Despite the fact my parents spent 5 years in Infertility Land before I was born, and that I have Aunts & Uncles who have resided there, I had no clue I was living so close to it's borders. In fact, I still have no idea when I really crossed into it's territory, there were no signs telling me 'Infertility Land 100 km ahead', there were no border crossing stations, there was no welcome sign to 'Infertility Land, Population 2 million'. Even the people there seemed the same, at first.
But as time went on we noticed subtle changes. I began to notice cultural differences, like men were seen and not heard, and even then, barely seen, at first I wondered if there were any here at all. Then I noticed a slight difference in language, a predominant usage of some words in particular but more so a tendency towards acronyms, like a secret language that you would only understand if you belonged. Although there were some regional dialects within Infertility Land that I never picked up, I picked up the native tongue of Infertility Land pretty quickly. Yet I still hadn't quite figured out our whereabouts yet.
So, what do you do when you are lost? You look for directions. We were directed to the resident expert, one of two, and he seemed to know less than we did. He tried to show us where we were, in vague and simplistic terms, like we had just taken a wrong turn and ended up there. Then he gave us what you might call a map, with wrong directions that even we in our limited knowledge knew was incorrect. Just in case we weren't here by accident, he examined our modes of transportation and found nothing wrong, yet he gave us a special gadget anyway, one that should trick our GPS into heading towards Fertility Land. That seemed like a good idea, for a few days, but then we realized how could we trust it was truly taking us in the right direction. But at least we had a vague map, and the 'You Are Here' circle was indeed inside Infertility Land borders.
We of course were certain we were just visiting. Several times we saw signs 'Fertility Land this way', but every time we drew nearer to it's borders, or just managed to make it over the border, our vehicle would crash. Sometimes it was just a small fender bender, sometimes it was bloody mess. Every time we ended back up in Infertility Land.
Four years of getting nowhere, of feeling lost, feeling like foreigners, feeling like we don't belong. We were determined not to get comfortable and settle there, yet tired of getting our hopes up just to end up in another crash and still stuck here. We finally resigned ourselves to finding a home, a permanent address in Infertility Land. At first, it was a gut reaction to another crash, I was bitter, frustrated, hopeless, and so I threw my hands in the air and said, 'Fine! You want me here, I'll stay here. Forever!' I was done with futile efforts of trying to escape. I tried to get friendly with the natives. I tried to create a new community. My husband, always a homebody, seemed comfortable in the passive role most husbands had here, shut-ins - like ostrich's hiding their heads in the sand, pretending they didn't live at an address that broadcast their failure. I assumed our choice to settle would eventually lead to getting comfortable, but it didn't. Of the natives I got to know, a lot were hostile, they spewed hatred for those living outside our borders, and those that weren't were either recluses or jumping aboard adoption trains out of the the country as fast as possible. None of those were options we were comfortable with.
So after two years of unsuccessful attempts to become permanent residents, we decided to consult a different expert. One we should have consulted from the very beginning. An expert in all lands, not just Infertility Land or Fertility Land. He gave us back our immigration paperwork, for now our Visa's were denied, we were deemed temporary visitors. The expiry date of our visitor status was blurred out and He wasn't telling us when we would finally be able to leave, we would be aliens in a foreign land for the foreseeable future. There was nothing we could do, provide, or control, to expedite our journey out of Infertility Land. And so we once again began to explore the country-side, looking for the one road that would finally lead us away from here forever. The latest leg of our journey hasn't been without it's crashes, but one thing it hasn't been without is hope.
Because, now we have a different kind of hope.
An unquenchable hope.
My friend and I have mutually been inspirations of hope in our respective journeys, and another way she has inspired my hope is through her music, her first album was released yesterday and of course it is titled Unquenchable Hope. All of the songs are inspiring, but the one that touches my particular journey in Infertility Land is called For the Moment. I encourage you to find some hope through her musical journey, you can find the album here:
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