2016, The Present

There is no moment like now to make big statements and sweeping resolutions.  In fact at this time last year, I was picking a target word for 2015.  What ambition!  Then 2016 slunk in without a sound.   Well perhaps I cracked the door and permitted the slinking.  Motivation and betterment have sunk lower on the to dos in this new year.  To be fair (to me), focus is hard to attain when life’s horizon remains hazy and unsettled.

Maybe you get this, maybe you don’t.  But those of us stuck smack dab in the middle of IT understand just fine.  We know.

Here’s the thing:  I’m still not pregnant.  Our daughter is still not here.  The adoption process continues to get longer, more expensive, and increasingly complex.  I’ve pinpointed my laser concentration on these issues for so many years, it seems wrong to consider fixating elsewhere.  It feels like an abandonment, a relenting.  

Some of you don’t even have the luxury of forgetting your “things” for a day.  They are pressing concerns- hammering on your door, filling up your voicemail, hounding your thoughts at night.  These matters are our life.  Whether it be sickness, singleness, separation, financial difficulty, family hurt.  Whatever.  In weariness and vulnerability, we begin to let these circumstances define us.  It’s been this way for so long, we can’t see beyond it anymore.

One sleepless evening, I felt overcome by this reality.  By becoming my issues.  Infertility especially haunts me.  I’ve talked about this many times (Click on the headings to connect to the original blogs): Our 5 year struggle with infertility.  The difficulty of grieving unspecified loss.  Waiting through a circumstance with a questionable outcome.  The jealousy of desiring something outside of your control.  Clearly, those misfortunes are nothing to sniff at.  But the one I’ve failed to mention before is guilt.  Tremendous guilt.

Obviously, this is NOT new territory for me as a Mama.  But in regards to secondary infertility, the twist of the knife is more severe.  Since we always assumed I'd eventually birth another kid, I didn’t intentionally treasure my beginning season with Elijah as I could have.  Granted, late nights and postpartum depression definitely played their part in the first 3 months of E’s life.  It's hard to be overly jubilant as an un-showered, overwhelmed first-time mom powered solely by sporadic cat naps (taken on piles of dirty laundry).  But had I KNOWN that E would be my only newborn?  Maybe I could've learned to genuinely value those chaotic moments with a little one, instead of just “getting through” them.  At least, I would have tried.  My regret over this is huge.

Hindsight is 20/20.  And, don’t get me wrong, I had a blast with my baby boy!  But I also remember wishing for the future: For when he could walk, talk, wipe his own behind, go to school, etc.  I often missed the blessing right in front of me because I was so busy looking for what was next.  Glennon Melton commented on this in a great blog about our inability to always “carpe diem” as parents.  Reality is too exhausting for non-stop gratitude.  But you CAN cherish single moments throughout the day.  Times when you measure the fullness of life through the depth of your daughter’s eyes, the release of a single breath.  These moments.  This is what you can’t get back.

 And I'm confident we will have our second baby.  We’ll skip all the newborn stuff though and she'll probably be walking and talking by her arrival home, but she will be a baby to us.  And trust me, I will cherish the crap out of my moments with her.  There are not enough cameras in the world to entirely satisfy my urge of capturing everything!  But hard lesson learned: I can’t get so caught up in looking forward to being with my daughter that I miss this time with my son now.  He deserves my presence and I don’t have enough head space to lament any more parenting foibles.  So for both of us, I’ll try this out.  Living in the moment, whatever that entails.  Savoring today, the highs and lows.  Or to quote the old cliche (Your mom probably shared this as an e-card on Facebook): "Today is a gift; that's why it's called 'the present'."  This year I'm going to choose to unwrap each day like I actually believe that.