A sustained encounter with uncertainty.....

Shelley, the owner of Apothecary Tinctura and a talented and gifted healer who has been a real mentor to me in this crazy long journey of baby-making, has a little quote that is always at the end of each email she sends me:

The development of courage and imagination

requires a sustained encounter with uncertainty

This is where I came up with the subtitle to my blog: A journey of sustained uncertainty and hope through IVF and beyond.....

Today I was reminded of this quote again as I pondered what it would look like to wait with purpose and intentionality these next five days. What does it mean to "wait well"?

Initially, when I first read this quote - when I first began to ponder the sustained uncertainty I was experiencing and would experience as I continued down the winding road of fertility treatments, I was still early on in the process...Encountering sustained uncertainty seemed noble and purposeful and wise - and developing courage and imagination, well who couldn't use a bit more of those? So, inspired, I went further in, further on.....imagining myself as this strong, noble, woman, fighting a battle of the heart through sustaining great uncertainty with honor and grace.

Sometimes this journey has felt exactly like that.

And, at other times the uncertainty has felt more like powerlessness, fear of the unknown, and lack of control than something beautiful and noble, growing up courage and imagination within me. It sometimes has elicited feelings of being very small rather than strong and wise. This week has begun to feel like one of those times again.

So - today I am reclaiming this idea of embracing uncertainty, I am inviting it in, reminding myself that I am already sitting with this uncertainty, breathing it in, curling the whole of my body around it, living with it day in and out - it is in my skin, in my water, in my air, in my teeth. I cannot avoid it, I cannot run from it - I might as well welcome it and find out what it has for me. Or at least encounter it and face it.

Because the truth is, the uncertainty is always with us. If I am pregnant, my pregnancy will be filled with many many moments of wild uncertainty - as will motherhood - as does any experience in life that we truly give ourselves to. We really have so little control over anything in life. And when we love, or hope - this only becomes magnified. It is scary to give your heart in a world you don't control. (as much as some of us may try to) It is scary to love someone or something - it is scary to dream. But we all do it every single day. We do it and we are more courageous and imaginative because of it. Only, sometimes we forget to notice this. So, my invitation to you is this: take a moment to thank yourself for the risks you take by loving, dreaming, hoping, being alive in this uncertain world - and realize all the places you are more courageous and imaginative for having done this. Good.

A friend of mine, a fellow blogger named Denise, came through her embryo transfer this week as well. (please go visit her and wish her well) She has posted a really lovely post today about waiting......she includes the following quote from Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (which I am running out to rent right this moment!):

Molly: “37 seconds…great, well done, now we wait.”

Mr. Magorium: “No, we breathe. We pulse. We regenerate. Our hearts beat, our minds create, our souls ingest. 37 seconds well-used is a lifetime.”

This post and this quote, really helped me get to this place today of believing that I can sit with this uncertainty and welcome it in, that I can wait well. It inspired me and reminded me that in this next five days I can breathe, pulse, and regenerate, with a beating heart, a creative mind, and a soul that ingests it all. I can thrive in this sustained encounter with uncertainty.....

Five days well-used is a lifetime, after all.