Friend #47 - Emily

Emily is a good girl.  She grew up in a Christian home in San Diego and met her husband while he was stationed there.  He’s a small town boy from Missouri.  She admits he doesn’t talk very much, as country boys tend to be on the quieter side, but the pair shares the same values.  They love Jesus and more than anything Emily wants to create a home that is comfortable for them, their families and their friends.  

They married when Emily was twenty-three and they tried living in Missouri for a while.  Being from San Diego, Emily wasn’t a fan of the humidity and cold winters.  Her husband isn’t a fan of big cities, but Queen Creek, Arizona seems to be the best of both worlds.  The desert climate is nice most of the year and although Queen Creek does have a lot of the city’s amenities, it is still far enough outside of Phoenix to have ample farmland and horse property that make Emily’s husband feel right at home.

For the most part, Emily has a happy life.  She mostly has the life she grew up believing she would.  She has a loving husband and a job she finds meaningful.  The only thing missing from Emily’s life is…a baby.

At one point she went to the doctor, complaining something was wrong.  She had gained one hundred pounds in a year.  The doctor dismissed her, sent her home and told her to eat less.  Still, Emily persisted.  Eventually, she was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome which is basic terminology for your hormones go crazy…but it also makes a woman less likely to conceive.  Over the years, Emily has been poked with needles, scheduled for endless tests and filled her gullet with an obscene number of pills.  Nothing worked.  At one point, she did become pregnant only to lose the baby before it was born.  I sat across from her, stunned, my heart aching but Emily was surprisingly nonchalant about it.

“I’m over it,” she said. 

I guess there are only so many tears a person can cry. 

These days, Emily has lost her belief in Western medicine.  Acupuncture is what has helped her the most.  She’s also recently cut dairy and gluten from her diet.  Her skin has cleared up.  She’s beginning to lose some of the weight.  She even feels stronger.  She admits she still isn’t at the weight she wants to be, but then again, when she was a size four she wasn’t at the weight she wanted to be either.  Yet she’s a beautiful girl with bright eyes and big dimples.  I think Emily would be beautiful no matter what size she was. 

She’ll be turning thirty soon.  When she was young, she thought she’d have four children by now but most days, she’s pretty content curling up with her three dogs.  I think she’d still like a baby if she was blessed with it, but I also think she’s grown past the emotional frustration of attempting to force something that may not be meant to be.  Instead, she focuses her time on helping others because deep down in her heart, I believe Emily knows that everyone has the choice of whether to be happy or whether to be miserable.  Emily chooses happiness.  And the rest she leaves up to God.