Mole Crickets of Worry

Well, last week was a rare one.  I didn't have to go see any medical professional for a whole week! Of course, tomorrow (Tuesday) will break my streak when I go in for my OB apt, but still it was nice last week to use my energy on other pursuits. My mom came over Saturday and helped me put all the baby clothes away in the almost-completed nursery.  That was nice.  I've had a little more energy this week compared to the previous two weeks which has ben very nice! I still am limited on what I can do: energy is a resource I don't have much of, but I am managing more time in the office and am able to help BJ out in the evenings when he works all day with the boys.  (for those that don't know, the hubby and I work at a boy's boarding school)

Evangeline is doing well. She likes to hang out on the right side of my belly, curled up and happy. She is still a wiggle worm and I love how she gets the hiccups every evening and morning.  In three weeks I'll get to see her and I am super excited about that.

I wish I could say at this point of eminent arrival that I was immune to nerves and stray worrisome thoughts, but sadly, I haven't entirely gotten the better of them yet. So I catch them one at a time when they spring up, like unwanted mole crickets in an otherwise beautiful lawn, and remind myself of the truth.

You know... like the Good Book says, "take every thought captive".  So I do my best to capture every worry, but it's strange how often those worry thoughts break out of the truth prison I've built, a prison shorn up with both medical facts and spiritual belief, only to go skipping through my waking thoughts and dreams.  I've decided that thoughts really are as tricky as mole crickets.  Have you ever tried to catch a mole cricket? Or stop a mole cricket? or Kill a mole cricket? Definitely only a task for the strong willed and stout hearted. So it has been with my worries. They bury themselves in their little tunnels and if left unchecked will eat away at the roots of the life, love and sanity that I so carefully cultivate. So, despite my frustrations at having to travel down the same mental roads again and again... I do it.  I tell  myself the truth about each worry, reciting scripture or fact or both and stuff the thought back into prison only to have to deal with another shortly after. I yearn for the day that my daughter arrives and the current crop of mole-crickets-of-worry will commit mass suicide in the face of reality and leave me the heck alone.

Right now, I find myself worried about the amnio to check for lung function (oooh, the worry bug whispers, what if it ruptures your membrane and her lungs aren't ready? what if the needle pokes her cause she wiggles?)  I worry about the c-section and the recovery process. I worry about her lesion "bubble" rupturing. I wake up from bad dreams about the size of her lesion (its a long one). I worry about seeing the wires they'll use to monitor her and the possibility she might need a shunt. (nobody wants their baby to have one, now do they?) but then again.... I worry she will need one and somehow no one will notice. I worry that with the lesion running the full length of her sacrum, that she might not have a functional sphincter, to control her pooping or the right muscle tone in her bladder to control her pee-pee. I worry that they don't know if its affecting her lumbar spine and what that might mean for her ability to feel her feet and toes. I wonder how many nerves are involved in the sack. I worry a lot about how I'll know what to do when the time comes to take care of her.

I'm being as real as I can with all this. These thoughts are nasty. They evoke emotions that are vile. I would obliterate them if only I had the arsenal to do so. But alas, in the face of such uncertainty all I have, all I can do, is battle them one at a time. I put each one in its cage, reminding myself that emotions lie. Worries change nothing. Truth and God alone are real. I know that given time, the worries I face will die of natural causes. In the light of holding my child, many will perish and I will laugh, and my baby will smile and we will go on living just fine without them. So I pray. I pray a lot and thank God for what I know He told me "She'll be fine." whatever that means to Him is truth to me. So simple, and yet so profound. I could use a few more prayers though... as time goes on, I am tired of fighting the worry.  I get tired of quoting it scripture and promises only to have to turn around and keep on quoting it!

Thankfully, I have memories of my Nana (my mom's mom) that great and terrible mole-cricket fighter. She used pots of scalding water to dump down their burrows. She put out bait and poison. For each one she destroyed, more returned, leaving little brown lines in her yard where their tunnels ran, but to the end, she did not give up. Every year she fought them with everything she had, and though they came back each year, they did not have an easy life.  I pray I am as stalwart, not giving in these last three weeks, doing all I can to "get my mind right" and ready to love my baby and thankfully greet my miracle.

^"We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." 2 Corinthians 10:5