On coming out

If infertility has rocked your world and kept your dreams from happening, then you've had an experience similar to what I had on Friday at lunch.

I'm sitting in the teachers' lounge eating lunch with my co-worker friend who is pregnant. Another co-worker, who is eating lunch with us for the first time in over a month, is talking about how she doesn't want to get pregnant until she can convince her husband to move back to Kentucky to be near her family--as if she is guaranteed the luxury of deciding when and where and how she can conveniently conceive a child. Then, my friend asks, "So when are you and Wisehubby going to try? You seem so baby happy whenever you're around them."

*Gulp*
*Breath*
*Think*
*Respond*

"Well, it is really between me and the guy upstairs," I say; it's my typical circumlocution. I'm not entirely pleased with the evasion tactic, but I decide that I don't really feel talking about it with the other co-worker present. Plus, Wisehubby is decidely more private than I am, and he works at the same middle school.

Then, it dawns on me that my friend thought I meant Wisehubby when I meant God as "the guy upstairs." After all, Wisehubby was literally teaching one flight of stairs above the teachers' lounge.

I'm forced to reevaluate my response and decide to go for a more direct response. "Well, we had a miscarriage last fall, and we haven't had any luck since."

My friend was polite and said that she was sorry she hadn't known. She talked about how a friend had lost her baby, and that it was very hard. I could almost see her regretting every conversation she's ever had about being pregnant with me.

I didn't come out to her to make her feel bad. I didn't come out to her to make her more sensitive. I came out to her because I just can't tell lies about my hopes and dreams.

I'm not going to pretend that Wisehubby and I haven't been praying for, trying for, dreaming of a baby for a while now. I'm not going to pretend that it doesn't break my heart watching my gentle, kind, loving husband hold other people's babies or play with other people's children with the focus and care that I know he'll give to our Wisebabies someday.

Coming out isn't the easy thing to do; it is the honest thing.