Positive pregnancy tests.

I write my baby letters. Sometimes I speak them to her* when we’re in the car by ourselves. Sometimes I type and save them. Sometimes I pray them aloud so she can hear. There’s no telling what people will say to her when she gets here, so I want to make sure she’s got nine months of truth packed into her tiny brain. I tell her how much her dad and I love her, how wonderful her family is, how she can always trust Jesus. In fact, I never run out of things to tell her. The problem is I can’t seem to write about her. I wish I could tell you how miraculous she is and how much joy and wonder she’s brought us already. But every time I try, it comes out in a syrupy, overwrought voice that doesn’t sound much like mine.

I can tell you this. For a full decade, four medical professionals (three of whom are doctors) in two states assured me I couldn’t support a pregnancy past five weeks, and my body proved them right three times. It wouldn’t produce progesterone, and artificially spiking production didn’t work. PCOS seemed to be the culprit, but no one was certain. After several fruitless months of trying and three losses during my five-year first marriage, I didn’t have a reason to believe the doctors were wrong.

Then on March 8 of this year, I married the strongest, kindest man I’ve ever met. And almost immediately started vomiting.

We went on the honeymoon I’ve always dreamed of – mountains, cabin, fireplace, Jacuzzi, wine. And it was good. And never did “ovulation days” cross my mind because I was so obviously, certifiably, doctor-approvedly infertile. But then sneaky things started happening. A few mornings I felt so nauseated I couldn’t get my clammy self out of bed. And with a passion unrecognizable to me, I craved red meat. As in, I literally salivated over the raw hamburgers at the grocery store one day. I might have torn the package open with my fangs and feasted if the butcher hadn’t been right in front of me, asking from a healthy distance whether I needed assistance.

Then on the 17^th of April, I put on my favorite dress, kissed my husband, and headed to work. I realized I hadn’t menstruated, an odd thing since my medicine keeps me from being even an hour late. So on a whim I picked up a pregnancy test and a decaf coffee on my way. Maybe a few prayers escaped into the air as I did these things, but mostly my mind raced with menstruation math. When I arrived at my desk, I set down my bag calmly. I sauntered to the restroom. My steady hands placed the test on the sink. Less than a minute later, I peered over and saw the two pink lines that had already formed. Two. “Oh, God,” I breathed.

People have asked if we were trying to get pregnant. Of course, the answer is no; not only were we not trying, but we didn’t think we could. That doesn’t mean, however, that my baby is a “mistake.” Even though she wasn’t part of our plan, she has always been part of the Great Design God has for the planet. Our plan is short-sighted and imperfect in a thousand ways. But this baby – the one whose mother has a reproductive disorder – is the one God has chosen. He wants a person created out of our DNA, to be parented by us, to make his compassion and power visible to others. So whether the timing seems right or wrong, whether my body seems capable or incapable, whether other people agree or disagree, my man and I will love and raise our baby to bring glory to God.

I asked God one night in an overwhelmed state, “How did this happen? And why is it happening now?” I got an answer, flashing in my heart like a marquee: For my glory. So I already know how the story turns out: God’s glory will be undeniable. What a perfect reason for a baby to be born.

* I say “her” for two reasons: 1) simplicity, and 2) I believe I’m carrying a girl. The night my first pregnancy ended, which I have already written about, I knew I would one day have a baby girl and her name was supposed to be Anna because “Anna” means “grace.” I believe I am pregnant with that promise.

Ears.

I have this thing with names. I’ve written about it once already. The thought of giving a blessing or honoring someone or telling a story with your baby’s name is such a precious concept to me. Many names are on my Love-It List, but as long as I can remember, my favorite name of all has been Kate. Growing up, my most beautiful Barbie was Kate. My favorite paper doll—yes, I played with paper dolls—was Kate. Just last year, I asked on FaceBook what my pen-last-name should be if my pen-first-name was Kate. It’s the perfect name—simple, elegant, and timeless.

So when I got pregnant in July 2008, I was beside myself with excitement. I kept thinking, Kate’s here! She didn’t stay long enough for me to know by way of scientific confirmation that she was a girl, but I know anyway because moms just know. When I daydreamed about what the rest of her name could be, a Buechner quote kept resurfacing: “Grace is something you can never get but only be given. There’s no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries…or bring about your own birth.” Having for years worn that definition of grace like a pair of contact lenses, I knew my daughter could have no other name. She was something I could never deserve, something only God could give me. My then-husband let me take the reins with naming, so I chose Anna Catherine. Anna means “grace,” and Catherine means “pure,” so my baby girl would be named “pure grace.” Which is exactly what she was. But she’d go by “Kate,” of course.

