Everything in God's time

My family is officially on their way here and I can't wait for vacation! I will probably be posting while I'm there, since there is usually internet connection and I have an addiction to the internet. I'm really hoping that if I do ovulate this month that I do so after my husband arrives on Monday. He works weekends so he is joining us a bit late. Wouldn't that be funny if I ovulate for possibly the first time ever when we're not together? I'm not stressing about it because my new motto is 'everything in God's time'. I have truly realized that I want to be in sync with God. To be out of sync with Him is not a great choice for many reasons, not the least of which is that it kind of feels like you are trying to swim upstream. And I'm tired! So I'm letting go and going with the flow. I honestly can't wait to see where it takes me.

Last night was a big night for me because I have, unofficially, finished my documentary. Just a little background - more than two years ago I became an adorer at a perpetual adoration chapel. It was in the midst of a crisis of faith that I was experiencing, and I credit adoration with helping me out of that. Almost two years ago now, I began to ask God before the Blessed Sacrament what He wanted of me, if not to be a mother right away. I immediately began to feel a very specific call - to produce a documentary. This wasn't out of the realm of possibility; I have a journalism degree, worked as a reporter for years, and have always wanted to make documentaries. But because of my background, I knew exactly how expensive of an undertaking it would be. I shrugged this notion off for several months but kept asking God, "No, really.. what else do you want of me, other than that?" I think my initial hesitation was also due to the fact that I feared it wasn't really God speaking to me, and that it was my own brain suggesting that I make a movie. I had always wondered what it would be like if God "gave you a message," so to speak. Would you hear His voice? This was more of a strong feeling, that never went away, no matter how hard I resisted. Soon, I'd be in adoration and I'd close my eyes, only to see entire scenes of the documentary play in my mind. They'd come fast, too. By this time I realized I had all this material, so why not make it? I should also mention that during this time I got a strong feeling the documentary was to be about perpetual adoration. At one point I even tried to pray that I could do a movie on the pro-life community instead. But the message was clear - my first movie was to be about perpetual adoration.

So about a year and a half ago, in August of 2006, I tried to call God's bluff. I prayed that if He truly wanted me to make this movie, then He needed to provide me with the money. And I'd need a lot of it. I thought, that will put an end to this! Well, a couple days later I was telling my mom about the idea. She just listened, I probably didn't sound too serious about it, and that was that. But a couple days later I got a call from her, telling me that she mentioned my idea to my father and that he was willing to front me several thousand dollars to purchase equipment (I did not ask them for it whatsoever, so the offer came as a shock). I'd have to pay him back though, so my prayers changed to asking God for a way to pay back my father. Well, a couple days later I got a call from my old boss asking me to do some freelance reporting for his station. It worked out perfectly, so that I ended up paying every penny that came in from that part-time job to my father each month. A couple months went by and my husband and I were in the process of purchasing the equipment - camera, microphone, lights, apple computer, and professional editing software. As with shopping for anything, your initial estimates always end up being low. Suddenly we needed two thousand dollars more. So I prayed. Within a few weeks I received in the mail a check for two thousand dollars. It came from a woman who knew of my plan who wanted to help. I've never received money like that before, other than when my grandfather died, and coming from someone I didn't even know, that just blew me away.

There are countless other examples of these answered prayers, including that time we prayed for the financial means to travel to the Vatican to shoot video and the very next day received an offer for a free trip to, where else, Italy (I'm not even kidding). Or that time when we started praying for music that we desperately needed. There was no way we could afford to pay for the rights to music, so we'd need to get permission some way, some how. Low and behold, we wound up getting permission to use awesome music from a Catholic singer/songwriter who lived a block away from us where we use to live. He's won all kinds of awards and his songs are far and away more professional than I could have ever dreamed for (I'd link to his site, but I don't want anyone to know about this blog!). Anway, this movie couldn't have happened without music. See, God answers our prayers in ways that are even better than we could have ever hoped for! (Just a little reminder for those of us with infertility!)

