A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to Menopause

Four years ago Hubs and I had a contraceptive fail on us at a critical point on the monthly calendar. Given that abstinence is the only fool-proof method of birth control, we always knew this could potentially happen.I only freaked out for a brief moment before rationalizing, “I’m forty-six. I’m perimenopausal. We haven’t even had a whisper of Possible-Bun-In-the-Oven for eight years.” I looked up the statistics. At my age the odds of a woman falling pregnant without medical intervention were 1 in 10,000.So I put it out of my mind.Till two weeks later, as I knelt to embrace the porcelain deity and my insides disgorged themselves into it. After an episode of violent hurling I flushed the toilet, sat back on the tile floor, wiped my mouth, and said, “Geez, I haven’t felt this awful since last time I was...”Oh God.I made Hubs sit in the bathroom with me when I took the pregnancy test, because I wasn’t sure I could be trusted not to slash my wrists in the bathtub if it came back positive.The second blue line appeared like someone flipped on a light switch.I turned to the window and erupted into sobs.Hubs grabbed the information insert that came with the pregnancy test and read every single word, front and back:“Have you recently had a miscarriage?”Sniffle. “No!”“Have you taken any medications that contain Human Chorionic Growth Hormone?”Choke and wail. “No!”“Do you have any form of kidney disease?”Sob, sniffle, choke, wail. “NO!!!”He read to the very end of the second page, re-read both sides, then laid the leaflet on the counter and looked at me. “Yeah. There’s no way out of this.”Our children were eight, ten, and twelve years old. And for the last couple of years I’d been saying, “When the little one hits nine I start getting my life back.”I said that because childcare guidelines recommend that until a kid turns nine years old he or she should not be left alone at home for even short periods of time.So in just a few more months I’d be able to go to the grocery by myself again. I could do drop-offs and pick-ups for the other kids’ activities without dragging the little one along. I could make commitments to be places and not worry if Hubs would be home from work by the time I needed to leave.But now we were about to start over with a newborn: nighttime feedings, diapers, potty training, babysitters, preschool…“I feel like I just got out of jail and now I’m going back,” I admitted to Hubs.Don’t get me wrong, I love my children and I loved raising them from babyhood. I had grace and joy in that journey. But that journey ended as they moved into a season of growing independence. I loved the new season we were in, and didn’t want to go backwards.Yet here we were.I spent two weeks crying, and getting very real with God about how angry I was. I had dreams for my life, and a couple of them were beginning to bear fruit. If I had another baby I would have to shelve those hopes for another decade. “Why?” I asked.I knew couples who desperately wanted a family and could never get pregnant. “Why, God? I don’t want another baby. Why don’t you bless one of these families who have been praying to you and begging you for a child? Why me?” The thought of telling those brokenhearted couples that I’d gotten their desperate dream fulfilled in my womb by accident made me even more miserable.Embarrassment overcame me. Hubs and I probably looked like a couple of irresponsible teenagers who didn’t know how to keep from getting knocked up.“I’ll be sixty-five when this one goes to college,” I complained.After all the tears drained out of me, I moved on to stoicism. The first thing Hubs said after he accepted the reality of this was, “This has to be from God. The odds of you getting pregnant this way are so slim. If this is God’s will, then it’s good.”I wanted to slap him back and forth on both cheeks repeatedly, even though I knew he was right.“I’m going to accept this,” I resolved. “I’m going to accept as God’s good will that I am pregnant.”I needed another couple of weeks to get on top of that decision. “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,” took on new meaning for me as I fought to bring my feelings into alignment with my faith.Then one day I realized I’d discovered joy again:“I get to hold another newborn of my own.”“God is trusting us with another precious soul.”“I’m going to bear life through my body one more time.”I started speaking to the baby I carried. I apologized for my fear and lack of welcome. I promised I’d cherish him or her and give all the love and the very best parenting I could. I affirmed to that baby that God had given us a gift.Then, just shy of twelve weeks, I lost the pregnancy.Seeing my baby on the ultrasound monitor, curled up and still and too small for gestational age, evoked two opposite and visceral reactions in me:My heart broke. This was my older children’s sibling. He or she was every bit as much my husband’s and my child as the three we already had in our home. My baby had died.And relief swept through me, freed from having to go through childbirth and infancy and toddlerhood all over again.Holding those two contradictory emotions in tension is still a struggle sometimes.But I was going to get my life back.Except I’d learned something critical and powerful about my life through this shocker of a pregnancy.When I gave my life to Christ, I gave him all of it. But I’d forgotten that fact over the years, as evidenced by my repeated assertion that when my youngest turned nine “I’d start getting my life back.” God took exception to that claim of autonomy, which struck home with me in the most thundering way early in the pregnancy, when the obstetrician’s office told me when I should expect my baby.This child’s due date was on my youngest child’s ninth birthday.God could not have been clearer if he’d spoken the words out loud: “That life you think is yours? It’s not. It hasn’t been yours since the day you gave it to me.”Other gifts have already come out of this pregnancy and miscarriage, gifts that God has used to minister to me and to others. He’s not an angry, punitive God, who would give his daughter pain just to teach her a lesson. His ways are mysterious and mighty, but they’re always good. Every time. Even when they bring into my life the last thing I think I could ever want.But if God brought it, then it’s exactly the thing that’s needed and good and right. Because the end of all being is the glory of God.And that is the real end of every story.