Unfortunately, Kate faded from me on Sunday, 14 September. I cried steady, silent tears, sitting with my back against the tub. I was a heartbroken mother whose daughter had been taken in the night. I hadn’t protected her, hadn’t known how. I did the only thing I could: I crawled back into bed and prayed. At first, I heard nothing, but the tender presence of the Holy Spirit comforted my heart. Then I had a powerful, inexplicable urge to look up Isaiah 49:16, a verse I did not already know. Bewildered, I opened my Bible and read: “See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands…” My name. Kate’s name. The tears came again, but this time for an entirely different reason. The verse reminded me that I am so precious to God that when he looks down at his hands—or, perhaps, Jesus’s—he sees my name. And in a small way, I had the same thing going with my Kate. The veins in my right wrist, I had noticed as a child, form an unmistakable K. After that night, it became a sweet reminder. Kate was gone, but her name was written on my palm, so to speak, and God makes all things new. God restores.

Over time, he has restored my heart. Time, I believe, numbs pain, helps a wound scar over maybe, but God actually heals. Certainly, sadness hits me unexpectedly sometimes, or with unexpected force: it was the saddest and most unfair day of my life, being at once Mother and Not-mother. But God has guided me through the process of letting my daughter stay with him, of not begrudging the laws of nature that sent her his way. For too long, I carried her as a millstone around my neck. I feared that not thinking about her might mean she never existed. As her mother, it seemed to fall on my shoulders to acknowledge her fleeting presence. But God has taken my heart from that prison of grief into a position of grace. I do think about her occasionally, but in a peaceful, heavenly way. I imagine her spinning giddily in a white cotton dress in a field of lavender, so drunk with joy she dissolves into giggles. I imagine her sitting on Jesus’s lap, enamored with him, asking him questions with the ethereal wisdom that a heaven-born child must possess. I imagine her smiling when she sees me, if you do that sort of thing in heaven.

And tonight, when it was time for a little earth-born girl to fall asleep, she wriggled onto the couch next to me and settled into my arms. She looked into my eyes with a beautiful face lit by a grin and laced her fingers with mine. She and I do not share DNA. I do not have memories of her in the womb. She does not belong to me in the way she belongs to her mother. But she loves me, and I love her, and we both love her father more than we could tell you. She and her brother have become a part of my heart, and as I look forward to many years with the man I love, I feel doubly blessed to be their friend as well. I never knew life could be this good, this full. But when God restores life and fulfills promises, he doesn’t do a halfhearted job of it. Speaking of promises, those letters the veins in my wrists so clearly form happen to be their initials—hers and her brother’s. As someone who does not believe in coincidence, only divine winks, you can imagine how this hits me. Especially since her name is “pure grace,” too. And she goes by Kate.

If you ever wondered whether God hears you cry out, whether he knows who you are…he does.

Losing it.

I needed two pairs of shoes—brown sandals and white sandals—so I went to the discount shoe shop in town last Friday. While admiring our feet in the mirror, another customer and I started discussing weight loss. She’d lost 35 pounds and was back to her pre-three-children weight. I told her I’d lost 70 pounds and was smaller than I’d been in high school. We started swapping tips, and since so many people have asked me how I lost my weight, I thought I’d post my eleven most helpful ones here. I’m no guru, but these have worked for me.

1.              Participating in exercise classes. You will inevitably work harder than you would’ve on your own because of the pumping music, trained instructor, and camaraderie of the environment. I found that I especially love Zumba; I’d go even if I weren’t trying to lose weight. If there’s no class, I try to make a workout date with my friend M. That way, I’m less likely to back out or quit early. Plus, we can chat while we treadmill it up. And M is even more motivating than my iPod because we hold each other accountable to the same plan—the same increases and decreases in speed and grade at the same intervals.

2.              Investing in music. On days that I can’t get to the gym, I’m much likelier to take a walk or go for a jog if I have music I want to listen to. Plus, I have some playlists set up that push me hard and then let me rest for a few strides, so the tempo of the songs forces me to do interval training without me really having to think about it when I’m on the track.

