Shadows

Seven years of waiting, trying, praying, despairing
Was coming to an end.
Joy radiated.
My belly rounding
The tiny bump-bump-bumps against my insides
Reminded us of life beyond our own.
My husband's hand settling to it's new favorite resting place
Touching the outer me but the inner us.
Tha-thump tha-thump blinking on the screen
Kicking flailing turning floating
Our daughter.
This miracle we were granted, this child, our child.
A baby girl.

I woke with a smile this morning with my hand still on my full belly. I could still FEEL her there. The fullness faded along with the haze of sleep. As the sunlight permeated my consciousness, I realized.

It was a dream.

There is no daughter.

I remembered.

There is no baby girl.

I cried.

Because there might never be.

Overwhelmed

I was hoping to have a more positive post for today, being it is only the 5th day of NaBloPoMo, but I'm just not in that space today. If you're looking for an upbeat, positive, cheery post...well, I'm sorry. Today will just not be that day.

Some of you already know from Twitter and Facebook that I had a pretty tough day yesterday, emotionally. I've been wavering on whether or not to post these feelings, as I've been trying to keep this a place of positivity, hope, and encouragement. To be honest, I'm not feeling any of those things right now. And, since this blog is intended to be an amalgam of all facets of my life, these feelings have their place here too.

There is not one word to define what I'm feeling. If I had to put a label on it, it would be despair. Everything has come crashing down on me in a wave, and I am struggling to get my head above water.

It's all tying into infertility in some way or another. I don't have these feelings often...or rather I don't allow myself to indulge these feelings often. Most of the time I'm able to shove them back down into the ugly little black hole in my heart where they came from...but right now they're overflowing and washing over me like a flood. I need to get them out before they completely overwhelm me.

The impact of my husband being out of work since last Christmas is hitting us, and although I don't fault him in any way, shape or form, I am frustrated. He has been putting in applications, sending out resumes, and actively looking for employment for almost a year now. He has had several interviews that didn't work out. He does have two interviews on the 15th (Thank God!), so keep us in your prayers that something comes of one of them. I feel the pressure of being the sole income, which has farther reaching ramifications than just not having much money in the bank. I find myself resentful that we can't afford the infertility treatments that I know we need. I "met" that fabulous doctor in the webchat and have yet to make an appointment because I don't want to get my hopes up and get a ball rolling on something I know we don't have the money to do (treatments). I am jealous that other people can afford to do treatments, even if it's "just" Clomid, injectibles, and IUI's. I'm uber-jealous that others can afford or have insurance coverage to do IVF. I'm jealous that other people can get loans and credit cards to pay for their treatments. With our credit (especially with the recent forclosure of our home), there is no way in Hell we could (or SHOULD, in all reality), get a loan or credit card.

I'm frustrated with my weight and my recent back injury. I am miserable, and have all the desire in the world to begin an exercise program to get back on track to losing weight (which I know will help with the PCOS and infertility...much as I hate to admit that my weight is causing problems, I know it is). I went to the gym with Matt yesterday and was only able to do 7 minutes on the treadmill at 1.7 mph before my back was killing me. I pushed myself to do 10 minutes and was in tears I hurt so bad at the end. I know I can't expect miracles, but jeez. What a pathetic loser.

I'm so depressed that I will be 37 in 5 months and am still no closer to being a mother than I was six years ago. October marked 6 years that we have been TTC. Granted the majority of that time has been "on our own" without medical treatment, we've still been TTC. It sucks. Time and time again I have been passed by, watched everyone around me get pregnant once, twice and sometimes even three times. Some of these women are very dear friends, and while I am thrilled for them, I can't help but feel jealous, hopeless, and broken because it isn't me. I know there is no "race", there is not a finite number of babies in the world, and that these women are deserving of the miracles they have been given...I can't help but foster the negative thoughts of "Why not me?". What have I done in life to deserve the heartbreak of this? Am I not deserving enough to have just one child? Why can other women have two, three, four or more, and I can't even have one? Am I not good enough? Is this God's way of keeping me from completely screwing up my future child because I will be a horrible mother? I know those thoughts are not rational, but they are real.

A friend of mine has been struggling in her life as of late, and recently wrote that in a certain turn of events of her life she felt like "in answer to our prayers, God shit on us and had a big ole laugh". My heart broke to hear her say that, but in reading her words, I heard my own voice. That's how I feel too. I have prayed, I have begged, I have dedicated my life to God and serving him through helping people. I am a devoted wife, a loyal friend, I honor my parents and I serve my community. For six long devastating years I have prayed for a child. And sometimes I feel like God has, well...for lack of better words, taken a giant steamer on my dreams. I know this is not true, in the part of me that trusts that He has a plan. But that small, sinful, untrusting part of me...well, it lurks like a festering splinter.

