The rollercoaster calms down

We have done a bit of research.

It seems that many of our worries are a consequence of the early signs of menopause, rather than anything else.

This is good in some ways and bad in others. The irregular periods are not a series of mini-miscarriages or failed implantations, they are just irregular periods. And quite a lot of the sensations may be menopausal rather than fertilisation, implantation, etc. So our emotional rollercoaster can now ease off a little. Fewer false hopes, fewer let-downs. The bad news of course is that there is a reduced chance of pregnancy – it’s harder to get the timing right and conditions in the womb are less favourable. But this also means that the possibility of two eggs being released is slightly greater, which might render the twins she wants.

Is this it?

Well, don't tell anyone, but we might have a pregnancy going.

We have had some sensations but they felt different from the usual fertilisation and implantation things (more fo a burning feeling), and then she had a period, so we hought it was out.

But come this months ovulation, nothing happened, instead, the feelings seem to be getting stronger, more like morning sickness.

So - it may be good news something may be working. But then again, it may be a repeat of last summer's miscarriage when she didn't develop along her normal lines and it ended a 7 weeks.

Watch this space.

If this is a pregnancy, it came about while we were rocking the caravan on holiday - great stuff! Anyway, we have one fantastic name for it if it is a boy - a name that would be full of divine anointing. Can't wait!

Praise exposes injustice, and a woman's woes

The feedback from my first attempt at ‘leading worship seems to have gone down OK. In fact, putting false modesty aside, the Vicar seemed very pleased. This was despite his attempts to sabotage me – as is his custom – by leaving it until very late before giving me instructions so that my earlier preparation is wasted. I must get into the habit of pre-emptively asking what he wants.

I am also still being praised for my sermon two weeks ago.

And I have just had my photo taken at work for the in-house magazine article on my upcoming licensing.

But the praise heaped on me serves only to emphasise how little appreciation my wife has been given for her equally good contributions to services in previous years. Which is why she gave up on church, and tried fostering, which was unsuccessful, and is at the root of our current efforts to conceive.

So perhaps this root of bitterness is why we still fail to conceive, even though I do believe it is God’s will to have another baby.

And even as I write, she is at home, neither pregnant nor not pregnant – feeling implantation sensations but bleeding: Awkward bleeding that is too strong for implantation but not strong enough (and too early) for a period. So we just don’t know, and continually ride the rollercoaster of not knowing but hoping, only to have hopes raised and dashed. Since Christmas she has spent more time bleeding than not bleeding. And wouldn’t you be fed up with that on its own, regardless of the emotional and spiritual rollercoaster?.

Same old questions

So we have blood spots. Month after month the same questions – is this implantation or an out-of-synch period as the body settles down after the miscarriage?

Since it has gone on a bit too long, does this mean it really is a period, or does it mean that her protracted ovulation sensations meant that she released two eggs on two days(being out-of-synch after the miscarriage) and hence two implanatations on two days?

There is a very narrow boundary between faith for miracles and pure fantasy, and I suspect we cross to the wrong side too frequently.

Gather the broken pieces

This weekend I attended the final year group meeting of my training course prior to my licensing in April.

We each had to do a presentation on our three month placement. ie I had to listen to 17 sermons!.. well sixteen, actually, becasue numebr 6 was mine. It was of course the best and most enlighteneing and stimuleted the most discussion up to that point. I surprised them all by truning up in a cassock and surplice, and spoke about how much my views of vestments (and most things anglo-catholic) had changed during the placement.

But good though my talk was, it was totally outclasssed by the person after me. She was a lady in her 70s, short, clinging to the lecturn to control her nervous shaking, and yet she delivered a fantastically well-prepared talk, whihc he best stand-up comedians would have been proud of, and she had us rolling about in fits of laughter with tears rolling down our cheeks.

Another woman's talk also contained God's word for me for the time - based on the feeding of the five thousand, where the disciples are told to gather up the broken pieces, and of course find that these are more than there was to start with. she was speaking about a placement at a homeless charity, but for me it applied to our own circumstances, where we feel broken and can't understand why this has happened if we were in god's will. yet in the feeding, the bread started off in jesus's hands and it was good and perfcet, yet had to be broken by him so that more could be made of it. and so, i now felt, that we were in God's will, in a perfect place, and yet he had to break it to make it more. THis has helped me to understand some of why god has given us such a rough time of late.

And so I went home, and Mrs was gald to hear what I reported, especially since she could report to me that she had had some blod spotting - which almost certainly meant that she was pregnant again. And so we were ecstatic for 24 hours.

It helped that our youngest, riding his new bicycle on his 7th birthday, was cycling off into the distance on just his second day without trainer wheels!

But the joy was short-lived, since this morning her bleeding has expanded to a full gush and it turns out that it is just her cylce getting back into routine after the miscarriage, and not a pregnancy.

So why did God allow us to be told there was a ripe follicle when we went for the scan? Why did he lead her up the garden path with an appearance of a definite implantation blood-spotting, only for it to be a period? why does he give us these falkse dawns? why the rollercoaster of ecstasy is despondancy?

Why does he put me back in a leadership role for the workpace alpha, discussing "how does God guide us?", when I am really messsed up about these things? How can I preach when i barely believe?

And so I open up my blog to pour out his frustration and rage, and find that the verse of the day in the panel at the top left is “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.” (1 John 4:9)I have been missing the point. I want God's love to be expressed in him solving what I think are the problems, but he shows his love by adressing the REAL problem. And are not my trivia nothing in comparison to what he has done?