To the Woman Who’s Life Has Not Gone as Planned
On the table in the waiting room of the women’s clinic are gifts for new or pregnant moms labeled “Welcome to the Sisterhood of Motherhood.”
The bulletin board in the exam room is covered in photos of babies that I’m assuming this doctor helped bring into the world.
This is all ironic since I am here to ask the doctor, among other things, if she thinks my body will be able to bear children one day, or if the chemo has damaged it beyond repair.
I rotate my head toward the opposite wall so I that I don’t have to stare at the baby pictures anymore. But the artwork is paintings of brown leaves, and since my head turns everything into poetry, I begin to think about how I have a lot in common with this dried up foliage.
So I turn my head forward and try to focus on how they’ve spelled my name wrong on the collection container.
Sitting in the hospital gown, my legs swinging off the exam table, I feel naked and alone.
And I wonder if any of the other women in the waiting room feel that way too—feel the brokenness that comes with life not going the way they thought it would.
And so, I just wanted to write this little note to say, if that’s you,
Beloved,
you are not alone.
2 Comments
Deirdre Lehmann
just breaks my heart, but also resonates so deeply within me. Thank you so much for being so open and vulnerable and willing to talk about the hard things that a lot of us feel but can’t express. A lot of time life feels like God is calling us into a place where when we look at it all we can see is death. The story in 1st kings where Elijah is sent to the city of Zarephath and promised provision is such a perfect picture of this. He is told to go and provision will be waiting for him, only to show up and find that his provision is supposed to come from an old window who was dying of starvation, with enough food for one last meal. So Elijah asks her to give him the last of her hope, the last of everything she has AND THEN God will provide for her. He asked her to have this incredible faith to accept that if God didn’t step in, she would die. To give the very last of all she had, face a situation that she could only see death in and only then would God step in and provide for them. And that’s the path God brings us to frequently, one where when we look at a situation and all we can see is hopelessness and death, and he tells us to walk into death with faith because HE is faithful.
Anyways. I love you so much, and I really loved this.
Jenifer Jones
Wow Deirdre, that is SUCH A GOOD WORD! Thank you so much for sharing this with me. I feel like I’m going to be chewing on it for a while.
Love you too! I hope you are doing well!