Pushing Through

A view of the waterfall in Bells Canyon

Two weeks ago, my husband and I went on a truly amazing hike. Well, it was amazing when we got to the top and were rewarded with the view of a hundred foot waterfall crashing into a mountain river, white spray misting through the air and sound thundering across the canyon. The whole way up to this waterfall, I was thinking, "why the crap did we do this?" I cursed in my mind (and OK, let's admit it, out loud) too many times to be proud of as I crawled up giant rocks, banging and scraping my knees and arms as I hoisted up and over the chunks of granite that peppered the forest floor. We climbed at a steep incline for the last mile and a half, and I felt my heart thudding in my chest in a steady rhythm as we kept ascending, stopping only briefly for to rest our aching knees and ankles. We hit several false summits, and I was almost in tears by the last one. 

When we finally reached the top of the trail and scrambled down to the waterfall, the sight was absolutely breathtaking. The way down was equally as difficult in terms of impact, but we reached the bottom with a sense of exuberance and accomplishment. I couldn't help but be struck by the symbolism of what we did. The hike was an exercise in pushing through the pain. Not pushing through by numbing out and shutting down, but by acutely feeling the pain and difficulty in every step, and still moving forward. I can't say I enjoyed the actual process of pushing through, but I do value what is on the other side of that-the knowledge and assurance that I can do really hard things and those things can make me mentally, emotionally and physically stronger. 

I think my life right now is defined by this idea of pushing through the pain. I shut down completely from January to June this year-work necessitated a level of focus, commitment, and composure that demanded I not turn into an emotional wreck that curled up on the classroom floor to join first-graders in their temper tantrums. When work ended, I slammed into a brick wall of all of the feelings that I hadn't been feeling. It was like being punched in the gut. But I am learning that walking through each day in emotional pain is preferable to walking through each day feeling nothing at all. I hate the way I feel sometimes. It is torture to be around children for me. I want to burst into tears at the sight of them. I can't handle being in the same room as a pregnant woman. I can't even watch the adorable videos the people I am closest to in my life post of their beautiful babies on Facebook because I know that they will send me into complete meltdowns. I am overcome so many days with absolute despair. It is really the most horrible, difficult thing I have ever experienced. But for the first time in months, I am actually experiencing it, and I am grateful for the companionship of my sweet, supportive husband and my Savior as He walks hand in hand beside me. Even when I am furious at Him for making me endure this hell. But I will take angry over indifferent, and I know He will too. 

We are only a tiny step closer to an end to project baby (whatever that end may be). After two months of very, very unpleasant hormone supplements to suppress a persistent cyst on my right ovary, I have the go-ahead to go off them. These pills made me feel like garbage-emotionally and physically. At the end of taking them, the cyst on my right ovary is resolved, but there is a small one on the left ovary now. Dr. Peterson has now seen enough of a pattern to classify them as alternating functional cysts (hormone producing) rather than endometriosis, which I guess is good news. I need three weeks to clear my system and return to a normal cycle, and then we start all of the fertility drugs again. We have waited 6 months for this, so we are anxious to try again. I am hopeful that the perfect storm will hit-I'll be pumped up on the drugs, husband will be in the last two months of his zinc/folic acid supplement trial, and I will be in a place where I am not only mentally but physically healthy, and the magic will happen. We get three chances at the magic. Then, the conversation will have to change.

Due to my low AMH levels (eggs in reserve), our doctor wants us to start talking about IVF if our current plan of action doesn't work. I have never wanted to pursue IVF, however, as our church has moved away from facilitating very affordable adoptions, a $15,000 IVF package has suddenly become the more affordable option. I don't know how I feel about it yet. I think that's a mountain that I will wait until the last possible minute to even consider climbing. 

The rest of the summer will provide plenty of chances for growth and fun and pushing through the pain. We have some great (hard!) hikes planned. I am working out like a crazy woman each day and it is definitely giving me an Elle Woods-esque rush of endorphines (because happy people just don't shoot their husbands). I am spending lots of time with my husband who I adore more and more each day. Isn't it amazing how you only fall deeper in love with someone as you struggle through the hard stuff together? We have a great vacation to Florida (yay for Disney and Harry Potter world!) planned for the end of July/beginning of August. I know I am going to keep hurting through all of this, and I don't think that will change. But I can see a way to appreciate the good things while I am hurting. 

