Can I Handle Anything Else?

...and the answer is..."I don't know."  How's that for being wishy-washy?  My husband thinks I'm tough enough to handle anything, but I know that I just put on a good front.  I am an actress, I can put on a good front.  I've reached a point where I honestly don't know if I can take anything else.  I'm sure that if something else happened, I'd deal with it, but...  The best way I can describe it is to say that with each new challenge, I feel a bit of "me" slipping away, I lose more of my optimism, and I start turning into a "grown-up".  I've always held out on becoming a "grown-up", because my view is that adults who lose their joy in life become "grown-ups".  I'm feeling myself sliding down that slope, and it scares me...a lot.

So what perfect storm of events has led to all of this inner thinking?  I'm glad you asked, because I need to share.  My period started on Monday, which meant that yet again, I've failed to get pregnant.  I was even two days late, and I'd gotten a pregnancy test.  I'm not sure why I spent the money on the test, but I did.  Each month seems to get harder and harder.  Someone once said that infertility is worse than grieving the loss of a loved one, because when someone dies, you have a funeral, you say your goodbyes, and then you move on with life.  Infertility is like that, only you grieve anew each month, and you never get to really say a final goodbye.  Instead, you have that flickering light of Hope each month, only to have it cruelly snuffed out each time that time of the month hits.

What's sad is that I've gotten used to it.  It's been two years of negatives, that's 24 of them, and each one has gotten harder.  It's easy to go into a depression, and if I didn't have a supportive family, my husband, and God, I'd willingly go into that depression and stay there.

So anyway, I had grieved this cycle, and had wrapped up my emotions and my heart so that I could make it through Thanksgiving without just bursting into tears.  Then, while stopping to drop food off at Grandma's house, I got to see my 2-year-old nephew wearing a shirt that said "BIG Brother".  That's right, my sister is expecting again.  Since I was only stopping to drop off the food, I was able to mumble congratulations and then slip off.  I was then able to have time to put on my happy face and re-wrap up my heart.

Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled that I'll have a new niece or nephew to love on, and I'm praying she has an uncomplicated pregnancy.  I just didn't know they'd been trying or that they'd been planning on one yet.  Then there's the whole finding out about her good news right as I'd been coming to terms of my bad news.

My deep-down fear is that my first pregnancy was my last one.  That it was a test and I failed.  That my miscarriage was totally my fault, and because I couldn't carry to term, I'll never get that chance again. 

These are the thoughts that creep out when it's dark outside, when I'm laying down to sleep, sometimes when I see someone's new baby, sometimes when I see a pregnant woman.  I know that many of them are Satan's accusations hurled to make my light flicker, but he's just magnifying what's already in my head and heart;  and on days like yesterday, it's almost too much to resist. 

The cry of my heart is to be a mother...of a living child.  I want to feel a new life growing inside of me, to hold an infant and know he/she's mine, to have the responsibility of training him/her in the ways of faith, to have all of those moments my siblings are having with their kids.

So, can I handle anything else?  I guess I have to be able to handle whatever.  I just want to have too many good things to handle instead of too many bad things.  God will see me through, I just want out of this valley sooner rather than later.

Thankful and Hopeful

So...It's been a while since I posted.  I haven't intended to be away this long, but sometimes I just need to step back and not think about my journey for a while...it's hard to explain unless you're also in this moment.  I just needed a break.

Since it's so close to Thanksgiving, I thought I would devote some of this post to what I'm thankful for.  First of all, I'm thankful to be a child of God--that trumps everything.  Second, I'm thankful for an amazing husband who is my soulmate and who is far more than I ever hoped for.  Third, I'm thankful for my family--they're totally awesome and have enriched my life more than I feel I deserve.  Fourth, I'm thankful for my nieces and nephew--they make me light up!

I am also thankful for getting to hold a baby at church last night.  You might not think it's much, but his mom handed him to me.  That doesn't just happen to me.  Since I had a miscarriage 19 months ago, I've not really held one.  For the first few months, it hurt to much to hold one, and then as time wore on, it felt like no one really trusted me around infants.  So,  I've just not really touched them.  I love children dearly, but since I'm not a member of the "mommy club" it seems that most of them don't think I'm capable of being able to hold one.  This mom at church probably has no idea what she did to my self-confidence, but it was nice to hold one again.

Under my hopeful paragraph, I'm hopeful that I'll be a mom someday.  We spent the last weekend with my nephew, and watching my husband interact with him just about tore my heart out.  Most people don't see that side of my husband, but I know he'll make an excellent dad, and I really want him to be a daddy.  I had to step out of the room for a bit, because I was so teary--in a good way, but teary.  I have to put my hope in the Lord, and my trust.  That's the hard part, the trusting, because it means that I take my burden out of my hands and put it in God's hands.  He is infinitely more capable of taking care of things than I am, but I always seem to think I can do things better.  I guess part of it is that I think He's so busy helping out people with real problems, and I don't want to bother Him with my "petty" problems.  I know it's wrong thinking, and I'm working on it. 

I'm still a work in progress, which brings me to my last thankful item.  Thank goodness I'm not a completed work.  That won't occur until heaven, but until then, I need to keep growing in faith and working on becoming the woman He wants me to be.

Adoption

Today has been a good day...strike that, a great day.  It is the day that the Lord has made, so I will rejoice and be glad in it.  Fall has come in all it's glory, and the crispness in the air means hot chocolate and cider (Yippee for liquid chocolate--God invents some goooood stuff!).  I got to see new pictures of my new niece--she lives too far away to just visit, but I'll see her at Christmas, and my mind has wandered to questions that people have asked me recently, so I'll lay out my opinions on the subjects of adoption and IVF.

First of all, we are still trying to go the "home-ade" route on children.  It's cheaper right now.  I've recently had MANY people tell me that they think I'd make a great mom, and that since we're struggling to conceive, that perhaps we should go the adoption route.  I would LOVE to be a mom through adoption, but it's not as easy as everyone thinks it is.  First of all, as with anything in this world, adoption costs $$$. Lots of $$$.  More money than I'm making this year, just to start the process.  I think some people think you can just walk into an orphanage and just say, "I'd like this one, only as a girl, and in a smaller size.  Oh, and can I have it gift-wrapped?"  URRGGHH.   Most people mean well, but not having ever experienced it, they honestly don't understand all the "stuff" that goes into it.  I don't even know everything, because I know that we're not even close to qualifying as adoptive parents.  We live in an 850 sq. ft house, which is much smaller than I'd like, but it's PAID FOR, and in this economy, that trumps just about anything.  That's not enough room to even qualify for being foster parents.  Also, while we are financially able to make it right now, we don't have any extra, soooo...no adoption $$$. 

We've talked about adoption, and both of us are for it if we can't be parents any other way.  But it's going to take time. We've decided that when I can get a full-time job again, we'll put some money in to our regular savings account and then start up another adoption savings account.  By putting away some each month, we'll be able to afford to adopt in about 5 years.  That is, unless we're already parents, or unless we have a major calamity, or unless the Lord comes again, or..........  It's hard to plan that far into the future when we're not guaranteed tomorrow.

But for right now, I'm still getting to know how my body reacts to this medication I'm on, and am still arguing with my body about how, while I like unpredictable things from time to time, my cycle is not supposed to be like that.  It's supposed to be...boring.  Boring is good.  I would like to have the most boring cycle in the world.  In fact, if it would be boring for six months in a row, and work like it's supposed to, I'll let it have a month off to be crazy unpredictable.  Maybe I should draw up a contract for that...

Have a great, God-filled day!