So we purchased the equipment and got going. The process was sped up last summer when we found out we were moving. My husband and I shot nearly everything before we left, with the exception of an interview we shot when we went back up to visit at Christmas. Since moving, I started the editing process and after several months (and many weeks spent not working on it at all), I finally finished last night. There's still some tweaking I need to do, and I will probably be working on it for another month or so.

So what's it about? Well, it's about a perpetual adoration chapel in the city where we used to live. It tells the stories of a few of the more than 300 adorers who keep watch around the clock. Despite the fact that it is in a poor neighborhood and in a diocese that is continuously closing churches, this chapel draws adorers from around the area. They come for one hour or more each week to adore our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. In this busy world, it is truly amazing to think that someone has been with our Lord in this chapel every single hour of every single day for (in this chapel's case) sixteen years. That is dedication, and quite an undertaking. As one adorer put it, what must those who aren't Catholic think? People coming all hours of the night - young, old, business people, you name it. Perhaps it makes some think that maybe, just maybe, something is truly there.

My goal in telling this story is to get the word out about adoration not only to those who aren't Catholic, but to Catholics as well. It's sad how many Catholics don't even know what the Real Presence is. If I can play some tiny part in educating some of them, then that's all I hope for.

Everyone's next question is always, "what do you plan to do with it?" Well, I'm not sure. I continue to pray that God will show me why He called me to make it (I still feel funny saying that. Trust me, I'm still not completely comfortable with the idea that God personally called me to do something. It's kind of like I don't think I'm good enough. But I have to remember that we are all called to do different things, we just don't always listen to Him. He just happened to hit me over the head with this). My highest goal, if it is God's will, is to have it aired on EWTN. I know they air independent projects at times, and I know they love the Blessed Sacrament, so perhaps they'll give my documentary a shot. Plus, they have a lot of time to fill, so why not?! I at least hope that I can get it into parish libraries as a teaching tool. We also plan on setting up a website for it, so perhaps we will distribute it that way as well.

Very soon I will post a trailer on this blog. I just have to finish putting it together. And I'll post the link when I set up the new website as well. Sorry if this story was long and boring, but it is all that I'm thinking about lately! And I didn't even write about how amazing I have felt lately while I've been finishing it! Speaking of resisting God's will, I definitely resisted Him in the past few months when it came to finishing the movie. But as soon as I sat down to do it, the rest of my life immediately fell into place. I was less depressed about infertility and much more hopeful. Not to mention that the editing process was one of the easiest things I've ever done in my life! Thanks be to God! As I write this I realize that if anything, God is probably hoping that I use this experience as assurance that He will protect me when it comes to infertility. I didn't trust Him initially with the movie idea but once I did, everything fell into place. So I will trust Him. I usually have good and bad days when it comes to this, but I feel like now I'm entering a phase in which my good days will outnumber the bad. And that's all I can ask for.

Having hope in the Lord

I've been feeling really great lately and it's partly because I get to see my family on Thursday! Then we all leave on Friday for vacation for a week. I'm so excited. I'm pretty bummed about one thing though. I had the chance to see the Pope next week and I had to turn it down. A friend of mine had an extra ticket to see him at Catholic University, but it's next Wednesday while I'll be seven hours away on vacation. I considered driving to D.C., but seven hours each way is just too much for one day. Plus, I don't get to see my family that often so I probably shouldn't leave while I'm with them. Oh well. I'm pretty sad about it, but I did just get to see Pope Benedict in October. Here's a great shot we got of him at the Vatican:



On another topic, I watched the best episode of Cold Case last night. It actually made me realize something important (I know this might sound pathetic, but I'm serious, and I'll take some insight wherever I can get it). It was about a guy who kidnapped and kept women in little dungeon-like rooms in basements, and the reason he does it is because basically he gets a sick enjoyment out of seeing the women give up hope. As he put it, once they lose hope, "death is just a formality". It turned out (sorry to ruin it for you) that one of the women was still alive because she refused to give up hope, despite being stuck in one room with no light and no apparent chance at being rescued. She hung on, humming the tune of church bells she could hear, and convinced herself there was something to live for. So hope saved her.

