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Have you ever been stuck in a place you don't like? Frustrated with the physical limitations of your body? Jealous of what seems to come to others so easily? Confused and alone? Stunted and motionless while others surge past you? Unsure you can fulfill what is required of you? Scared to death of the road ahead?

Then you have experienced infertility.

Sure, sure, it technically applies to couples that can't have a baby but I have found that the emotions of infertility are universal. I was infertile for 12 years (which means I knew what "day" I was on for 4,380 days) and after many efforts and even more miracles I am 31 weeks pregnant as I write this. From the moment my HCG levels soared I have felt the cathartic need to condense the enormous lessons I've learned down to ten capsules that can be easily swallowed. What follows is what I wish I had known from the beginning. We all know someone who wants a baby and the odds are everyone else we know is fighting the same feelings toward a different desire.

Where personal agony is concerned we all suffer uniquely. My advice may be way off, however, this is my angle and I have to proclaim it as I have lived it. I share this from an open heart with the sincere hope it can help any sad soul who is bleeding.

TEN THINGS PEOPLE WITH INFERTILITY SHOULD KNOW:

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ox xoxo

My Spring Break has been painting, more painting, wallpapering, and additional painting. Painting is tedious. My angled Purdy and I can only have so many mental conversations before I get twitchy and need background noise. I turned on Sabrina with Julia Ormond despite the fact that aged, mumbling Harrison Ford loving her is neither apparent nor believable. Poor, desperate Sabrina up in a tree watching the man she thought she loved. Sometime during the 3rd coat of edging I recalled that I was no less pathetic my freshman year of college.

There was a boy and I thought we were a thing but he had stopped returning my calls. Later that semester I went to Mama's Cafe to support Brett Spackman's drumming career and was startled to see that boy with a beautiful blonde. I walked 12 blocks to his apartment complex, climbed the big tree in the courtyard and waited like a spider for him to come home with or without that girl. I was going to get to the bottom of this unrequited love story. Sadly, trees are not comfortable even when spying on lost flames and I jumped down after an uneventful hour. I focused on my forest green suede Chuck Taylors the length of the long, dark walk back to the dorms.

I was married two years later to a man that returned my calls and prefers brunettes.

Joni Mitchell said,

I come from pioneer stock, developers of the West, people who went out into the wilderness and set up home with nothing but a pair of oxen.

When Greg and I set up home we had very little. His belongings fit in a small cardboard box: a wood veneer clock radio, two J.Crew flannel shirts purchased at a warehouse sale, a striped sweater, a few pair of Levi's Silvertab Baggy jeans, DEP level 3 hair gel, and a monkey bank fashioned from a coconut. I was slightly more blessed but everything we owned fit in one truckload. I realize now that we also set up home as a pair of oxen.

President Boyd K. Packer, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, once attended an ox pulling contest. In his words:

"A wooden sledge was weighted with ten thousand pounds of cement blocks. The object was for the oxen to move the sledge three feet. I noticed a well-matched pair of very large, brindled, blue-gray animals…the big blue oxen of seasons past.

 “Teams were eliminated one by one. The big blue oxen didn’t even place! A small, nondescript pair of animals, not very well matched for size, moved the sledge all three times.

 “The big blues were larger and stronger and better matched for size than the other team. But the little oxen had better teamwork and coordination. They hit the yoke together. Both animals jerked forward at exactly the same time and the force moved the load.”

It's been nearly 17 years since we unpacked Greg's cardboard box. He is still rocking the Silvertab Baggys (only available on Amazon) and fishing in those two flannel shirts with gelled hair. Some things never change. More importantly, Greg is still my mismatched, stout ox partner that knows when to pull.

Lots of things in marriage don't warrant joint-effort pulling. I don't have to watch the Broncos and he doesn't have to scrapbook. I don't like talking on the phone and he could care less about canning black beans. But hanging wallpaper for six hours so the nursery can move forward and my anxiety can decrease? We pull. Skipping my swim class to design his ad that needs to go to press in an hour? We pull. Sitting in the hail during RE's track meet to show support? We pull. Physical, emotional, financial hardships? We pull. Temple covenants? We pull hard.

Maybe we aren't the prettiest pair. Maybe our size doesn't scare anyone.* Don't count us out. There isn't a cement-laden sledge life has chained to our yoke that we haven't moved if we wanted to. Together we can pull anything.

*Greg has gained 8 lbs of pure muscle in anticipation of becoming a father again at age 40...just sayin'. In fact, he might be soon mistaken for Paul Bunyan rather than my ox.

“Equally Yoked Together,” address delivered at regional representatives’ seminar, Apr. 3, 1975; in Teaching Seminary: Preservice Readings [2004], 30, quoted by Elder Edward Dube, "Look Ahead and Believe," Ensign, November 2013. I share a birthday with Elder Dube.

