Not just a girl's name

Hope.

People say a lot of things about it.

Don't get your hopes up.
Don't give them false hope.
Hope is the thing with feathers (Emily Dickenson poem).
Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. (Shawshank Redemption)
I hope you dance. (Gosh, do you remember that cheesy Lee Ann Womack song?)
When all hope is gone, sad songs say so much. (Elton John)

And if you've ever been to a wedding, there is a good chance you've heard 1 Corinthians 13 where the Bible is pretty clear that God likes hope. In fact, He places it in his "top three things that really matter list." And God tells us that in Him, we have a living hope. As in, our hope is not in the past, nor the distant future, but is applicable at all times.

As you can tell, I've been thinking and hoping a lot these past few days. And sometimes I'm embarrassed to admit just how hopeful I am. The "ville" I grew up in, Glendaville, is the land of hopes and dreams. You know that joke where the two kids are standing in poo and one kid is so excited because he is sure with all that crap there must be a horse somewhere? Well, that's my mom. And so, during the longest 11 days of my life, I'm shovelin' a lot of crap because I'm just certain there's a horse around here somewhere.

Some of you are worried about this. That I'll get my hopes up and be disappointed should I not be pregnant. That I'm jumping the gun saying to Henry, "Mommy can't pick you up because there are babies in her tummy." I say this to him because: a) I want him to know that there is in fact a good reason I'm not picking him up and it has nothing to do with him or my love for him, and b) because I know he has no idea what I'm talking about. I think he thinks I'm crazy. He peers at my belly as if to say "Lady, that ain't a baby. I've seen babies. That's just unfitness." (I also say this very loudly when he is mad at having to walk with me across a parking lot and has just sat down in the middle of the road. I say it so the people going in and out of Target will stop judging me for letting my son sit in the road and scream and seemingly do nothing about it.)

A friend even said to me the other day, "So what are you going to do if this doesn't take and you're back at square one?"

1. Not helpful.
2. I don't know. Probably cry. And cuss. And pray. And drink heavily. Maybe even smoke a few cigarettes. I told my Bible study that I was planning on puking next Tuesday one way or the other.

The truth is I'm not thinking about it much. Not because I'm unaware of that possibility, but because I know a little something about loss, grief, and disappointment. You cannot prepare for it. At all. Any attempts to prepare for loss is simply time wasted. Because it never happens the way you thought and then you feel like a boob for spending all that time preparing for this thing. I mean, if we aren't pregnant, the roof will cave in. So it really seems silly of me to not just go ahead and make it a high rise. Roofs caving in hurt, no matter from what height they fall.

I also know about hope. Red (from Shawshank) is right--hope is a good thing. It is a gift. And it is rude to the Giver of hope if I don't open the gift and enjoy it. To say to God, "Hmm, I'm scared I might not like what you have for me, so instead of enjoying it, I'll just sit it on the mantle still wrapped." In fact, Scripture tells us that Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. (Proverbs 13:12)

So yes. I am going nuts about this. I've yanked off the paper like a toddler at Christmas and am enjoying this hope anabashedly. I'm thinking of names. I analyze every time I pee to discern whether or not I'm peeing more than usual. (I think I am.) I keep grabbing my chest to see if it's sore. (Sort of. But I am on all those hormones.) I'm having loopy dreams that wake me up. And when I'm awake, I have to go pee. The nuttiest thing is that I'm pretty sure I can feel my cervix and it is sore. It ached my entire pregnancy with Henry. My OB tried to tell me that it is a medical impossibility for one to "feel" one's own cervix, but I can. And maybe I am and maybe I'm not pregnant. Maybe I'll find out I'm psychosomatically experiencing pregnancy symptoms. That will be pretty embarrassing. Oh well.

At least my heart will not be sick.

Because my hope does not rest in Baby Q or Tenderoni. It never will. That's too much of a burden for a child to bear. My hope rests in Q and Tenderoni's Creator. Should I not be pregnant, He will be close at hand and very understanding when I yell at Him.