A New Work

To update, we had some bad news recently. We have been trying a medication for a few months now and it looks like it may not be working. Right now things don't seem great, and we are going month to month knowing each month that there is only a very, very small chance of getting pregnant. We do have a consultation at a new fertility clinic towards the end of October, so that is something to look forward to. I am hoping to get some answers and a game plan in place very soon. I have hoped for that before with no success, but hopefully the doctors will have enough to go on this time to give us some concrete information and suggestions.

I've been doing pretty well the past week or so, all things considered. The weather is beautiful, I love my new job, and I just got home from a shopping trip at the mall! So life is okay, and parts of it are very good.

I have been taking a class called "After the Boxes are Unpacked" here at the seminary on Tuesday nights. The point of the class is to help the 'sem wives' adjust after moving, get to know each other, and make friends. We talk about how hard it is to pick up and move away from home, etc. For me, moving here was really not very hard. I was already living far away from family and friends, so it was not as traumatic a move as many other families experienced. I thought it was a pretty easy transition, actually. But the class has still been very helpful for me when I think about my TTC journey.

Last Tuesday we talked about some of the things that it was hard to let go of when moving. I thought that this did not really apply to me at first, since I really did not let go of anything during this last move. But I think what I need to let go of is an idea and not a physical thing in this case. I always pictured myself living here while my husband attended seminary having and raising kids. Now that I am here and I do not have any children it is really nothing like what I imagined. I think it is hard for me to let go of what I thought this part of our lives would look like, which is making it hard for me to truly enjoy what we do have right now. I see other couples who move here and are pregnant, or have brand new babies, and I think "that should have been us." I know that is a horrible way to think, but it happens. I really want to be able to enjoy the time we have here, and enjoy all the good things we have going on in our lives right now. And I do notice them and appreciate them. But at the same time, I know that until I have children, I am always going to be missing something. There's just no way around it.

These are two verses that were shared in this class over the past two weeks. Even though I was listening to those verses with a different spin on them than the rest of the class, I found them to be very encouraging.

"Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland." ~Isaiah 43:18-19

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generation, for ever and ever." ~Ephesians 20-21

These verses remind me of God's power over all creation and that He, the God who created the whole world, is also at work in each of us. I desire very much to start a family, and I am going to continue to work towards that goal. But I also want to be open-minded to look for what God may be trying to do in my life through this. I do want to trust Him. This is definitely much easier said than done, but -

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." ~ Philippians 4:13

Daydreaming

I used to daydream all the time about babies. I would start at the beginning, planning out just how I would tell my husband when the wonderful, long awaited, positive pregnancy test came along. I would then look forward to all our conversations planning for the future, telling our families, picking out names, setting up a nursery... every detail until the moment we brought that beautiful baby home. And then I would daydream some more. About teaching Baby colors, shapes, words, and all the wonderful "firsts." I can't wait for all these experiences and for the incredible joy, honor and opportunity of raising a child and watching them grow.

The past couple months I have been more successful than I thought possible in shutting the daydreaming down. I thought that "getting my hopes up" every month lead me to be more devastated in the end. And it probably did. So I stopped hoping and I stopped daydreaming and I stopped planning. Of course we kept trying,  but I worked hard to convince myself that there was no real hope because a) I believed that, and b) it was too painful being continually let down.

But the past week or so the daydreaming has slowly crept back into my thinking, and I've let it. I think I'm finding that I far prefer the daydreams and hopes to the bitterness of having no hope. Sure, it may not be likely, and sure, I may be disappointed. But I love the idea of having kids, and I am thrilled and beyond excited about it. And one way or another, this IS going to happen. Maybe not how I think it should, and clearly not in my timing. But it will happen. If it never happens naturally, we've already decided that we will adopt some day. So I WILL be a parent some day. And I am going to look forward to that day with excitement. Sure, I might spend a few days of each month devastated. But I think I'll be happier overall than being just moderately miserable all the time.

I don't want to give up hope. I want to learn to trust God to guide my path. I want to rely on His promises that He loves me and He has a plan for me. It is hard, but I think allowing myself to daydream could actually be one small step toward living out that trust.

And daydreaming is fun! I can't wait to have a baby!

As Anne Shirley says, "I can't help flying up on the wings of anticipation. It's as glorious as soaring through a sunset... almost pays for the thud."