I want to believe God has a plan. No, I do believe God has a plan. I am just incredibly frustrated that I can't know what it is right now.

My heart hurts. My soul aches. My womb aches with the fullness of one who was never and may never be there. My arms cradle emptiness and my eyes cry hot tears of anguish over the loss of the dreams of one who never was. One who might never be.

I trust that God can work His healing in my heart, He has done it before. I will still be devoted to Him and follow His will when He chooses to light the next step.

As I am working my way out of this, I ask you all, if you are willing, to pray for me. Pray that God will work His healing in my broken heart and restore peace and hope. Pray that I can learn to put full trust in Him and His plan, whatever that may be. I know it might not look the way I envision my life, but I know that whatever it is will be exactly what He wants for my life.

Thanks for listening and being here for me.

Getting settled...

Well, we're finally all settled in the new apartment. 

We still have a box or two to go through and organize, and we need to hang up some pictures and personalize the place, but it's coming along nicely.  I tried to take some pictures, but the light wasn't very good when I was taking them, so I'll have to post some later.

I think the physical act of moving residences blew the dust off of some issues I've been hanging on to.  I've been moving them back and forth in my mind, trying to reorganize them back into their respective boxes and not succeeding very well.  Let's just say it's been an emotional week for me.  I had a good cry on hubby's shoulders last night about some of them, and that did make me feel somewhat better, but I still have a little lingering "emotional hangover" today.  I'm sure with a little time and some extra prayers I will be okay in a few days.  

Sorry for the quick disjointed post, but I just wanted to let you all know I am still around, reading if not commenting on your blogs and keeping you all in my thoughts and prayers. 

We'll talk soon...off to knit!

A few steps down the path...

There has been so much going on around here lately for us. Some of it has been good, some challenging, but all of it has been a learning experience. Through the past few weeks I've learned more about myself, grown in my faith in God, and learned so much about the people I am blessed to call my family and friends.

We "came out" recently on a popular social networking site in regards to our infertility struggle and our adoption path. Well...I did anyway. My husband was "outed" by default in the process. I did this for several reasons. I've always been open and brutally honest here and on previous blogs about our infertility and the feelings and struggles we've faced because of it, both personally and within our marriage. I have kind of kept a lid on it in other places mostly because I'm tired of the well-meaning ass-vice that people love to give. It's a hard balance to keep sometimes. Well, I'm tired of hiding. If you can have five kids and post a zillion pictures and update everyone about the status of your "miserable pregnancy" then I can say "Hey, I'm infertile and if you don't like what I have to say or the way I respond, then there's the unfriend button, click away honey." I have nothing to be ashamed of because I'm infertile. It's not my fault. It's not my husband's fault, it's not anyone's fault. It's not even God's fault. It took me a long time to realize that. It's taken me a long time to get to the point of accepting that I might never conceive and give birth to a child that is biologically of me and my husband. It hurts to accept that. I'm not going to lie, it hurts bad. There will always be a hollowed out spot in my heart and in our family that I believe belongs to that child that might never be. I will always to long to look at our child and see my husband's eyes, my nose, his cute jutting chin and my chubby cheeks looking back at me. I believe I will always long to have that. But I've gotten to a place where I'm accepting that it just might not happen. I have learned in the past few months that God has a plan that is bigger than I could ever imagine. And I don't believe that God would have put the desire to be a mother in my heart if He didn't have a way in mind to make that happen.

I truly believe that God has plans for us to be parents together. For me to be a mother, for my husband to be a full-time father. However, and what has frustrated me for the past six years is that His plan is not always the same as MY plan. It has taken a lot of prayer, soul-searching, and humbling of myself before I realized that our goals are the same...just the paths are a little different. My path, the path I've been trudging along for five years and five months has been me wandering in the jungle, hacking away at the dense choking foliage with the machete of my iron will. It was dark, stifling, treacherous, claustrophobic, and filled with the scary sounds of jungle creatures and sometimes myself screaming in the night. Most of all it was lonely. Good grief was it fucking lonely. God's path however...how mightily different the few steps I've taken on it have been.

Wait.

Let me back up a bit.

I've already stated here before that several months ago I began to re-explore my relationship with God, or lack thereof. My husband and I sought out and found a church "home" we feel comfortable in and have been attending services regularly (well, as regularly as my nutty schedule will allow anyway). I began taking time daily to read my Bible, and have been reading several books geared toward "new believers" pertaining to establishing a relationship adn walk with God. My best friend and I have had several very interesting and fulfilling conversations about faith, religion and our personal walks and challenges in our faith. I look forward to spending time with her every week not only because we have fun together, but because we can talk faith and I know both of us enjoy that immensely.

