Waiting

It seems like every decision we've made the last few years has been in preparation for children. Every piece of clothing I buy or don't buy, I think about if I could wear it if I was pregnant, or if it would be super out of style or impractical post baby. The house we live in, and today buying a washer and dryer, when only the dryer is broken.   I thought, if our washer goes out 2 years from now, when we're paying for daycare, we might not be able to make an extra payment. Waiting for a baby is so consuming in every part of our lives. Everything I eat, the medicine I take, etc. Is run through a "what if" filter. This month is 2 years into this difficult process. I'm hoping to get started on some medical interventions next month. I'm not looking forward to the process, and hope with everything in me that we come out with a baby (or two) at the end of it. I keep hoping to not have to go this road, that I would have peace about which way to go. I haven't closed any doors.

I know from waiting for a husband that God was preparing me for unique circumstances. He was building me and teaching me things I would need. And I believe he may be doing it now. I wish I knew more.

I know that so far, he's joining me to other women who are in various stages of infertility that I certainly would have never met without this battle. He's given me war buddies.

The result is not all heartache. There has been plenty of heartache, but there has been good as well. This wound of a closed womb has reopened my heart to spiritual desires I thought were gone forever.

The move is over, but the fat lady is not singing.

I love my new house. I'm so proud of what God has done by making this opportunity available to us.

It's been a rough move. I started packing a few weeks ago and have learned through many moves that I'm not good at it. I'm just not good at getting ready for them. I'm not good at the stress of it. I'm not good at organizing it. I pack myself and hire movers, but it still is ridiculous how much I end up moving myself and how many loads there are.

This is my second move since I've been with Doorway Man. We were engaged and I moved into the apartment we would share once we got married. The movers came and I was not ready. We took loads in mine and his dad's car for days after the movers came. It was horrible, but we got it done. Doorway Man was a real champ. Then over the course of the next few months, he moved his stuff in.

This time has been different. I guess at some point Doorway Man decided this was not his move, so he managed to not help the entire move. He kind of half-@$$ed packed his collection of sports memorabilia, but he pretty much decided that he would find something else to do and not help with the rest of the house. At. All.

I'm really mad.

I've begged him to help me, but he's made every excuse he cam think of and disappeared every time any work was actually being done. And any time I got onto him about it, he got mad and has refused to acknowledge that he's done me wrong.

I'm really hurt.

I feel like his selfishness stole the spotlight for me on the happiness of us getting our first house. He's been pretty mean and I think his coldness toward me and his shirking responsibility on this has become really personal.

He really let me down, and I feel like when the chips were down, he didn't do right by me, and it's not because he can't. He just didn't want to.

So, I'm not sure where we go from here. I keep trying to remind myself that a bad two weeks does not equal a bad life. I'm so tired. I'm tired of this move. I'm tired of fighting with my husband. I'm tired of feeling like I'm about to burst into tears.

I'm so embarrassed.

I'm embarrassed that I'm married to the kind of man that would treat his wife this way. I don't want to tell anyone how bad it's been, because I'm embarrassed that he's acted this way, and I feel like I let him.  I feel like maybe I've enabled him in some way that he knew that whether he helped or not, I would get it done. I'm embarrassed that I didn't just tell him that if he didn't help me, I wasn't going to do it either. I wish I'd had the freedom to do that.

I believe that you teach people how to treat you, and I don't ever intend to be treated this way again. Don't worry, I'm not thinking of leaving him or anything that serious. I just need God to give me wisdom on how to communicate with him exactly how wrong he has been to treat me this way.

I know I need to forgive, and I will. Tonight, I'm so tired and so upset that I just don't think I can get there. I wish I could show him what he's done and he could see it and repent. I need him to see what he's done and show remorse.

Rainbow baby

I visited my parents home for the first time in over a year a few weeks ago. Our relationship has been very strained for about 3 years, but has been healing.

It took me almost a year into our struggle with infertility to tell my parents we were struggling. The rift had been caused due to who I chose to marry, and I figured that the response would be negative regarding having children. So one day, I put on my brave panties and sent a text message.

Facts. This is the deal. I'm going to the doctor soon to see what's up. I'm not ready to talk about it.

