Merry Christmas!

Something "jumped off the pages" as I was reading a devotion this morning and struck me in a deep, hurting and confused place. It was this; "I have held back nothing in my provision for you." I just want to write it over and over. I want to say it out loud. It makes my eyes well up and somehow, in this moment it helps make sense of everything I have ever been through or will go through up ahead. 

Simple truth.

I have felt cheated and short changed, but He has given me His all. 

I have felt hollow and deprived, but He has held back nothing. 

Where then is the disconnect between what I often feel, the things I believe I am entitled to, the way I thought things would go and the truth about my life? There is mystery involved, that I am sure of, but what if the miraculous healing didn't come because His provision, His best, was found in the valley? What if the baby isn't here yet because His provision is found in the waiting? His best in the story unfolding right now, in this day. What He holds in His hand is the best gift to open, even if it's not what I've been asking for. That's hard. Life sometimes is. But today I am comforted meditating on the truth that my God isn't heaven watching as I flounder, or dangling my dreams in front of me like a carrot. He's the conducter signaling every hymn and ho, in perfect time, navigating me through the lulls, walking me up the highs and catching me when I fall down low. 

So I can stop wishing things were different in my life, wondering what could have been, or why trials have come my way. Because 'He who did not spare His own son but gave Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Rom. 8:32

Merry Christmas!! 

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Processing

The last two days I have experienced such a wide and varying degrees of emotions. At my best I am hopeful and my gaze is strong as I look out on the unseen adventure that awaits us. Another journey, a new road, a different baby. I keep telling the Lord that I really liked the old story, the one that just seeped through my fingertips like sand. I tell him that the road I took was hard and long and that I expected something on the other side of it. My hands are empty Lord, but I will keep holding them out until you fill them. I tell him that I loved the old embryo, The One (reading this post wrecks me), that specific set of chromosomes, the person he was going to be. But we don’t get to choose the things that are out of our control. If we’re being honest with ourselves, it’s all out of our hands, even the things we grip so tightly our knuckles turn white.

My house feels a little emptier somehow and that room we call “the baby room” feels a little bigger. What the heck am I going to fill this place up with so it doesn’t look so…so barren?

I want to fill up my days with meaningful things, but it’s hard for me to find what those are right now. Processing is a process.

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Still Good

Today was supposed to be the day our little embryo, our one, was transferred into our dear friend and gestational carrier. Yesterday we got the call that our embryo did not survive the unthawing process.  We were shocked, speechless, confused, heart-broken. All we could do was cry. We were so expectant, so full of faith for this. Every detail was in place, contracts have been made, we have exhausted our savings and nearly maxed out our credit card. I’ve endured countless pokes, prods, and a major surgery, all for this day, all to become a mother. And instead of rejoicing in a new life, today I grieve. I cry for my husband who desperately wants to be a father, for a dream that seems so out of reach, and for the death of an idea, a picture of the way we believed so unflinchingly life would go. But it didn’t. What do you do when there are no answers to all your questions and God doesn’t come through the way you thought He would? Trying to make sense of the last few years, everything we have gone through is fruitless, I’m learning that. So I have to keep coming back to what I do know. God is still good. I am crushed, but not without hope.

We are still processing this news, and trying to sort out our emotions, which is basically like a full time job. Things can get dark pretty quick up in my brain right now if I don’t keep tabs on it and continually replete my soul with truth.

Where do we go from here? We are essentially back at square one. Jessi is now across the country from me without our embryo, which makes the potential for her carrying for us in the future a very, very complicated, if not impossible scenario, and I would have to begin the egg retrieval process all over again. This is daunting for me, but we have zero peace about giving up here. We will keep fighting for this dream as long as God puts the fight in us. There are so many unknowns in our future, and sometimes this feels impossible, financially & emotionally. BUT GOD. That’s all we have right now, and that’s enough, it’s gotta be.

I know there are so many of you that are so invested in this journey of ours, financially, spiritually, and emotionally, and I cry for you too. I really don’t have words for what your love & support has meant to us.

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