Tag: disappointment

DREAM - HOPE - BELIEVE - DARE - RISK - TRY

A Quick Turnaround

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6 weeks ago when I wrote my last post, I was really immersed in disappointment and had no hope that things were going to get better anytime soon.

I’m happy to report that so much has happened since then – and I’m in a much better place.

When I’m in a dark place, sometimes I have a tendency to want to “fix” things, or try taking drastic measures to make things better. One of those drastic things I had thought about doing six weeks ago was quitting my job. I loved the place and the people I worked with, but I didn’t exactly love what my specific role was. I constantly felt like I was failing, and despite being at my job for over four years, I still felt like I didn’t know what I was doing. I was majorly burned out.

I ended up having a meeting with my boss. He knew I was going through some hard stuff. I told him I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing, and that I was honestly thinking of quitting. He asked me what would need to change in order for me to want to stay. I proposed moving to a different department where I felt like I would be better supported and could be successful. I also proposed working less than 40 hours a week – maybe 32, or even 20, hours.

And because my boss is awesome, he was like, “done!”

So, two weeks ago, I officially began working in my new department – with a team of people who are excited to have me and who are teaching me how to do the work that needs to be done. They are patient with me when I ask a million questions, and the work has been good and steady, and surprisingly more meaningful than I thought it would be. I’m also only working four days a week – I now have Fridays off.

The past two weeks I’ve felt like a completely different person from the one who wrote that last post. I am SO much less stressed. The hours pass quickly at work, I love learning how to do new things, and the tasks are challenging me in a good way. I’m feeling successful. I feel like my work matters, and I’m helping more people than I ever was before. I have more energy for my family, and for myself. I started going back to the gym this week. I decided I would start taking a yoga class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I started making green juices for breakfast in the mornings. I’ve been going on more walks with my dog.

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cross with flowers at church entrance

40 Days of Lent and My Own Personal Season of Disappointment

Erica2 Comments

It has been a rough couple of weeks for me. There have been numerous disappointments over the past month. Things that I took for granted would happen, and then they didn’t.

Things that were a pretty big hit to my confidence and self-esteem. Things that were a hit to my faith.

I’m not talking about your casual, run-of-the-mill disappointment. I’m talking about the devastating feeling of being punched in the gut when you learned the news. I’m talking about the kind of disappointment that requires a mental health day (or two) off of work. The kind of disappointment that makes you think, “what’s the point!?”

Why would God let this happen? Why did he keep ignoring my prayers? Did he just forget about me, or did he not care about me anymore?

It’s been interesting because this season of disappointment and doubt has corresponded amazingly well with the season of Lent, which began on March 2 this year: Ash Wednesday.

I went to my first Ash Wednesday service this year. In the faith tradition I grew up in, we just didn’t observe Lent. I had never even heard of it until I went to college, when suddenly people were talking about giving up caffeine or chocolate for the 40 days before Easter.

I think some people feel very uncomfortable stepping outside of their own faith traditions, but I have found it beneficial to keep an open mind, and see if there is a potential spiritual benefit in partaking in other faith traditions. Lent is not even that far of a stretch for me, it’s still a Christian tradition, just not the brand of Christianity I was used to.

Church auditorium with words "Ash Wednesday" on screen
family with ash crosses on foreheads
My family and I at our Ash Wednesday service (2022)

At our Ash Wednesday service, we sang hymns together and had a time of private and public confession of sin. It was a time to focus on our mortality, and our thankfulness that Jesus died for our sins. It was a time to be grateful for the grace of God.

I thought about giving up something for Lent, but nothing seemed right. I started out the season of Lent with a lot of hope, but found myself unfortunately collecting disappointment after disappointment. Our church had created a podcast especially for Lent, where members of our church shared prayers and Scripture and recited the Lord’s Prayer together. Many people talked about how much they loved the podcast, and how uplifting and meaningful it was for them to listen to it each morning.

But I found myself less and less able to listen to it as the weeks went by. I felt like my faith was failing as I watched and waited (and waited some more) for my prayers to be answered. And then they weren’t.

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Membership to the Infertility Club

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My period started today.

That makes 12 months in a row of being acutely aware of each time my period begins.

My husband and I have hit the “one-year-of-trying-to-conceive” milestone, which also means we get the consolation prize of getting to join the infertility club.

Infertility is defined as not being able to get pregnant after one year of trying (depending on your age, the timeframe for qualifying as “infertile” may differ a bit.)

I never imagined I would be here. With my first child, we got pregnant in the second month of trying. Afterwards I literally said out loud, “I can’t imagine having to try over and over, month after month…”

Maybe I jinxed myself.

It’s weird to hit the point where you’ve been trying to have a baby longer than it actually takes to have a baby.

Around the 10-month mark of trying for a second child, I went to my annual gynecologist appointment. I mentioned that I wanted to start looking into why we weren’t getting pregnant. This meant doing some testing on my husband and I, and coming back in a month to have the doctor review the results.

A month later we found out there was a reason why it wasn’t happening quickly. We also found out it was something that (at this point) we couldn’t really do much about (we have some more follow up appointments, so we will see). Basically we were told we were doing everything right, but that there was an extenuating circumstance that made our chances of conceiving much less.

In some ways this was validating – I had been doing stuff right. The timing of intercourse, the charting of my cycles… I understood how my body worked, and in *most couples, it probably would have meant a pregnancy by now.

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