It's so amazing how quickly things can change. Just a few weeks ago, I felt totally bereft, wondering what lay ahead, thinking of life as something grim and cheerless stretching out into nothingness. Today I am filled with joy and hope and contentment and true excitement for the months and years ahead.

Last week I thought I was getting sick, and I could tell I was depressed by how much I was eating. I would be finishing a meal, and thinking of what to eat next. I love my food but that rarely happens. I was also nodding off over my afternoon work--every afternoon, at 3PM on the dot, my eyes would close of their own accord. Since I stay up until 1 or 2 AM easily most nights, this was really unlike me.

I was also dreading an acquaintance's shower on Saturday afternoon. How could I get through it, I wondered, how could I be adequately happy for her when my own heart was breaking over the less than encouraging fertility news James and I had gotten? It was small of me, I know. But I could feel the beginnings of PMS: cramps, a TON of zits, bad mood, and I didn't want to go, I wanted to stay home and cry and feel sorry for myself. I was really unreasonable.

I thought about not going, about begging off. But I couldn't. I went to the bookstore and got the baby a selection of board books for his little library. I promised myself on the way to the shower that I would stay for just a little while, and then leave. So I went to the shower. When I showed up, everything was in disarray. My pregnant friend J. looked totally exhausted and the person throwing the shower had flaked out. Nothing was set up. The food wasn't out. The decorations weren't up. The cupcakes weren't iced. People were milling around, drinking and eating from under the plastic covering everything, but nobody was helping the poor mother to be, whose party we were attending!

So I put my feelings aside. I rolled up my sleeves and I spent the next hour decorating cupcakes, making little fondant blankets for little fondant baby heads to peek out of. And to my surprise, I enjoyed myself. I was having fun being useful. And even thought J and I have never been close, and even though I had been jealous of her happiness, I found that it didn't matter, because I was happy. I was happy for her, and I was happy to help. It felt good to help. And as I worked, I knew that my time would come, and I decided to look forward to it with anticipation, and to cherish the last few months of my carefree, childfree existence.

Well.

When I got home, just for laughs, I took a dollar store pregnancy test, and it was positive. At least: I thought it was. There was a line--wasn't there? Maybe? Or was it a shadow? I couldn't be sure. I took every pregnancy test I had in the house--I had bought a huge batch of them months ago, at the beginning of this--but they all were ambiguous. Finally, James and I ran across the street to get a digital test, the kind that says PREGNANT or NOT PREGNANT and faint little lines be damned!

I did the test--we waited--

PREGNANT. Definitively.

Based on my ovulation date, I am 4 weeks pregnant today. My baby, if we both manage to survive these long, long three seasons ahead of us, should be born around May 10, 2011. A springtime baby. My baby--mine and James's.

I feel like an entirely different person than the one I was days ago. I am so happy. I thought my hormones were supposed to be wreaking havoc? But they aren't, emotionally. I just feel great. I did have a sobbing fit earlier today when I read my baby was only as big as a poppy seed--it just seems so small, and it makes me worry. Something that small can get lost. I know the odds, and I want my baby to grow big and strong and be out of danger, and I want to be sure that it will stay, that it will be born. But that worry, though it's there, feels small next to the peace and wonder and joy I feel.

(And the hunger I feel. I'm SO HUNGRY. AND TIRED. And this weird heartburn--yeesh. But that might be because I am craving food with Tabasco in it. AND LOTS of it! And my boobs are aching--they feel like they've been punched, hard.)

So far we've told my mom and dad, and nobody else yet--save you ladies who read this blog. But I don't want to tell too many people--I'm afraid they'll make a fuss. My baby is so small right now, and a big fuss feels too big for him. I want to keep it a secret, but at the same time, I was bursting to tell someone. I really didn't feel right keeping it from you guys. I've noticed that I can't talk to anybody now because all I want to do is shout from the rooftops. I'M HAVING A BABY! And I definitely want to be able to keep talking to you. :) But this is TOP SECRET until October or so, and I'll probably take this journal entry down tomorrow in case snoopy-snoops should stumble across it and spread it around.