So I know this is just a t.v. show, but sometimes it takes things like this to make me realize things I should already know - that I need to have hope, even when it seems like I am stuck in a dungeon with no light. Because if I lose hope, I will die. I may not actually die, but what is the difference if I walk around like there's no reason to live? I need to have hope. God wants me to have hope. And I need to hope not necessarily for a pregnancy, but that I will have joy.

God is working in my life and I need to show Him that I am faithful, patient, and with Him always, not just in good times. He wants the best for me and all I should want is to make Him happy. Lately I want to be pregnant more than I want to please God, and that's not right.

The devil wants those of us suffering with infertility to lose hope. He is trying so hard for us to give up on our God and desperately wants us to think God gave up on us. But He hasn't! He has been with us all along and always will be. There will be tough days and suffering is painful, but the Lord is still with us through it all.

Just needed to rant

I know I'm coming a little late to this party, but I now feel the need to comment on the pregnant woman who has been grabbing headlines as the "pregnant man." (I wonder how many infertile women looked at the headline last week and thought, "Oh, great.") I am not even going to get into what that child may think when he or she learns they came down their father's birth canal, or how I personally feel about using a turkey baster to create the pregnancy. No, I am simply annoyed by one thing. As an otherwise healthy woman whose reproductive organs don't seem to be working, I am so tired of hearing that a man was able to conceive. It's like pouring salt on my wound (and this is coming from an infertile woman whose testosterone levels are high.. actually, should this give me hope?). For the record, she's not a man. She's had no surgery and still has all her lady parts, so it's a little nuts to dub this a miracle (now me getting pregnant, that would be a miracle). I understand the concept of respecting someone's wishes and calling them by the pronoun they believe fits them, but when it comes to discussing that person's pregnancy, let's refer to their gender from a medical standpoint, please. Media, I am talking to you.

Okay, sorry to rant. Speaking of the media, I heard on the Discovery channel today a wonderful little stat that just brightened my morning - the fact that 250,000 babies are born each day. A quarter of a million! In one day! Hearing that stat really made me realize how absolutely commonplace pregnancy is, and how that is what our bodies are supposed to do. I know this is all very obvious, but when you are unable to give birth to one of the 91,250,000 babies born each year, hearing how many other people are able to isn't exactly fun. I mean, millions upon millions of women are trying their darndest to not get pregnant right now!

Here's an example of how bad it has gotten for me.. It's one thing to see babies everywhere to remind you of your infertility, but has anyone ever looked at a crowd of adults and thought, 'every one of these people were born to a fertile woman'? That's right - I even see adults as a reminder of my infertility. Heck, I am a reminder of my infertility in that my mother was fertile. That's bad. Actually, it's not like I am in a bad place right now. I'm not. These are just some of the thoughts that swirl around in my head on a good day.

As for how my chart is doing, I'm on day 11 and I had three days of spotting following my period. That was a bit excessive, even for me. I had some mucus yesterday. And I just finished my first month of parlodel, which I'm taking for my high prolactin. I'm still taking it, it's just significant because I heard it might take a couple months to start working. Not much else new.

I've been tagged!

Yay! I know some people get tagged all the time and are over it, but this is a first for me (thanks Beth), so I'm excited!

Rules of the meme:
1. Post these rules of the game first.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 people and posts their names. Then the tagger goes to the blogs of those who have been tagged & leaves a comment letting new players know they’ve been tagged. The tagger asks them to find the meme and instructions back at his/her blog.

What I was doing 10 years ago: I have no idea! Okay, let's see. Ten years ago I was a junior at Syracuse University and I was studying abroad in London. And right about now I was probably either spending spring break in Italy with my five roommates, or had just returned to London from that trip and my sister was visiting me.

