Things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. —E.B. White
Shortly after dawn, I stepped out of the house into a cold fog. Our dog pulled me along by her leash. Twelve days before, the sun had smiled in the blue sky as my wife and I walked hand-in-hand out of the center for reproductive medicine, wondering if the in vitro would at last make us parents.
But now on this gray morning nearly two weeks later, as our dog took me for a walk, the weather seemed like a bad omen. It was the day we would find out if my wife was pregnant. There was not even a hint of color in the slate sky.
~
Even before we were married, my wife and I loved to talk about having children. But first there was seminary for both of us, noses in the books, little money to spare.
After graduation, I was called to serve a small, rural church. The sanctuary was just down the road from the manse, which had plenty of rooms we could turn into a nursery and then eventually bedrooms for multiple kids. Those were dreamy days. With a wink, parishioners would say, my, just how big that old house must be for only two people! I’d give a big old goofy grin. My wife would tell me not to get ahead of myself.
We tried to have a baby, and we had fun trying. Months passed. She began charting her body temperature to track her menstrual cycle. As months turned to years, I became tight-lipped and grim-faced. Whenever the topic of children came up, I’d change the subject. I’ve since read studies that have shown the stress of infertility to be equal to the stress experienced with a terminal illness diagnosis.
We were referred to a center for reproductive medicine. A battery of anatomy tests on both of us revealed no red flags. But no quick solutions either. The official diagnosis was “unexplained infertility.”
Through the years there were many afternoons when my wife would bawl in my arms until she’d cried herself to sleep. Then the dog would take me for a walk. The weather seemed to be showing off, flaunting its beauty. There were crisp, clear days with the sun behind the golden leaves, blue sky over a soft blanket of snow, and gentle breezes in the budding trees.
How could the world go on as if nothing were horribly wrong?
I’d heard all my life that the Lord works in mysterious ways. Wise elders have always said that you have to keep going, weathering the storms of life. But without any explanation for infertility, I felt like this was a sick cosmic joke at our expense. I felt like suffering Job of old, railing against God: Therefore I will not refrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul (Job 7:11).
~
We began in vitro fertilization. I say “we.” I only administered the shots.
Every evening, she would stand before the sink in what we hoped would be the baby’s bathroom. I would sit on the rim of the clawfoot tub and ready the needle as she slipped her yoga pants down. I’d wait for her to take a deep breath, then nod. The nurse had coached me: “It’s like throwing a dart.” Ah, but dart boards neither grimace nor yelp in pain. She was not above taking the Lord’s name in vain, either. Not that I could blame her.
On the day her eggs were retrieved, there was a minor, last-minute delay just before she was to be taken to the operating room. I stood by her gurney and held her hand. The nurse had already given something to “relax her.” My wife looked at me sleepily and asked, “What are you going to do while I’m back there?”
“I’m going to pray like hell,” I replied.
She giggled. “You said, ‘hell.’”
The nurse came and whisked her away. I went to the window and did what I’d promised. There was a happy yellow sun in the winter sky.
~
Though I pray throughout all the seasons of my life, I have only asked God, The Universe, The Coherent Mercy, or Whatever-You-Wish-to-Call-It, for two signs.
The first was the summer before sixth grade when my best friend was supposed to move right before the start of middle school. In the woods outside my house, I asked for a sign that he would stay. As soon as the whispered plea had left my lips, the wind rushed out of nowhere and rattled the trees. I took this as assurance of a divine promise…then his family moved as planned.
The morning of the embryo transfer, I prayed at my in-law’s kitchen sink, overlooking their statue of Saint Francis and an empty birdbath. This was in the dead of winter. I asked for a sign that we would have a child. Suddenly there was a flicker of blue—one, two birds came to rest on the feeder. Then a third one fluttered into view and perched exactly between them. Bluebirds at this time of year? Three of them? I almost couldn’t believe it. Almost.
Again, I think of old Job: Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know (Job 42:3).
~
By the time the dog and I had returned home on that fateful morning, worries had further clouded my mind and darkened my thoughts. I puttered about the kitchen, making coffee and oatmeal as loudly as possible in hopes that my wife would come downstairs. I didn’t want to be alone.
When she (finally) joined me at the kitchen table, we reviewed The Plan for the umpteenth time. She would take the car to the doctor’s office and have blood drawn. I would walk to church and teach Bible study. It didn’t feel right to leave her, but I was trying to carry on as normal lest suspicions be raised.
“The doctor said she’d call later this afternoon,” my wife reassured me one last time as I lingered at the door. “Besides, I’ll just go shopping afterward.”
I nodded, kissed her cheek, scratched behind the dog’s ears, and walked to church in the cold, damp, gray air. Still no sign of the sun.
~
Our Bible study always took place in the Shepherd’s Room, so named for the woodcut of Psalm 23 that hung on the wall—The Lord is my shepherd. The room had been furnished in memory of a parishioner who had died years before I arrived. But folks would still shake their heads at the mention of her name and say wistfully, “She was a ray of sunshine.”
The Shepherd’s Room had a long couch with a pair of matching armchairs around a glass-top coffee table. Metal folding chairs could be hauled up from the fellowship hall downstairs in the event that more seats were needed, but the weekly Bible study rarely exceeded a half-dozen folks. I actually preferred it that way.
I’d arrive early in order to turn on the space heater beforehand because its motor was loud and interfered with an old man’s hearing. He and his wife, along with another couple around the age of my parents, were my closest friends, mentors, and confidants in that church. Still, I hadn’t breathed a word of the IVF.
I don’t remember what Bible passage the five of us studied that day. I remember the weather. As the hour slowly passed, a drizzle of rain started, then stopped. The air lightened. The old man caught my distracted gaze.
“Looks like snow,” he said. I rebuffed him. I’d been checking the forecast because I would have been glad for the excuse to cancel that particular morning’s Bible study. But there was no chance of wintry precipitation. Zero percent.
I concluded the study exactly at one hour with a very short prayer. Lifting my head and opening my eyes, I saw the first snowflakes drifting gently down into the gravel parking lot.
“Looks like snow,” the old man said again, grinning like a little boy.
Little did I know that, down the road back at the manse, my wife was watching the same snow. The doctor had called while she’d been in the middle of Target.
~
After saying goodbye to the folks in the Bible study, I lingered alone in the Shepherd Room and stared at the woodcut on the wall. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
Back in the manse, my wife watched the last car pull away from the gravel lot. Her hands shook as she attached the leash to our dog.
I locked the church door from the outside and began to walk home. The snow fell in big, wet flakes and I stopped to watch it cover the tombstones in the church’s cemetery.
Then I heard our dog barking.
I looked down the road at the exact moment my wife came into view around the bend.
“I’m pregnant!”
I froze in disbelief.
“Pregnant!”
Then I sprinted toward her, slipped onto one knee, and got back up. She crashed into my arms, and I heard our dog barking as if in the distance, though she was right behind us. I lifted my wife off the ground and we spun and spun, both of us laughing and laughing until, exhausted, I set her down gently. Her cheeks were wet and red. I cupped her face and I kissed her mouth with my eyes open, the snow coming down around us like a fairy tale, a myth, something almost too wonderful to be true. Almost.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman serves as poet pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill, NC. His fourth book, Gently Between the Words, was published in 2019.
