Today I woke up with an incredibly sore back. I pretty much expected it (I went to bed with a cramped back after Lucas sat on my back. Yet, I woke up and I somehow knew that I had become a Disney villain. All I wanted to do was walk around like the old crone in Snow White. The thing is my day ahead had leading three worship services and attending a meeting. And as good as it felt to walk hunched over cackling evilly it probably wouldn't have made for the most meaningful worship experience for my congregation members. Anyway, it wasn't just the sore back. After all, isn't that just part of getting older, waking up just to see what new body part hurts and which has fallen off? This was a conglomeration of things. It was the sore back. It was waking up angry and not being sure why. It was wanting to shake my fist and curse the princess for escaping my sinister plan. It was the strange desire to give a poisoned apple to the annoying girl who can't stop singing with the woodland creatures and who actually ENJOYS cleaning the house. ![]() I earnestly don't know exactly when it happened. We all start out the hero of the story, right? We twirl through our lives with a song in our step and all the coolest outfits... Or, as it seemed in my case, the friend of the main character who was slightly overweight and more of an alto. (I.E. Lady Kluck from the animated Robin Hood. Who knew she had a nakme, right?) I mean, life was good friends. I felt like there were rainbows, and unicorns, and general joy. Crabs sang jazzy Jamaican songs about how great life under the ocean can be for a girl like me. But then, life happens, as it always does, right? Friends come and go. You hit puberty, your voice changes, and suddenly you're an adult even though you feel like you still shouldn't be allowed to make these kind of decisions without some supervision. Yet, the hands on the clock keep turning. You get a dog, you get married, you buy a house, have kids... And one day, when you're watching the latest Disney movie with your little and all of a sudden you find yourself sympathizing with the parents (usually before they are killed off so the princess can have a tragic backstory.) I mean... Ariel, sweetheart, you are 16 years old and you have known the guy for a hot second, you in no way, shape or form love him. I'll believe you think he's a hottie, but love, please. It really made me excited when Disney let Elsa proclaim a very logical statement. Anyway, I'm a little off topic. This is how I became a Disney villain. At some point from getting back from vacation and today (that's a whole 5 days people), I went from chill and relaxed to grumbling and holding my back while shaking my fist at the kids on my lawn. I think some of it was just the post-vacation not wanting to give up the relaxation lifestyle. After all, vacation Robyn can get pretty wild and crazy. One night I even stayed awake til 11! Some of it was that I was grieving alongside a friend who had experienced a deep loss. Some was that my little boy was growing up in front of my eyes and I desperately wanted time to slow down. My heart was also extremely heavy when I learned the news of Rachel Held Evans passing. She was an incredibly gifted Christian author and speaker. At the age of 37 she completed her baptismal journey leaving behind her husband and young children. She wrote A Year of Biblical Womanhood and Searching for Sunday, you really should read them. This all shifted my way of looking at the world for a little bit. It was all disorienting and frustrating and it just made me.... tired. Then I remembered a quote I had heard somewhere in my life: "You either get bitter or your get better. It's that simple. You either take what has been dealt to you and allow it to make you a better person, or you allow it to tear you down. The choice does not belong to fate, it belongs to you." (Josh Shipp) That stuck with me. You get bitter or you get better. I realized as I was Evil Queen-ing around that I finally understood something about the Disney villains. They weren't born evil. They didn't come out of the womb with perfected cackles and perfectly groomed mustaches to twirl. These people started off their lives like you and I. And all I can think is that at some point in their lives they reached a moment that gave them this exact choice, they could get better or they could get bitter. Maybe they didn't have someone in their life to help them recenter their focus off the pain in their lives and onto the joy. Perhaps they just had one too many traumas and they just couldn't find the "better." Whatever it was, these villains got bitter and the old adage is "misery loves company." When they couldn't bring themselves up out of their bitterness, they strove to draw others down into their bitterness. Ursula couldn't cope with the perceived slight of ages ago from Triton. Gaston was angry when Belle rejected him. Scar did not want to accept the rule of his brother. The Evil Queen needed to be the most beautiful in all the realm. At any time these villains had a choice to let go of that which was drawing them down. They needed to let go of their anger, their belief that they had the right to revenge. Instead of seeking reconciliation they furthered the divide and sunk down into bitterness.