Photo of my "lipstick kleenex" I keep in my purse for blotting. It's one of those deluxe printed kleenexes that comes in a small purse pack and is too pretty to blow my nose on. All my kisses are for Greg.

Watershed

This is perhaps the prettiest stationery I've ever received a letter on. This cottony cream dream of Italian paper has Florence deftly illustrated on the front and sage life advice stained in quill's ink on the back. The closing line of the letter:

"Most of life can be so mundane with chores & stupid stuff-

  GRAB THE WORLD and make this life BIGGER!"

The letter arrived mere weeks after I read A Room With a View and the irony caused me to wonder if my own life would unfold if I simply stared at the Arno from a stone bridge or got kissed on an Italian hillside teeming with blue flowers. (Books make me crazy, I've established this.)

Three world travelers whose opinions I respect confirmed that of all the places they've been Florence was the best. It's on my list, although David and Il Duomo will have to wait a few years until international travel seems feasible again. Florence awaits but a year ago I was in Paris. An actual year ago today I was making croissants in Montmartre with Emmanuelle the French chef who had never tasted kale. 

Something about the way it feels outside, the way the lilac buds are whispering something big and fragrant and miraculous is in the works, the way the pink plum petals are shunning the confused April snow, the way my first daffodil is trumpeting change is coming, reminds me of last year. Paris was a big grab. After Paris my life got bigger. Momentum gained and things long still began to quiver, simmer, near boil.

I've been a watershed for years, my barren terrain slowly collecting moisture from rain clouds and the occasional seeping brooklet, always begging for the big fill. This winter I witnessed the whiteout of my emotional mountains and that "Paris feeling" is back. Change is so close. The snowpack is about to melt and I am bracing myself for the flood, the blessed overflow that will cure drought. Every parched place of me will soak up what it has needed for so long and the surplus can flow on, flow down, flow away, not to be needed again.

This summer my hillsides will be verdant and varnished with flowers of baby boy blue hue. I will be wilderness no more.

Occasionally a good thing falls right in your lap. Now and then a good thing just isn't meant to be yours. I believe the majority of good things are waiting to be grabbed. So go out and grab what you want from this life! Sometimes you just have to go for it.

Bullseye

I recently pulled an old photocopy of a 90s Nike ad out of my Trapper Keeper (they still make them) for two reasons:

1. I'm fat.

2. My daughter has no talents.

Not really, but that is how we were feeling.

Six weeks ago I went to the 40-minute ultrasound of Baby Boy. It was a red-letter day, the pinnacle in a plain of waiting, the reward for my patience. You would think after seeing my baby's spine, face, and two kidneys with arteries going in and out of them I would have been ecstatic. I was, but I manifested it by going home and crying in my bedroom about how fat I'm getting. Yes, my body is enlarging because a human is growing inside of it. Imagine that.

It's the growth I've been praying for for 12 years but on this day of days during the view of views the devil robbed me of my much-deserved happiness because I let him come at me with the fat angle. Lying in the dark viewing skeletal baby-sized parts all I could think about was a story Greg's sales rep told us in Manhattan about his smoking hot second wife and how she worked out and drank a green smoothie every day of her pregnancy and never had postpartum or baby weight to lose. That story reminded me of all the pregnant women that run 6 mph on the treadmill next to me while I ellipt for 20 minutes at Level One hoping my round ligament doesn't pop. Which reminded me that I had just eaten a Russell Stover dark chocolate marshmallow for breakfast instead of a green smoothie and that was the precise reason I'd never be a hard body. It was an unfortunate downward spiral that showed me I still have chinks in my self-reflection armor.

A few weeks later RE confided in me that she didn't feel like she had any measurable talents worth mentioning. She could do lots of things but so many others could do them better. I could relate to her internal plight.

Like RE I was smart but not off the charts; my 4.0 wasn't weapon enough to slay the ACT. I played piano but was not Julliard-bound; I devoted ten years to finger power but my left hand was never virtuoso enough to take Chopin's "Revolution" head on. I won "Class Clown" and "Biggest Schoolie" but not the coveted Senior Superlatives award of "Best Legs." I was socially average and well-liked but never a Homecoming candidate, trophy winner, or medal wearer. I didn't change the world, I barely showed up on its roster. Or so I thought.

All of this mental defeat made me remember my Nike Ad. (You can view and print it here. Sorry for its weathered state...we've been through the war together.) I've been trying to remind my little tween, as well as myself, that the world measures with a stick that doesn't add up. And when we measure ourselves with that stick the only figure we get is comparison. And comparison is UGLY.