It's Getting Old...

I realize that I haven't posted in about a month. I promise that is not because I forgot, or because things have been better, or because things have been worse. I resolved at the beginning that I would not make this a depressed, ranting, complaining blog.  The internet has plenty of those. I resolved to follow the advice of Thumper from Bambi and my mother: "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."

So it's been a month of silence from me. Nothing has happened really on the infertility front. My husband and I moved from one area to another so my husband could start attending graduate school. I started my new job, which has been going very well, but has kept me really busy. We have not found a new fertility doctor yet, so I feel like everything is kind of paused for us.  I've been very busy with my new job so I have not had a lot of time to work on that, but that doesn't mean that time is going by fast or that I don't feel more and more devastated with each passing month of not conceiving.

To be completely honest, I have been very sad lately, and that is why I haven't blogged. My life is good, my apartment is good, I seem happy on the surface, and in many ways I am. But there is this undercurrent of sadness constantly. It keeps me from ever feeling completely 100% happy. It's kind of like numbness most of the time, and then like acute, sharp pain at other times.  But I don't want to complain or dwell on my sadness, so that's all I'm going to say about that.

Hopefully something positive will give me hope soon, and I can come on here and write a more uplifting (or at the very least insightful) post. Until then, like the title said, this whole waiting thing is getting old.

If You Work Hard Enough...

... you can accomplish anything.

I am not sure that anyone has ever said this to me directly, but I feel like the world has definitely infused this message into society very strongly.  Some variations on this theme are:

• You can be whatever you want to be.
• You can do whatever you set your mind to do.
• Whatever you dream of and desire in your heart, it can and will happen if you just have faith.

I feel like that last point is the theme of just about every Disney movie that I saw as a little girl.  While I may not have admitted that I believed this at any given point in my life, I think that I always hoped and trusted that this would be true.  I hoped that if I wanted something badly enough, was willing to work hard for it, and just kept going, that I could really be or do or have anything.  Is that the American Dream?  I'm not sure, but it sure feels like it is on the curriculum in our nation's schools! 

Well, I may have believed these things at the age of eight, or even twelve.  And I may have hoped and acted on these premises at the age of sixteen or even eighteen.  But now in my twenties, I know for sure that these statements are all lies. 

Disclaimer:  I do think that these beliefs have their place.  I do believe in working hard to accomplish goals.  I do not believe in giving up.

That being said, I sure wish someone would have told me that even if I want something and work towards it with all my strength, sometimes I still will not get it.  TTC has taught me this.  It is unfortunate that I did not learn this lesson before, as I certainly had the opportunity.

When I was a teenager I loved to dance, and I took as many ballet lessons per week as my parents would pay for and my teachers would allow.  I wanted to be a ballerina when I grew up, and I worked very, very hard.  I was even talented, and I think that it would have been possible for me to succeed.  But when I was fourteen, I had to have a spinal fusion surgery to correct scoliosis in my back.  It was an unpleasant six months, but I got through it, and now I hardly ever think about my scoliosis and it has no impact on my daily life. (Praise God!)  But it made me much less flexible in my back, and there came a point when I was seventeen when I knew I would never be a dancer.  I had reached a point where I could not bend in ways the other girls in my class did, and if I danced for over ten hours a week, my back hurt to a point I could not handle.  I had to stop dancing and develop new goals and dreams.  This was the first real loss in my life.  I know that many people deal with much worse, but I can easily say that going through surgery and recovery was nothing compared to not being able to dance the way I wanted to. 

So there... this should have been my first clue that trying hard is not always enough.  But I mentally moved on to my still greater goal of being a wife and a mother and having a large family.  I knew that to have a career in dance it is pretty impossible to have kids in your early twenties.  I had always felt conflicted about these two dreams of mine.  But when God closed the dance door, and simultaneously presented me with a wonderful, loving relationship with my now-husband, I was sure that this was the new door that God was opening or pointing out to me.  The thought that both of my plans would be thwarted never occurred to me.  The thought that my body could betray me twice and deny me the only two things I ever wanted it to do for me was just not something that seemed realistic to me.  I believed that God loved me too much for that.

