Easter and the Semi-Colon

Jeremiah 29:11-12 The Message (MSG)

10-11 This is God’s Word on the subject: “As soon as Babylon’s seventy years are up and not a day before, I’ll show up and take care of you as I promised and bring you back home. I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out-plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.

12 “When you call on me, when you come and pray to me, I’ll listen.

When I was a kid, my favorite holiday was Christmas. What is not to love? It is Christmas trees, Christmas carols and Christmas presents. Celebrating the birth of baby Jesus is full of joy and light. But now, as I’ve grown up and hopefully matured a bit, I have to say my favorite holiday is Easter. I liked it as a kid but it was a bit morbid and Stephen King-like with the death of Jesus followed by His resurrection. So I focused on the jellybeans and Easter baskets. I didn’t understand Easter then. I do now. Like an old saying goes, “We are Easter people living in a Good Friday world.”

I recently discovered a new trend by way of a patient of mine. I noticed a semi-colon tattooed on her wrist. She gladly told me what it meant. The message behind it isn’t loyalty to grammar rules and punctuation. Rather, it is “The author could have chosen to end the sentence but didn’t.” The “author” in this context is a person who has survived a suicidal crisis, a mental health breakdown or even an extremely difficult situation. The semi-colon is there as a sign of choosing to keep going on. It represents the person’s courage and resilience to not end the story or their life. It is to convey hope in a sea of hopelessness and despair. It also can be a way to elicit conversations and share hope with others. It is a non-verbal symbol to share the good news with others that “if I made it through, so can you.”

That’s why I love Easter so much. It about hope when all hope is gone. It is about a miracle. It is about God keeping His promise. When I think about the first Good Friday, I often wonder if people left after Jesus died thinking it was the end of the story. Were some disappointed that the Messiah they hoped for-the One who was promised to them by God–wasn’t this man who just died on a cross between two thieves? Did they question God and wonder if He lost this battle? Did they wonder if God was a God who really kept His promises? Maybe. But as Christians, we know this isn’t where the story ends. There is more to this story and that is good news indeed.

I’ve had many trials in my life. Most of us do. But one of the hardest times in my life was when I wanted to have a baby and it didn’t look like it was going to happen. I was in my mid-thirties when I married my husband and we didn’t start trying for a baby right away. When we did, I was 37-no spring chicken! We did some fertility testing. Most of the doctors were pretty doubtful I would conceive on my own but we were optimistic. Cue the timed intercourse and ovulation kits. My husband switched to boxer shorts and stopped taking his beloved hot baths at bedtime. Nothing.

Then, we did some of the fertility medications and intrauterine insemination without success. I went to my mother’s church back home and was anointed with oil and prayed over for conception. Nothing. We tried “not trying.” We went on vacation and tried to “relax”-a true oxymoron if there ever was one. Then I did a few rounds of acupuncture. I also feng shui’d the bedroom. For those you who may not know what that it, feng shui has to do with freeing up the energy in the room. I read somewhere that the energy of your unborn baby comes to you under your bed and to help conceive, one needs to clean out under their bed so your baby’s energy doesn’t get trapped on boxes and other things kept under the bed. Under our bed was purged of everything and vacuumed faithfully. It didn’t work. Pregnancy test after pregnancy test came back negative.

Finally, we discussed in-vitro. That is when the fertility specialist takes the female egg, combines it with the male sperm and implants it in the uterus. At that time, the cost was $25, 000 for just the attempt-no guarantees. Plus, the clinician recommended I use a donor egg-meaning not my own egg-thus not my biological child. It was a lot to consider. I briefly thought about asking some of my cousins for their eggs but that seemed more than a bit awkward.

We finally opted for adoption right around year three in our quest for a child. It was roughly around the same cost as in-vitro but a child would be guaranteed. We proceeded. Our new motto became “we have a home that needs a baby and we are looking for a baby who needs a home”–however that may come to pass.

We heard the comments. “Now that you are going to adopt, you’ll get pregnant.” Because, anyone who has ever adopted knows this is the easy way to have a child. Right? Wrong! Anyone who has ever thought that it is easy to adopt has obviously never tried to adopt a child. Nor should it be easy.

For two years, our lives became an open book including our finances, our home and our medical histories. We had to take parenting classes and infant and child CPR and first aid. We were interviewed individually and together. We had chosen to adopt internationally-specifically China. We had our passports updated and were busy completing our home study and saving money.

