A Joyful Mother

To my children on the fifth anniversary of my first child's homecoming:

When you are unable to conceive a child, each month is enveloped with death. Except there is no period of mourning set aside for you, no warm embraces or attempts of comforting words rendered to you. No one offers you flowers, cooks you a meal, or sends you a card to console you. There is no gravestone to substantiate the tangibleness of your hurt, for there is nothing to bury but your hope. It is doubtful that most will notice the numbness behind your eyes. There will only be a precious few who validate your loss. Mostly, like all those in pain, you suffer in silence; your grief bound up deep within.

For nearly five years, my husband and I traveled down the dark road of infertility. Did I expertly learn to contort my face to reveal an expression of happiness each time a friend, a family member, or an acquaintance announced that a new life was being created within them when I wanted to weep for my own barrenness? Did I break down in the middle of a department store when I inadvertently wandered into the maternity section? Did I politely smile and mumble my gratitude when good intentioned people absurdly diagnosed the cause of my brokenness and then proceeded to cruelly prescribe medicine in the form of advice? Did I cry in the confessional over my heartbreak and my spiritual father's wise urgings to truly experience joy in another's pregnancy? Did I feel betrayed by God and my own body? Did I lament like a woman scorned and lash out in fury? Did I allow my body to be cut open, to be poked and prodded? Did I offer my my veins every month to be pried open and my life blood drained out as I stared at a florescent light glutted with dead bugs, silently praying for mercy? Absolutely.

But in the midst of this anguish, did not joy also exist? Did I not have the honor and privilege of touching Christ each day in the bodies of beautiful individuals whom society also labeled as broken, impaired, handicapped? Did I not experience unadulterated happiness with Kristopher, Salman, Julissa, Leslie and the countless other students who could not talk or take care of themselves but who could communicate love? Did I have the opportunity to embrace suffering friends and co-workers who likewise could not conceive and look them in the eye and sincerely say, "I know your anger, your pain, your heartache and I mourn with you?" Did my greatest joy, my children whose very existence is the breath of the divine upon my ordinary life, rise out of my pain? Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes. To you my children, Thomas Jung-hyun, Russell Matthew Jin-pyo, Elliot Andrew Jin-seo, and Lucia Ethiopia Kebedech, know that although you were not born from my body or nursed at my breasts, I am your mother, and I would choose the pain every single time to have you in my life. You are my heart. There is no me without you.

The Prophet

"On Joy and Sorrow"

Kahlil Gibran

Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.

And he answered:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your

laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your 

being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very

cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your

spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into

your heart and you shall find it is only that

which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in

your heart, and you shall see that in truth

you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than

sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits

alone with you at your board, remember

that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales 

between your sorrow and your joy.

Only when you are empty are you

standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to

weigh his gold and his silver, needs must

your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

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