Well, the truth of the matter is that God does love me too much for that.  God wants me to be happy, and to have the things that I want that are in his plan and will.  But I still have to deal with the fact that we live in a fallen world, and things happen.  My dad has been trying to teach me this lesson my entire life, but I think I'm beginning to get it.  Life is not fair.  And this has nothing to do with good or bad, or the existence or love of God.  It is just true.  Life is not fair.  Some people have things that others are denied, and there is no reason for it.  Sometimes as hard as  you work for something you will never get it.  That does not mean that you should not continue working for it.

Life is not fair.

You may never get what you desire no matter how hard you work.

You should still fight and work for the things you want in life.

God still loves you, and life still has meaning.

Even if I never get the things that I desire in life, I want to trust that God does have a plan for me that will be fulfilling.

Career Crisis

I feel that I am preparing for a life that I never wanted.

Let me sketch for you a picture of the life I have been dreaming of for the past six or more years.  This, to me, is the perfect, ideal life that I wanted for myself.  

I always wanted to fall in love and get married young.  When J and I started dating, we already knew that our relationship was serious and heading toward marriage.  We may have only been 18 and 17, respectively, but neither of us believed in casual dating, and we had strong faith in our friendship and our growing relationship.  I was home schooled through tenth grade, and through my home school groups and my church, I knew many large families with young mothers, or women who had been around 20 when they had their first kid.  I always thought that these families were beautiful, wonderful, and what I wanted my future family to be like.  I feel so much passion about the vocation of parenthood!  More than anything I long to have a large family, to home school my children, and to provide them with a wonderful, joyful, childhood full of all the love, security, and Christian values that made me who I am today.  I do enjoy my career path.  I do love math and teaching.  I can become passionate about many things, but I have always longed to be a mother and take care of a family to a much greater extent than I ever desired a professional career.  

When I got married at the age of 20, it was my expectation that my first child would be born when I was 21. This did not seem young or early to me at all.  It seemed like perfect timing.  Maturity has very little to do with age, and J and I both believe that we are ready to be parents.  We have friends who are our age who have babies or are starting their families now, and even if it is less common today, my grandmothers had their first children when they were 20!  But our eagerness to start a family has nothing to do with when anyone else started or is starting their families.  We both want children now because we feel we are ready.  We share the dream of a large family, and we want that dream to begin yesterday.  

Something that has been hard for me is that while I am longing with everything in me to start the vocation of motherhood, so many of my friends around me are excited about their new careers, and they all assume that I should be too.  Am I glad that I went to college?  Of course!  I think education is incredibly important, and even if I had absolutely no intention of ever working (which is not the case) I would have wanted to study and learn more.  A high school education is just not enough for me, and I always wanted to go to college for its own sake.  But everyone assumes that now that I'm done with college of course all I want to do is find a job in my field and build my career.  I do love my field, and I do think I have talents that I can use there, but it is not what I want for my life right now.  I feel like society is asking me to live a lie by pretending that I desire these things. 

Now that my dreams of starting a family are not being fulfilled in the way I had hoped, I have been pouring all of my efforts into finding a job.  I always planned to work for a few years after college if necessary, and I am okay with doing that.  But I never felt the pressure to select all the right positions, make all the right connections, and maximize my career potential in the way that I would have felt compelled to do if I planned to work for my whole life.  A whole 14 months have passed since we started trying to start our family, and even though I still hope and believe that we will be successful, I feel that the chance that we may not is growing each month.  Now that I recognize that there is a reasonable chance I may not have children, or may not have them for a while, my career takes on a whole new importance and significance.  

And so while I grieve and struggle through infertility, I must also pour all of my efforts into preparing for a life I have never desired and do not want.  This has made this summer incredibly emotional and stressful for me.  For the first time I have started to feel this urgency to be successful after college, because I may not be able to pursue my real dreams.  I am very happy that I have the promise of employment when J and I move to our new home in a few weeks.  But at the same time, I am worried because this job is not in my field, and I want to ensure that my career is successful.  Even while I weight these considerations, the main thought constantly running through my head is I don't care about any of this.  I just want a baby! It sure makes it hard to think clearly! 

I am thankful that God has kept me sane through the past few months.  I am glad that he has blessed me with a job so that I will have something to do.  I know that his plans for me are greater than my plans for myself.  I know that there is a way that he can use this situation to bring glory to him.  I know all the right answers.  And knowing that God loves me does help.  I cannot imagine how lost and hopeless I would feel without God right now.  But that certainly does not mean that this is easy.