Train tracks

Just finished watching the movie "Under the Tuscan Sun." and there is this wonderful scene where Diane Lane is mourning the emptiness of her life, and the stupidity of renovating a house that's too big for her small life.  The man she's telling this to relates to her the story of how the railroad tracks over the Swiss Alps were built before there was ever a train that had been built to handle the steep climb, but they built the tracks believing one day it would happen.   It's used an a way to tell her to keep going, build for what you want in your life and someday it will arrive.  I was crying at the end of the movie, because she got what she wanted, her "train" came.  I was thinking of it in relation to all this.  My acupuncturist has told me that she sees so many women that come in wanting a baby for themselves, and that until the ego is put in it's proper place their baby can not come.  I have examined my own soul, and prayed and I don't think that's me; but I do believe that I had to come to a place where I felt secure enough in my acting career that the thought of having to take time off to make room in my life for a child was not such a scary enterprise.  I finally feel at that place.  I love to act, it is like air to me in some ways, the creative outlet is vital to the way I have been made to function as a person, and I don't think that God would create me with that and then expect me to put it permanently away. But I do think He had to bring me to a place where I would be willing and at peace with taking time away from it.  And I am there, for the first time it does not scare me as it once did.  God had to lay the tracks for our baby "train" to be able to ride smoothly on it.  Sometimes the things that happen in our lives that are so unfair, that make us cry and wince and yell in pain are the tracks being laid for our hearts desires, and sometimes that train doesn't look anything like what we would have made it to be, but it doesn't mean it will be less fulfilling.  If I know God, it will turn out to be more so.  

Accepting this is hard, and sometimes I don't want to. I want what I want and that's that.  But I have to look back on my life and see the times I didn't get what I wanted but what God wanted for me and I have to admit it's the difference between plain chocolate ice cream and triple fudge brownie ice cream.  One is pretty good, the other is sheer heaven in a bowl.

I decided, on a whim, to start a women's group in my church for those who have struggled with infertility.  At first I was scared, what do I really have to say to any of these women?  Now, though, I think that maybe this maternal love that is pouring out of me could not only be spent on my nieces and nephews and a sweet ten year old girl who lost her mother a few years back, but also on women who need a shoulder to cry on, need strong loving arms to hold them, and a soft voice to sooth their bruised heart.  Maybe I could help them laugh about the insanity of having their husbands give them hormone shots in their butts, or come to accept adoption as the "train" God laid the tracks for.  I don't know.  It's not a replacement for a baby, that's not what I'm saying because I believe I will be pregnant soon and will give birth to our wonderful, beautiful child.  But there are many aspects to a train, perhaps this group is one that I would not have chosen if I had not had these tracks laid for me.