I have my first prenatal appointment on Thursday. I am equal parts excited and nervous about it. Basically, I am equal parts excited and nervous about everything right now. I am glad I turned to God before I got this news, because now I am able to pray with a sincere heart: Dear Lord, please let everything be OK. Please let my baby be healthy and normal and strong. And to trust in His wisdom, and put my life--and this new life inside of me--into His capable hands.

A few months ago, Adrienne, you said something about not having time to write because you were so busy at work, and I heard you, but I didn't understand. After a month and a half of working, I finally do. I have my whole Sally story planned out in my head, but by the end of the day I want to throw my computer out of the window and turn my brain off and zone out until bedtime. Why does real life have to interfere with my hobbies?

This is especially hard, because just yesterday I finally finalized (finally!) plans for my new novel. It took me so hard to come up with something original. I have the bad habit of reading something that I like, and letting that influence me. I wanted something original, and something fresh. I wanted to write a book that showed my love of reading.

Well, finally I came up with the perfect (in my quite modest--can't you tell?--opinion). I was reading through Jane Austen's unfinished novel, The Watsons, and I thought, suddenly, wouldn't it be great if I converted this to a modern-day New York--and finished it? It would be combining my two main writing genres: fanfiction and chicklit.

I have been so excited about this idea. Since you guys are Austenites, I can tell you what I have planned and you will understand. I am not going to stick literally to the five chapters Austen set out, but the relationships will be the same, and the ending she had in mind will still happen. I've decided to call my novel The Watson Women, and it will focus on three sisters. If I was going to write a book blurb about it, the kind that appears on the back covers of books, I imagine it would look something like this:

When Penelope Watson stole her sister Liza's boyfriend, Parviz, she did more than break up a relationship--she broke up a sisterhood. For ten years, the Watson sisters have grown farther and farther apart from each other. Liza married in haste, and now is repenting her hasty decision, and regretting her dull life as a wife and mother. Youngest sister Emma went to England to study and stayed. And scheming Penny is still the same selfish girl now that she was back then.

But when their brother, Sam, announces that he is marrying Maisie Edwards, the women are thrown together again. Emma comes home for the wedding eager to show off her British fiance, Osborne, only to find that she is drawn to Sam's best friend (her former high school classmate) Howie. As Liza sees her sister's interest in Howie growing, she decides that it's time to reconnect with Parviz, with disastrous results. And Penny worries that she may be reaping her well-deserved bad relationship karma: her playboy boyfriend, Tom Musgrave, has a chronic wandering eye, and seems less and less interested in her every day. Have Penny's past actions cursed her love life forever?

The Watson sisters aren't the only ones with problems. Bride-to-be Maisie is having second thoughts about starting a family with a med student who's never around. When she announces she is calling off the wedding, the Watson women must come together to try and protect their brother's chance for happiness. Can they convince Maisie to change her mind about Sam--and can they ever be friends, as well as sisters, again?

Like I said, it's not exactly the same as the Jane Austen book--I've deleted the other sister, Margaret, for one--but I think it could be a natural outgrowth of Austen's original story. I am ridiculously excited to start outlining--if I could only find the time! Stupid job!

Today was the first day in a week when my depression lifted. It isn't fully gone, but it's only pattering rain right now instead of storming. Last night I allowed my doubts to come creeping in, and by bedtime I was a mess of tears and frustration and fear all over again. But this morning, it was better and it's still good, if not perfect, right now. It's better.

