Becoming Better, Not Bitter
Joy isn’t found when your situation is perfected. Joy is experienced when your perspective is shifted…. Circumstances can crush your soul or be a catalyst for joy.
NIRUP ALPHONSE
Thrilled to escape the San Antonio heat for a few days, I flew home to Seattle with the intent of visiting my parents as well as tying up loose ends on the sale of our darling little bungalow we had owned those few short months before our big move. The day after I arrived was warmer than usual, and a dear friend and I took full advantage of the beautiful weather, enjoying crab cakes and muddled strawberry lemonade on the deck of a favorite little spot overlooking Lake Washington. It was a sweet catching up of two friends who have been through so much together, a lifetime of memories in a handful of years. The next morning after an evening absorbed in conversation and laughter, I wasn’t feeling well. Praying I hadn’t consumed bad crab, a thought of pregnancy rolled through my consciousness.
Convincing myself I was being ridiculous, I spent the next several hours back in bed seesawing in discomfort until I gave in and hopped in the car. Mind swirling with what-ifs, I sped past the neighborhood grocery store that sat next to the Blockbuster Video I had worked at through high school for fear that someone I knew would recognize me and want to chat, and pulled instead into a drugstore parking lot farther from my home. Buying a handful of tests that all spouted promises of being the first to recognize a pregnancy, I rushed back home on autopilot, parking my rental car in the same spot I used to park the rickety old Porsche I’d bought at a garage sale when I was nineteen. I shakily walked back inside my parents’ empty house, the silence feeling extremely loud since everyone was at work and I wished they weren’t. Joined by Libby, our family dog, I headed to the bathroom (already a sign I’d never have privacy in the bathroom again).
Yep, pregnant. Each test I took said the same thing.
Forgetting that Ben was off hunting with a buddy where reception was nonexistent, I phoned him with a stunned smile on my face. Voice mail. Ruffled, I called my mom, whose assistant shared that she was in a meeting. Well then. Scrolling quickly to my dad’s name, I rang him next. Unavailable. Frustration beginning to settle in, I phoned my firefighter brother’s phone and my call went straight to voice mail. It was likely his phone was off; he was probably responding to an emergency or catching a quick nap between calls. Mind reeling, I tried my best friend, Kiesha. Negative. I left a hurried message.
Seriously? I thought. The biggest news ever to hit my uterus and I can’t get ahold of a single person? I had other friends I could call, but I knew all the aforementioned would be seriously hurt I hadn’t told them first. Nervous energy poured over me like a tidal wave, so I went for a run.
A loooonnnnggg run.
Over and over and on repeat, an internal conversation flowed through my mind: I’m pregnant. (puff puff) I’m pregnant. (wait for the crosswalk sign to turn green) Lord Jesus, are You serious?!
I. Am. Pregnant.
Instead of a sinking feeling of knowing this was not planned, that we had only been married a handful of months and this wasn’t supposed to happen yet, I was surprisingly elated. Well, the scared type of elated. I ran/walked for nearly two hours until I realized I should probably stop before I passed out. I may have worked with women in crisis pregnancy situations, but I suddenly felt like I knew nothing. One thing I did figure though, was that running until I passed out was probably not good for the baby.
Finally making it back home and pressing the brass latch and hobbling through the bright blue door, I bolted upstairs to grab a towel for a much-needed shower. Just then, our elderly Labrador, Libby, waddled up to me with a frenzied look in her eyes and suddenly collapsed onto the bedroom floor and began seizing!
I stroked her fur and softly spoke to her, making sure she didn’t swallow or bite her tongue. I kept thinking of my brother’s EMT training and how he’d know how to handle this situation. I phoned him again in a panic. This time he answered both my call as well as my question if this had happened before to Libby. He knew as well as I did that this was a first for our beloved family dog.
Mentally setting aside my big announcement for the rest of the afternoon, I cared only for the dog our family had rescued a decade earlier as she had seizure after seizure in my arms. Eventually I reached my parents, and when they arrived home, we were able to walk through the devastation together, searching for an emergency facility to rush our sweet dog to.
Just before my parents left to take Libby to the animal ER, Kiesha arrived at the door. As I was standing there in the hallway with my family and my best friend, I blurted out, “Um … I know this is terrible timing and all, but I found out today that I’m pregnant.”
