Glimmer of Hope

I love that so many of you had the same question after last month’s Lost Diamond post. “Did Simon find it?”

When Simon texted me, “I FOUND IT!!!!!” I couldn’t believe it! My first reaction was, You found what?!

As you know, we searched everywhere, literally everywhere, from poop (Metta’s), to pipes and back again. I gave up after one day, but not Simon. He had HOPE and he had FAITH. If I’m being honest, it was kind of annoying.

I had no space to think of hope, nor to rely on faith. There was too much on my plate to even care about an earring. I was focusing all my attention towards my mom’s care; I was giving all of my mental capabilities to my students… I was expelling all my energy towards attempting our first round of IVF. Truly, I was drawing from the depths of my patience reserves just to keep it all together. I didn’t feel like I had the luxury of HOPE & FAITH. I was in “keep my head above water,’ survival mode.

Every night he would greet me with a big tight reassuring hug and say, “We are going to find it. Have faith”. I think, what is this faith he speaks of? Can I borrow some from somebody?

Then he found it.

Where, you ask?

How, you ask?

While brushing his teeth.

He wasn’t looking for it, he wasn’t even thinking about it.

He explained later, that this is the funny thing about faith. When you have it, you give over, you let go of worry.

Brush, brush, brush. He looks toward the window, toothbrush still in his mouth and notices a small dark spot in the blinds. There, lodged inside the bubble blinds, was my earring. Impossible!

Wait hold on, let me explain, it’s crazy!

For it to have ended up there, that 3.3-billion-year old little sucker was yanked out of my ear, thrown behind me 5 feet, slid through the ¼ inch space between the wall and the blinds, hit the wall, and ricocheted off the wall to land inside the blind. I measured the earring to the space, it does not fit. There is NO WAY it makes sense, yet this is where he found it.

He told me, “See? Always have faith, and never give up hope, it will always workout.” I settled into his arms and his words. I silently pondered my own faith, my own abilities to keep hope alive. Could I?

A few weeks later I find out the answer.

After my mom went in the hospital, we were given the news that the IVF treatment had not taken. This was one of those moments where you think this has to be a joke. I’m at the hospital, meeting with my mother’s doctor who is breaking the news that she will most likely not walk again, when the phone rings. It’s the fertility doctor. I’ve been expecting this call all day— this is the call where I am sure he is going to say, “You’re pregnant!” Instead he says the opposite. I hang up quickly, heartbroken, but no time for that. I get back to the never-going-to-walk again conversation. “What else you got for me, world?” I quietly scream in my head as my mom’s doctor continues delivering bad news.

When I arrive at the studio later that day, a client had left a card for me that read,

I did agree with the sentiment on the card, especially the part about the pandas, but this did seem like really really bad planning. What I was discovering in that moment was after you commit to have faith, you have to hold on to it even when the shit hits the fan. I wavered, I struggled, yet I held on a little tighter to faith. I meditate on knowing there is a plan, it is greater then I am, I sure as heck cannot see it right now, but it is unfolding.

Simon, our fertility doctors, and I decide it is best to discontinue with treatment until the stress of managing my mom’s situation has subsided. I know this is right, but it’s hard to keep waiting. I know I will be a mom, I know Simon and I will be parents together, I refuse to doubt this. My grip gets stronger.

We go on with life; surviving, losing diamonds, finding diamonds, teaching my students, training my clients, dealing with doctors, caring for my mom, my birthday, his kids, his stresses, his career, etc., all well NOT trying to get pregnant

After 8 weeks of not working out, mounds of stress, weight gain, plus hormone injections, I am 100%, completely out of touch with my body. Did you know that all day our body is telling you what it needs? If you get quiet and tune in you can hear and read all these messages, and your body will guide you exactly to what you need. At that moment, my body is sending messages more like a broken radio at the back of a hand-me-down store. It’s so bad that I don’t even notice I missed my period. Needless to say, I was in utter shock to find out we were 7 weeks pregnant.

Right after the shock subsides, I am literally glowing with joy.

Simon’s words about faith and hope are radiating through me- Oh yes, I have hope, and this faith thing is kind of amazing!!!!

I am gushing as I tell him, “I mean, don’t you see? It is just like you said, we let go, we stopped worrying and now we are pregnant. See! And, and, and,” I stammer, “Look, we are dealing with all the heavy darkness associated with illness and end of life, with my mom, and at the same moment in time we have been given this beautiful gift of life!!! I think we should name her Lotus, she grew in the midst of all this shit we are dealing with!”

Our joy lasted another 5 days. Last Wednesday, we were told this pregnancy would not carry to term. I asked, is there any hope. The doctor replied there was none. On Thursday I began to bleed and cramp. By Sunday this gift of life had passed through me. We had barely said hello when we had to say goodbye. This was our second miscarriage. I wondered how many more there would be. I felt the darkness seep in to the pores of me that were just filed with joy for the last 5 days. I cursed everyone. I said nasty things. I imagined horrible thoughts. This lasted for a few hours, with the pinnacle of negativity stretching for the last 30 minutes, all focused on Simon. He took my wrath as best he could. I was hideous. It was the kind of ugliness that will cause irrevocable damage. If not stopped it will create a forever darkness inside of me. As I thrashed about inside of this, somewhere deep inside I heard my body speaking to me. I pulled that feeling up, I held on tight, examined it. I knew what it was. It was hope. HOPE was not dead. “It couldn’t be,” my body yelled! If I buried hope beneath all this anger, I was killing our future. I could give up on hope and not become a mother. Or, I could infuse that hope with faith and be a mother one day. I saw our future inside of me. I saw Simon, I saw our child, I could feel us, and I was not willing to bury that.

I took control of how this narrative was going to go.

So: I washed my face, pulled myself together, and we went out for dinner. Simple as that. No joke. From demise to dinner in 30 minutes.

We decided to take an evening excursion to help pull the mully grubs off of us. We jumped on a train, headed to Santa Monica. We went to an English pub for Fish & Chips and cold pints. We held hands the entire time, even as we awkwardly ate dinner. We talked about our future kid, we talked about what kind of parents we were going to be. We laughed over stories of our own childhood. We discussed baby names and my plans for the nursery. We kissed. There may have been a tear or two but they were for how much love we had between us not for the news we had received. We fell asleep that night, bloated from beer and fried food, but wrapped in the arms of love & faith. Hope was alive.

Hope, it became clear, was in fact an evergreen. Not to be wilted, but to hold strong, no matter how rocky the soil. Hope is what reminds us to have faith, and faith keeps hope alive. After all, if faith can find that earring, anything is possible.