I feel pregnant

"How are you feeling?"
"Pregnant"
"I'm sorry."

I've probably had this exact reaction to my statement of "feeling pregnant" at least 20 times in the last 2 weeks.

I think as Americans we have a HUGE set of entitlement issues. We feel entitled to be well feed, warm, dressed well, to feel good, to have friends, to have fun, and to be loved. We feel that life is obligated to make us happy. We feel people are obligated to help us and to understand us. When we feel we have those things we tell ourselves we are happy. We view success as the ability to be happy with the material excess of our life.

Happiness is not what life is about. I know because a long time ago I learned to seperate my society view of happiness and success from the view that it is necessary for my fulfillment. I do not feel fulfilled because I am wearing name brand jeans or because I know there will be lunch and dinner today with overflowing plates of my favorite foods. Today I am fulfilled because I am loved. I am loved even when I am not loved well. I am loved even if I am not loved by you. And you do love me...so that is more. I am feed... so that is more. I have more than I could ever need. I have love and then some.

I am not merely content. No, more so, I am overjoyed with the knowledge that happiness is fleeting but love has no bounds. I know joy. I know faith. I know hope. I don't know them every second of every day and that means that when I do know them I appreciate them all the more. I find the joy & the hope in the situation I am given. I have to.

My faith tells me it is my job to know and spread the knowledge that God's love has no limit. It is an absence of that love that leaves us cold, hungry or alone. It is our lack of acknowledgment that love is enough. Even the love we can not always feel or see... it is enough.

Commercials tell us if the bathroom is easier to clean we will be happy. Product placement tells us happy people drink name brand soda. Movie trailers tell us happiness is knowing what's it like to wake up one day and find out you are a princess of a far away land. Life tells us that if we just had one more thing we'd be happy.

In other cultures there are people who have never had the things we feel are necessary to live a fulfilled life. They've never been angry they've missed their prime time tv favorites because they don't have a tv. They've never complained about the taste of the house wine selection because they haven't had dinner in weeks. They've never felt what it was like to know that if you didn't go to school someone would come looking for you. They instead miss day after day of school to take care of a situation they are too young to mend. They starve and they worry.

They know joy. Look into their eyes and you can see it. They don't know where their next meal will come from but they know without a shadow of a doubt that they are alive. Life alone for them a constant reminder that they are loved by a God that knows they go without and still lets them struggle to live. A gift.

A gift of life. As simple and yet beautifully complicated as it is... it is what they need to know they love. To be loved by God is merely to be given the chance to exist. Even if it is hard. Even if it is fleeting. It was there. It was proof. It was joy.

On a smaller scale this same battle of life is taking place inside my body. Small and loved a child is struggling for a life. A child loved by God. A child loved by me. A child who knows nothing more than surviving and who has hope...as small as it is... that life is enough.

I feel pregnant. As scary and uncomfortable as that can be when you're battling infertility, I look at it every single day and I see in it the small speck of life. Life created by a God who's love knows no limit and I am hopeful. I have joy. I live in the moment knowing it is fleeting and that it's ability to end at any second is what makes it so powerful & beautiful.