Right then, before anyone could respond, I heard a strange noise coming from upstairs where Libby was resting. Figuring she was seizing yet again, I ran to the stairs, and had just gotten on the first step when she fell down the staircase, flipping and flopping around, with wild, scared eyes looking at me like, What is going on?! Make this stop! Oh, sweet Libby. I can hardly type this without letting the tears flow.
She was whisked away to the animal ER, and several hours later my parents came home alone. Libby had a brain tumor and there was nothing they could do. We cried. We sobbed. It was a rough day in the Swanstrom household.
Thankfully, we had another life to be excited about and help us grieve the loss of our wonderful family member. Not the best way or day to find out you were about to start the next limb in your family tree, but God knew we needed a little joy on that dark day. By the way, I finally got ahold of Ben to share the news that he was going to be a dad. I honestly don’t remember much of our conversation, but I do remember the excitement and wonder in our voices.
Back in San Antonio, Ben and I were finally in our new house (sans the bachelor roommates) and I was able to wrap my mind around the fact that I was becoming a mom. Laughing that I used to think I never wanted children, I was thrilled to start planning. My pregnancy may have been a total surprise, but as soon as it sank in, I took control of it and everything was thought out with intention. I had all the apps and frequented all the websites, making sure I knew what to expect as I was expecting. I gobbled up book after book and had very strong feelings about Baby Wise, breast-feeding, cloth diapers, and homemade baby food. I parented really well, while that little baby was in my womb. I decided I’d be a great and successful mom if I’d just stick to the instruction manuals.
Each doctor’s appointment confirmed we were taking one step away from our newlywed adventure and stepping closer toward a family of three. We were eager to learn the sex of the little one growing inside me, but when the doctor shared it was a boy, I don’t think I was adequately prepared for the news. I was still absorbing all the changes we would undergo with a newborn, but now this newborn was becoming a little person—my baby boy. I was in awe of knowing that this boy I carried inside me already had an entire life planned out by our Creator. As Ben and I prayed over our baby boy, we were excited for all the adventures God has in store for him. We decided to go with an African safari theme for his bedroom, and I splurged on the perfect zebra-striped rug from Pottery Barn and hung a wall full of breathtaking black-and-white photography of dusty elephants, giraffes stretching their necks to reach the top of the tree leaves, and lions snuggling their young. Motherhood was easy, I decided, and I had it all figured out, down to the darling pre-Pinterest decorated nursery.
All of a sudden though, things came to a screeching halt. My tides of feeling poorly suddenly turned into debilitating nausea and I began to throw up every twenty minutes. When I was at work, I ignored it as best I could, sweat trickling down my temples as I swallowed down the nausea for fear these women with unplanned pregnancies would go running for the door. I closed my eyes tightly and visualized sitting in a session and saying, “Pregnancy is such a blessing. Really! Oh, excuse me for a moment.” Cue my run for the bathroom.
Sigh … it was awesome.
I christened Target parking lots, wastebaskets, and it’s taken me over a decade to eat at Chipotle again (you don’t want to know). Ben would come home from work to find me passed out in the hallway of our home, having attempted to grab a glass of water in the kitchen. Other days my poor husband would find our chocolate lab, Thatcher, curled up next to me as I hugged the toilet bowl after falling asleep exhausted from heaving. Needless to say, it was rough. Worse than rough. My eyes would zero in on restroom signs, the closest wastebaskets, or even the nearest exits to parking lots or grass. Every moment of every day, I felt like I needed to find the nearest place to, well, you know.
My doctor, whom I absolutely cherish, became a dear friend through my constant visits to her office and was my biggest supporter. Her nurses all knew to patch me through immediately when I called, and by the end I even had her personal cell phone number. Constantly on massive amounts of medication typically used to keep chemotherapy patients’ nausea at bay, I can’t even put into words how awful I still felt. I was secretly jealous of those cute pregnant girls who glowed and loved being “with child.” I was just not that girl, and sometimes fought with despair over it.
I worked as long as I could, but my constant vomiting made it difficult to concentrate on the girls and women who needed the best of me when they came for counsel. Finally I couldn’t ignore it any longer, and it was time for me to step away from working with these women who held my heart so tightly and focus on my own coming child. I continued coming in often, bringing in my own clothes that I quickly outgrew. Though I felt the Lord releasing me of my time there, I hoped even something as little as a new maternity shirt, shorts, or jeans would bring the women a tiny bit of joy, knowing they were loved and God truly cared about them and what happened to their babies.
