I realized the other day that it’s been five years since we were going through all our infertility treatments.
FIVE years. In some ways I can close my eyes and catapulted myself back into that time and feel like I am still in the middle of it all. And in other ways, it feels like that time of my life was a lifetime ago.
For the most part that time seems long ago, but I don’t think there will ever come a time when I won’t be able to easily go back in time and feel like I am in the middle of it all. I will forever remember that season of my life. That time of my life was monumental to who I am today. God used those years and the experience of going through those treatments to mold me into who He wanted me to be today. That time was truly life-changing for me.
Life is so different now than it was back in those days. I try to remember how I spent my time. My house was immaculately clean. I do know that much. There wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere and cleaning the blinds was on the weekly cleaning list.
I still haven’t cleaned the blinds in our house and we’ve been in it almost 6 months now!
It’s funny how priorities, goals and life in general changes as time goes by. Cleaning the blinds is just no longer on my priority list, and I’m so thankful. Not because I disliked cleaning the blinds. With a Swiffer duster, it is actually kinda fun and easy to clean blinds.
But I’m thankful because it means my focus is elsewhere. On my daughters.
The little girls that, five years ago, it seemed they would never be. It is hard to sometimes go back to those desperate times when I wondered if I would ever be a mother. Maybe because in all honesty never becoming a mother just didn’t seem like an option for me. I truthfully believed that I would one day be a mother.
Up until that fateful day on the examination table in the doctor’s office when we learned our IVF cycle wasn’t working quite like we had hoped, I believed one day I would see those two pink lines.
I figured we were just having to go the long route to finally see them. But, eventually, they would be there.
I sometimes wonder if we had continued trudging along on the infertility treatment path, would we have eventually seen those two pink lines?
It is really a mute point because God lead us elsewhere and the what ifs truly don’t matter because we received God’s perfect plan and there is nothing more amazing than that.
Looking back on that time five years ago, I am so thankful God brought us through those treatments and taught us what He did, and then put a stop to them when He did. I am not sure how much more I could have physically and emotionally taken.
The road of adoption certainly wasn’t a cake walk, but strangely enough, it was a breath of fresh air once we knew the treatments were over. Sure I still had to mourn the loss of pregnancy and a biological child, but knowing the treatments were behind us was such a relief.
I am five years removed from that time in my life. It is not even something I think about every day anymore. It is a season of my life that I remember and always will remember. But I am no longer living those days. I have not forgotten that, for some people, maybe someone reading this blog right now, they are living these days every single day.
First of all, I am so sorry you are going through this. The pain of desiring a child and not becoming pregnant month after month after month when everyone else around you seems to become pregnant so easily is so very hard. I remember the pain of those days. I remember not being able to go to baby showers because it hurt too much and I was fearful I would start crying in the middle of someone else’s celebration. I remember being happy for others who became pregnant but inside it felt like a knife had just stabbed me in my side. I remember falling to a heap on the floor and weeping when we’d get another call that another treatment had not worked. I remember being angry when thinking about all the money we were spending just to attempt pregnancy. I remember feeling angry at my body because it wasn’t working right to be able to conceive.
I remember…
I also remember everything that God taught me during that trial in my life. It’s too much to even begin to type it all out into one little paragraph on this blog post. But, I remember when I started to realize that all this suffering and pain wasn’t about me. It was about God and what He wanted to do in and through my life so that others could see that God did this; not man. I remember when I realized I had a choice to make: was I going to choose to put my trust in God or choose to be angry and bitter about the less than ideal circumstances that I was currently dealing with in my life? I remember when God’s Word (the Bible) spoke to me as I read Jeremiah 29:11 and I knew that I could trust God to keep those promises for me, too. He did have plans for my future, plans that would prosper me and not harm me, plans that would bring me hope and a future. I remember clinging to the words in that verse as if my life depended on it. And, really, my life did depend on it. I was at the bottom of the barrel of hope and those words revived my soul and gave me true hope that can only be found in Jesus Christ. I remember when my outlook on my circumstances changed and I stopped thinking woe-is-me-thoughts and started thinking, Ok, God, how are you going to use all this for your glory!? I am a willing vessel. Use me! Show the world you are God.
I remember…
And then, how could I ever forget what God did next? I can’t and I won’t as long as I ever live.
I will never forget working on our adoption paperwork with renewed hope and expectation that God was going to do something marvelous. I will never forget walking into the adoption agency and then texting my husband moments later, Do you want to be a daddy in June?! I will never forget our first meeting with Little Bug’s birth mother sitting there at the adoption agency. The nerves were high on both ends, but as we talked, there was such tremendous peace. I will never forget walking into that delivery room just in time to see Little Bug enter this world. Poor Tracy had delivered naturally and she was still screaming in pain saying that hurt more than anything she had ever done, but she still had the presence of mind to ask the doctor to let me cut the cord. Such a beautiful gift she gave me to be there at the birth of Little Bug. And I remember what it felt like for Little Bug to be placed in my arms for the very first time. Arms that were once empty were completely full with the expectation that this baby girl was going to be my little girl, always and forever.
And then, not two years later, we found ourselves in the adoption process again! Pregnancy came hard for us (they never came!), but adoptions seemed to just fall in our laps. It was a very clear reminder to me that when God has a plan, He brings it to fruition in His time and in His way. Within two years I became the mother of two little girls.
I remember holding both of my daughters for the first time, one of them still hooked up to all the NICU machines, and just thinking, So this is what my infertility was all about?! God wanted to perform these miracles and He used my broken womb to do so! Wow.
In those moments all the pain and heartache of infertility made sense. We serve a God that is BIG and desires to do BIG things in our lives, if we are surrendered and allow Him to do His work in our lives. I didn’t go in to the details about how we were matched with our daughters’ birth mothers but each story is a clear picture of the hand of God at work in the lives of everyone involved. He alone is the one who orchestrated the adoptions of my daughters. I had nothing to do with it, except the fact that I surrendered to His plan laying on that examination table. He did the rest and I just happened to have front row seats to the show.
Five years removed from infertility and I can honestly say it is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I still have a broken reproductive system. I don’t need a pregnancy to feel complete. I can sit among a group of women talking about pregnancy and childbirth and not feel like I need to escape now. God has done a work in my life only He could do and I am just so thankful.
If you are reading this and going through infertility or some other trial, there is a purpose that goes beyond you. God desires to do something marvelous in your life! Something beyond anything you can see at this moment. You see hopelessness and despair but God sees a miracle waiting to unfold. God takes bad and makes good as only He can do.
Let the work God has done in and through my battle with infertility serve to bring you hope today.
To God be the glory!
