​Since November 8th and that miraculously ultrasound, those two unforgettable heartbeats, I’ve pretty much been in hiding, simply waiting out my first trimester.
 
I’ve cancelled lunch dates. Missed two supper clubs. Worked from home when schools have allowed. Stopped working out. Stopped going out.
 
It’s not that my faith became small. It’s that my fear became large.
 
“Monoamniotic twins.”
“Rare.”
“High risk.”
“Required hospitalized bed rest at 25 weeks.”
All the things a bright and shiny new mom doesn’t want to hear.
Shouldn’t have to hear.
 
I wasn’t mad at God. How can I be? I’m a miracle! They are miracles!
 
But like all the things we have endured before, God was preparing us. Jason and I are equipped to handle this. I just didn’t want to.
 
But my Wonder Woman doctor gave us hope. There are two types of Mono twins, there are “Mono Mono” twins and there are “Mono Di.” Twins.
 
“We’re praying for the ‘Mono Di’ kind,” she explained, just thirty minutes after our life altering ultrasound.  
 
With a blank sheet of paper, she is scribbling two scenarios. One, where the amniotic sack is wide open and the twins have free range to float and swim about bumping elbows and throwing imaginary high fives (seriously, that’s what I was thinking). 

​I naively assumed that the waiting would be over as soon as God allowed me to conceive. But even after the Wonder Woman, October 31st shock of my life, I have still been holding my breath and waiting.
 
But this time the waiting doesn’t feel so alone. It’s now a collective holding of the breaths that Jason and I share. Since Halloween, together we’ve held hands, our breaths, and our plans until the following appointment on November 8th. “All we want is a heartbeat,” we repeat to ourselves and each other.
 
And so the agony of waiting once again crept alongside us, like an old friend. You know the kind. The ones who are close-talkers, who arrive way to early, start digging through your frig and begin eating the perfectly round cheese ball long before any of the other guests arrive.
 
That’s how waiting feels; the uninvited guest. The annoying close-talker. The one who gets close enough to whisper all the doubts you are trying so hard to push out with a lot of work and filler noise. 

​​It seems fitting that it’s snowing today. That the ground is covered in white, fluffy flakes of a fresh start. In just twenty-two days, that’s what we’ll all get. A New Year. A fresh start. A white slate.
 
But we can’t move forward without reflecting back. I think this entire “Year of Whimsy” in some way has been a reflection. Like the Children’s Book “Zoom” I received at my AP Seminar training in July of 2014, the first image that you see, the one you begin to focus in on, is not the entire picture. In fact, it’s just a detail of a detail, and by zooming out, slowly, with intention, you begin to see what is truly there. What began as finally verbalizing the brokenness behind my failed attempts at motherhood and belonging, that detail of a detail, has merged into a year-long reflection upon my inability to let go and Let God.
 
Now, I’m not cured. Far from it! I think I will always be a struggling perfectionist. A struggling control freak (I know, you don’t say!). But that’s what whimsy was all about for me. Whimsy was about the attempt to let go. Slowing uncurling my fingers from the life I was so desperately trying to force, and learning to open that hand to the life God has so desperately been trying to give.