There are probably a lot of reasons why I am feeling more hope. And there's a reason I am decidedly NOT and it's this book I'm reading. Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, written by Marcus Borg. It's interesting and full of historical tidbits and Borg is really, really knowledgeable (although scarily named--BORG!) and I am liking the book immensely as a book. But I've just gotten to the part where Borg makes his case that Jesus was not divine. However, he says, this doesn't matter because Jesus is living proof of how people can be inspired by God, who is divine. The problem is that I find his argument so convincing. That's upsetting, because I want my Jesus to be divine. I want the Christ of faith, not the historical Christ, however inspired by God he might have been.

I have emailed my friend Mike who is the most devout Catholic I know and whom (I think) believes in the literal Jesus. He is writing me a response and I am hoping it will help me. I know I shouldn't need Catholicism to help me experience God, but it's what I was raised in, and it's the framework I know, and so I am going to go back to it, at least for a while, to ease myself back into the spiritual world. I don't plan (or really want) to go back to the Church, but I think I need a numinous moment, the kind Borg writes about, the kind he experienced and the thing about his book I find most compelling. I don't know if I've ever experienced God in my life that way, so fully, so completely. I don't think I've ever had that kind of transcendent moment (except the first moment I saw James, before he even spoke, when I was kind of lifted out of myself and toward him) but the closest I have gotten (other than that) has been at Mass. I need to be reminded of the holy. I need to go, this week, because that's the place I open myself up best.

I say that I haven't "experienced" God, but a spate of things has happened to me in the last few days, since deciding to open myself to Him, things that are almost miraculous to me in my hope-ridden life. An agent wants to read my book. I had emailed this agent back in the start of the year, and had almost given up hope that she would ever respond. And the letter came two days ago, right at the darkest hour before dawn, right at the time when I decided to open myself up to God. A reminder: that life can be good, and fun, and joyful, and exciting. I needed that. I needed it.

Secondly, I had been despairing about ever finding enough clients to make ends meet in my business, but then today another potential client got in touch with me and wants me to take an editing test to maybe work for their agency. After hundreds of resumes and applications, something, finally. And yet I doubt God's goodness? I feel like God is tapping me on the shoulder and saying, "Um, Cathy? What else do you need me to do?"

Maybe these things would have happened anyway, but they still would have been of God, wouldn't they? It could be that He's always been reaching out, waiting for me to turn to Him. This just happened to be the moment I noticed what He's been doing for me, all along.

The cloud has lifted a bit. Thank God. I mean it: thank you, God. Thank you for a little of my life back. Things aren't perfect right now, and I have the feeling I'm still going to require some medical help to get over this hump of my depression. But I understand that any lingering fear or anxiety I am feeling might be because of my human mind trying to explain something so much bigger than itself rather than God not being there for me.

O LORD, my heart is not proud, nor my eyes haughty;

Nor do I involve myself in great matters,
Or in things too difficult for me.
Surely I have composed and quieted my soul;
Like a weaned child rests against his mother,
My soul is like a weaned child within me.
O Israel, hope in the LORD
From this time forth and forever.

Last night, immediately after posting my last entry, I was full of terror and darkness and didn't know what to do. God bless my agnostic husband, though, because he took me and sat me down and told me to pray. And as soon as he said it, I knew that's what this whole swell of emotion had been: a prayer. Only I wasn't directing it to God, because I wasn't sure of Him. And he couldn't answer, because I had closed myself off.

So I closed my eyes and I said, "God, I put my heart in your hands tonight. Please hold it for me, so that I can have a little peace and respite from my fear."

As soon as I had thought those words, I felt peace come over me, like a blanket. Like when I am having the height of my panic, and I take a Klonopin. It was that good, that complete. And I felt better.

I kept running my mind through the old songs that we used to sing in church for the responsorial psalm, and one in particular jumped out at me, one that I cantered many, many times back at Pius.

The Lord is my Light, my help my salvation
Why should I fear? With God, I fear nothing
God protects me all my days
With the Lord, what should I dread?

I kept repeating it over and over to myself, even singing it out loud. Even after I stopped being Catholic, stopped being religious, I loved to sing that song. Now I know that is because something in me was aching, crying out for light. Because something in me recognized the truth of those words.

