Finding Our Footing
What losing our first pregnancy and a trip to Iceland taught me about marriage, in light of our second anniversary.
Five feet is not a far drop. Not really. Except when you’re standing at the top of such a drop, with water crashing over it, and your only way down is a rock wall slick with spray and the chain drilled into it. I felt my heartbeat escalate, and my breathing quicken. My husband reached out and clung to the chain with two hands, swinging his feet down into (seemingly) impossibly narrow footholds, dripping with spray from the small waterfall. While I watched him do it and heard him explain how, I still remained frozen. My brain could not understand how to make my body do what his had done. I also knew that I couldn’t stand at the crest of that drop forever. I’d have to find my way down. Somehow.
Hiking through Iceland together, captured by my brother.
Today marks two years since Austin and I stood before God and our loved ones, in a sandstone church along the river in northern NY, and vowed that throughout the ups and downs of life we would love and cherish each other. Always. Over the following two years we’ve navigated the pandemic, family dynamics, and the search for a church family. We’ve laughed and hiked and explored and dreamed together. Earning degrees, accepting new jobs, and processing deep, deep loss taught us about life, about each other, and about faith. But for all we’ve shared in the two years, the last two months have taught us more about love and marriage than all the rest combined.
May was supposed to be a rather chill month, when we could enjoy a North Country spring and plan the details of our trip to Iceland with my grad school bestie Alexis and her husband Mark, where we would all meet up with my brother, Than. Instead, it rushed into a crescendo. First my husband learned due to issues with his post-doc funding and he needed a new position. Two weeks later he’d landed one in MA, just north of Boston. Before we could begin to pack up our life in the North Country for a move at the end of June, the second life changing event occurred: after nearly a year of trying, we discovered that we were pregnant with our first child. But the intensity of our life still didn’t slow down. The pregnancy hormones set in and I spent almost every day with intense nausea, but we learned after our 9 week ultrasound that we would never hold that baby in our arms. Our pregnancy was a partial molar pregnancy, a condition which happens to about 1 in 1000 pregnancies, when two sperm fertilize the same healthy egg. The result is an embryo with 69 chromosomes, and, as such, it can never sustain life. If left untreated it grows into cancerous mass and is life threatening. The only treatment option is surgical removal. Four days after learning this news, we drove to Boston (again) and flew to Iceland. Immediately after our trip, I would have one more ultrasound to confirm the partial molar pregnancy, and the following day I would have the pregnancy surgically removed. The care I received was exceptional but the physical experience was traumatic, both for me to experience and Austin to witness, and my recovery would take two weeks, not two days like I’d heard from other women. Days later we would move to to our new apartment in Massachusetts. It seems crazy that in middle of all this change, and deep, intense loss that we would still board that plane and fly to another country. Yet, that’s exactly what we did.
Seriously one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.
For a week we felt the bliss of scenic views and chilly breezes. We laughed with my brother and our friends and ate the best salmon I’d ever had. And, in the quiet moments, we had the chance to grieve. Most of all, we hiked. We climbed up the sides of hills, and crept down narrow paths, through valleys and canyons, along the beach and behind waterfalls. About halfway through our trip we took on some of the most challenging hiking I’d ever done. Up and down steep gravel paths, scrambles across rocks, through cervices, through deep valleys. As hard as it was, it was also beautiful and unlike anything I’d ever seen. Invigorated from the first challenging hike, we took on a second. At the time we didn’t know this next hike would be even more difficult than the first, but as we faced down the five foot waterfall we’d have to climb up alongside and then back down again, I knew this would be one of the hardest physical challenges I’d taken on. Up I climbed, knowing that the hike down would be awaiting me, but I told myself that I could do it. The view from the top of the second, secret waterfall was otherworldly, worth the cold, slippery clamber up the falls. At least it was until I found myself facing the climb down. I couldn’t move. I saw no path forward. But Austin, halfway down, used his own feet to create sturdy footholds that I could trust. Step by step, we made our way down together. That wasn’t the end of our hard climbs for the day. We would go on to clamber up steep dirt paths on all fours, emerging out of a valley to see the sweeping views of green hills and grey mist. Higher and higher we climbed, finding new views of hills and waterfalls, and discovering a strength in my legs that I didn’t know I had. I only had to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Alexis climbing up the wall next to the waterfall in question like a boss.
There have been moments since the partial molar diagnosis when I felt that same standstill, that same inability to move that I felt at the top of the small waterfall. In those moments Austin created footholds for me to climb. There have been moments when Austin was the one who needed footholds, and I made them for him. In the moments when neither of us knew how to move forward, we found the way together. Thats what we vowed to each other two years ago, when we promised that for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and cherish each other as long as we both would live. We didn’t know we’d be here today when we made that vow, hand in hand, in that sandstone church where we’d met. All we knew was that no matter what, we’d find our footing together.
Today we keep finding our way, one step in front of the other. Some days feel normal. Some days the absence of the pregnancy hits us and we grieve. Sometimes it hits one of us harder, and then other days it hits the other, and sometimes the absence meets together. But amid it all, we still share in so much joy. It’s a strange paradox, where grief and joy coexist, yet it’s true. We still live in so much uncertainty. Even now we await the results of my weekly post-op tests that will confirm whether or not the entire partial molar growth has been removed or if it is beginning to grow back and require further treatment. At the same time, we have an anniversary beach picnic to enjoy tonight and a cake in the fridge, and I’m looking forward to it, not a way to escape but because I want to celebrate this powerful love that my husband and I share.
Wedding portrait by Ben Carlson Photography.
In the Episcopal Church, the marriage liturgy opens acknowledging that marriage is intend for our mutual joy. What I’ve discovered over the last 2 months is how true that is, no matter what we face. Joy is a funny thing, dare I say a divine thing. It can exist, even thrive, through the hardest of circumstances. We don’t create it. Instead, we recognize it. Love and marriage, more than any other experience in my life, has helped me recognize that joy no matter what is happening around or to me. It is something that binds us together, to each other and to God. It’s the path we follow as find our way up and down the painful parts of life. Through our mutual joy, I can better see how beautiful this life is. Perhaps it is the more beautiful for experiencing it together. I don’t know what exactly awaits us in the hours, the days, the months, or the years ahead. What I do know, is that Austin and I will walk through this life, sharing in our mutual joy and deep, abiding love for each other and falling deeper and deeper in love, no matter if the hike we find ourselves on is easy or hard. We’ll do it together. Through our love, we can hold onto joy throughout whatever we face in life. Through love we will continue to bear, believe, hope, and endure all things together. That is my solemn vow.
“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
