriage, God placed in my life another baby to love and take joy in and care for? The things that come from God are good. I don't think that my miscarriage necessarily came from God. I think it just came from my somewhat older body and the chance alignment of biological and physiological factors. But that impression that I had in January 2014 to be a part of Sebastian and his mom's life--that did come from God. And I praise Him for it.