I may be scraped up, bruised, prone to crying in the presence of small-children, and soon to be pumped full of more hormones, but I am still climbing, and anticipating whatever view awaits me at the top. 

Changes

I can't begin to grasp the amount of change that has occurred in my life over the past four years. The end of what I thought was a forever relationship. The beginning of what is my true forever marriage. Moving. Leaving my dream job. Experiencing my husband becoming my best friend. Financial hardship. Not being able to have a baby. A new job. And now, more changes are headed in our direction.

Last week, after waiting one month for a cyst on my ovary to clear up on its own, and spending another month taking a Progestin to shrink that stubborn cyst, I went in to see what was going on in the incubator. My cyst shrunk. A lot. Down by 60%, and the overall volume down even more. But I also found out it's probably not a cyst. It's probably an endometrioma. And for the first time, there is a fibroid camping out on my uterine wall. Which scares the living crap out of me. I have never had these before. I have had cysts that have come and gone. My uterus has been pretty normal. All of a sudden, my sloughed-off endometrial cells are making themselves at home in parts of my body where they shouldn't be. Scary. I didn't know much about Endometriosis until last week. I wish I had never even heard of this, because it adds another lovely wrench to this already hellish struggle. What I do know is that Endo is thought to be influenced greatly by stress, inflammation and weight gain. Well, I just hit the danged triple jackpot. 

I.am.so.tired.of.my.stupid.body.not.doing.what.it.is.designed.to.do. But this is likely of my own doing.

I looked back over 9 months of uterine scans and procedures. I have never had this happen before. The only thing that has changed in my life is, well, everything. I went back to work and I stopped eating well. I stopped sleeping well. I worked almost every weekend until 1 AM. I developed a persistent twitch in my left eye. I worked most weeknights nights until 9 or 10. I didn't exercise. I replaced water intake with Cherry Coke. I frequented more drive-thru lines than I could ever care to admit. Hell, I even ate more than one gas-station hot dog wrapped in a croissant drenched in nacho cheese. I ate roller food. From a gas station. The shame is more than I can bear. Those of you that know me and the extreme love for the gastronomic arts, this is a level to which I never imagined I could descend. For the past six months, ,my life became 100% about the 27 sweet, amazing, wonderful, squirrely, energetic and challenging kids that I teach. Doing what is best for them, every moment of each day. And I sacrificed doing anything for me. I wasn't the picture of health or fitness before going back to work full-time, but I certainly was not in the ultimate pits of having let everything that is important just fall to the side. 

I had to choose. The sweet, smiling faces. The moment that a kid truly grasps a concept. The sticky-finger hugs. The crazy ebb and flow of the day. I love it. But I love my future family more. 

The seed of change was planted in my mind about six weeks ago, but at 6:20 AM on Thursday, when my doctor looked at me and told me that next month, after another four weeks of Progestin, regardless of the size of the endometrioma, we would restart my fertility drugs and push through for an IUI, I knew what I had to do. His exact words were, "I need you to do whatever you can to get as healthy as possible in the next four weeks." It hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt like the wind was knocked out of me. I am doing ZERO healthy things in my life. I am dumping money and time and emotion into a pursuit of having a baby, and I am doing ZERO healthy things to support that effort. Reality is a bitter slap in the face. 

I won't be returning to full-time teaching in the fall. I may do some part-time specialized instruction that would be less stressful and demanding. I am not yet sure what the right choice is. I need to work in some capacity because it is good and healthy to have a focus and to be productive. I just can't do 75 hour weeks and extra classes for certification and little sleep and no room in my heart for anything but these wonderful 27 kids. My husband needs my heart. I need my heart. My future children need my heart. I thought about just scaling back. I am a person that puts excess into everything I do. My work process is frenetic. I can't give any less than everything. I need to give my everything to becoming a mom, in whatever way that comes to me.

I really don't know what the road ahead holds for me, but I do know that for the first time in months, I feel a measure of peace. Changes. Time to embrace the change that is coming, and commit to the changes that I need to make in my own life. Freaking gas station hot dogs... 