My doubts have come back today, not in full force, but they are there. My rational brain keeps trying to make logical sense of the divine, even of the divinity I have felt, trying to draw parallels, trying to explain things and scoffing at it, when it can't. I am working through this. I don't really have a plan except to keep praying, and to keep opening myself up to the Lord. I don't think my faith is even as large as a mustard seed at this point, but to use the analogy, I am going to plant my faith and tend to it and try to let it grow. As Adrienne said, I am not going to bar the door, but to throw it wide open.

One day, I feel sure I will look back at this moment and be able to see that God was already there in this heart that feels so empty right now.

I appreciate so much the testimonies and the stories and the verses you guys have shared with me. I would be so honored and grateful if you could keep them coming and I thank you for the ones you have given me so far.

Soul darkness

James and I have had a really rough couple of months this year. His grandmother and grandfather died recently, within weeks of each other. His grandfather was sick, but his grandmother wasn't. She just died. I don't think she could face life without him.

I spent a little too much time dwelling on morbid thoughts lately. My imagination is a curse sometimes--I started thinking about how it would feel to be dying, to be on the very edges of life, with a void on the other side of me. How horrible it will feel to know I am losing myself--losing everything--as I slip over it, and outside of life forever. For ever. A cold fear went through my veins and I was literally paralyzed with the worse sense of fear I have ever known, and I have known fear on many occasions. It was like being tortured--soul tortured. I don't want to die. I don't want to lose myself. I don't want the ones I love to be gone, just gone. Gone.

This awful feeling has persisted for the last four days. I have sunk down deep into something and I can't see my way out. I feel as though my life has become suddenly cursed. I don't know how I will ever be happy again, with the End of Everything waiting for me, leering at me, down the road. I got a letter from an agent today. She wants to see my manuscript. I felt no joy. James and I are trying for a baby. I feel only fear in the prospect of that. Any happiness I have--any friendships I make--any people I love--won't they all be taken from me, in the end? Won't we all lose each other? Why live, then? How can I live?

This isn't a cry for help in the after-school special sense of the concept. I'm not thinking of doing anything horrible to myself or anything like that. But I do need help, friends. I'm working with my doctor on the physical effects of my fear, but I need a rebirth of hope. I think--I think I want to be saved. Saved, with a capital S. I don't know, though. I can try to love God with my whole heart and soul and mind, but I don't know if I can tear my doubts down enough to follow Christ truly. I want to love God and I want the eternal life that Jesus promises, but I don't know if I will ever be able to believe in His existence with my whole heart. There will always be a skeptic in me that doubts Him. Can I still turn to Him, even if I know that I will doubt him? Will He still hear my cry, if I am turning to him out of pure fear?

I don't know what to do. But I feel as though my soul has hit rock bottom, and I need lifting up. I don't want to be afraid. I want to believe that life goes on for me after my body is finished on the Earth, that it goes on for all of the people I love, for everyone. I want to believe that the world is place for our souls to learn to act out the goodly things, love and generosity and joy and kindness and comfort, to prepare us for a world where we will abound in those things, free from the cumber of our mortality. But--I don't know if I can believe. A verse that my mom always used to quote to me as a skeptical child comes to me now: "Lord, help my unbelief!"

As a smart-assed twenty year old, I thought that religion was one of the childish things I would have to put off with my youth. And now I fear that I will never get back to that place. I want to go there so badly. But I have built up my wall against the divine, the sublime, so high. I held myself out as an unbeliever. I convinced myself that science and logic and reason can explain everything. Now I am not sure, but I have built that wall so high that I don't know if I will ever be able to tear it down.

I find myself cowering on a road, and the only end I see is Death. I want to be on the road to Emmaus. I want to live a live of joy, but find myself mired in fear and pain instead. Lord, can You help my unbelief?