Five things on my To Do List today:
1. Meet with an adoption agency
2. Get my hair cut
3. Work on my documentary
4. Mail stuff to PPVI that is long overdue
5. Make dinner

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
1. I would donate tons of money to PPVI so they could conduct research wherever there's a need (like maybe to find a cure for lutenized unruptured follicle syndrome!)
2. Donate money to pro-life causes and our church
3. Give money to my parents so my dad can retire and move them wherever we are
4. Build my dream house and design everything in it
5. Start a big production company with lots of employees (not just me with no money) to make documentaries that promote the Church and life issues

Three of my bad habits:
1. procrastinating
2. being a pessimist
3. spending too much time online

Five places I have lived:
1. Richmond, VA
2. Fort Plain, NY
3. New Hartford, NY
4. Manhattan
5. Albany, NY

Five jobs I’ve had:
1. t.v. news anchor and reporter
2. host of a real estate t.v. show
3. hostess at Ruby Tuesday's
4. marketing associate for a Catholic retreat center
5. intern at Late Show with David Letterman

Five people I want to know more about: And Not By Sight, TTC Depression, Shannon and... Okay, I barely know five bloggers (especially ones who haven't recently been tagged themselves), so I'll leave it at that!

I take this very personally...

Barack Obama:

Look, I've got two daughters -- 9 years old and 6 years old. I'm going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby.

See for yourself:

This makes me so made that I can't even begin to comment on the obsurdity of it, other than to say how dare he call a baby, a blessing that is tragically unattainable to so many women, a punishment.

(Thanks to A Thorn in the Pew, where I first saw this story)

Adoption worries

Sorry if I sound like a broken record lately, but I am still confused about whether or not we should start the adoption process. For the most part, I still don't feel as if God has completely placed adoption on my heart. I've had some moments where I thought maybe He was trying to tell me something. I've come across adoption blogs that have made me think. And last night, while praying, I thought about how adoption may be a real and tangible way for me to truly help out the pro-life movement - that by adopting I would be playing a real role in helping a woman who chose life instead of abortion. I've also been reminded lately of Scripture passages that deal with adoption, the fact that God calls us to care for orphans, and that we are all God's adopted children - all things that make me think that maybe it's not as much about me as I have been making it. Maybe it's about helping others and what I am called to do, and not whether I am completely comfortable with it, whether I am a big enough person to not be jealous of the birth mom (is that normal? because I think I would be), or if I would still feel sorry for myself that I can't get pregnant. God didn't say 'Care for the little children as if you were caring for me, accept if you have too many issues. Then just forget it.'

I don't know. I also know not everyone is called to adopt, and if I think I'll have hang-ups about it, then maybe I'm not a good candidate. Not to mention that if I am asking God to place this on my heart if it is His will, there's a chance that it's not His will. I'm waiting for a sign from Him and when one hasn't come I keep thinking I just missed it, but there is a chance He is trying to tell me not to do it right now.

I've been trying to read adoption blogs lately and I thought they would really help get me use to the idea, but they've actually done the opposite. I read them and I am so happy for the couples, but then it just makes me start thinking about all of my issues with it. Let me just say that what I'm about to say is not meant to offend anyone considering adoption, in the process of adoption, who has adopted, or is adopted. I just have some hang-ups that are my problems, and I want to voice them in order to show myself how crazy they are. So here are my worries: I am afraid that if I adopt I'll feel like a phony. I think I would still be so wrapped up in dealing with infertility that I would feel less-than. I would feel like I didn't deserve this child because I didn't carry it for nine months like "real" mothers. I would feel like I couldn't take credit for the child, or take pride in the child if he/she did something good or cute, because it isn't really mine. I'm afraid that the baby wouldn't have any kind of love or connection to me because I didn't carry it. I'm afraid I wouldn't feel like I was getting that true experience of being a mother, because I would have just gotten a call a few weeks before the baby's birth. I couldn't possibly have all those intuitions a new mother has, because I am just an infertile girl who happens to have gotten someone else's baby. I also have this vision that I would feel like people weren't really happy for me, that deep down they'd feel sorry for me. Aw, they had to adopt. How sad. That's crazy, I know!