The Flyer Comet

When I was twelve, the scariest thing in the world to me was the roller coaster at our local, historic amusement park. The star attraction at Whalom Park was The Flyer Comet, a classic wooden coaster, perched on the shore of a lake in central Massachusetts, and by the time I was old enough to ride it's rickety tracks and dilapidated cart train, had been in operation for nearly 60 years. The Flyer Comet was a hallmark of New England culture, and the fact that the entire structure shook as you whooshed around the curves, and that the paint flaked off in sheets as metal wheels clacked over the worn track wasn't enough to deter thrill-seekers from riding the ancient attraction. The scariest part of riding the Flyer Comet was a section they called "the black hole," which was a covered portion of track built over a steep drop (often rumored to cover faulty portions of the structure). For a few seconds, the darkness enveloped you, your heart raced, stomach churned, and mind spiraled, before you shot out the other side into brilliant sunlight over deep blue water, arms raised to touch the sky with outstretched fingertips, heart full of exultant joy and body buzzing with adrenaline. 

I feel like I am stuck on the Flyer Comet, trapped in the "black hole," and I can't get off the ride. 

In the past ten days, I have walked away from a full-time teaching opportunity less than a week before school started, created a new plan for employment wholly dependent on substitute teaching jobs, and found out that our problems having a baby may be more serious than we initially thought. I am spiraling, sometimes it feels like without direction, but banking on that moment of shooting out of the "black hole," hands raised joyously toward the heavens, lungs bursting and heart soaring as light overcomes darkness and hope fills my soul. 

For the first time on my life, I am running on nothing but faith. There is something exhilarating and liberating about turning control over to God and opening yourself to His goodness and glory to satisfy every possible need. There is something awesome and humbling about knowing that after doing everything in your power to satisfy your temporal and eternal needs, it will never be enough without His grace. So while I am terrified and stuck on what seems like an endless trip through the "black hole," I know with a faith that burns hotter than any earthly flame, that if we live our faith daily, commit ourselves to Him, see the needed specialists to help us have a baby, and work our hardest to meet our financial needs, He will help us achieve our eternal and paramount goal of a family. There is no way to meet that goal running on our old plan of working 65-70 hours a week teaching and commuting. So we have a new plan. 

The new plan is this-give it our all. Keep our heads up. Be flexible. Be receptive to the Holy Spirit. Move forward with faith. Steel ourselves. And wait for the sun to come back.

We need to find out if I have a misshapen uterus that could challenge carrying a healthy baby to term. We need to find out if I am able to ovulate at all. We are at a point of moving beyond the help that my OBGYN can give us. We are upping the ante. We have our first reproductive endocrinologist appointment on October 8th.  We need to find a way to meet our financial obligations on a reduced income. But I know that he will help us to do all of those things, because more than anything else, He wants us to have a family and to know the full spectrum of experience that raising children will bring us. And He and BJ and I will do whatever we need to do and are inspired to do to make that happen. 

I have a feeling the Flyer Comet and I have a few more rounds to go, but the moment of transformation from inky darkness to brilliant light will make every second of the experience worthwhile. 

So we soar on through the darkness just before dawn. Heads up. Hearts full of love. Hands stretched to the sky. 

Choosing the Path Before You

I have been unemployed for nearly two years. When I got engaged and we decided living in Utah was the best option for us because of BJ's condo ownership, I resigned my position as a teacher at a school I loved. I would have stayed there forever, teaching ancient civilizations to hilarious junior high kids and been totally happy. The Classical Academy was my dream school. I thoroughly, completely and effervescently enjoyed every moment of working there. From the students, to fellow staff, to administration, to school philosophy, it was like TCA and Lauren were made for each other. Leaving was incredibly hard, and I miss it all the time. And since moving, job opportunities have been nonexistent. 

I have since moonlighted as a private tutor. It has been a lot of fun, rewarding, and a good source of some much-needed income. I especially love that this year I have been able to work with my 14-year-old nephew and develop an amazing personal relationship with him. It has been wonderful blessing. But now, that is all changing.

I was offered (and accepted) a full-time teaching job for next year. It is at an amazing charter school that is similar to TCA in many ways. I will be coming on board as a high school teacher, and will get the chance to really help build that school from the ground up as they continue adding a grade at the high school each year. I am excited at the prospect of creating curriculum, integrating technology and developing awesome relationships with my students. I will have an hour-long train commute back and forth each day, but I can use that time to plan and grade and make sure I am not always bringing work home with me. Inside, I can feel seeds of excitement about this job, and I am incredibly grateful and excited for the chance to work again.

It is also breaking my heart.

