Wrassling Serenity

Disclaimer: No, no news yet. This is just me trying to manage my anxiety.

So, I woke up at 4 o'clock this morning thinking about the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can

And the wisdom to know the difference.

Now, I know that this prayer has special meaning for the Friends of Bill W., but since I've yet to see an infertility prayer that makes any sense to me, I'm hoping they won't mind sharing.

Of these, the hardest for me is serenity. The problem with serenity is that you can't just grab ahold of it. You can't wrassle it to the ground and sit on it. You have to yield to it.

And as anyone who has known me for five minutes can attest, I suck at yielding.

Ever true to my birth year -- the Ram -- I tend to deal with obstacles by head-butting them into submission, even if it means I sustain a concussion in the process. That has served me well in litigation, but not so much elsewhere.

Little by little, I am discovering the advantages of yielding -- by letting Atomic take care of me, by sinking deep into shivasana at the end of yoga practice, by letting myself melt into the warm, purring pile of cat fur sprawled next to me on the couch, by letting my friends and family be there for me and cut me slack.

This process, this pregnancy, is a crash course in yielding. Thrashing around isn't going to help matters, whether the news is good or bad. The only way through to serenity is by yielding.

So, I yield. I yield to my fate, to my reality, whatever it may be, to my body's limitations, to whatever lies before us.

I yield.