Tuesday, November 8th, 2005

The countdown is on?

If the ultrasound technician is right there are now 100 days until my estimated due date. If my ob-gyn is correct there are 107 days until my estimated due date. By my estimation by going somewhere in the middle I have 103.5 days until I am due. There is a bit of talk of starting a baby pool at work to guess the due date.

It still sounds like I have a lot of time left to get ready and prepare but realistically I know that is not the case. I have only about 7 paydays or so until I go on maternity leave and I feel like I am so behind. I have already been offered a lot of stuff, and I've started to stockpile things on my own as well. I think the biggest thing is the mental part of getting ready. If the truth be told sometimes I am scared. All I know is on one Friday morning when I saw that blue horizontal line on the pregnancy test my life changed forever and will never again be the same.

The whole walk home from the pharmacy after buying the test I kept praying that it was a false alarm. I felt like I was pregnant, but I really wasn't prepared to see the positive result. I was so in shock I even called the manufacturer's 800 line to double check that I was reading the test correctly. Some days I still have a hard time believing I am going to be a mother even with the evidence of no periods, morning sickness and a burgeoning belly. I never really thought I would ever become a mother. I felt that time had passed me by. Now this baby is my miracle.

Before I knew I was pregnant I would see women with their children and I'd be envious in a way. I wanted to know what it was to be a mother. All I knew is that sometimes my heart would ache when I would hold a baby and I never felt as complete as I did when I held a child. There is nothing in the world that feels quite like the arms of a little one clinging around one's neck and that child burying his or her face into one's shoulder. I had so many people say to me "You are so good with kids, how many do you have?" It used to hurt a bit inside when I'd answer that I had no children. Sometimes I would look in a mirror and mouth the word "barren" to myself. I thought that if I could get myself used to it, and call myself that word, that name, that in time I would get used to it and it would no longer be the secret pain that I held.

Previously Sunday had been one of the most lonely days of the week. In many ways churches are not set up for single people past a certain age. There are plenty of things to do for teens and university/college age people. However, it seems that once one has passed the age of 27 or so churches tend to forget the singles. By age 27 most are either in "young marrieds" or "young marrieds with children" groups. Going to church and being surrounded by that used to push the knife edge in deeper but pride kept me smiling and there was no way I'd share that inner pain with with anyone. I did not, nor do I ever want anyone's pity. That was the main reason I stopped going to church. If I wasn't surrounded by it I did not feel as hurt by it. I don't want to make it sound that people were deliberately callous or rude -- it's just that most don't stop to think beyond their own social circle. Those who do decide to look beyond their social circle often end up making that single person feel more single because it is like they are doing the person a favour by including him or her. Coming across that kind of attitude was even worse than being on the fringes.

In Trinidad they have a term for a woman who is unmarried past a certain age. They call her a "had-back woman". I guess basically meaning no-one wants her. I used to laugh at that term, until I became that woman. All my life all I ever really wanted was to be a wife and a mother (yes in that order, although admittedly I am out of order now .....) My desire for that caused me to make a lot of stupid mistakes. I used to be ok in waiting, but then I got tired of it. I felt God was somehow cheating me. I could not understand (and admittedly still don't understand) how He could place a desire so strongly in my heart for my life and yet not fulfill it.

Come 20 I was alright with being single. 21, 22, 23, still I felt ok. By 24 I was starting to feel pressure as I saw my friends start to get married. At 26 I started to date this man just two weeks before my sister died. If I knew then what I knew now I would have run from this man as fast as I could. I was very naif and incredibly inexperienced -- two things this man was not. I don't want to lay all the blame on his shoulders since I was an adult woman at that time and capable of saying "no". In my defense though my sister's death really messed me up. Until that time my sexual education had consisted of "Don't do 'it' until you are married!" That is totally inadequate. I knew the physical consequences of premarital sex -- pregnancy and/or stds. I was not at all prepared for the emotional and spiritual consequences of it all. One night this man and I had sex. I thought that after having sex marriage was the only logical next step -- as I said, I was very naif. I spent years thinking I had to "make things right" and become married to this person.

My sister's death and my relationship with this man was the beginning of a downward spiral for me. I cried so many tears and prayed so many prayers because of this man. Now I thank God for unanswered prayers. This man and I would have been totally unsuitable for each other though I did not know it at the time. I felt at that time like I couldn't breathe and that his rejection of me after having sex reinforced in me my belief that somehow I was deficient. I wish I had been told that having sex with a person, unless your heart has become totally hardened to the experience, is like leaving a part of your heart and soul with the one you are physically intimate with. When you are no longer with that person you don't get that part of yourself back. I wish I had been told that I would gain an insight into the person I was with and would know things about them, their state of mind etc in such a way that it would be intrusive for me and my healing after the break up. "Soul ties" are a very real thing.