But... at the same time, I have no qualms about raising an adopted child once they are no longer a baby. At that point I believe the child would be a product of our parenting, that we could take pride in him/her, that I would be confident that he/she loved me because I would be all he/she knew, and that I would be a 'real' parent at that point (which I would have earned through sleepless nights and all that). I also, though, have worries about how an older child would handle being adopted once they truly understand what it is. And the idea of them looking for their birth parents would scare the heck out of me. I know these feelings are due to my insecurities.

Does any of this make sense? I'm not sure it does. I just wanted to get it all out because usually my fears and worries don't seem as big once I write/type them out. And again, I don't think these things are facts, they are just my worries I need to sort through. They are just more examples of how infertility has messed with my mind. Plus, no one close to me is adopted or has adopted, so I've never been close to it before.

The reason I'm thinking about all of this today in particular is that we have our adoption meeting tomorrow with one of the agencies we are considering. This is the agency that a friend of mine is using and highly recommends. This has also been on my mind today because I got an email response from Catholic Charities. As I posted about the other day, they had emailed in February saying that because we are open to adopting an African-American or bi-racial baby, that we can start the homestudy process now (normally it's a year-and-a-half or more wait). We had missed the email, only to find it over the weekend. Well, they responded that it's not too late and we can set up a meeting to start the process. So we are dangerously close to starting the process with one of these two agencies.. and I'm not even sure we're supposed to!

Ugh!!!! I just don't know if I've adequately dealt with all of this infertility stuff yet. But, then again, will I ever fully deal with it? If I wait for that day, we might be childless forever. And no matter what, we know we want a big family. I'm 31, after all. It's not like I'm 25. But then is the fact that I'm 31 a reason to jump into adoption? Is just wanting a child reason enough? If I knew today that I would never have a biological child would I start the adoption process? The answer to that is yes. Absolutely.

This situation is in serious need of more prayer.

Feeling good

I've been thinking a lot lately about how much infertility makes no sense. I once talked to a priest about infertility. I told him about my situation, hoping he'd offer me some sage spiritual advice. But what he told me was that when he gets to heaven, one of the top three things that he'd like to ask God is why some couples can't have children. His confirmation that this is all a mystery just confused me further. I want to make sense of it all. Things that don't make sense, that aren't fair, that don't mesh with my image of God, well, they just drive me nuts.

So I realized that, for the most part, infertility just doesn't make sense and to try to understand it would be futile. Way too many good, God-fearing couples can't have kids and there's just no way to make sense of it, so why try?

I'm actually feeling pretty good lately. Not because I'm starting a new cycle and we can begin trying again in a week or so. That doesn't really affect my moods. I personally feel my mood is affected by hormones, otherwise there's no explanation of why sometimes I'm up and sometimes I'm down. So I'm up right now, not necessarily hopeful, just in a good mood. Maybe it's because we're going on vacation in a week and a half. That could be it.

As I mentioned yesterday, I started working on my documentary again and I think that is also helping my mood. Every time I've prayed lately and asked God what I can do to serve Him, all I keep coming back to is the documentary. It's like God is telling me "I already told you what you can do, and you're not doing it!" I just need to finish it. That's what He called me to do and I need to carry out His wishes. So hopefully now that I've started working on it again my prayer life will improve and I won't constantly feel guilty. I also know I have to finish it because I got a lot of money from people for it, so there's absolutely no way I won't complete it. It's just been a writer's block sort of thing. I get that with painting a lot. I'll go for a year without painting anything. My inspiration runs very hot and cold.

Today was a pet day. Our cat Carmie has a cold and had to go to the vet. Poor thing. And Sophie got groomed and looks beautiful, or 'bootiful' as my family would say. Here's my baby with her new haircut and her new pretty girl (I should explain that my family calls dog bandanas "pretty girls" as in "My, that's a beautiful new pretty girl you're wearing!" I know, we're weird.)



Sorry this was such a hodge-podge post!