I wrote this on Saturday, and almost didn't post it because my plan is still in the early stages, but if I put it in writing, I'll follow through. So here we go:
Another year is nearly gone. I sit here, thankful for the snow because it gives me an excuse to treat myself to a lazy day, when I know that what I should be doing is grocery shopping. I look at our tree, full of Doug's childhood ornaments. The "geek tree," as we've playfully dubbed it, because it's covered in NASA and Star Wars-themed ornaments from Hallmark, and the superhero logo bulbs I made this year, just to give it some color other than gray (not many war ships are vibrantly colored). And the little apple ornament I insisted go on the tree (aginst our agreement that this year we use all his nerdy ornaments and leave my pretty angels and Christmas critters in their boxes until next year), in tribute to the kids in Colorado who died so close to the holidays. I made an apple ornament like that when I was their age, and when it got too ratty, my mom recreated it, and gave it to us. Funny how it was the very first ornament I pulled out of the box when I went hunting in the jumble of tissue paper for an angel to hang in their honor. It just seemed to fit.
I can't imagine what Christmas was like for those families, with gifts wrapped under the tree for little ones who would never open them. It breaks my heart. It makes me feel ashamed that I'm still sad there was no Baby's First Christmas ornament on our tree, like we'd hoped. Our sadness simply pales in comparison. But there it is. I am sad that it didn't happen this year. I cry every day for the families who lost, but I still feel like a huge jerk because our sadness for them is enormous, but doesn't make our own sadness go away. When we started waiting, we optimistically thought last year would be our last Christmas as a family of two.
I guess I'm probably not supposed to say that. Blogs like this, intended for an expectant mom to possibly read and maybe choose us, aren't supposed to dwell on our disappointment. We're supposed to talk about how wonderful our lives are, not the challenges we've faced. But honestly, if I've learned anything in the past year, it's that our challenges are what make people care about us. No one ever felt inspired by someone's description of a life of perfect ease. It's the struggles, and how we overcome them, that compel us, that make us feel a connection to one another.
For all menopause at 32 sucks, I watch Teen Mom and think that I wouldn't want those girls' lives either. I don't wish I'd had a baby at their age, even though back then, maybe I would have actually been able to conceive. Everything would have been different. College, work, friends. But I probably wouldn't have met Doug, and that's the only thing that makes me pause, and say, "nope, I'm glad things turned out the way they did."
This path has been full of a lot of tears and sadness. Infertility is an emotional drain, and adoption has its own difficulties. But I want to take our experience, and do some work with the church, offering support for people struggling with infertility or their adoption wait. It's so easy to get caught up in how unfair it is when our plans don't work out, and I've seen a lot of women, especially, lose their faith in God altogether because of the same sort of experience Doug and I have had. There's a huge stigma about infertility being too personal to talk about, so people going through it end up doing it alone, or on some internet site where they can stay anonymous. I'd like to form a faith-based support group so people can come and actually talk about their feelings, and not feel so alone.
And as Doug said to me the other night...in a way, as bad as this has sucked, we're lucky that we went through it together. Because it brought us closer than we would ever have been otherwise. I want to share that perspective, and that hope, and that appreciation that God knew exactly what He was doing in our lives.
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