My Policy is to Hope

"Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality." ~ Jonas Salk

This past Wednesday I had another procedure done at the hospital; I'm still trying to figure out what is causing my severe, chronic nausea. But the reason I'm writing about my procedure is because I found the admittance process to be different than it was a year ago when I was last there.

This time, when the nurse came in to do my evaluation, check vitals, etc. she just simply told me I needed to give a urine sample to make sure I wasn't pregnant. That was a HUGE difference from previous times being admitted to this hospital. 

Previously, the nurse would ask for the date of my last period. This time they didn't even bother asking anything at all about whether or not I was still having periods, or if I was menopausal, or anything of that nature... all they cared about was getting the urine sample and making sure it came back negative!

I found this new hospital policy to be very hopeful to any older women who are trying to get pregnant, for, to me, at least, it seems clear that something is going on, some place, and most likely in that hospital group, wherein being 52 is in no way a reason FOR NOT CHECKING FOR PREGNANCY! 

I actually have the feeling that even had I been 54 their policy would still be to do a urine check for pregnancy before allowing a procedure.

So, yeah, I think there is a definite message to all of this, and that is: that some woman/women are 52 - or even older! - and they were found - surprising as it may have been to them, AND the hospital! - to be pregnant. A hospital doesn't just whimsically make hospital policy without there having been a precedent set for needing to make it!

No Coincidences in Life

"There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from." ~ Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Ever since I was in my twenties I have lived with the mantra that "there are no coincidences in life." Somewhere along my path those words came together for me and stayed, on a gut level. I even have a journal wherein I keep track of "coincidences" or synchronistic-seeming events - however big or small - that come into my awareness. 

My thinking is, that if - with all the stimuli one has bombarding them throughout the day - some one thing stands out in such a way as to make you fully conscious of it, whether it is because you "feel" the "coincidence" of the thing, or the "synchronicity" of whatever has happened - especially because you were made aware of it - it is meant for you to acknowledge, give thought to, and even appreciate. 

In my mind, those events are like messages - signs - that are God's way of "talking" with you. If you ever feel like you only ever have one-way conversations with God, I would encourage you to open your eyes, ears and heart to the way in which he is best able to express vividly his thoughts or desires for you. And, if you ask for that kind of "conversation," I believe you will be astonished out how often it can take place. 

I seem to ask for "conversations" all the time, I suppose because I am one of the "thee of little faith." I'm always - especially when still faced so strongly with the, as yet, unfulfilled longings of my heart and soul - on the look-out for whatever "patterns" come to me to help keep me dreaming in miracles. 

I'm writing all of this because I had, what I would consider, a very synchronistic, "coincidental" event happen from last night to today. 

Last night I read an article with the headline: 

Is Gwen Stefani Pregnant?

It's that time of the week again when the celebrity weeklies hit the newsstands. To separate what's real and rumor, we turned to our frie…

She's not. But then I read a few of the comments that were made and one struck me: 

Bicycle Girl • a day ago
She's 46 for crying out loud! How can a maternal dinosaur be pregnant when her eggs are nothing but dust in the wind? Her breeding days are over. She has more than enough kids already.
7  • Reply•Share 

Of course, me being me, I felt the need to make a reply. But first I wanted to get my facts straight. So I googled some of the late-in-life celebrity pregnancies. Though numerous names popped up, I used Halle Berry because I felt like she was probably the most well known. And so wrote to Bicycle Girl saying: 

L  Bicycle Girl • 21 hours ago
Umm... Halle Berry had her most recent baby at 47 years old... pretty sure her baby is not a dinosaur! But if you want to spend time being misogynist over age, well, I guess that's what the internet is for!
2  • Edit• Reply•Share ›  

Needless to say, Bicycle Girl's response was less than kind... like, way less! lol! 

But what had happened when I googled the "late-in-life celebrity pregnancies" was that I was reminded of Geena Davis and how she had had her first child at 46 years old and then at 48 gave birth to twins. I thought on that a bit and was like, that's great for Geena Davis, but I'm four years older than that! 

Now, I know I had googled, once before, pregnancy over age 50 - most likely when I turned 50 - but that was two long years ago and last night I had the thought to google it again to see if anything "new" had developed. It hadn't. My browser history highlighted that I had read just about every story of woman over 50 having kids. I think their were two women who had unplanned pregnancies - meaning the babies were naturally conceived - at age 53, but that had now been a couple of years ago.  I decided I better quit that particular search before I felt a sense of frustration and got pulled down by any negative thoughts regarding my situation. And then today arrived. 

Today, I get on my laptop to read my email and thanks to Yahoo! News I saw the headline: 

Swiss billionaire Margarita Louis-Dreyfus, 53, pregnant with twins*

That caught my attention! But for a second I was confused. I was like, didn't I just google last night woman over 50 who got pregnant? Why didn't this woman come up last night in my search? So, I scrolled to the byline to see when the article was written and it read:

Marie-Noëlle Blessig

January 4, 2016

That's when I thought, "there are no coincidences in life." The synchronicity of having googled the night before a search on women pregnant over 50 and come up "empty-handed" without anything new - in the past two years! - only to be faced the next day with a fresh-off-the-press, 2016 headline regarding this latest woman to get pregnant over 50 seemed like a good enough "conversation" with God for me.** 

And then, as if God wanted to add just a bit more to the conversation, I noticed the last name of the article's writer. When I first glanced at it I read, "Blessing" which, upon a double-take, I re-read as it is, Blessig. But that only encouraged me to see that the first name was Marie-Noëlle. Now most people know that Marie is derived from the name Mary. And many are familiar that Noël means Christmas. Well, when I give the name Mary thought, I always think of Mary the mother of Christ, and I also - along with Sarah - always recall that God sent an angel to her to prophecy his birth. When  I add up all of these thoughts that go through my head, I could wonder, "Why did all these strange thoughts just go through my head?" Or, because I have come closer to understanding my own personal relationship with God and the way I have come to feel he carries on a "conversation" with me, I take it all in as a hope-filled sign. It doesn't matter that I don't quite understand the whole "conversation," only that I get a "feeling" of hope that it provides... and at this point in my journey - neophyte sign-watcher and God to L conversationalist-interpretor that I am - I can't ask for much more.

Everybody has their way of talking to God... it just so happens that my most recent "conversation" came by means of Yahoo! and Google!


*I'm not going to dwell on whether or not this woman used donor eggs - though usually I do, because, though that option is the right one for many women, it isn't the option I'm seeking for myself - because now days I do think that there are many more woman - like myself - who have previously frozen their own eggs and thus, though not a "natural" pregnancy still have the ability to have biological children of their own.

**When I speak of God I use the male tense... that's just me... I grew up thinking of God like that and speaking of God like that; I'm used to it. But by no means do I believe God can only be viewed in male imagery or words. As the Bible tells us we - all - were created in God's image... to me, that means, God is representative of both the feminine and the masculine. But even more truly in my thoughts, I doubt we can even comprehend what form or kind of being God really encompasses... only that he encompasses us!

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