Two things happened around year five of our journey for a baby. First, China changed a policy that was allowing more of the babies and children who were available for adoption to be placed with families in their native country of China. While this is truly wonderful, the selfish part of me knew this would delay us further.

Secondly, I had been working as a nurse practitioner in obstetrics and gynecology for 15 years. I began mourning the loss of experiencing a baby sharing my body. I never thought it wouldn’t happen. But month after month of no pregnancy was incredibly disheartening and depressing. Women would come in upset about “accidental” pregnancies or cheerfully joke about how fertile they were. They lamented stretch marks, weight gain and sagging breasts due to their pregnancies. To me, those weren’t a big deal. I have very little vanity and I would take whatever came just for the privilege to feel my baby residing under my heart. It would be a dream come true.

But, it was becoming more and more an impossible dream. I was now age 42-practically geriatric in the world of obstetrics. I knew the statistics. Birth defects, miscarriage rates and maternal complications rise significantly after age 40. I prayed for peace and acceptance with this information-perhaps God’s will for me– but I could not find it. Coupled with the delay of the adoption, it was becoming too much to bear.

One Sunday-the first Sunday in August 2010, I sat in church feeling sadder than I had ever felt before. I actually could feel the heaviness of grief in my body. I was alone that day as my husband had stayed home. Usually I chitter-chatter with friends before and after service but this Sunday, I just sat and withdrew from everyone. My throat felt tight and I fought tears through the service. I kept thinking to myself, “What is wrong with me?”

That Sunday was a communion Sunday. I took Communion and went to my Pastor for anointing with oil. Pastor Kathy looked at me with her kind eyes and warm smile and asked if I had a prayer request.

“A baby,” I whispered through my tears. Like I hadn’t asked for that one million times?! She anointed me, whispered a prayer over me, hugged me and I went back to my seat.

I sat in my seat, still sad and despairing but feeling like something had opened up. I sat, staring at the stain-glassed window that is in the front of the church. The colors in the window were dull as there was no light coming through. I sat, just staring at that window like I was in a trance, listening to the music, waiting for others to receive Communion and anointing so we could proceed with service. I sat just as I have sat in that church on so many other Sundays.

Then, all of the sudden, I had an experience I don’t even know how to fully describe. I was not in my body anymore. I don’t know where I was but I wasn’t sitting in my pew. I couldn’t see or even hear anything. I felt warmth; like when one feels the warm sun on their skin when they are cold. And I wasn’t alone. I was with Him-The One who made me. I felt surrounded by His love. And then, I felt the question-it wasn’t spoken in my ear but in my heart. “What do you want?” I responded, not with my mouth, but with my soul.

“Please, just one.”

Then, I was slammed back into my body. I felt woozy and a bit light-headed. I blinked a few times and looked up at the stained-glass window again to steady myself. At that moment, I saw light shine through that stained-glass window; illuminating it like I had never seen before and somehow I could feel that light touch me. I knew in that one moment that God had answered my prayer.

Three weeks later, I had my first positive pregnancy test. My doctor was delighted. He grabbed the calendar to calculate how far along I was and when my baby would be due.

“OK, Michelle, ” he said. “It looks like you are just a few weeks pregnant so that gives you a due date of April 24, 2011.”

He looked at his calendar and then smiled and added, “How funny! You are due Easter Sunday.”

Sometimes, God can be such a show-off.

I don’t know why God answered my prayer. I don’t know how to even explain what happened to me on that Sunday. I see women everyday struggling to conceive and I am certainly not more worthy that they are. And this is not to say that God prefers biological children to adopted children. All babies are precious in His sight. Our prayer was for a baby-however He saw fit to bless us. There is so much I can’t explain. But I know what happened and it was truly the most intimate moment of my life.

My daughter came a few days before Easter Sunday. She was born the day after my 43rd birthday-a lovely belated birthday gift to me. She was a miracle baby from start to finish. We named her Amy Elizabeth. It translates to Beloved Promise of God. She really is.

Now, I am juggling the world of motherhood and work. And I still see patients with semi-colon tattoos. I admire the message but I have decided I don’t need to get one to represent this time in my life. I have other symbols that to me are the same as the semi-colon; A vacant cross, an empty tomb, and a little girl with blond hair and blue eyes who calls me “Mommy”, for they, too, all mean hope for the hopeless. They remind me that the story isn’t over just because it appears to be over. They remind me that God’s love for us is bigger that we can imagine and that we are in a relationship with a God who does keep His promises. And this is very good news.

https://youtu.be/v_W0xUgGILY