In the past, I’ve shared that my morning sickness took away some of the joy in my pregnancy, but I actually don’t think that’s true. It may have removed some of the pregnancy bliss as my baby boy grew in my womb, but I fought intensely to keep my joy. When I was in high school our youth pastor asked once what we’d like to have more than anything else. My response was that I wanted to find joy in all situations. I’ve paid deep deference to the concept of joy since then.
Joy cannot be dictated by circumstance; instead, we need to allow it to be linked to promises that have been laid out before us throughout Scripture.
Joy isn’t meant to be a by-product of a perfect or easy life; it instead shows the heart’s position during struggle. The reality is that my health or the way I feel emotionally cannot correspond to my joy because as my dear friend and pastor Nirup Alphonse says, “The joy we experience is a direct result of the perspective we have of Christ Jesus.”9 It’s easy to have joy when life is rainbows and unicorns, but the instant something goes awry and away from perfectly laid out plans, will we drop joy into a pile of rubble, with the mind-set that it’s too difficult to hold on to when life goes for the jugular? Joy cannot be dictated by circumstance; instead, we need to allow it to be linked to promises that have been laid out before us throughout Scripture.
I pray that God, the source of all hope, will infuse your lives with an abundance of joy and peace in the midst of your faith so that your hope will overflow through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13 VOICE
Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament, says this in 2 Corinthians 11:23–27 (MSG):
I’ve worked much harder, been jailed more often, beaten up more times than I can count, and at death’s door time after time. I’ve been flogged five times with the Jews’ thirty-nine lashes, beaten by Roman rods three times, pummeled with rocks once. I’ve been shipwrecked three times, and immersed in the open sea for a night and a day. In hard traveling year in and year out, I’ve had to ford rivers, fend off robbers, struggle with friends, struggle with foes. I’ve been at risk in the city, at risk in the country, endangered by desert sun and sea storm, and betrayed by those I thought were my brothers. I’ve known drudgery and hard labor, many a long and lonely night without sleep, many a missed meal, blasted by the cold, naked to the weather.
And yet, with this as part of his story, Paul shared about the joy he had in Christ. I might not be flogged or shipwrecked. Even so, struggles, however they look in that particular season, can still attempt to overtake delighting in the Lord. Having the opposite of an easy pregnancy, where my body was debilitated and unwell for months on end, actually causing me to lose weight rather than gaining it, could have racked me with a discouraged pessimism. But though I certainly had moments of despair, I knew that God saw me in my brokenness, just like He always has.
The reality is that no one can steal our joy; it’s something that we have to choose to hand over and release from our grasp. We must refuse to let circumstances make us bitter, but pray they instead make us better. Jesus bought and paid for my freedom and yours, and joy rests in that gift of salvation. However, I still struggle, and maybe you do too. I wrestle with wondering why all I focus on is my lack of joy when life isn’t flawless, but don’t recognize overwhelming joy when life is going grand.
Paul later says in 2 Corinthians 12:7–9 (MSG):
Satan’s angel did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty! At first I didn’t think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me,
My grace is enough; it’s all you need.
My strength comes into its own in your weakness.
Our beautiful, precious, baby boy finally arrived on April 17 … exactly ten days late, even after being induced. After finding out we were having a boy, we scoured baby name books, looked through family albums, and prayed for inspiration, but nothing was standing out. But now this baby was here and he needed a name—and he couldn’t leave the hospital without one! My doctor sat with us for over half an hour brainstorming names. Finally we decided on Anton, a shortened version of Antony, my dad’s middle name. Ben also felt a connection to the name Anton because of a close college friend who had tragically drowned. So, with deep affection for my father and for the young life that ended too soon, Anton Christian Anderson came home with both a name and a legacy. The week he was born was the same week my brother moved in with us because he didn’t want his nephew growing up with him on the other side of the country. I don’t remember if he knew the guest room was across the hall from the nursery, but I do remember laughing while buying him earplugs.
I realized pretty quickly after the nausea set in that my pregnancy was not going as planned, but when Anton arrived, all my great parenting also went out the window. Just like I had planned out my life years before, I had gotten caught up in taking control of the details once again.
When will I learn? I wondered.
