Real Talk: What the Faith?!

I stumbled into the bathroom, eyes still half shut. My sleep had been disrupted by dreams of the little white and purple box Wenrick had purchased weeks ago, sitting under the sink. I could wait until the sun came up, but what would be the point? I doubted I’d get much more sleep anyhow, so I grabbed the box, and pulled out the last pregnancy test.

After taking it,  I placed the stick on the window sill and walked out of the bathroom without waiting to see the results. ‘Baby.’ I gently rocked Wenrick’s shoulder to wake him. This got me a confused grunt and a somewhat annoyed “What time is it?”

“It’s 4:00AM” I said, “I took the test, but I can’t look at it. Can you go and tell me what it says?”

A less patient man may have rolled over and went back to sleep (and I saw the ‘you can’t be serious right now’ look in his eyes), but he pushed back the covers, got out of bed and slowly sauntered into the bathroom anyway.

I sat on the edge of the bed, tense, and fully awake now. The results could still be negative. I’d taken the first test four days earlier and it was a hard ‘no’. Maybe I’m not ready to go back down this road so soon. We’d agreed that we would start trying again six months after having a silent miscarriage, and although I felt I was in a good place mentally, I was emotionally saturated when it came to my family. My stepmother was currently battling an increasingly aggressive form of cancer. And if witnessing my mother deteriorate and eventually succumb to a different version of this abominable disease 9 years ago was gut-wrenching, then having to watch this horror show up close and personal for a second time, not knowing how it would end, was emotionally crippling for me. I was at capacity, with no inclination to dive headfirst into another scenario over which I had zero control. In more ways than one, I simply wasn’t prepared to face a second loss.

I suddenly found myself desperately wanting more time. 

Wen walked back out of the bathroom and calmly said, “Two lines means you’re pregnant, right?”

I nodded ‘yes’, as my eyes widened.

“Congratulations baby, you’re pregnant. You’re going to be a mommy. We’re going to be parents.”

There is a joyful innocence that you experience with your first pregnancy. Your imagination comes alive with all of the possibilities of what can and will be. The furthest thing from your mind is what could go wrong, and even if you do consider it, you never envision it happening to you.  Experiencing a sudden loss robs you of that innocence the second time around. The journey becomes more or less a treacherous trek, as opposed to some grand adventure.

Although I’d made my peace about the first baby, I found myself totally unprepared for the wave of emotions that this second baby brought along with it. All I could imagine was going to the doctor and hearing the same awful news. How the hell was I going to make it through an entire 40 weeks of  waiting for the other shoe to drop? 

Sitting at the breakfast table the next morning, thought after paranoid thought consumed me for the better part of an hour. My phone buzzed, momentarily disrupting the cloud of questions thats swirled around my head. Absentmindedly, I pressed the play button to listen to the voice note that had come through. It was a friend, sharing her morning devotional with me. I was halfway listening until she started to speak about focusing on what this day had to offer, and not getting caught up on or worrying about what tomorrow might bring. Tomorrow will take care of itself, so don’t worry about it. Those words sliced through my anxious fog like an axe. This was God himself, telling me “don’t worry“. The timing was too uncanny to be anything else.

I felt the haze fall away, and for the first time since hearing the results, I felt at peace.

About a week later, I was speaking at a friend’s event in Nassau. Now this particular friend always ends her classes with affirmations (which I love), so all of the attendees lined up across from each other and began to speak positively into each other’s lives and businesses. When it came time for her to speak to me, I wish I could tell you all that she said, but when she began to say over and over “God says stop worrying“, everything else faded away. Wenrick and I hadn’t told a soul that we were pregnant and at just 5 weeks, morning sickness hadn’t reared it’s ugly head so there was really nothing to hide. She couldn’t possibly have known how poignant that one sentence was. How it spoke to every fear I was grappling with when it came to my stepmother’s health, the concern I had for my father having to walk this road yet again, and me questioning my ability to carry this baby to term. I managed to hold back the ugly cry, but on the inside I was a snotty mess.

God was setting the tone for this pregnancy.

And with good reason.

To be continued…