Chapter 6--"the bearded lady"

My husband calls this journal the "warts and all version." Here's some more.....


As a child, i was expected to be the first among my friends to get married and have children. As a child, i planned to have many children and to marry and start having them by age 20. When i was in college, i planned to be a great teacher and have a career and be successful--or move to Germany and be a missionary working with a church in former East Germany (but that part was before we decided for sure to get married).

Anyway, the point is that lots of things change.

This is a particularly "warty" entry because i don't talk about this stuff much. But i was going through my journal the other day and found myself horribly disturbed by the overwhelming concentration on a desire to have children.

Like i said, i've always planned to have lots of kids and never even considered anything that would hinder that.

When i was nineteen, James and i were planning to get married and i went for my first "female" exam because i thought i should have birth control while i finished college.

The doctor i went to was concerned and sent me for an ultrasound, which revealed some of the symptoms of an "abnormality" called "polycystic ovarian syndrome." If you don't know what that is, the name doesn't really give it away. "PCOS" (for short because the other one takes way too long to type over and over again) was named for the hundreds of tiny cysts that form on the ovaries--or actually the falopian opening as i understand it...........but that's really not important right now. Outwardly, the symptoms tend to be, well, disturbing. I've done a lot of reading on this subject, and it seems that a lot of women carry PCOS and don't even know it because it is at a less severe level, and it doesn't really affect them that much. In its severity, however.....

Do you ever remember reading a book from 100 or so years ago in which there was a fair or carnival, and one of the attractions was a "bearded lady" ? I'm sure you thought that the bearded lady must be wearing a costume, but i have a hunch she wasn't. She probably had PCOS. PCOS is a big mystery for the most part to many and most doctors.....but it's easy to diagnose because of the "hirsutism." (that just means hairy). If you search your memory, you probably remember at least one or two times when the sight of a particularly hairy woman carved its image into your memory. You may have noticed really hairy arms or suspiciously thick stubble on the chin. The other day i actually saw a woman with a full blown goatee.

The other main symptom of severe PCOS is obesity. They go hand-in-hand. In fact besides aggressive hormone treatment, the only thing that doctors seems to agree will help PCOS is to lose weight--of course one of the symptoms of PCOS is that it causes weight gain.




Now, i have pretty much all the symptoms (that i know of) of severe PCOS. You might not have noticed easily because i --- well, i shave everything you can see. The whole hairiness thing is something that i'll have to share my personal struggle with in a different entry. But get this, after reading my journal entries about wanting babies, i'm thankful. I'm actually becoming thankful for this problem i face every day.

Here's why: i realized that while i was so consumed with the desire to have children, i was not consumed with God. Many times i have prayed in my life for God to make me what He wants me to be and to remove those things that are displeasing to Him. Well, there you go. God wants me to desire HIM more than anything. And that includes the natural desires that He gave us, if they in any way compete with Him.

So, i guess it's time to say "thank You" and "i trust You, Lord, to do exactly what You want to do in my life, whether i understand it or not."