I twitched as the sharp needle pierced my skin and dove into the vein on the back of my hand. As the lab tech gave me a look, I took a deep breath and tried to relax.
“This is the time it will be positive,” I told myself as the red stream of my life filled the tube. The mantra continued to run through my brain until she released the rubber band around my bicep.
It was over.
A war waged inside my head as I left the fertility office and drove back to our small town.
“You are wasting so much money!” cried the voice of Fear. “You’ve already gone through this process two times, and it hasn’t worked.”
My Calm voice answered after a moment, waiting for her turn. “It’s worth this last try. Who knows, it might work!”
Fear was having none of it. “Some women aren’t meant to have babies. Maybe you’re one of them.”
“We don’t know that! Just because it hasn’t worked before doesn’t mean it didn’t work this time.”
Fear tried one last salvo. “This isn’t how you are supposed to make babies!”
That last comment was always the one that made me cringe. Nature was in charge of when conception happened. Science controlling what is nature’s province always seemed wrong to me. It’s almost as if I have forgotten that God was even part of this process.
A sharp reminder was about to be delivered.
“I’m sorry.” A long pause. “You’re not pregnant.”
The voice on the other end of the phone was kind and sincere, but no amount of kindness could change the awful fact that I was incapable of conceiving a child.
Grief, loss, and pain became my constant companions. Fear had a field day reminding me of the loss of a long-cherished dream. Calm couldn’t do much, other than to be there.
I couldn’t seem to find my way out of the tunnel of despair. It wasn’t until my dear husband proposed a crazy idea that I felt slightly more myself.
“Let’s go to Sturgis!” His enthusiasm made his eyes shine, and his face glow.
“Where is Sturgis? And why in the world would we want to go there?”
“It’s in North Dakota – near the Badlands.”
“That answers the where question. But why would we want to go?”
He paused, leaned across the table to be sure he had my attention. “You know that Bob and Donna bought a Harley and they love it?”
At the mention of the motorcycle, strong feelings rose from the depth of my being. “You know how I feel about motorcycles, especially since we’re trying…”
I couldn’t finish the sentence. It hurt too much. But then I realized that now, with the last treatment a bust, we didn’t have to hold back from doing whatever we wanted to.
Silence descended on our kitchen table as I contemplated the possibilities. It might be a great distraction for me, and we would go on a big adventure. The stories we could tell our nephews would be amazing!
“Let’s do it!”
That one decision that seemed so impulsive turned out to be the turning point of our story. Sitting on the back of a rumbling, hot motorcycle with no opportunity to talk (this was before Bluetooth headset communication) gave me plenty of time to think.
It was almost a forced journey into silence. I had only my thoughts, fears, doubts, and hopes to keep me company. After several mind-numbing hours of looking at the brown West Texas landscape, even my mind became still.
And that is when it happened.
I heard a voice inside my head ask me a simple question. I had been running away from answering this question because I was so focused on the goal of pregnancy. I never took the time to look at my motivation behind the goal.
And now, sitting on the back of that motorcycle, my husband driving us to the Badlands, I had to face the truth behind my actions.
I was treating the entire process like a puzzle that I had to solve. I had placed science and all of its wonders at the top of my pedestal, never turning to God except in my despair. My ego was running the show, and the results spoke for themselves.
The question I heard so clearly that day was: “Do you want to get pregnant or be a mom?”
I had firmly planted my feet in the quicksand of “wanting,” the ego’s playground. Wanting never goes far, because it is designed to keep us stagnant and stationary. When you focus on wanting, it is like standing outside a beautiful window display, nose pressed against the glass, coveting the object inside but never receiving it.
Being, on the other hand, is a radically different energy. When you are being, you create from the inside and believe that it, or something better, will show up on the outside.
Wanting is ego. Being is Love. It’s that simple.
I had made the classic manifestation mistake! Wanting became my mantra, my identity. As long as I stayed in wanting, I could play the victim. People would feel sorry for me, even as they bounced their baby on their knee and silently thought to themselves, “Thank goodness that didn’t happen to me!”
I forgave myself somewhere between Amarillo and the New Mexico border and surrendered to Love. I concentrated on being a great mom and imagined us holding our sweet baby girl. Joy and happiness became my companions, as natural as breathing.
The darkness of my despair could no longer exist in the light of Love.
At the next rest stop, I pulled my husband aside and asked him a simple question. “What do you think about adoption?”
He smiled and nodded. “That feels right. Let’s check it out when we get back!”
Nine months later, we were thrilled to hold our daughter. That was 21 years ago, and she is my greatest manifestation story.
