The In-between

I’ll never forget the boom-boom-boom of the sonogram machine.

The heartbeat was there, but I immediately knew it was slow. Too slow, for a baby toward the end of its first trimester.

The look on the ultrasound tech’s face said it all, as she quietly excused herself to go get the doctor.

I don’t remember his words, because they were drowned out by the sound of my heart breaking inside of my body. I knew it wasn’t good news. I knew chances were slim that this precious baby would be okay.

What I didn’t know, what I wasn’t ready for, was what he said next:

“So, we’ll need to wait two weeks before we do another ultrasound. We need to give the baby and your body enough time to see what happens…”

And then, I was lost again in the sounds of my heart racing and then dropping into the depths of my stomach.

WAIT TWO WEEKS.

How in the world was I going to be able to wait two whole weeks to see if this baby would make it? How would I keep living my life, as if nothing is wrong, keep taking steps forward, keep smiling, keep working, keep hoping, keep breathing?

Somehow, I made it through those two excruciating weeks. Weeks during which minutes felt like hours, days like an eternity. Though we hoped and prayed the outcome would be different, the next ultrasound showed a heart that had stopped beating. A tiny, precious soul I’d never know on this side of life…

It is still painful to relive this loss, and as I see these words find their way into this post, my cheeks are tear-stained, remembering the heartache and the disappointment and – mostly – the painful steps I forced myself to walk as I traveled the middle place.

Those two weeks of wondering whether or not my daughter would be a big sister to that baby were one of my first experiences with traveling that excruciating place of “in-between.”

I remember standing in the parking lot of my doctor’s office, talking to my husband, and asking him, “How am I supposed to get through the next two weeks?  I don’t know how to do this…”

He didn’t have an answer for me — no one did.

Yet somehow, I made it through.  And when the outcome was heartbreaking, I made it through that, too.

Since that pregnancy loss, I have had several soul-shaking experiences with walking through the in-between

…another fetus whose heart rate wasn’t quite right…and whose heart eventually stopped.

…fertility treatments and drugs and ultrasounds and appointments and waiting to see if the protocol was working and then a canceled IVF cycle.

…red flags in my newborn baby’s initial tests leading to further tests to see what was going on.

…finding out devastating news in my marriage, over and over again, and living days/weeks/months wondering what I would find out next and if we would ever be able to reconcile.

…a cancer diagnosis for someone I love and admire and need so very much, leading to a journey in which we are always waiting for the next results.

…and now, I’m in a new in-between. An in-between that has totally caught me off guard, an in-between that is raising a lot of questions about my own health and well-being. An in-between where I am waiting for the next doctor appointment, the next test, the next answer, the next potential diagnosis.

This in-between, this middle place, is so, so hard. And exhausting. And scary.

When you’re in the in-between, you can’t help but let your mind go to the darkest place, to the end of the tunnel.

But what is most important is to come back from the darkness to find and focus on the light.

As I told my therapist the other day, I have to let my brain go there. I have to digest the what-ifs. Because, for me, I need to let my mind go there and dip my toes in the scary water and then fight my way back to a place of courage and of faith and of hope.

After the valleys I’ve lived in and walked through, I now believe wholeheartedly that these middle places are the places in which we become.

We become strong and resilient. We somehow figure out how to keep walking, keep moving, keep breathing. Even if the breaths are painful, we breathe in and out and know tomorrow, even when we’re in the dark, scary in between, the sun will rise. And the new day will bring us a new chance to live with hope as long as we know we’re always walking toward something beautiful that we may not even realize exists.

Without those precious babies I lost, I wouldn’t have my two boys.

Without the devastating loss of my marriage, I wouldn’t be experiencing the life I’m living today, which is a life full of a new kind of love, hope, and strength I’ve never felt before.

Without the tightrope walk of a cancer diagnosis, my family likely wouldn’t have the grace-filled perspective on life we now carry daily.

While I don’t know what my current middle place will bring, I have to remember that this in-between is shaping and molding and preparing me for something. The only way I should let it affect me is by pushing myself to live today in the most intentional and joyful way possible.

Because if you really think about it, isn’t our entire life just one big in-between? We are living in the middle of a beginning and an end, in-between being born and taking our last breath. We never truly know what tomorrow will bring. So if we try to stop breathing and living in the in-between, then we’re choosing to turn off our hope and turn off our dreams.

Sometimes, if you pay really close attention, the magic happens in the waiting – in the middle – in the in-between.

As I fight to keep breaths of hope in my lungs while I journey through my current middle place of uncertainty, I am learning to believe we become exactly who we are because of the hard steps we take through the in-betweens.

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Jessie Peele
Jessie is a happy-hour-loving, cupcake-eating, running-obsessed, reality-tv-addicted single mama, currently living in Carrollton, GA. She was born and raised in Columbia, SC, attended Clemson University (Go Tigers!), and taught elementary school for about ten years in Winston Salem, NC. Life brought her to Carrollton in January of 2014, and after four years in Georgia she's still getting used to living in a small town. Jessie was a stay-at-home mama for 3.5 years, but when life took an unexpected turn, she became a divorced mama who found her way back to the classroom. With three kids in tow (Cameron Kate, 7, Everette, 4, and Brooks, 2), she is now a full-time elementary school teacher and a part-time skincare business owner via Rodan + Fields. In the nooks and crannies of her day, she loves running (bonus if it's WITHOUT the stroller!), binge-watching on Netflix, baking and eating anything sweet, drinking a good craft beer/vodka cocktail/cold margarita, and blogging about all things mama-hood on her blog Cupcakes & Running Shoes: http://cupcakesandrunningshoes.blogspot.com/.

2 COMMENTS

  1. Oh thank you so much for these words… you have no clue how much your prayers mean to me. <3

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