My Journey to the Mommy Club: The Egg, The IUI & The Tattoo?!

I read the gospel of Mark, Chapter 1 as I wait for the phone call from the doctor’s office. The same phone call that is going to reaffirm the bad news the morning ultrasound already told us. I read about Jesus being baptized and about him calling his disciples, his chosen people, to come follow him. I read about Jesus and how he just touched people and he healed them. As I read these words my heart yearns for Jesus. Not the idea of him or the thought of who he was- but Jesus himself, God made man. My heart yearns to be standing in front of Jesus knowing that just a touch from him would heal me. The Holy Spirit lives in me but I want Jesus. To touch him in the flesh to know that I am healed.

My cell rings and snaps me out of my daydream- Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” blares over the sound waves and is music to my ear holes… Don’t act surprised that it’s my ringtone. Sometimes I like to kick it old school because it just feels so good. I pick up the line and it’s the nurse to tell me what I know in the gut of my heart. “I am so sorry there are no viable eggs this month.” I repeat this in my head as I fight back the tears because I just don’t understand. “Dollface, you have no viable eggs this month.” When I say it to myself it doesn’t sound any better, WHAT!? Is this a sick joke, God?

I have stuffed my body with medicine month-after-month-after-month for over a year and a half with egg maturation being a “great success” (said in my best Borat voice). Now, the month that we have been gearing up for, the month I have been secretly believing if all else failed it would absolutely work, the eggs don’t mature?! It didn’t work for a year and a half but I was holding out for IUI because, I mean, how was this not going to work?! (If you are wondering what IUI is I will put it in layman’s terms: teeny-tiny turkey baster full of sperm Übered directly to the egg so they can meet and “hug”…And yes, I just explained it that way.) None of that process matters now because there are no viable eggs. I am so ready to put on my sailor hat, throw off being a lady and cuss up a storm… Swear like a real live trucker! I am so pissed right now. SOOOOOO FUMINGGGGGGG PISSSSSSED. I’m not sure who or what I am mad at but at the moment I am just mad. The anger flows through me. I can feel it. My body is tense and angry, my emotions are angry with rage. I want to yell and scream and throw the fit that ends all fits.

…But I don’t. I don’t do any of that. I don’t let the anger get the best of me because I know the anger is just a secondary emotion. The real emotion is raw, unadulterated sadness. Hurt and despair that is deeper than anything I have ever felt before in my entire life.

Instead, of the fit that I want to throw or the tears that I want to cry, I do what I know to do. I pick up my phone and I text “my people”. I text the people that I know have been waiting by their phones for the results of today’s appointment. It’s a group text and it’s short and to the point. It’s ordered up as just the facts, add a splash of an f-bomb and hold the emojis because there is no room for fun in this text. My people, they get it. They understand and they don’t try to sugar-coat the suckage of the situation. My people. They are the ones that hold me up when I can’t hold myself. I love my people.

I put my phone down and I look over at my open bible. I raise my hand to close it and push it away because I just can’t even at the moment …That’s when it dawns on me. I look down and the gospel of Mark is staring back at me. My breath catches in my chest. I can hear my own voice say “Mark. Mark 5:41.” I gasped and put my hand over my mouth and I can hear myself whisper “Jesus.” My eyes well with tears.

Mark 5. Verse 41.

The same verse that I had tattooed on my foot 4 years ago.

MY VERSE.

The verse that spoke to my heart at a cutesy little marriage conference we attended as newlyweds.

I grab my bible and I read Mark 5. The woman who was sick who thought “if I could just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” And I cry because in verse 34, Jesus tells her “Daughter your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

I keep reading as the tears fall.

The very next verse begins the story of the sweet little girl who has died. I tattooed that verse on my foot because this little girl is me. Life happens and we die a little. We have sad childhoods and we die a little. We lose relationships and we die a little. We lose people and jobs and things we hold dear and we die a little. We cannot get pregnant and we go through really hard things and we die a little. We grow older and our bodies change and our skin sags and we lose our youth and we die a little.

And then verse 41 happens.

And then verse 41 ALWAYS happens.

Jesus takes the little girl by the hand and says “Talitha Koum” it is Aramaic for “Little girl I say to you get up!” The Jesus I have been yearning for, the Jesus that I know if I can just touch can heal me, that Jesus has already healed me. He’s already come and taken me by the hand and said “Desireé, my desired one, my little girl, get up.”

I don’t know where this journey will take us. I don’t know if a little voice will ever call me Mommy. I don’t know about the future and some days, if we are being honest, I don’t even know about the present. But I know that in every moment Jesus is there and he is saying “Get up. Keep going. Even when life is hard. Get up little girl. Even though it might feel like it, your story isn’t done.”

And with that, a close my bible, I stand up from my chair and I get on my knees and I begin to pray.

His promise, written in my bible and tattooed on my body.

My God astonishes me and I am so in love with Him.