3.              Brushing my teeth. My kryptonite is desserts and sodas. I’ve learned, however, that if I brush my teeth when a sweet craving hits, I won’t hit the Oreo cabinet. If I did, they wouldn’t taste right. The sodas, however…I’ll let you know when I get that habit kicked. Which might never happen. Sweet Moses, I love soda.

4.              Buying flavored coffee. I am at a slight advantage in the coffee department because 1) I don’t like coffee drinks, like cappuccinos and sweet lattes, and 2) I don’t take sugar in my coffee. So specialty coffees are a workable substitute for dessert: they’re calorie-free (except for my nondairy creamer), and they have the flavor twist of chocolate-raspberry truffle, vanilla biscotti, cinnamon hazelnut, and so on. Delicious and cozy.

5.              Following Weight Watchers. I love this plan. It helps me with portion control, doesn’t force me to eat anything I don’t want, and is 100% customizable to my preferences and needs. I never feel deprived or hungry or stuffed to the brim with vegetables.

6.              Cutting myself some slack. I started losing weight in August 2010. I lost 70 pounds in one year. Last September, life became really tough, and I simply couldn’t focus on weight loss. So I took five months off. I exercised some, watched what I ate some, and maintained my new weight within five to ten pounds. In March some of my stress cleared, so I refocused on weight loss. I’m nearly at my August 2011 weight again, and I have no reason to stop there. Instead of berating myself for the weight-loss vacation, I’m proud that I was able to keep from gaining much. That is unlike the old Amie. But I have learned to cut myself slack in other ways. For example, if I’m in an exercise class that causes me to work so hard I get nauseated, then I slow down. I don’t get frustrated or embarrassed. If I need a weight-loss free day, I take one. The journey through the last 30 pounds might take longer than I’d like, but that’s okay. The harder I work to get it off, the less likely I will be to put it back on.

7.              Buying higher heels and smaller-sized clothes that I love. After a 70-pound loss, I discovered how sexy I feel in high heels. So now I own a few that I acquired over several months from the discount shoe store. I feel confident when I look in the mirror and see the sculpted calves and lifted derrière that the heels bring out. And little is more motivating than getting a clearance-rack top at Kohl’s for $5 that makes me feel skinny. Buying a cheap something that’s one size down and then fitting into it in a few weeks breeds success quickly.

8.              Reading Women, Food, and God by Geneen Roth. It’s impossible to laud this book enough. Roth is spot-on when it comes to explaining the mental processes and frustrations of chronic dieting. I literally sat amazed, devouring some of the chapters at lightning speed and thinking, How does she know stuff I’ve never let out of my brain?! I highly recommend the book for anyone who’s frustrated with his/her eating habits, particularly if your habits include obsessive dieting or (like mine) emotional eating. NOTE: The book has almost nothing to do with God, and its revelations are certainly not gynocentric in nature.

9.              Finding light but delicious versions of my favorite foods. Hungry Girl (http://www.hungry-girl.com) is an excellent resource for stuff like this. My roommate and I absolutely love her low-cal brownies, and they’re so simple to make. Open a can of pumpkin, pour the whole thing into a package of devil’s food cake mix, stir, and scoop into muffin cups. Bake at 350^o for however long the package suggests, and you end up with luxurious, velvety chocolate cupcakes. They honest-to-God do not taste a bit like low-cal brownies. Finding recipes like this keeps lighter food interesting; I don’t have to eat cottage cheese and celery all day long. I still eat foods I enjoy and just watch how much I consume.

10.           Keeping the goal in mind. I’m losing weight for reasons more important than my appearance. Diabetes runs in my mom’s side of the family. The diminished fertility brought on by PCOS is compounded by obesity. Those two health factors are much more on my mind than appearance…although certainly that is important to me, too. When I’m stressed and I want to eat a whole cake, I try to remember not to sacrifice what I really want for what I want in the moment.

11.           Praying. By far my #1 weapon, but it doesn’t sound like much of a tactic, does it? Here’s the thing. Just like I want to be healthy and take care of myself, God wants that for me, too. He wants me to live abundantly, to present myself to him as a living sacrifice, to take care of the body he gave me. So I pray and ask for help. I ask him to help me resist actions that detract from my goals. I ask him to fortify me with his Spirit and satisfy my heart so that emotional eating loses its appeal. With my God I can scale any wall and crush an army (Psalm 18:29); why would alimentary desires be any different?

