Life is not a nursery rhyme.

“But me, he caught-reached all the way
from the sky to the sea, he pulled me out
Of that Ocean of hate, that enemy chaos, the void in which I was drowning
He stood me up on a wide-open field,
I stood there saved-surprised to be loved!
…God made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before him.
When I got my act together, he gave me a fresh start.
…God rewrote the text of my life
When I opened the book of my heart to his eyes”
Psalm 10:18-20

It was difficult to look away from her chubby legs and chubby cheeks. I closely observed how she clung to her mamma and wanted no one else to hold her. I am normally not a jealous person but I found tears well up as I thought, “it’s just not fair.”

As we drive home I just couldn’t hold it together anymore. “You know what it feels like? It feels like there is a deep deep cavern of love inside me that is sitting still…waiting to be poured out on our future children.”
In his usual calm voice he said, “We will…even if we adopt. We will have kids.”
“But, what if I can never give that love?” What if?

Later, I clicked on my Facebook and scrolled down to mostly see photos of babies in Halloween costumes, baby bumps, baby ultrasound pics, baby updates, baby videos and decided Facebook should be renamed to “Babybook.”

I guess I assumed my life would follow the rhyme, “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage.” Little did I know that a year after being married I would find out that while it is possible for me to have a baby…it would not be as easy as the nursery rhyme promised. After many tests and scans, it was recently discovered that I have a tumor in my brain (not cancerous) which is telling my body that I am already pregnant (and someone who is pregnant cannot get pregnant). We are still in the middle of tests, medications, and appointments so I still have hope yet somehow in the midst of clinging to hope with my right hand, I grabbed onto fear with my left.

People always say that when you let go of something, it will come back to you. That made me angry because I was not capable of letting go of being a mother someday. So instead of letting go, I wrapped my fingers, legs, and arms, around and clung on as if it were a rope hanging over a swamp of starving alligators. The longer I hung there, glancing down at those evil teeth…the evil teeth that wanted to devour me whole, and feast on my heart. I realized that I was alone and I was scared. I realized it was time to find a way to get my feet back on solid ground.

Then one day for no good reason at all I was driving home from work and had an epiphany. The Webster dictionary defines “Epiphany” as:
a. A sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something.
b. A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization.

My definition of an epiphany is the moment when your soul and your purpose collide.

I realized in the middle of this epiphany that by assuming my life was supposed to follow a popular nursery rhyme, I was stifling what was supposed to happen, from happening. Maybe we would have kids or maybe we would take in a child who was meant to be part of our family? Maybe I was supposed to continue with school, open a place where people could find healing? And…god forbid…maybe just maybe I wasn’t meant to carry a baby. After opening my eyes this felt as if I had been choosing to sit in a dark room when I had a whole house full of big windows. I was so focused on making sure I didn’t trip on the path I was on, that I never took the time to look up and see what paths I might have been passing up. While I have no idea what the future is, I am confident that making the decision to swing off that rope and land on solid ground will lead me to walk straight into the purpose I would have missed out on.