Yesterday I found the bridge that connected my thoughts to pure truth on the matter:

"Place the Savior, His teachings and His church at the CENTER of your life. Make sure that all decisions comply with this standard. As you walk the path of righteousness, you will grow in strength, understanding, and SELF-ESTEEM. You will discover HIDDEN TALENTS and UNKNOWN CAPACITIES. The whole course of your life may be altered for your HAPPINESS and the Lord's purposes." (emphasis added)

Thankfully I grew out of high school and blossomed in the real world. No test can substantiate it but I have an aptitude for cheering the sad and making others feel glad. Turns out that I can also spin straw into gold and make something from nothing be it dinner from an empty fridge, an outfit from a sparse closet, or home decor from literal trash. I am not afraid to talk to anyone. I see the world differently and can transpose that sight into words to share with others. Best of all, I found the elusive X that marks the spot on my personal treasure map: a deep well of creativity that has provided my life's endeavors with endless buckets of inspiration. I am changing the world. Where are the statistics that prove this? What scores did I earn with these immeasurable talents?

I didn't. They don't exist. The world measures pounds and percentile, rank and rating, skill and scholarship. If you want to know who you really are you have to aim for the bull's-eye of righteous living instead of measuring up to everyone around you. When you focus on doing what's right the Savior will whisper your worth to you and it will far outweigh any value the world ever tagged you with. I know my worth and can't believe I almost let paneled pants and squishyness erase it.

*quote by Richard G. Scott, an excerpt from "Making the Right Decisions", April 1991.

Kaleidoscope

There were only two fun things to do in my dad's private office: stare at the braided trunks of the ficus tree or play with the black kaleidoscope. I preferred the latter. How I loved sprawling out on the couch, aiming the lens at the window, and twisting the tube to create endless exhibitions of symmetry.

I love the word "kaleidoscope." It's easy to remember how to spell because it's four separate words. Kale-i-do-scope. I like kaleidoscopes more than kale. I was so happy last year when I got a freelance job to design a logo for Kaleidoscope Dance Studio. It was a nice change from designing vacuum catalogs.

Anytime I see that marvelous word I take notice. I noticed it when I recently read a 1994 essay by Neal A. Maxwell on hope:

Those with true hope often see their personal circumstances shaken, like kaleidoscopes, again and again. Yet with the “eye of faith” they still see divine pattern and purpose.

I missed this quote in 1994 because I was too busy turning 18 and waiting for the world to become my oyster. Eighteen was when magical adult-type things were supposed to start happening. Moving away from home and no longer being tied to the apron was less than magical, especially when I contracted mono my first month of college (not from kissing, from sharing a milkshake) and had no one to take care of me. No world oyster freebie for me at age 18, no siree! (Probably wise since my throat was so swollen...no way I could have swallowed a free oyster.)

Mono was just the beginning of magical adulthood. Soon after I discovered that one doesn't receive their auto insurance premium back if they don't get in a wreck that year. The insurance company keeps it NO MATTER WHAT. Between that financial discovery and not knowing what cut of meat makes a pot roast I was completely unprepared for life on my own.

It's now been 20 years since I left home. Eighteen-year old Melissa had no clue what was coming. Earning my degree, choosing a spouse, adjusting to the merge of marriage and the acquisition of an entirely new family, quitting a full-time job to become a full-time mother, the onset and accompaniment of chronic pain, 12 years of infertility, depending on our livelihood from a retail business that would endure an economic roller coaster ride, the simultaneous purchasing of anti-acne and anti-aging products, and a kid that would eventually become old enough to participate in the science fair a.k.a. Parental Nightmare 101 was all in store for me.

The kaleidoscope of my personal life has been shaken many, many times. After reading that essay I wondered if there was a divine pattern that displayed after each of my tumults. I wanted to have that invaluable eye of faith that could focus on the beauty down the barrel. Was there something consistent that the Lord always proved to me after every trial? After much soul-searching I discovered my life's divine pattern:

I WILL HAVE STRENGTH WHEN I NEED IT.

No matter what the Lord decides to put me through I simply know that He will get me through it. I will not wither from my own weakness nor will I ache with apathy. I see it now. I see the artistry in the growing pains, the gift in every loss, and how the bumps in the road polish to perfection. I see how much grace He uses when He places each weight upon me. I have never been more certain that he will make up the difference for what I lack.

I have been experiencing a little anxiety of late. This is a new sensation for me. Mornings start out full of joy while baby kicks me and by dinnertime I'm wondering what the heck I have gone and done to my easy life by getting pregnant. Anxiety's BFF, Doubt, infiltrates my outlook and I begin to wonder if I can physically get to the finish line and have this baby with my bad back and weak joints. Crumple, crumbling, shrinking, praying on all fours, and then I remember the pattern I have seen all my life: that I will have strength when I need it. This baby is the Lord's will and where there's a will there's a way. He will get me through the days that I can't. Head up, stand up, deep breath, smile, press forward, be strong and of a good courage.

Being shaken has a purpose. Being shaken builds strength. Being shaken leads to new beauty. 

*Quote from "Brightness of Hope" by Elder Neal A. Maxwell, Ensign, November 1994.

Did you know a group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope? They huddle together to protect themselves from cold and predators. Thank you, Sister Reyna Aburto!