the Week that nothing is something
I'm a little disappointed by the lack of representation of blogs by people like me. Almost all the blogs that exist are ones either written by single women or moms. And don't get me wrong--both of these groups of women are people I admire, but I do wonder where are all the married women who don't have kids? I know these blissfully wedded, childless years are often so short that there are indeed less of us in number, I understand that. But it seems like once we get married, we distance ourselves from social media in general, only to emerge 2-3 years later with daily pictures of our baby. Why does this happen? Where does everyone go for these few years? Where is everyone like me?
I am quite enjoying this phase of life and am in no hurry to rush into the sleepless, exhausting, yoga pant, stretch mark, droopy-boob phase. I know it will probably come with its stickiness and snot, I know I likely can't dodge the phase entirely. I have accepted that. But this part of my life is really, really wonderful, and I'm not quite ready for the loudness of tiny humans.
And I think this is why I don't blog much anymore. I did it quite often as a single woman, but with marrying and joining a missionary organization, I feel less and less relatable. My relevance feels like it keeps shifting to an ever-decreasing group of people, and my awareness of this has hesitated my writing. But I'm kind of sick of these phases dividing us, and so you are more than welcome into my world, even if our worlds don't resemble each other at all.
This week was one of those Weeks. And if you are married and haven't yet experienced this Week, then consider this a warning of a Week that is surely in your future. As a married woman, I have a little bit more fear when weeks like this approach because of basic science and biology, but I am also an informed, responsible woman who uses wonderful things that stop 99.9% of said science and biology so that this Week is significantly less full of worry so we can make room for All of The Chocolate. Plus because we serve a God who is Sovereign, most of us add a secondary birth control we like to call prayer. So we're pretty confident, ya'll. And we're having a great time not having kids. A really great time.
But we all have at least one Week. Because though we are responsible, informed women, we also serve a God who fertilized an egg without any sperm whatsoever (#Jesus), so our fear of the Lord also spills over into a tinge of fear over our uterus which is also at the mercy of the Sovereignty of our Lord. Mary's eggs had a 0% chance of being fertilized, so with the added help of the .01%, it's easy to feel doomed. Plus if we've endured any amount of sanctification at all, we realize that God is not mainly focused on us having a great time, but sometimes asks us to do hard things before we were ready.
So with all of this knowledge, we're lucky we don't have a Week like this each month. Thankfully, we are strong, rational women so we don't have a Week every month, unfortunately all we need is some sort of arbitrary trigger often caused by stress or gas or a headache or the always mystical and irrefutable "I feel different this time!". And all it takes is one of these small ailments for our (in actuality) PMSing hormones to have a full-fledged field day for one rousing Week where Nothing is Something (which shall henceforth be called WNIS).
Like I said, the WNIS starts with an odd cramp or pain that just needs to last long enough for us to Google, "is a cramp a sign of pregnancy" because of all the very real and likely problems that this cramp could indicate, the PMSing woman will always want to first eliminate pregnancy, which she does not realize will be her ultimate demise. Starting with pregnancy and its symptoms is a black hole of fear because EVERYTHING THAT IS A PMS SYMPTOM IS ALSO A SIGN OF PREGNANCY. This is important. Headache. Backache. Abdominal cramps. Mood swings. Hunger. Nausea. All of it.
We already knew this of course, but somehow we convince ourselves that "this time feels different" which we've also realized is the best response to our husbands who try to assure us we aren't pregnant, because there's absolutely no way they can simply deny this. We have spun them into our web and now they're scared too, scared and spun into a web where we as the queen spider (?) have trapped them and will continue to devour their childless souls: we are not going down without them.
So now that we have ourselves and our husbands convinced that perhaps, just maybe, there's something down there besides stored-up cells (or whatever it is, I wasn't paying attention in class), this is where this not-baby begins to possess our souls. What? I just sneezed. Is sneezing a sign of pregnancy? My feet have been unusually cold, what does that mean? We are no longer free; everything is chained to this fake pregnancy as this ghost fetus maniacally rules our lives on his throne of lies, blood tissue, and hormones.
This Week is an odd one of emotions as we consider our choices in light of this bloating that we've mistaken for a fertilized egg. We of course still try to guard our hearts and do not let ourselves grow attached because we know we are not pregnant, nor do we want to be, but if it is a baby, then surely we cannot take ibuprofen for our headaches. This dichotomy between the what is and what if is what begins to rip us apart and want a big glass of wine, but shoot I can't do that either until I know for sure.
This Week usually ends in one of two ways: the brave, long-suffering who are able to withstand the week's full-on assault on our emotions and sanity receive the prize of menstruation which gently tells us with its paralyzing cramps and fatigue that the worst is not over, but at least we are not pregnant. The ones who know they will be driven insane trying to make it through the week send their husbands to the store while they nervously eat ice cream and wait for a stick to tell us our fate: that it has actually been a mixture of blood, water weight, and nerves growing in our belly rather than a baby.
