Magic and Faith and the Universe

Erika, who conceived two of her boys at the same Silicon Valley fertility clinic as we used to conceive James and Jack, recently had just a horrendous experience.  It was a normal busy day and she had just gotten all three of her young boys (all under 5) home and settled after school and various activities.  Then one of the boys started to look for the beloved new puppy, one that was adopted by the family more than a year after the longtime pet dog had moved to that big farm in the sky.  After searching the house and the yard, it suddenly struck Erika, to her horror, what if the puppy is still in the car?!  It was.  Please click over and give her some love in the comments. 

It's one of those moments, I think, where you just wish you could rewind time and redo things.  Like me with my lost luggage, if I were still thinking about that.  If I had it to do over I would have shipped it. Or carried on select items.  Instead I irrevocably lost a lifetime of treasured mementos because I checked them in luggage that was lost by the airline.

And it makes me think of Julie and her dad's recent death.  If he'd been riding on that road another day, or another moment, would the same thing have happened?  What could have been changed to prevent tragedy?

For me, it has been hard not to take such things personally. For example, after the loss of our first IVF baby to Trisomy 18, I spent a lot of time feeling as if God now hates me.  Sometimes I still feel that way.  What have I done to piss off the Universe so much that I'm receiving this bad bad karma.  And it was a surprise for me to feel that way, because most of my life I've felt lucky and charmed  -- as if the Universe was looking out for me and protecting me from harm.

I was non-functional after we lost Will, our Trisomy 18 baby, and in spite of other tragedies in my life, that was the first that had had such a profound effect on me.  During this period, one day David took me to a rocky beach about an hour from where we lived in Silicon Valley.  We'd been there many times before. It is a place where waves crash on giant rocks and cliffs.  Big sea birds and seals gather on boulders that are set back from the water's edge. There are tide pools where you can see a microcosm of sea life in tiny tide pools formed on hollowed out rocks.

On that day I spent some time looking at those tide pools.  At one point I saw that one hermit crab had been washed onto a rock while all his buddies were in the tide pool scurrying around.  The one on the rock had died.  He was away from the water and dried out by the sun.

And at that moment I knew that God didn't hate that particular hermit crab and love the other hermit crabs. It was random. And at that moment I realized the Universe did not express its hate for me by afflicting my son with Trisomy 18.  Things happen.  Some babies have problems and others do not.  The Universe doesn't punish people by making their babies sick. Or by making some people sub-fertile. Or by causing horrible and tragic accidents to happen.  Such things are random and can happen to anyone.

A few years ago one of the ladies on "The View", Star whats-her-name, was talking about how she'd been to Sri Lanka a few weeks before the tsunami hit that nation.  She said she felt blessed by God that she wasn't there when it hit.  But does that mean that God damned the entire nation of people in Sri Lanka while he spared Star?  No.  It is random.

So instead of feeling unprotected by the Universe, the realization of the randomness of things made me realize that I had not been targeted. God didn't hate me. And most of the time I intellectually still believe this, although emotionally sometimes it is still a challenge.

(Cecily talked about similar feelings in her recent post Faith and Trust) 

But the idea that bad things can happen, even to me, has left me feeling less safe in the world and more protective of my babies. There's a shadow there that didn't exist before. Maybe part of that also comes from watching too many episodes of "Without a Trace" (someone told us the main character looks like David) and too many news stories about crimes against children.

(In conjunction with Mel's happiness project, I am seriously thinking about going on an Internet and TV news diet. Too much of a time suck and too many new things for me to worry about.)  It won't stop bad things from happening in the world.  But it will limit their affect on my outlook on life. I think it's important to approach life with optimism because it helps to minimize bad things.  (see what the Dalai Lama says: world peace through inner peace)

I think that it's important to limit the effects of the shadow. The trick is to not let that shadow darken the joy that is the rest of my life -- my living sons, my husband, the home we are slowly making here in our new town, and plenty of other things too.  So I'm trying to figure out how to do that.

Comments

[Eva]

Yes, it is all random. Personally I find that acceptable and actually comforting, but a lot of people like to attribute happenings to divinity or fate or whatever.

Everything in the universe is random and yet on schedule.

[Erika, Plain Jane Mom]

What a beautiful post. Thank you.