The way I dealt with my pain was to throw myself into a Godly lifestyle, and I kept going to church in spite of the loneliness it caused me. I surrounded myself with strong Christian friends and borrowed from their strength to grow my own. I wish I could say that I learned from that, but the loneliness grew. Every Sunday I would see these seemingly happy couples and it would hurt and the loneliness grew deeper. I was moving into that age span where churches don't know what to do with singles so I stopped going to church.

It is also very true that once you've had sex with someone it opens up the possibility of having sex with someone else. That was how I dealt with the loneliness I felt and I had a series of short lived experiences with some men. My heart became hardened to it and it was not a big deal to me any longer. In fact when a man said he cared about me my first reaction was to shrug it off and not believe him. I even told one man that he didn't have to say it since I was already in bed with him and he didn't need a line to get me there. From being very naif I was becoming jaded. One night after having had sex with this man I looked at him and was disgusted with myself and I started to cry. I wondered if this was all there was and how I had let myself get this far from what God wanted. My room-mate was away that night so I left my bed and went to sleep in her room. The next morning I broke it off with that man and explained that sex without marriage was killing me inside. I don't think he understood and he did make several attempts after that to get back with me. I ended up breaking all ties with him.

After that I was celibate for several months. In time I met this Christian man and he helped me out with a lot of my struggles with how my pagan friends were more accepting and loving towards me than my Christian friends. His outlook was not traditional and we seemed to really hit it off. Eventually we started dating and it was great going to church with my boyfriend. It was the first time I could share spiritual experiences with the man I was dating. I fell for him so hard and I loved him like I have not loved anyone since. He opened up a new world to me in many ways and although he is not the one for me and I have no desire for a relationship with him now I will always be grateful for the things and people knowing him brought into my life. I wish I could say that our relationship remained above board, but it did not. Sex is an area of weakness for him too. Strangely even though our relationship was also sexual I grew a lot spiritually -- I have no explanation for it. However, as I grew my conscience bothered me more and more and I knew I could no longer have sex with him. I don't think he ever understood my decision. I don't think he ever understood that when I said "no" to sex I was not saying "no" to him but was saying "no" to sin. In fact by not having sex with him I was trying to show honour to our relationship. Needless to say the relationship did not last long after that. We were both messed up at the time.

I stayed true to my convictions for at least a three years or so after that, but loneliness is a strange thing -- and I felt so hurt and bitter about feeling that God was denying my heart's desire even though "in all my ways I was committing my ways" to God. I never bothered to go back to church but instead just followed God in my own way. I'd pray and read my Bible as well as Christian books and listen to Christian music. Occasionally I would go to church but never really found a church where I felt at home apart from the church I had gone to when I was in Oregon. That also fed my hurt that I felt with God.

When I was in Oregon it was the first time I felt like I could truly be myself without feeling I had to live up to the expectations of who others thought I should be. For the first time I felt like I was accepted for me. I had friends there who seemed to like me for me not for what they thought I could give them, and who let me be me quirks and all. It was very freeing. I also found a ministry there that I loved to be involved with. To this day I love working with street kids and have volunteered with several places I've lived in Canada since I got back from Oregon. However, since I am not American I could not live there -- well not live there and be legally able to work. Even the scenery in Oregon fed my soul and I love it there. Should I never make another friend there, and should everyone I know there leave, given the chance I would still love to live in Eugene, Oregon. I felt like God had showed me the banquet but had denied me a seat. That once again I was the starving person watching others partake of what I could not have.

I wish I could say I stuck with my resolve to remain celibate but I did not. I lost contact with most of my Christian friends and by now my walls were so high and my defenses so entrenched it became difficult for me to let anyone close enough to start a friendship with a Christian. If anything I was more on guard around Christians than I was non-believers.

Once again I started a series of shallow relationships which, apart from one, were mainly sexual. I don't think I cared at all for the men I was intimate with except for one. I still think a lot of him and he and I remain friends. This trend continued until I met the father of my baby. Needless to say the man that I first met and the man I ended up living with turned out to be two different people. I've already written a bit about how that was and I can see no purpose in adding more to that story. Being around him made me realize how much I missed God and how empty and void everything else is in comparison to being with God.

There was a church a few blocks from where we lived so I started to go back. It was very lonely going to that church too. I have nothing against the preaching or the singing there but it is difficult to go to a church where the only person who spoke to me was the greeter when I was given the weekly church bulletin. However, I was determined to stick it out and to go to church each Sunday even if nobody ever spoke to me.

