There's less swearing in this one.

When I was raging last night to Sarge, he confessed that he had read about the "art" earlier in the week and decided not to tell me about it on the grounds that I did not need to know.  I was having a tough enough week already and he knows I don't generally read the news, so he was hoping the furor would die and pass me by.  This is kind of what it's like being married to a spy.  Sometimes information is stopped for my own good. 

I'm not saying the man was wrong.  I think he was totally right.  I wish I could forget.  I wish there was some sort of selective Alzheimer's injection that could erase that specific neuron so that I could go back to the state of mild depression I enjoyed before I read the Yale article. 

I knew when I blogged yesterday that Yale was claiming the project to be a hoax.  And that the "artist" behind the concept was coyly refusing to say.  She'd obviously said what she had to say to the academians at Yale in order to ensure that her project is shown and she is graded and I do firmly believe that if she felt she had to lie in order to preserve her skin, she did so.  But she likes the shock value and her greatest power lies with not telling the whole truth to the press. 

Hoax or not, it doesn't really matter to me.  The damage is done.  Whether her display is fiction or fact, the very idea of it still spits upon all that I hold sacred and painful and private.  She's taken my very most deeply painful experiences and made a mockery of them.  For that, I have no forgiveness.

This is where things get complicated for me and if you're still reading, I applaud.  For me, everything in life relates back to faith and to God.  I believe firmly that everyone, EVERYONE is created in the image of God and is therefore entitled to my respect and love.  It's the only way I can serve the general public on a day-to-day basis, when fully a third of my patrons are angry or bigots or self-entitled narcissists.  So for me, there's an extra dimension to this whole Yale "art" scandal: I have to believe that this woman is created in the image of the God I love.  I have to believe that she's worthy of redemtion and of my kindness and that I could concievably one day be sharing all of eternity with her should she adjust her outlook at some point in life.

I wrestle with that.  God and I talked some more about it: I want JUSTICE! I raged.  I want her to know how much she has hurt me, hurt all of us in the IF community!  I want her to feel every ounce of pain she's caused and I want it now, on my schedule!  And WHY, GOD, WHY CAN'T I HAVE CHILDREN?  HOW MUCH MORE OF THIS SUFFERING, THIS SPIRITUAL PUMMELING DO YOU THINK I CAN TAKE?  I AM DUST BEFORE YOU, GOD!  IS THAT NOT ENOUGH!?

But you know what?  God's on His own time.  He always has been.  He has to be; running the universe can't be a democratic thing.  Too many cooks in the kitchen for that one.  So I'm struggling to accept what I know to be true: that there will be justice, just not in my time frame and I may never know about it when it does come.  That I was unworthy once too and God showed me grace even though I didn't deserve it.  (But God, wasn't I worthier than THAT?  What do you mean, there's no sliding scale?  It's an "is" or "isn't" and not a matter of degrees?)  And that if I really, truly believe my own preaching, I should be praying for this girl because my Bible tells me to pray for those I consider my enemies and do good to people who hurt me.  How often do I really do that?  How often does my beautiful, abstract faith actually connect with reality?

Not that often, people.  Like I said, I'm struggling.  I can't pray for her without praying for fire and I know that's not the type of prayer God wants from me.  He's got all that covered.  So I've given up on that temporarily and I'm just praying for myself right now.  Praying that my broken spirit would be bandaged enough to move on, praying that my heart would stop being so full of hate, praying that my faith would grow.  All of this has to be for something; God doesn't waste. 

This is the last time I'll mention this "artist" or her project.  I had a beautiful, kind letter from a lurker this morning suggesting that what this girl wants is attention and that I have given it to her.  And I think that's probably true.  I truly feel that I couldn't have done any differently, though.  I use this space to vent my hurt; it's a safe space for me.  I needed to let all of that rage and pain out and then later to wrestle with the larger implications.  In the end, none of this is really about her anwyay; it's about what this blog has always been about: infertility, loss and pain.