How do we get better? We forgive those that have wronged us. Forgiving is not easy. It means we let go of our right to seek retribution and instead choose relationship over being right. How do we get better? We seek the support and friendship of our tribe that offers support, love, and honesty. We remove the toxic elements from our lives, the people who want us to get bitter with them, the situations that sap our joy, and the stuff that convinces us that we need it more than we need to be well. How do we get better? We step back from those things that are causing us sorrow. That was what I needed to do, I needed to stop reading the posts about the loss of Rachel Held Evans, I needed to stop scrolling the news stories about traumas happening around the world... I needed to unplug myself for a bit in order to get better. So, yes, I woke up as a Disney villain, ready to hobble out and call down a curse upon an infant child because I wasn't invited to her Christening party but saw everyone else had received an invite. Thankfully, I have people in my life who help me move towards getting better and not bitter. I'm grateful for my faith that reminds me that even in the midst of death there is hope that promises a life beyond the grave.
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Adoption is a huge journey. There is no way I could ever cover it in one single blog post. So, as I'm able, I'll be sharing posts and reflections about the places our path has taken us. I figure I have to start in the place where our journey started. And that for us was when the diagnoses were attached to me and I became what was wrong with me. We had tried for over a year to conceive. We had already known that it could be difficult for us to conceive. Just not how difficult. We got into see a highly recommended fertility doctor in Louisville and she was great. Got us in right away. Honestly, that was one of the least fun times I've ever had. That's when I learned about my additional diagnosis of PCOS (poly-cystic ovarian syndrome). If you'd like to read more about what it is I'd recommend this site: www.pcosaa.org/symptoms Those treatments were filled with mixed emotions. The top one was hope. Each cycle there were hopes and visions of what could be forming. But there was also shame. I felt like less of a woman because I had to have help with something that other women were able to do without thinking about it. There was shame because privacy becomes non-existent in this process, I mean it... super non-existent. You don't need all the details only that if you are seeking to maintain some semblance of mystery and dignity, fertility treatments are not for you. We sought IUI treatments. If you really want to know more about what that means check out this site: americanpregnancy.org/infertility/intrauterine-insemination/ Now, important to note here, infertility treatments are not covered by most insurances. Like at all. And on top of that, insurance is then like: So, we were paying out of pocket every time we went in for any part of these many... many visits to go through this. That was depressing enough. Then there were the delightful shots that I had to give myself. That was a lovely experience. Overall, it all made me the shame fall heavier on me because I felt that if I wasn't so "broken" that we wouldn't have to be going through this. And yes, "broken" is exactly the word that bounced around my brain over and over and over until it was all I could hear when we were in the doctor's office, at home, at work... it just stripped away all my self-esteem. When treatments didn't seem to be working and the most recent ultrasound showed that there were new cysts forming, the recommendation became that I should undergo surgery to remove the cysts and basically serve as an exploratory procedure. I ended up having to do this surgery twice, though, because the first surgeon looked around and literally didn't do anything. Our specialist and the next surgeon called it a "peek and freak." He didn't have any clue what to do and got out. So, the next surgeon actually did something. They used a machine called the DaVinci Robot to remove the cysts. In this procedure they also found new growths of endometriosis, more places where there were adhesion's from my surgery when I was 17, and significant damage in general. We were told that the surgeon did his absolute best to try and fix some of the adhesion's but that there was an increased risk if we were to conceive via my right ovary because of an increased chance of it being an ecotopic pregnancy. In other words, I walked away from that surgery in a lot of pain (as the doctor said "Myself and two doctors and a robot took you in an alley and beat you up) and even less hope than when we went into it. There were SO many fake smiles during this process. I really hate to say that but there really were. Some I saved for David because I felt so guilty for being the reason we had to go through all of this. (David was dedicated and loving and supportive through all of this - repeatedly affirming that he loves me and did not consider me "broken" or a problem.) Now, we didn't share the information widely that we were undergoing fertility treatments, but there were a few people that we did share with, and as well as they meant, it's not an easy thing to try and formulate a response to that is supportive and non-judgmental and non-hurtful. (Tiny target for people to hit). One of the responses that I still remember vividly that was so meaningful for me and yet absolutely heart