Le Chatelier sur la Vie

 I was never much good at any of the sciences - I found in middle high and senior high school that biology was the easiest to take a stab at, and since I had to take one of the sciences in order to get my OP score I enrolled in that. I sat up the back of class and generally fooled around, I reckon between me and my group of friends we took MAYBE half a dozen pages of notes between us for the whole year, yet every single one of us passed. I think I got a B, maybe a B+ which for an unscientific mind like myself is testament to the power of an educated guess and a rudimentary understanding of the derivatives of scientific terms. 

Chemistry was perhaps my least favourite of the sciences - we had to try them all in grade 8 and 9, I presume in order to make our choice from Year 10 onwards. While doing experiments is fun, ours rarely ever actually worked and our longsuffering chemistry teacher (who was also our maths teacher) was a young, vulnerable man who while meaning well couldn't spell to save himself and NEVER had a demonstration actually do what it was supposed to do. Needless to say we were called upon to use our imaginations A LOT. One of the few things I remember from this very brief encounter with chemistry is something called "Le Chatelier's Principle" - I quote from the Libretexts Chemistry Website which states, "Le Chatelier's principle states that if a dynamic equilibrium is disturbed by changing the conditions, the position of equilibrium shifts to counter the change to reestablish an equilibrium" (chem.libretexts.org, 2020). Basically this is a fancy way of saying that if something is at rest and it gets disturbed, that something will inevitably move towards rebalancing that equilibrium. We, like the natural world, seek and often crave equilibrium. We've all experienced what I like to call a 'shift in the force' - events in our lives that fundamentally shift what we see as our balance in life. How we react to that shift is always in service of either releasing the discomfort of the change or in service of finding balance again. 

I believe that there are times in life when the universe itself rushes into the gaps in our lives. I spent all of my 20's and a third of my 30's feeling only what was missing in my world - keenly aware of all of the gaps and deficits. Every relationship I didn't have haunted me, including the dysfunctional and sometimes toxic relationship I had with myself. I've spent a long time thinking about what I DONT have and scrambling to regain some equilibrium. As I have moved closer to being my true authentic self, I feel like others have stepped in to fill the gaps. Mothers, Fathers, Brothers, Sisters, Aunts and Uncles who have taken it upon themselves to pick up the reins and to move me forward. Last night I turned 40 years old, and a lot of those people (not all, but a lot of them) gathered all together in one room to once again fill gaps in my world. Watching the different spheres of my world collide was perhaps the most precious gift I could have received - my husband chatting with work colleagues, my father in law regaling my sister with stories (whether she wanted them or not!), my mother in law being tickled pink at one of my Tamworth colleagues referring to her as "Ma" - These collisions sparkled like fireworks around me, brighter than the sun and I couldn't help but marvel at the new equilibrium I had discovered. 

One of the most quoted passages in the New Testament belongs to the Gospel of Matthew, commonly referred to as The Beatitudes (The supreme blessings) - Matthew 5:1-12 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you". 

While most interpret these words as referring to blessings bestowed on people in the after life, last night gave me pause to wonder whether that is always the case. I'm not saying I possess any of those qualities listed above - far far from it - and yet there I was surrounded with nothing but love. And if that isn't a glimpse of heaven on earth, I don't know what is! 

Six Years Later

 It was six years ago exactly. The hospital emergency department was humming with nurses bustling to and fro among patients, harsh UV lights and the smell of disinfectant. My face, calm in appearance masked a heart beating a million miles a minute as I and my husband kept reassuring ourselves and each other that everything would be fine, and that we would be seen soon. I was given a bed to lay down on, and in our little curtained cubicle we waited. Eventually a doctor came, stethoscope hung around her neck and told us that we could go home but instructed us to return the following morning for an ultrasound. She assured us it was merely routine, nothing to worry about, and she was sure everything was fine. We grasped on to that lifeline with both hands and believed her. Dutifully we did as we were told the following morning and at the ultrasound our world came crumbling down around us. 

If this sounds a little bit like the opening minutes of the pixar movie "Up" there's a reason for that - you might as well give my husband the moniker of Carl and I the name Ellie, because their story is our own. Six years ago today we found out that we were losing our little miracle and by the end of that week our peanut was gone, torn from my body in a birthing suite 8 months too soon. That same year I crumbled, and by the middle of 2017 I was off work on stress leave and barely functioning. As I sit here writing this the pain has dulled but has not left me - physical pain passes but in my soul there remains the grief that to this day still tears me apart. We have come a long way in six years. We had continued our fertility journey a little further before the full reality was conveyed to us: that having a child was not for us as written in our DNA. Shockingly I didn't turn my anger on God, or on myself. I saw it as a message that I had genuinely been asking for years: "God, please, if we are meant to have children please tell us. If we are not meant to have children, please please just tell us so that we know". I had prayed to God over and over to just give us an answer, and when I found out about my pesky chromosomes I felt somehow blessed that He had written the answer so clearly in my DNA that none could dispute it. For a myriad of reasons, we decided that our waiting and wishing had come to an end, and so that chapter of our lives closed 3 years after we lost our precious little one for good. 

It's now the beginning of 2023 - 3 years after we left that part of our lives behind, and six years since the miscarriage. There are days I am sincerely grateful to not have children as it affords us so much freedom and agency. I see parents down at the park when I'm walking my labra-daughter (and yes I do call her that!) and I think to myself "thank you God that I have the freedom to travel and enjoy my animals and to go about my life independently". There's other times when I watch the same parents down at the park and my heart aches. It's those times that I hold fur babies extra tightly, I laugh at their antics a little louder, and I count my blessings for they are many. I honestly don't think I would be able to live the way that I do if I had children. I can work and play with spontaneity and with whimsical abandon and I don't have to worry about babysitters or childcare or school holidays or basically anything. And when the pain hits me, when I think about my legacy dying with me, I take a moment to hold that hurt in my heart and remember that this is the life that God gave me - He directs my steps and He is good. I'm really proud of how far we've come, but I swear I will never forget that baby that never was. The crossroad has long since been past, but on days like this I take a moment and look behind me, and I hold on to the promise that one day, somehow, it will all make sense. And then, like now, I will shut the computer, wipe away my tears, stand up and move on to the next task, the next step, the next moment. 

Life may have been denied to my child, but I won't let it pass me by through grieving what was lost. Moments of pain come and go, but I hold on to the hope that somehow, some way, despite not having anyone to hand our memory to, that my life will somehow mean something and leave something when I am gone.