Last week, I got extremely sick at work. Something came over me around noon and just basically floored me for the rest of the day. I was nauseous and suddenly feverish. My joints were achy and I couldn’t shake the nausea for anything. Unfortunately, work does not stop for sickness and I still had to teach my last library class of the day. When the kindergartners piled into the library, I told their teacher that I would still let the kids check out books but that I wouldn’t be giving story time. When she asked if I was okay, I told her the symptoms that had just appeared. She began to grin and get that wide-eyed “uh-oh” face, and I knew what was coming. You can NOT tell women that you are nauseous and not expect to hear it. Before I could walk away she had presented the “Could you be pregnant”, grin. I smiled but politely said, “no, I doubt it”. By the next morning, I was fine, but I couldn’t help but remember what I’d said the day before.
“No, I doubt it.”
How often do we say things that are so negative about ourselves. When did it become uncool to dream? Why do we have to put all the nails in our proverbial coffins instead of accepting the positive energies?
As a Christian, I try and live by this verse:
Proverbs 18:21 (New International Version)
21 The tongue has the power of life and death
What it means, or at least the way Christians are taught to use it is that what you say has power. If you speak negatively about yourself, negative things will happen to you. If you speak positivity and prosperity, it will find you.
Equating this to the struggle of infertility and trying to conceive, how far fetched is it to believe that if we ALWAYS try and shield ourselves from “getting our hopes up”, we in fact will take away even our reasons to hope? I understand how frustrating it is to invent symptoms all the time, only to find that once again, you were mistaken. I know how hurtful it is to get used to the idea that maybe since your period is late this time, things may have changed, only to get to work and realize that no, you have to get that extra pad from your bottom desk drawer. I understand.
BUT, if you try and protect yourself from being hurt by dreaming, you will soon stop dreaming altogether.
Watch what you say about yourself. Don’t assume that it can’t happen just because it hasn’t yet. It’s okay to dream. It is okay to hope. It is okay to wish. It is perfectly fine to want, yearn and desire life in your womb.
After all,
LIFE is but a dream, anyway.
