It was 15 years ago one evening I'm out with some friends when I get a phone call from my brother saying he found a puppy on the way home from his night out and that it's sitting in my bathtub right now. That night had been challenging. It's not long since I lost my dad to a long battle of alcoholism, I'm having stomach problems of all sorts so I happened to be at the hospital on an emergency appointment just before I went to visit my friends and received this life changing phone call.
I ask my brother, 'does she have fleas?' He says 'no, just some flying bugs around her in the bathtub'.
Fleas, of course, many of them. When I first saw her she was shaking like a leaf, tiny and soggy from the bath water, drinking the shampoo water from the bath tub. She was the most adorable thing i'd ever seen. She was only meant to stay with us until she was better and I'd found someone who was going to adopt her. The TV repairman next door and his daughter.
The first night I had with her I dried her from her flea infested bath, gave her some clean water to drink and fed her liver pate with lots of garlic, having heard somewhere that garlic was good for worms. After seeing her flea situation I could only guess how many other organisms were also inhabiting her tiny body. Her little breath stank of garlic. I wrapped her up in a blue cloth, you could only see the tip of her nose, and put her in a white Styrofoam box, the closest thing I could find to a doggy bed.
The same doggy is now 15 with white whiskers and a freshly shaved belly from a liver scan she recently had, she's curled up in her wicker basket under the radiator and resting her tired little legs. The vet put her on a weeks rest for her hind left leg to heal.
My heart is in pieces.
I've lost people I've loved and felt the deep pain of that. But I've always loved dogs way more than people, they could never hurt you as much as people can.
So D and I got married just over 4 months ago and have been trying for a baby for almost 2,5 years now. Me being 36 and he 37, our time and options are becoming limited, or so it feels.
We're in the process of starting IVF, but secretly I pray that we can conceive without me having to be pumped full of hormones. I believe nature knows best in most areas of life, so why would this be any different.
So far according to the doctors our infertility is 'unexplained'
I have a flashback of being 15 or so and being so angry with the world around me that I decided I would adopt a child instead of having my own...
Not to mention the doubts in my head about ever becoming a parent worthy of raising another human being...
Then there was a dream I had about half a year ago about a blonde little girl, aged 2 or 3 in a snow white dress, waiting for us to adopt her...
And then there was the day we watched the film LION, and the scene in it when the adoptive mother, Nicole Kidman's character talks about her past, her alcoholic father and her vision of adopting children later on in life...
Who knows what God has in store for us. I am keeping an open mind for D's sake and from gratitude to God for keeping me sane all these years and for giving me hope again.
I wake up very often in the middle of the night around 2-3 am and cant get back to sleep so I pray and talk to God and ask for healing for all the sadness I'm still carrying. I look at cheerful people and so wish to be one of them, but when I'm on my own with my thoughts I still find so much pain and struggle, especially lately with what we've been through with Lujzi, the only baby I've ever had...
Last night I was quite poorly with my cold and feverish headache and had a longer than usual chat with 'Papa' the name given to God in the wonderful film The Shack. In this film God appears as a beautifully warm and loving lady brought to life by the radiant Octavia Spencer. When Mack the main character who grew up with an alcoholic, abusive father first meats her and looks shocked and puzzled, her very poignant reply was something like 'with a past like yours we didn't think you could handle a father figure'. How very appropriate as far as I'm concerned.
So my very lengthy conversing flowed into a very soothing resting with God, like I was being cradled and held safe, reassuring me that whatever life brought, this safe haven would always be here for me to return to no matter what.
I just lay there hot with fever, gasping for air through my mouth as my nose was so blocked up, thinking of all the people and animals I love dearly, and the fear of losing them suddenly turned into a letting go.. A handing over everything to God and trusting that he or shall I say she will watch over them all and never leave their sides whether in this life or what follows.
I have decided to call my God Love, no he, no she just an all embracing Love.
I've just spotted it on a candle in front of me and it says:
'Love makes life lighter'
A beautiful thought to close this entry with, I believe.
Love Noemi
xxx
