I've never cried so much before. I've lost a sister, a grandmother, great aunts, friends and mentors, yet today is the day that I feel the most grief, the greatest loss, the ambiguous loss of a future hope.
I've always wanted to get married. I just assumed that it would happen one day. I assumed that some man would stumble upon me, see something special, something worth having and would pursue me. I assumed that we would compliment each other perfectly. That he would have been designed by God to be a perfect fit for me and I for him. That sounds like such a fairytale, yet even as I write these words, the image of that man and that life linger somewhere between my conscious and unconscious self.
I sit here on my bed, in the room that I've lived in for most of my life, in my parent's home, as a 37 year old, never-been-kissed virgin. Dwelling on these facts is usually enough to send me into pints of ice cream and despair, but there's usually that glimmer, even during my chocolate binges/ pity parties, that ONE DAY it might actually happen.
I've known for the past few weeks that I'll need to have a surgical procedure called an open myomectomy to remove several large fibroids on my uterus. The surgery is now just a few weeks away and I've been going through every single possible eventuality: 1- I could die, 2- They might need to remove my entire uterus because of some complication, 3- Recovery will be extremely painful... you get it. Every bad outcome seems to invade my thoughts. I know that I could have an amazing result, that the surgery could greatly improve my quality of life and my ability to carry a baby to term one day... yet my mind keeps going back to those worse case scenarios.
What if I never get to experience what it's like to carry the child of the man I love in my womb? Isn't that the strong almost universal desire of every woman? Could something that I desire so deeply be denied of me? Would God allow such a horrible thing to happen to me?
I don't have a lot of answers. I know that God loves me, I know that He sees me, I know that He has a plan for my life. I just don't know if I trust Him enough to truly long for His plans if they conflict with my own. I've wanted this so badly for so long... almost as long as I've known myself- I just knew that I would be a wife and mother.
The realization that this tacit, latent identity might never be realized really hit me hard tonight as I watched a friend's daughter dance around our church lightheartedly. She looked so much like her parents, and her aunts, and her grandparents and it suddenly hit me that I might never see myself, or my parents, or my sister, or my brother reflected back at me in the same way.
It shook me in a way that I've never experienced before. I came home, interacted cheerfully with my family knowing that I would come upstairs to my room to cry, sob, wail... bemoan the possible loss of what has always seemed like an inevitable identity; one that I would seamlessly take possession of. Has it been an idol? Has it kept me from truly/ completely giving my life to God? Is it something that I desire on such a primal level because He made me that way? Who would want me if I couldn't provide him with a child?
So many questions and I have almost no answers, just a sense that I haven't done enough listening, or trusting or fasting, or praying, or loving, or working, or studying. I'm left with a feeling of inadequacy, of abject need, and a strong desire to seek His face.
