Thursday, April 23, 2015

Plans are a funny thing

Sometimes your best made plans are interrupted and cast by the wayside...Life occasionally steps in and makes a completely different plan. On a small scale, that's what happened to me this week. On a large scale, that's been the last 8 months of my life! But let's look at the small picture because the big picture has been exhausting lately.

So I have been planning some fun things over these months during the deployment to keep myself busy and such. One of the things I did plan was a mud run - it is a 5K mud run that I was going to do up in Boston with some friends. It's this Saturday! So the last 48 hours I have been plagued with this awful stomach bug! It has been just dreadful. While I had every intention of going up to do the run, I don't think I'm going to be able to go. I'm just today able to eat some crackers and a banana. Hoping that things get better from here.

An interesting observation I've made over the last few months has been regarding my decision to come off Facebook. Initially, during the first phase of the miscarriage, it was a lot to have the input of seemingly everyone posting that they were pregnant. That, coupled with the idea that people would be knowing or potentially posting that DH was away, lead me to come off the social media site. I have definitely noticed some of my friendships have fallen off and become more distant. It takes a lot to keep friendships going with the busy lives that everyone has, and in some ways, social media has made it easier for us to just know the day to day of people's lives without even really trying. I have found myself putting more time into the people that invest their time into me. There is definitely a clear line of people who have reached out and invested into me. Who know what is going on with me. Who know what is happening in my life. And there are others that have moved to the fringe.

The evolution of life is something that is really very funny.

Friday, April 10, 2015

Light in the tunnel!

Have you been to the eye doctor when they sit you behind that black apparatus and make you lean your head against it to look through the impossibly small holes? Then they hook up the "reading" bar with a little card and slide it closer to your eyes obstructing everything else in view but bringing those tiny little letters into your whole range of focus. That exactly explains where my life has been for the last few weeks. Those tiny letters on that little card have been the miscarriage - obstructing my ENTIRE LIFE. I haven't been able to see anything past that.

Why now? It's 6 months past when it actually happened, so why now? Let's think about that....At the time of the miscarriage, DH was getting ready to deploy, he was away at training, the house was in the final stages of selling, packing, apartment hunting, DH departing to CA, moving, back and forth to CA to visit him, moving again, finally DH going overseas.....then I came home to quiet. I was left with my DH deployed, I wasn't 6 months pregnant. I was in an apartment alone. I was dredging through life. I was finally facing the fact that here I was, in a non-ordinary life, alone - no husband and no baby. Not only that, but we didn't even really have another chance to try for a baby after the miscarriage because of the timing.

So we miscarried and I've just been kind of sitting with the disappointment. No hope to try again for a year. Now don't get me wrong. I know God has a plan. I know that things happened the way that they did for a reason. I know that it also took me a good 3 weeks to get in touch with what exactly my problem was! Guys, I was in  HUGE FUNK!

I finally identified the problem. I finally began talking about it. Working through it. I'm definitely not through it. But I've found a candle in my tunnel. I can at least see where I'm going now. It's a dim light, but it's helping me keep my balance, and step over the obstacles in the way. I feel much more in control since I've identified what it is that was weighing me down.

So I feel ready to move forward a little at a time. The first step is going forward with the surgeries I have scheduled with my NaPro doctor. I see him next Thursday and I have a list of questions. I'm scheduled for three surgeries. One to remove the endometriosis (endo as most people shorten it to), a selective HSG, and an ovarian wedge resection. The hope is to get in, get cleaned up and get healed and hopefully ready and ovulating on my own (without meds!) so when DH is back, we can start trying again for the family we want so badly.

It's funny the way life works out sometimes. In this season of Easter, I feel that I have been given new hope, new life and a new chance. I hope that I can hold onto this feeling of newness as I watch the flowers start to poke their heads up, trees start to slowly turn green and the sun stay a little higher in the sky a few minutes longer every day. It's such a hopeful time of year. I hope that the hope extends to you and your family too.