I think this week and the challenges of my doctor's appointment to deal with fertility challenges have really thrown my ability to judge my emotions accurately. I am just feeling a whole lot and not really thinking very much about what those feelings really mean when I dig into them.

I feel like I am sacrificing my ultimate dream of mommy-hood for a career. I never wanted to do that. In my guts, I feel like I have surrendered to the challenge and given up on getting pregnant, because I am going back to work. The original plan was to be a mom about six months ago. Somewhere, life and fate are sitting in a room having a good laugh over the plans I made. Very funny, guys. Right now, I can't shake this feeling that I am doing this because I failed at becoming a mother. Which is crazy and totally irrational, but it's just how I feel right now.

I had a good talk with my Dad today. He said I need to choose the path that is before me, and if I detour somewhere along the way, I just take that detour, and that nobody is going to fault me for having a baby down the road. So that is what I am going to do. If I get pregnant while working, I will just do what I need to do to best fit the needs of my family. And for me, that will mean being home with my little one. But if I have to wait a little while in between the school year finishing and my being able to be home, then we will work it out. I cannot continue to live my life on pause while I wait for something to come. It may not come, or it may come in a way that I do not expect. But either way, I need to be working, contributing, saving money and being intellectually challenged as the path unfolds in front of me.

I really want this job. I want to feel a great sense of purpose and have something valuable to do each day. I want to contribute my time and talents somewhere that matter. I think I will be great and do great and feel great when I start teaching again. If I move forward with faith and hope, I know things will fall into place.

It is bittersweet to the core though, right now. I think that's ok. It will mellow over time.

So I am choosing the path before me, pushing my teacher cart ahead and towing a dream of a baby behind.

Acceptance

Accepting change is hard. Beyond hard. It is the first step towards a reformation of one's self. I hate it. But I am trying.

On the outside, I have always been someone who projects an appearance of being "together" and "settled." I cling to this idea as if it is a life-raft to save me from certain drowning. My first foray into blogging was very much tied to this idea of projecting perfection to some sort of all-knowing, all-judging internet audience. You know, those people who actually create the amazing things we all drool over on Pinterest. Who bake layer cakes each week, grow their own vegetable gardens, re-purpose their husband's shirts into baby clothes and take family pictures with perfectly styled and coiffed children sprawled on vintage velvet couches drug over an abandoned railroad track. I wanted to be these women. I taught myself photography. I searched for, created and perfected recipes that I thought these people would like and approve of. I went out of my way to prioritize writing for them and what I believed they wanted. Then I realized, these people do not really exist.

We get snapshots of people's best in the online community. We see picture-perfect homes that put Better Homes & Gardens to shame. We see the epitome of their baking and culinary prowess presented on a perfectly-styled table. We see the best DIY projects they have ever completed in their adorable little lives. What we don't see are the many days spent in yoga pants, weighing the value of a shower against the value of a nap. We don't see the cake that fell flat at 11 PM before it ever made it out of the oven. We don't see the stress over bills, children and relationships. Everyone has their best, and that is great. Everyone has their "not best," and that is great too. So, in the spirit of embracing all the elements that make someone truly whole, I am going to put myself out there in as unedited and authentic a way as possible.

I want to share things that are good. Things that are joyful. Inspiring. Uplifting. But I want to share things that are real. Experiences that affirm what I know to be true-that the opposite of pain is not happiness, but joy. And joy is a complex emotion, tinged around the edges with discouragement, disappointment and heartache, and rooted at it's center in indescribable beauty and pure love. And that you can never have joy without pain.

This blog will be me-who I am, and who I am becoming. I love to cook and bake, so there will be some of that. I love my faith, so there will be some of that. I love my family and the support and delight they pour into my life, so there will be lots of that. There will be a documentation of my journey into healing self through natural and holistic means. There will be a whole mess of things about the struggles I have with my mind and body. And there will be a lot about my deepest desires to have a child, and the nearly two-year journey (thus far unsuccessful) my husband and I have been on to make that a reality. 

I hope that this is something that can help others who live in the same state of flux, growth and back-and-forth that I do. If you read it to gain an insight into a wonderfully imperfect life, then that is good. If you read it to find commonalities with someone who regularly wears sweatpants and binges on Netflix, then you have truly found a kindred spirit. I hope that my efforts to share and document my life authentically contribute something to those who take a few moments to read what I have crafted here. 

Welcome to Wit and Wishes.