Embracing the fact that I thought I knew everything from reading all the books, blogs, and websites, and actually knowing nothing because I had no life experience with actual human babies, I had moments of pure panic and others of genuine giddiness that he was mine. I’d never felt love like this before. Parents always said it, but I couldn’t comprehend the feeling until I held that little floppy-headed baby in my arms. I thought I loved chocolate and flowers and Italy. But those loves didn’t hold a candle to this new kind of love—the love a mother has for her child.
We must refuse to let circumstances make us bitter, but pray they instead make us better.
I would do anything for my son. I would give up sleep and hot meals. I would rock him for fifty hours straight if that meant he was happy and healthy. I would go to the ends of the earth to ensure his well-being and that he felt loved and was taken care of in the best and fullest way possible. He could never do anything that would stop me from loving him.
For the first time in my life, I began to understand all the Bible references to God the Father and how He must feel about me. I’d heard the verses before; I had studied the passages. But that was all head knowledge, and now I had heart knowledge, too. The cliché-sounding conversations we’d had in Sunday school and youth group were right: Jesus loves me so much that He left the paradise of heaven to walk around on earth for thirty-three years, knowing He would pay the ultimate price and die for me. I’d known this for years, but it suddenly felt specific, not generalized in the fact that He had sacrificed Himself for all of us, but that He’d done so for me personally (go to page 256 for more).
God, the Creator of the entire universe, knows my name and loves me deeply. That notion washed over me anew as I peered down at my wrinkly baby who was so perfectly part me and part Ben. Becoming a mother, I now had a pinprick of understanding God’s heart. I would willingly give up my life for my child if it meant saving him. I marveled at the self-sacrificial magnitude of this love.
A few short months after little Anton was born, we were surprised with double lines showing up on yet another pregnancy test, throwing us into a new life as parents of two little children just over a year apart. Despite this second pregnancy also being a challenge, I still loved being pregnant because I chose to find joy in it as I honed in on the little delights and knew when our second baby was in my arms, the magnitude of my struggle would feel so worth it. I suppose it’s one of those times when there is a large difference between like and love. I didn’t like it, but I did love it so very much. Having a baby truly is a miracle, especially once I could feel the little one wiggling around in my womb—the sweetest gift of all. In those last weeks, when I marveled how my skin could stretch any tighter to allow for the little one to grow inside my swollen belly, I would stare at the black-and-white photograph of that young boy in Malawi that we won at the auction years earlier. Knowing that picture was the catalyst that first put the idea of adoption into our minds, I wondered if I could love an adopted child as much as I loved the children from my own womb, and if we really had the courage to obey God and go for it.
Two days before my due date with our second baby boy, I called my doctor on her cell phone. With tears streaming down my cheeks, I told her to “get this baby out of me. Now.” I simply couldn’t be pregnant any longer. I was in so much pain and was so tired of throwing up so many times a day. Reminding her that I’d been pregnant for nearly two years straight, she chuckled knowingly, and scheduled me to be induced the next morning. After being in the hospital over twenty-four hours, I was sent home with the nurses shrugging that it didn’t take.
Little Laith Rutger Anderson finally arrived the next day, blue as a Smurf after an emergency C-section. I guess the way he entered the world was simply foreshadowing all the times we’d be in the hospital with him. Since he learned to walk, we’ve called him Crazy Crash. He’s been the first one of our boys to break a bone and have surgery, and he has had a slew of health issues. He says the hospital is his “happy place.” He is named after two of our favorite men in the world, our friend Laith Anderson, whom we now call “Big Laith,” and my brother, Erik Rutger. Both of these men are as strong as they are tender. We wanted our son to know that you can be both tough and compassionate, that those characteristics are not exclusive. And from the day we brought him home from the hospital, and even every visit since, he’s been our tenderhearted one who wants to become a pediatric brain or heart surgeon one day. He would (and has) give the shirt off his back. He never has money in his pocket because he spends it on other people before he’s able to use it on himself. We knew, even early on that these two boys of ours were going to become great brothers someday.
After Laith was born, I’d barely begun to figure out how to live life with two babies, take a shower every day, and serve something for dinner other than cereal or grilled cheese, and yet it was undeniable that God was whispering to Ben and me. Reminding us of our desire to live a life outside ourselves, the Lord urged us to expand our family again. This time He wasn’t going to make the decision for us, placing a baby in my womb. This new (and slightly scary) way required obedience and a willingness to act. With wide eyes and open hearts, we began researching adoption.