I wanted to start off this post by thanking everyone who has prayed for us recently. All of your prayers are appreciated so much and I know for sure there have been times when someone else's prayer is what is carrying me through a tough time. Like most of the IF journey, the disappointment devastates for a time, but life goes on and things get back to a more normal state. The grief of IF is always there lurking in the background, ready to rear it's ugly head at even the smallest provocation (like a stupid insurance commercial), but that is "normal" for us. The harder part of this disappointment is knowing that there was a life within me, and then there wasn't. We don't know why or when that life was gone, but we do mourn that small, short life and recognize it for what it is.

In all of my 3.5 years of TTC, I've never had a reason to question whether or not I was pregnant, not once. I think I've maybe taken 2 home pregnancy tests in my entire married life before this and one of those I took because I needed to confirm that I was not pregnant. To actually have some inkling of hope, and an actual reason to believe that I could be pregnant with our baby is a feeling that I wanted to hang on to for so long. It's a feeling I'm not sure I'll ever have again, and that is something I mourn too. I mourn never even having a reason to take a pregnancy test, at least not before this.

I don't know what 2010 will bring for us. We don't know where this journey will take us. My struggle right now is that although we are at peace with HOW God wants to start our family, I'm not at peace about when. I just don't know how much longer I can wait. I don't know why I have to wait when we've been ready for so long. Domestic adoption is about a 2-3 year wait (if it ever happens at all), international adoption is about the same or longer. Embryo adoption could take months or years, plus the pregnancy. No matter what, we are probably looking at the very least, 1-2 years before we could have a baby in our home. Knowing I may still have to wait this long is unbearable to me.

I also fear that maybe we will never be parents at all. It is a reality that all IF couples have to come to terms with. There are couples who have tried everything, ART's, adoption, foster care, and for whatever reason, remain childless. I don't understand this and I don't believe we are an exception to this possibility. I miss the naivete of thinking that just because I want to have a family, that I will have one, that because it is the desire of my heart, I will actually receive it. I guess IF has made me bit jaded.

As jaded as I am, amazingly enough God is graceful and he allows us to have some peace, actually more peace than I can comprehend. This upcoming year I really want to focus on having the hope that God provides when there is no hope in my circumstance, the hope I have just because I have God. This hope is not in what he will do for me, but in who He is to me. It's not always easy, usually when you think of hope, you think of it in terms of a "feeling". Kind of like love, in a way. You dream of love and how it makes you feel, but when it really happens you realize that love is not a feeling, it is an action, it's an attitude, it is work, it's commitment. The kind of hope you need when you are going through life's toughest of circumstances is work, it takes effort, it takes a change of attitude and it takes a commitment. I can't just choose to "feel" hope, I have to work at it, to change my mind and my heart to be in alignment with God's truth rather than giving in to my fears (especially the ones mentioned above).