This is where God really showed his hand in my life. I had left all my Christian music in Ontario so in order to encourage myself I started to listen to a Christian radio station here -- Shine FM. It was on Shine FM I heard about this woman's conference called "Total Woman". I decided that I wanted to go and maybe, just maybe I'd meet people who'd talk to me and maybe be my friend. I had been praying for weeks to find a Christian friend. I had started to suspect I might be pregnant and the day before the conference I took an at home test. The next day I was so tired I thought I didn't want to go to the conference. I wasn't feeling well and since no-one was expecting me no-one would miss me if I didn't show up. I had all sorts of excuses going through my head why I didn't want to go, and why I should just stay in bed. I then remembered what a preacher had said once about meeting that kind of resistance -- he said often when you feel so strongly you shouldn't go, that is when you should and that that Satan is just trying to keep you from something God would have for you. Well, that decided me so I pretty much rushed out of bed and jumped into my clothes just in time to catch the bus to the conference. Embarrassingly I had waited so long to get out of bed I didn't have time to have a shower that morning (yuck).

The whole trip to the conference I felt nervous and unsure of myself and wondered what I was doing. I was taking public transit into a part of town I had never seen before, going to a conference where I didn't know anyone, and I felt very shy and nervous.

When I got to the conference I was praying God would show me which table to sit at. My first instinct was to sit at the table closest to the door as it makes for an easy getaway.... However, I felt to go to this table all the way across the room. I sat there and just observed the people at the table for awhile and as I listened to a couple of the young women I thought that I had made a terrible mistake on where to sit. There was a young woman there who could have been poster child for Christianity. In fact 14 years ago I probably was her (my how things had changed). I tried to make small talk with her and her friend and felt more and more out of place. Then I don't know what came over me since I am generally a person who keeps my private thoughts private and my troubles to myself but I found myself blurting out "I'm pregnant and I just found out yesterday!" (Did I mention that I was still in shock???) Now I think it must have been God who took over my vocal chords at that time.

From that one decision to go to the conference and that one choice to allow myself to be vulnerable I now have a church I love going to and I met two women at the conference who gave me the means to escape my living situation with "expletive deleted". I don't know what I would have done without Sharon and Dee and I thank God that they opened their homes to a total stranger. They had no idea who I was and yet they welcomed me and made me feel at home and loved. It had been a long time since I had felt those things. If anything, apart from my decision to follow God no matter what, these two women welcoming me into their families helped to melt the majority of the ice and coldness from my heart.

So I guess that brings me to the beginning of this journal and the countdown to when SweetPea arrives. Writing in this journal is my means to come to terms with my past, and with my future but also to live with the now. The ice and coldness melting from my heart also makes me more vulnerable to hurt and to actually feel the pains from my past. However, I would not trade being able to feel again since I know this is what God wants. It is going to take awhile for my defenses to come down. I wish I could just will it so, but in answer to the question "do I really trust God enough to protect me?" I have to say that my answer is yes, I do trust Him and believe Him to do so. The walls are coming down but it is something that may be a slow process for me. I have already pushed myself farther than most people realize. Even starting to journal again is a huge step for me and being as transparent as I have with my pastor and his wife is an even bigger thing. Honesty is integral to this journey as is being open and upfront. It is only in truth can one find God and I will not live a lie any longer.

As I wrote this entry I found myself considering if I would want my daughter to read the kind of checkered past I have had and would I feel like a hypocrite telling her "NO" to some things when I had done them myself. My answer to that is I will welcome my daughter to read this journal if there comes a time when she would like to. Am I proud of some of the things she would read? No, I am not. But if by reading this it will save her some of the pain I have gone through then I want her to read it. If it will lead her to a deeper understanding of my love for God and what He is doing in my life then yes I want her to read it. If it will let her know what a blessing and a gift I consider her to be then yes I definitely want her to read this. After God she is the most important person in my life, and after God she is my biggest joy.

I have not resolved the loneliness issue, nor do I think I ever completely will this side of heaven. I do know that almost every stupid and sinful thing I have done in my life has been because I have not waited for God. I still would like to be a wife but I thank God I am going to be a mother, unwed or otherwise. I am not advocating the choices I have made. I am not saying that what I did to cause this pregnancy was right. I am saying though that God is the God of all life and I thank Him for trusting me with SweetPea and I continue to pray to be worthy of that trust.

The countdown is one and I can hardly wait to meet my daughter .....

Under His mercy and grace,