One particular book that has totally changed the way I pray and view my relationship with God is called "Just Enough Light for the Step I'm On" by Stormie Omartian. I highly recommend it. She likens our walk with God to that of a child learning to walk. Instead of the goal of INdependence when teaching our children to walk (and in raising them altogether), we must learn that without total DEpendence on God, we are unable to take even the smallest of steps along the path He has laid out for us. I'll be the first to admit, it sounds a bit simplistic at first, but as I've delved further into this book I've found that it's a very comforting premise. I've also learned a lot about the concept of "God's will". For years I've had a knee jerk reaction to those words. My hackles raised, my eyes involuntarily rolled, and I could feel the bitterness bubbling up like acid in my stomach burning a hole right through my soul. Mostly because those words were always prefaced by some well-meaning idiot who decided that it would be comforting to tell me that my infertility or my friends' pregnancy losses were "God's will" and that it was "God's will" that I wasn't meant to have a child. I call bullshit on that one. I have learned that God does have a plan. That doesn't mean that He CAUSES bad things to happen. He doesn't want bad things to happen to His children any more than any loving parent does. He never promise there wouldn't be struggles or hard times. He just promised that He would be there to comfort us if we allow Him to. It is NOT God's plan for any child to die. It is NOT His plan for any of His children to experience loss and disappointment. Bad things happen. Sometimes there are no explanations, and that's hard to accept. It's hard for me to accept, I know that for a fact. But I believe it to be true. God has a plan for me, and there is no way for me with my human eyes, heart and mind to comprehend how awesome it is. I've glimpsed tiny visions of it, because He has allowed me to. He has shone a light just big enough on the path before my feet to let me know I'm going in the right direction.

I have recently changed the way I pray. In all my years growing up in the church, I never truly learned how to pray. I was taught to thank God for what you do have and ask for what you want. That was it. So, for years, that's what I did. I spent the last six years basically begging God to let me get pregnant and to give us a child. To cure me of my infertility and stop the pain of my breaking heart. I spent the last six years hacking my way through the jungle, forging my own path through the wilderness, believing that since God wasn't answering my prayers and giving me a child, that I was being punished. My punishment for whatever I had done in my past that was so heinous was walking the Hell of infertility. There were a few people who tried to get me to understand that this was simply not true. I didn't want to believe them. I believed that I was such an awful person, God decided to refuse the one thing I truly wanted in life. The Bible even says that children are a reward, that if I ask I shall receive. Apparently (in my mind) God had deemed me not worthy of that reward, of that blessing, and I certainly wasn't going to receive no matter how many times/how loud/in how many languages I asked.

It's ok. Go ahead and laugh. I laugh at myself just writing that.

My first step was to accept that my infertility was not and IS NOT a punishment. That was a hard step to take. I am not unworthy. Like a lot of people in this world, I seemed to enjoy playing the "victim card". Woe is me, the lonely bitter jaded misunderstood infertile woman. Granted, infertility is lonely; sometimes we do become bitter and jaded; and a lot of people don't understand it. I see now though, that I overplayed it a LOT.

My second step was to accept that there are things in this life and in this world that I am simply not meant to understand or have control over. As much as it frustrates me and hurts, my infertility and the possibility that I might never conceive a child is one of those things. I don't know why I might never know the joy of conceiving, carrying and birthing a child. And maybe I'm not meant to understand.

My third step was to admit that I am helpless to overcome this aching chasm in my heart without God's help.

My fourth step was to accept that God has a plan for all of us. Just because it doesn't look the way we imagine it SHOULD look or the way we WANT it to look, doesn't mean that it's not a fantabulously amazing plan. God wants us to dream. He puts dreams in our hearts. He put the desire to be a mother into my heart, that I know for a fact. But pursuing dreams that are not in line with His will for our lives will only bring misery, frustration and unfulfillment. I'm learning that more everyday.

My fifth step was to learn a new way of praying. And that was to declare my total and utter dependence on God, ask him to reveal to me his plan for my life, and for Him to show me the path that is in line with his plan for my life.

A few months ago, I said my prayer of "God, I admit that I have no control of this situation, but I do know that you placed the desire to be a mother into my heart for a reason. I trust that you have a way to make that happen, and I am fully dependent on you to lead me down that path. I am surrendering my life to Your will. Please make Your will known to us. If it is Your will for us to be parents, please show us the way and the path we should be moving on".

