My Life is a Book

Here's a story I've been looking forward to telling you since the day I started this blog. It's the next chapter in my love story with Bill. (Did you even remember that we had a love story?)

In the last chapter, I told you what I endured in order to get a clean bill of health so that we could start trying to conceive. It was such a relief to have the waiting behind me at last, and so exciting to wonder if this could be the month. During this time, I was memorizing Psalm 139, and I was in awe of the timing. As I slowly worked through the chapter, verse by verse, it seemed that the verse I was currently memorizing almost always was the perfect one for what I was experiencing at that moment.

Here is an email that I sent to my Thursday group back in 2004 that captures my initial anticipation...

4/9/04

I was having my morning break today, meditating as usual on the SAME passage I've been studying for months, when I saw something new.

As you know, now that I have passed the colonoscopy, we are free to start trying for a baby, and we are, though Bill doesn't technically know yet. (He's ready, so that's not an issue.) I quietly stopped taking my pill this month, and the knowledge that we could be making a baby is a precious little secret in my heart.

Well, I was meditating on my verses and I stopped on Ps 139:13: "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb." I wish you could have seen the little smile on my face. I think it must have looked like Mona Lisa's smile, a private smile over a secret only she knew. It seemed so incredibly...INCREDIBLE and WONDERFUL that at this VERY moment, God could be knitting together a baby in my womb.

So I talked to God about that. I asked him for his perfect timing and his will, even if his will is no baby at all. At this moment, at least, I am feeling perfectly at peace with the waiting and the uncertainty because I know that God ordained all my days, and he knows what's best for me. I wish I could keep this moment forever.

Anyway, I thought I would share. Please be in prayer with me that I will continue to seek God's will in this and not become impatient like I usually do about everything else in my life.

Oh, how well I knew myself! Fast forward a year...

Here I Am on My 35th Birthday - April 2005

5/18/05

Hello everyone. I'm missing you a lot this week. I've been feeling sad, a deep sense of grief, really, as I've been trying to let go of the dream of having a baby. I just don't want to hope any more. It hurts too much when I start my period each month. This past month I didn't hope at all, and it still hurt when I started my period yesterday.

With each passing month (15 of them now), I feel more certain that Bill and I will never share that joy together. I have tried so hard to honestly give up that desire because I know that God's plan is best for me. Maybe we will have a baby, and if we do it will be at the perfect time, according to his plan. Sometimes I think I am at peace with just asking God for his will continually, and trying not to decide for myself what I want.

The problem with that is the not knowing. I keep thinking, "If I could just KNOW what God's plan is, it would be so much better." If I KNEW there would be no baby, I would grieve, and I would go on and be thankful for what I do have. And if I knew that in x months or years we would have a baby, I would spend the time preparing to be the best mother I could be, and just enjoying the anticipation. But I don't know what's going to happen, so I keep preparing for the worst. I keep telling myself how it wouldn't be so bad not to have a baby, how wonderful our life is already. I can almost believe that until I see a commercial or a TV program or a woman on the street who is pregnant or has a new baby, and then I just feel this deep sense of loss, thinking "I can't have that. That's for other people, not for me." Then I feel guilty for not being thankful and joyful about God's plan for my life.

All that to say... Today I was studying Psalm 139 for perhaps the 200th time (maybe more!), and I got something I hadn't seen before: Ps 139:15-16 "My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."

What I saw today when I quoted that scripture was your book. When God ordained the days for my life, before I was even born, he wrote them in His book. It's a book about me and my days, but it's HIS BOOK. I'm not supposed to know what is in the book, only to know the Author of the book. Since he planned all my days, I know that it's going to be a wonderful, incredible, awesome book. But I can't skip to the end without reading the whole thing. I have to savor it page by page, enjoying the process of getting to the end of the book.

I want to approach my life the way I approach a really good book. I love to savor a good book. I'm always dying to know what will happen next, but I never "cheat." I enjoy seeing the plot unfold slowly. If it's an author I love, I know from the start that I'm going to enjoy myself.

Obviously God is the best author you could find. I want to feel that same way about my life. I guess if there is not a baby in his plan, then I don't need to grieve that loss. Because whatever He has planned is what is best for me. He KNOWS! So I need to have joy in knowing that he cares for me and has planned the best life there can possibly be for me. He is going to teach me incredible truths along the way, and he is going to let me experience joy and sadness and longing and everything else that makes this life so rich and amazing.

Girls, I GET IT!! At this moment, I really get it. Please pray that God will continue to teach me this lesson and that it can be mine to keep. Pray that he will remind me of this moment over and over, whenever I need to hear it. Thank you.

I can't wait to hug everyone.

Love,

Sarah Louise

Bill and I (Far Left) at His Brother Trevor's Wedding, Same Month as the Preceding Email Message

As so often happens in my life, once I finally learned the lesson, God soon gave me the desire of my heart. But that’s another story.