Menopause week 3: waiting

Things are looking up this week.  I finally took the advice of a friend and am now on another hormone (just what my body needs) to try to relieve the hot flashes.  I was up to one every 20 minutes, and now more like one an hour or less so that is fantastic!  Yay for more hormones.  And I have not been feeling as crazy as I thought - minus the road rage which continues to escalate.  I even felt sane enough to rejoin facebook so I could wish my sister happy birthday, see my college roomie's engagement ring, and congratulate a dear friend on the birth of her 2 little twins and see their precious pictures.  During my first episode back, I found only 3 women who were announcing their pregnancy on that front page (bleh) but I didn't want to scream or throw things so I consider it progress.

The waiting has become more challenging than I thought.  It reminds me of waiting for my wedding day.  There was all the stress and excitement at the beginning of the process, then you took all the steps you had to and during that point you could count down to the specific day.  But those last few weeks (or months in our case with our long engagement) were so hard.  I couldn't wait to get married.  And I resented those people who married in the few months before me - they didn't date as long as us, we were engaged first, blah blah blah.  And here I am, with a set date (or a range of dates) for the transfer to occur and I am growing discontent in my waiting.  This is a position I should know well by now, and we are so much further along in the process, but I still hate it.

Our church is going through the story of Samuel and this past Sunday was on Hannah's prayer.  The pastor spoke some on the struggles of infertility and of Hannah's anguish but faith in her situation.  I had to think of how much harder this would be if I had someone in my life rubbing in their fertility.  Though I feel like that is often what happens with Facebook as people brag on their children and post weekly maternity pictures, I do really know that no one is intentionally trying to cause me grief.  No one is telling me over and over again what a failure I am or how I have let Andrew down as a wife as I am unable to bear him children.  And for Hannah to go through that, and do it with such faith, and then give up her first child to the Lord to be raised by someone else...wow.  I can't even imagine.  It was such a horrific thought but a beautiful picture of learning to live by God's strength and not my own.  And I do think I am slowly learning that though it is a very fragile characteristic at this point.