One inch at a time

As perhaps you can tell, I've been having a tough day, week, month... call it what you will. Anyway, after dissolving into tears before leaving the house yesterday morning, I went to my last day of school meetings before summer break. After three hours discussing students, I returned to my desk and found this:

Weird, right? A ruler in a miniature rose bush? But then I looked closer, and I noticed this:

If you visit this blog often, you know the title has nothing to do with my green thumb (which is, in actual fact, mostly brown). Rather, "Inch by Inch" is inscribed in my wedding band; "Row by Row" is in Jeff's. When we chose those words to wear forever, we chose them as a reminder to take life one step at a time, a reminder that a garden doesn't grow in an hour or a day but with a great deal of care and many months and years of effort. Yesterday, as he created this phenomenal gift for me, his wife, Jeff just wanted to give me the sweetest, gentlest reminder of that promise that he could.

Now I'm crying again--but these ones are tears of joy for a husband who loves me so dearly. Our family may not yet feel complete, but I am so grateful for the foundation it already has.

Disappointment.

Talk to any woman who is desperately trying to conceive a child, and she'll have an intimate, personal definition of the word disappointment. It comes in so many forms: a miscarriage, another BFN, a non-existent cycle, an elusive ovulation. Of course, there are varying degrees of disappointment--or that's what those on the outside tell you. The reality is that I've cried equally hard for each of the disappointments listed above. The sense of failure is overwhelming, the loss of hope threatens to swallow you whole, the discouragement that leads you to consider just giving up is what drowns you in your sleep.

I wish it were as easy as pulling one of the tabs off the sign at the top of this post. If I could just grab myself some hope or faith or patience today, I would--abundantly. But I can't. I don't know how to anymore. I have tried to look at the positives, tried to find the silver lining, tried to discover what God's teaching me in five of the saddest months of my life. But I can't do it anymore. It hurts too much to risk hope over and over and keep having it slip out of my grasp.

Duck--Duck--Goose!

On Earth Day, Potomac has a tradition of completing a half day of classes followed by bringing all the students outside to help care for our beautiful outdoor campus. This year, my sophomore advisees were paired up with a group of second graders to read a story and then plant milkweed on the hillside above the football field. The day was beautiful, my kids were wonderfully patient, and the younger students were awestruck by their good fortune of having special time with the "big kids." Once our planting was completed, we left the students to their own devices for a bit, and a massive game of duck-duck-goose quickly evolved. It was a pure delight to watch our lanky, sure-footed, quick-witted high school students artfully "forget" to get up or "trip" as they ran around the circle of squealing seven-year-olds. By the time twenty minutes had passed, the stewpot was overflowing with upperclassmen who vigorously cheered on their younger charges.

The sounds of laughter, the smell of the fresh grass, the vision of dappled sunlight brushing across grinning faces--all of it stuck with me for days. However, the part I remember most was the students' eager anticipation as a hand descended on their heads, some squeezing their eyes shut, praying they'd be the golden goose who got to leap up and sprint, others shrinking away, dreading the tap that would seal their fate and require them to stand and run.

As a child, I never wanted to be the goose.

I've never been an athlete--I've never won a championship or triumphed in a match--hence, the reason I never wanted to be selected in the game. However, for the last five months, in my personal game of duck-duck-goose, I've been straightening my spine and wiggling my butt in an anxious attempt to add inches to my short stature, hoping that God will select me as the goose and bestow--quite literally--a golden egg upon me. However, unlike so many of the children in our Earth Day circle, my desire didn't come from unbridled joy; it came from a paralyzing attack of the dreaded What-ifs. What if I'm 35 and not pregnant? What if we can't try for two children anymore? What if she gets pregnant before me? What if I'll never be a mom? What if...?


And then, in the blink of an eye, the What ifs come true. I turned 35 in May. I don't know if we'll have the opportunity to have two little ones. Several girls did get pregnant before me. And, despite all my hopes and prayers and dreams, there's no guarantee I'll be a mom. All my squirming and scooching to add inches got me nowhere--except to a few unattractively bitter pity parties of one.

Perhaps I just need to be content to be a duck. Or a goose. Or whatever God will have me.

Or maybe I need to just enjoy the children's laughter.