Of course, a rational woman would be ecstatic she isn't expecting, but we are sitting on the toilet weeping, because really there's no winning at this point, only losing; we have lost an imaginary baby as well as our dignity, and we lost the minute we opened the Google app.
I am quite enjoying this phase of life and am in no hurry to rush into the sleepless, exhausting, yoga pant, stretch mark, droopy-boob phase. I know it will probably come with its stickiness and snot, I know I likely can't dodge the phase entirely. I have accepted that. But this part of my life is really, really wonderful, and I'm not quite ready for the loudness of tiny humans.
And I think this is why I don't blog much anymore. I did it quite often as a single woman, but with marrying and joining a missionary organization, I feel less and less relatable. My relevance feels like it keeps shifting to an ever-decreasing group of people, and my awareness of this has hesitated my writing. But I'm kind of sick of these phases dividing us, and so you are more than welcome into my world, even if our worlds don't resemble each other at all.
This week was one of those Weeks. And if you are married and haven't yet experienced this Week, then consider this a warning of a Week that is surely in your future. As a married woman, I have a little bit more fear when weeks like this approach because of basic science and biology, but I am also an informed, responsible woman who uses wonderful things that stop 99.9% of said science and biology so that this Week is significantly less full of worry so we can make room for All of The Chocolate. Plus because we serve a God who is Sovereign, most of us add a secondary birth control we like to call prayer. So we're pretty confident, ya'll. And we're having a great time not having kids. A really great time.
But we all have at least one Week. Because though we are responsible, informed women, we also serve a God who fertilized an egg without any sperm whatsoever (#Jesus), so our fear of the Lord also spills over into a tinge of fear over our uterus which is also at the mercy of the Sovereignty of our Lord. Mary's eggs had a 0% chance of being fertilized, so with the added help of the .01%, it's easy to feel doomed. Plus if we've endured any amount of sanctification at all, we realize that God is not mainly focused on us having a great time, but sometimes asks us to do hard things before we were ready.
So with all of this knowledge, we're lucky we don't have a Week like this each month. Thankfully, we are strong, rational women so we don't have a Week every month, unfortunately all we need is some sort of arbitrary trigger often caused by stress or gas or a headache or the always mystical and irrefutable "I feel different this time!". And all it takes is one of these small ailments for our (in actuality) PMSing hormones to have a full-fledged field day for one rousing Week where Nothing is Something (which shall henceforth be called WNIS).
Like I said, the WNIS starts with an odd cramp or pain that just needs to last long enough for us to Google, "is a cramp a sign of pregnancy" because of all the very real and likely problems that this cramp could indicate, the PMSing woman will always want to first eliminate pregnancy, which she does not realize will be her ultimate demise. Starting with pregnancy and its symptoms is a black hole of fear because EVERYTHING THAT IS A PMS SYMPTOM IS ALSO A SIGN OF PREGNANCY. This is important. Headache. Backache. Abdominal cramps. Mood swings. Hunger. Nausea. All of it.
We already knew this of course, but somehow we convince ourselves that "this time feels different" which we've also realized is the best response to our husbands who try to assure us we aren't pregnant, because there's absolutely no way they can simply deny this. We have spun them into our web and now they're scared too, scared and spun into a web where we as the queen spider (?) have trapped them and will continue to devour their childless souls: we are not going down without them.
So now that we have ourselves and our husbands convinced that perhaps, just maybe, there's something down there besides stored-up cells (or whatever it is, I wasn't paying attention in class), this is where this not-baby begins to possess our souls. What? I just sneezed. Is sneezing a sign of pregnancy? My feet have been unusually cold, what does that mean? We are no longer free; everything is chained to this fake pregnancy as this ghost fetus maniacally rules our lives on his throne of lies, blood tissue, and hormones.
This Week is an odd one of emotions as we consider our choices in light of this bloating that we've mistaken for a fertilized egg. We of course still try to guard our hearts and do not let ourselves grow attached because we know we are not pregnant, nor do we want to be, but if it is a baby, then surely we cannot take ibuprofen for our headaches. This dichotomy between the what is and what if is what begins to rip us apart and want a big glass of wine, but shoot I can't do that either until I know for sure.
This Week usually ends in one of two ways: the brave, long-suffering who are able to withstand the week's full-on assault on our emotions and sanity receive the prize of menstruation which gently tells us with its paralyzing cramps and fatigue that the worst is not over, but at least we are not pregnant. The ones who know they will be driven insane trying to make it through the week send their husbands to the store while they nervously eat ice cream and wait for a stick to tell us our fate: that it has actually been a mixture of blood, water weight, and nerves growing in our belly rather than a baby.
Of course, a rational woman would be ecstatic she isn't expecting, but we are sitting on the toilet weeping, because really there's no winning at this point, only losing; we have lost an imaginary baby as well as our dignity, and we lost the minute we opened the Google app.
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