I still have 30 pounds to go, but that is so doable. It’s nothing like the 100 I started out needing to lose. My goal is to be down two more sizes by the fall and at my goal weight by next January. I could meet those goals even if I lost less than a half pound per week. It’s the home stretch, y’all!

Mothers Day.

Chances are you think your mother is the greatest of her kind. Me too: mine is beautiful, wise, compassionate, and seriously smart. My mom has spent hours and hours of the last two years on the phone with me while I cried or complained or unloaded fear and hurt. She never turns down a hug or says she’s too busy to listen. She works to make sure everyone in the family has what he or she needs. As I write this, tears of gratitude spring to my eyes, for I am blessed with such an amazing mother. I love that a twenty-four-hour period is set aside for my family to give her an extra dose of special treatment. Mothers Day is a sweet time.

Mothers Day church services are a different story. To those of us who aren’t mothers, it can feel a little like not being tapped into a sorority. The beginning of the church service I was in last Sunday was like this. One of the pastors asked the mothers to stand as he thanked them on behalf of all of us. “Ladies, you make significant sacrifices through the years, and we rarely recognize it. You have answered the highest calling a woman can have: raising children. We want to bless you and thank you for your service to us.” He said other things—he spoke for five or ten minutes—but that’s the gist. My issue with this is not that it’s necessarily untrue: my own mother does some serious sacrificing, and she deserves appreciation for that and so much more. So do all mothers. Across the world, women spend their days cleaning up spills that no one else sees, mending tears in clothes, administering medicine, crying as they rock their children to sleep for hours on end when the little one just won’t cooperate. Mothers are strong, so strong.

But I do not believe that raising children is a woman’s “highest calling.” If that’s true, a sizeable demographic will never reach its female potential. In this subset, some have chosen not to have children for very valid reasons, and some have chosen against wifehood, as well. Some want desperately to have children, but for a reason that mystifies the doctors, it isn’t happening. Some have had surgeries rendering them infertile. Some have hormonal abnormalities, chronic illnesses, or other medical factors that bar them from motherhood. Some have watched in horror as their dreams of motherhood ended abruptly in the bathroom. For some, this holiday is a reminder of the loss of life or the inability to give it, not its celebration.

However, there is much more to the concept of “mothering” than giving birth. Some women who have not and will never bear children have left an indelible mother’s mark on the little ones in their lives. Aunts, stepmothers, grandmothers, nurses, teachers, big sisters, babysitters, family friends—these women and others like them have the same capacity for “significant sacrifice” and “service” to children* as the women whose biological offspring are involved. Mothering, I would argue, is the art of cherishing and guiding children, an art that does not require a functional reproductive system. Mothers encourage. They spend time with children. They cause smiles and laughter. They provide for children’s needs and wants. They teach. They love. Women with unused wombs are just as capable of these functions and eager to fill them as their childbearing counterparts. Many of these mothering-women have played important roles in my life, as I hope to in the lives of others.

So maybe the entrance qualifications for the Mothers-Day sorority can be modified. Rather than honoring only biological or legally adoptive mothers, perhaps we can include all mothering-women who nurture and care for the world’s younger people. While only one woman births us, many, many women along the way help us become who we are. One such woman in my life was A.M., a family friend who spent a lot of time with me during my childhood. She took me out to dinner (and as a good Southern girl, I almost always picked Cracker Barrel), she took me mini-golfing, she invited me to spend weekends with her in her apartment. Many evenings she made us hot dogs and we talked and laughed while eating in her kitchen. A.M. reached out to me: she loved me, cared for me, and looked me in the eye when we talked. I knew I was important to her. And there is no greater gift a mothering-woman can bestow than the message “You’re significant. You’re special. There’s something wonderful inside you that I love to watch and be a part of.”

For A.M. and all the other members of the mothering corps out there, whether you are biological moms or moms of the heart: thank you most sincerely for the love and guidance you so freely give, and a very happy Mothers Day to you.

*Although I use the word “children” throughout, certainly some women mother us when we are already old enough to have children and perhaps grandchildren of our own.