wrenching was when one of the people I had confided in, after a particularly promising treatment, laid her hands over my womb and prayed for me, David, and what might be... As you know the treatment was not successful. And it was after that failed treatment that we made the decision to stop seeking treatment with the intention to eventually pursue adoption. We felt as though we could no longer justify the costs of infertility treatments when that money could be going towards an adoption, especially since IVF would be the next step and the concern of a difficult pregnancy if we did succeed. When that decision was made there was a lot of grief. This was it, this was what "giving up" felt like. This was saying goodbye to those photo albums in my head of what it would be like to be pregnant and give birth. This was closing the door to knowing what it would be like to feel a life growing in me, to feel the kicks, to get the ultrasound pictures. This was saying goodbye to the pregnancy that would never exist. This was grieving the child that had been carried in my mind. There were tears, there was anger, there was frustration. In my grief I struggled with my relationship with God. I felt as though I was being a poor example of faithfulness because I was giving up. I was angry because there are so many examples of women in Scripture who were infertile but conceived because they had been faithful. (i.e. Sarai/Sarah; Rachel; Hannah; Michal; Elizabeth). I screamed "have I not been faithful, Lord?" I felt betrayed by God. I felt betrayed by the body God had given me. Why was this not meant to be for me? Wouldn't I be a good mother? Wouldn't David be an amazing father? What had I done so wrong to deserve this...? It hurt. It took months of prayer and anger and sorrow to get to a healthier place. Here's the thing, though, a healthier place doesn't mean that the grief is gone. Friends, the grief is still here. One of the most overwhelming and frustrating parts of infertility is the difficulty people have understanding the grief that I had and still carry. It is almost an impossible task to explain what it is like to grieve something that never existed. I spent a lot of time, energy, tears and words trying to share with people exactly what I was feeling. How do you help people grasp the concept of mourning over something that didn't ever physically exist. This kind of grief is so painful because it is really hard to get closure on this kind of loss. It's the loss of everything the could have been. In that grief I mourned for the child that I would never have the chance to watch grow in my uterus. It was grief for losing the part of my identity that I had tied up with my ability to conceive and carry a child. The tears were for the fact that I won't have the chance to look down at a child and see David's eyes, my nose, and see what a little us would look like. It was sorrow for the photo album I had in my brain of the future and it became a future I would never have. The other part of this grief was tied up in embarrassment and feelings of being a terrible person. Whenever I would see a baby announcement on Facebook, or a friend would call with pregnancy news, or when new baby pictures were passed around, when I would baptize a baby, I would smile and in my heart, there was happiness for them, but at the same time I was angry and heartbroken. It tore the scab off of the wound that was still on my heart every time. I struggled mightily with this because I felt like an absolutely awful person for being jealous and angry because of someone else's good news. Particularly difficult for me were my friends who had been in touch with us because they knew we were working on the adoption process and wanted advice for how to begin because they'd been having difficulty conceiving, and then it seemed like weeks later they were sending me the news that they had conceived. I was beyond hurt but it is not something that is socially acceptable to express in that moment. Six and a half years ago we officially made the decision to no longer seek to conceive. Our beautiful boy Lucas came into our life four years ago. Two and a half years ago I was switched to 3 month birth control. I lost it when that change happened because it felt even more permanent and final. And it still causes an ache under my joy when loved ones share their pregnancy news. This grief is where our adoption journey truly started. By saying goodbye to what never was and what would never be. It's also where our journey continues because this grief comes on like waves. Sometimes it is low tide and it barely laps at my toes and it almost feels like letting go. Other times I feel as though I might not be able to catch a full breath because I am sinking under these waves that crash over my head repeatedly, my lungs hurt from holding my breath, and the tears stream down my face, and I just hold on as best I can until the water resides. My grief for what never was and never will be takes nothing away from my love for my son. To try and deny it would be more harmful. Therefore, I swim, I tread, I hold my breath, and I watch as the tide goes out again, knowing that there is grief but by the grace of God I have a much larger capacity for grace and love.
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AuthorI've been Robyn for my whole life. I've been a wife for 10 years and a mom for 5 years. I've been a pastor for about 10 years. I'm still stumbling, but I'm still standing. Archives
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