Room for Hope

I’m preoccupied lately with what I am feeling/what I should be feeling in terms of TTC this month. Seeing E’s multiple follies left me elated and filled with so much hope. As I starred into the screen behind Wander Woman, for a minute I could actually visualize the egg receiving the sperm and becoming a fetus. Then a fetus growing in E’s tummy. Then us having a baby.

I’ve been feeling the baby vibe big time lately. I’ve been looking at all your baby pics out there in baby blogland and simply melting at the site of them. I’m not feeling a frustrated, longing wish to have a baby, but more of a spiritual tugging at the will of the universe to bring one to us. I think this is hope.

Once I allow myself to fully feel hope, I immediately put up a warning sign within myself - a sort of “do not enter” sign to my heart. This does not make me happy. I don’t like stopping at the open door, peering in but not able to fully enter the room. I know I’ve touched on this dilemma before, but I guess I’m not done flushing it all out.

I looked up the meaning of hope and found this. I like these excerpts:

“Hope is a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one’s life. Hope implies a certain amount of perseverance — i.e., believing that a positive outcome is possible even when there is some evidence to the contrary. Beyond the basic definition, usage of the term hope follows some basic patterns which distinguish its usage from related terms:

• Hopefulness is somewhat different from optimism in that hope is an emotional state, whereas optimism is a conclusion reached through a deliberate thought pattern that leads to a positive attitude. But hope and optimism both can be based in unrealistic belief, or fantasy.
• Hope is often the result of faith in that while hope is an emotion, faith carries a divinely inspired and informed form of positive belief. Hope is typically contrasted with despair, but despair may also refer to a crisis of faith, or otherwise an ignorance thereof. Hence, when used in a religious context, hope carries a connotation being aware of spiritual truth. (In some religions, despair itself is considered to be a sin; see Hope (virtue)).
• In Catholic theology, hope is one of the three theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity), which are spiritual gifts of God. In contrast to the above, it is not a physical emotion but a spiritual grace.”

This clears it up for me a bit. Throughout the waiting, the disappointments, the breaks, the frustrations, I continue to have hope. I possess it somewhere deep inside, like a well that refuses to dry up. I expect to look down and find it empty, and expect myself to want to give up. I am surprised to find my hope has only increased with time. For me, it is a spiritual grace. I do not know where it comes from, only that I feel it and it holds me like a tight safety net, pulls me forward like a strong rope. I do not know where it comes from, and it continues to exist despite evidence and experience that it should not. For these reasons, it is a spiritual presence I am eternally grateful for.

I’ve decided to work on fully entering that room despite the fear that what I hope for will not come.