When I began praying in that manner, praying for God to reveal his plans for us and to make his will known, and when I consciously surrendered the grip of control I wanted to have on my life...things began to change. My relationship with my husband changed. We became softer and more open with each other. We began going to church together, reading our Bibles together, reading a couples' daily devotional together. My relationship with several of my friends began to change. My heart has opened and started to heal enough that I was able to spend an evening with my best friend and her two adorable sons without wanting to run from the room bursting into tears of jealousy and anger. I didn't even feel that when I was with them. I truly only felt blessed to get to witness my best friend, the little girl I've known since the day she was born, who used to sit in my bedroom and play Barbie's and trade secrets with me mothering her children. I didn't feel that old pang of "I can't be here, it's too painful". There was a moment of "yeah, I can't wait for that".

One of my biggest hindrances in my faith is being open to hearing the answers God has for me regarding my life rather than begging him for something and getting pissed off when He doesn't answer the way I think He should. Hmm. Pretentious much? I'm learning that I can't put limits on God. He works in His own way and His own time. Just because we don't get the answer we WANT, doesn't mean the answer is NO. Maybe the answer is "Well, maybe not now."

Soon after I changed my method of praying and truly opening myself up to the answers God was giving me, we heard about the adoption situation I discussed in my previous post. Even though that didn't pan out, we still feel that at this moment, we are being led to pursue adoption. I'm not saying we are giving up TTC. We will probably still keep trying as we move through the adoption process. We always wanted two anyway. The adoption process is going to be a while anyway, so anything can happen in that time.

All of that being said...we have started the process for adopting through our county Children's Division (DFS). I printed out and have begun completing the home assessment application. I contacted several of our friends to ask if we could use them as references. I have a list of items we need to gather to show that we are prepared (materially and physical space wise) for a child placement. A friend from work has donated a crib to us, and several people have offered us clothing from their children or relative's children.

I spoke to a case worker at the Children's Division today and even though I wasn't real encouraged by what she had to say, it was still a step in the right direction. She is mailing us out a homestudy packet and information on the adoption program, and I should get that next week. We have to go through the foster/adopt classes, and unfortunately they aren't having another one until September. We can take it in a different county as long as it's still in Missouri, and they might have one sooner. They will probably come do our homestudy in the next couple of months. As soon as we get the homestudy done and complete the classes and are approved, all we do then is wait for our child! She did say that we will probably have a longer wait because we specified that we are "adopt only" and that we prefer an infant up to 2-3 years old. There's a longer wait for that. But...one thing she did say is once we get the homestudy done, if we find out about a private adoption situation, we can use that homestudy for that and it's one less thing to go through.

Even though I was disappointed in the "hurry up and wait" aspect of everything, I'm relying on God to get me through it. One of the biggest lessons God has been trying to beat into me teach me for years is patience. September is only five months away. This gives us more time to get the projects done around the house that we have planned (remodeling the bathroom, rebuilding our front deck, painting inside and outside of the house).

Everyone we have told about this has been nothing but supportive and incredibly helpful. To be honest, I've been quite amazed at the outpouring of support we have received. I know I have amazing friends and family, but still. It's a little overwhelming when you receive text messages and emails for a full day from people offering help and support.

God is GOOD!!!

Oh yeah, Happy Birthday To Me! I'm 36 today, and although it's a little later than I wanted it to happen, I'm finally on my way to being a Mommy! That's the best present I could ever dream of!!!

(Stay tuned for a fun knitting update post this weekend!)

What's not to be...

Hello fellow travelers! 

I would like to thank you all for your continued prayers since my request. 

Unfortunately, the situation didn't work out the way we were hoping.  I know that God's plan is bigger than us and what we know, but it's still a disappointment. 

Since it's not going to work out, I guess I can share it now.  About a month ago we heard through the grapevine of a 17 year old girl who was about 8 weeks pregnant at the time.  She knew she didn't want to keep the baby and didn't want to have an abortion.  We made it known to people that knew her that we were very interested in pursuing adoption and were more than willing to speak to her about possibly adopting her baby if that's the way she wanted to go.  I prayed every day that if this was the child that we were supposed to raise, that God would find a way to make it happen.  If this was the plan that God had for us, to adopt a child, that He would lay the path for us. 

Well...we just (as in while I was typing this post) got word that her aunt is going to take the baby. 

I tried, God did I try, to not get my hopes up.  I should have known better.  I should have known that nothing good will ever happen to us.  I should have known better than to think that something like this could really happen for us.  For me. 

I had a lot more to post about, but honestly I don't feel much like talking now that I've gotten this news.

A request for prayer

Dear Fellow Travelers Along The Road Of Life,

Will you please pray for my husband and I? 

A situation has presented itself, which if it follows the plan God has intended for us, will significantly change our lives.

All I ask is that you pray for God to guide us in this decision, and if it is His will for it to be...that it WILL BE.  

I apologize in advance for the vagueness of this post, but I'm just not ready to discuss the particulars of the situation at this moment in time.  I know you all understand.

In His Love,

Rebecca and Matt