"I will pray that God gives you the desires of your heart."

A few weeks later while on my "trying to fix this relationship, but not trying" phone call, my mom began to talk to me about a painful time in her life. She had married my dad at 17, and way too soon had become pregnant with my older brother and gave birth to him at 19. She had taken birth control afterwards, which was a brand new thing in the 70s. And when they decided they were ready for another child, she came off birth control. And nothing happened. She was prescribed clomid, and became pregnant. Then she miscarried. Then she got pregnant with me. There were 4 years and some months between my brother and I.

A few weeks ago, when I was there visiting, my mom took me to the room that she goes every morning to drink her coffee and read her Bible and pray. She showed me 2 little outfits hanging by her chair, one for a boy and one for a girl. She said she didn't know if I was going to have a boy or a girl, so she got one of each. She said she touches them when she prays for me. Then, she handed me a gift bag that had a soft blanket in it, and told me her prayer group at church had prayed over that blanket for us.

This journey takes an awful lot away, but I feel like God is using it to restore my relationship with my mom. I hope to see lots of "fruit" from this time in my life. I hope it makes me a better, deeper person, gives me life long friendships, that I'm able to touch the lives of others who are walking through this someday.

Although I haven't been pregnant in this journey, my mom and I share a very special broken spot, and she understands my longing in a way that many others don't. She could have never known 40 years ago what her battle would mean to me, her rainbow baby.

The good, the bad, and the dummies

It's been a long time since I've posted. I kinda wish I had kept up this blog the last few years, but I didn't. Sometimes, when you start a blog and you call it something about dummies, you still check yourself before you post how stupid you are. Go figure.

I had lots of dreams coming into marriage that have come true in ways I never could have predicted. There are other dreams I'm waiting for, some more patiently than others. I've heard that expectation is dangerous in relationships, but I have found with doorway man, the opposite is true. I feel like it has everything to do with how expectations are both communicated by the expector and received and processed by the expectee. That's probably not a word. There have been times I felt like I watched the death rattle of my dreams and heard the flatline as I turned my head in disappointment. Then a few months later, where my tears watered the scorched earth in the place my bitterness and anger was released, there have been harvests of unexpected wild fruit. I'm not really sure why it has to come that way in my marriage, but that's what it's been.

"Trust me. Watch and see what I will do." Those words ring over and over in my marriage. These words were what I now understand were the promise God made to me 3 and a half years ago when I looked at brokenness and wanted to turn away. This is so strange, because in my years of "active ministry" I prayed so many times for God to let me be involved in seeing other people healed. I almost missed the biggest opportunity of my life to do just that.

I've watched a man who was stripped of his purpose and his potential be raised up and be given a holy pride and a hunger for growth. I've seen my faith that was wavering restored as the hands of God have built a man in front of my eyes. I've had a front row seat to the greatest miracle I've ever seen in all my years of following God. I've messed up lots of times in the past few years, and my anger and my fear has not been able to thwart God's plan. Go figure on that.

It's been a rough ride, full of days that I wasn't sure I was strong enough. Full of days I wondered if I was the abuser in my relationship with my husband because of some of the really hard times and not being sure if I was saying the right things or being the wife I am supposed to be.

We've really struggled financially. There have been nights I've laid awake in a panic, not knowing how we would ever make it to payday. So many tears. So much sacrifice.

My health has been bad. We've joked alot about my warrantee, and I've had to remind doorway man that I was an "as is" deal. We discovered a huge piece of the puzzle was a malfunctioning thyroid. Apparently, that can cause chronic fatigue, pain, and infertility. I had no idea.

His parents have been in and out of the hospital with serious health issues.

We weren't making it. I was so angry that things were so hard, and I really, really wanted to blame doorway man.

Then, as I laid down my control of one thing at a time, I began to see the hand of the Lord change things for us.

There is a reason that the first part of breakthrough is the word break.

We are entering a new phase of our lives and our marriage. I'm so hopeful to see what God will do in our home. We're about to close on our first house in a few weeks,  and we're beginning infertility treatment. I'm going to start blogging again. I want this part chronicled. The good, the bad, and the dummies.