December was coming to a close; a new year was about to start. I would finally graduate from college this year and, if I got my way, have our first baby.
I have been grateful from the start for a husband that was as excited as I was to become a parent some day. Throughout our first year of marriage we really had to fight trying to start a family, knowing we just weren't ready yet. But as 2012 neared with the promise of graduation ahead we knew it was our time. Initially, we chose to start trying in April since that's when I would finish school, but as the new year approached we kept picking sooner and sooner months until we finally just gave in mid-December. We were so excited, thinking about how I'd walk at graduation with a little baby bump!
1 year, 4 months, 20 days, a dozen negative at-home pregnancy tests, 3 negative at-home ovulation kits, 2 negative blood drawn ovulation tests, 2 miserably horrible months on Clomid, and thousands of tears later- Here we are. Still no baby, and little hope for natural conception.
Clomid is a medication for inducing ovulation. Typically, a patient is prescribed 3 cycles. Like many hormone increasing medications it can cause some intense side effects, like turning into a crazy nut-case! After cycle 2 and the severely frightening depression that accompanied it we decided we could not risk taking it a third time. Natural conception is not worth risking your mental health; it's just not!
My sweet doctor was very supportive and understood my decision. When I asked if 2 months of positive ovulation on Clomid had been enough to jumpstart my body to start ovulating on it's own again she apologetically replied that the odds were very unlikely. Our next step would be an infertility doctor (which of course would mean more meds... NO THANKS!) I politely declined to a referral for the time being. We needed a break!
Before I hung up the nurse said, "Call us if you have a miracle."
Miracles are a funny thing. Miracles come big and small. They come when we least expect them, and when we need them desperately. And sometimes we pray and pray 'til our knees are sore for the miracle we want, but God gives us the miracle we need.
For so long we prayed for a baby. We prayed and cried to the Lord to give us the child we so badly wanted and felt ready for. When that didn't work, it occurred to us that maybe we were praying for the wrong thing...
Heavenly Father sees the big picture. He knows when it is time for us to have a family. We see RIGHT NOW, and our prayers were evident of that. So, we changed. We stopped begging, we stopped praying for what we wanted. We started telling the Lord "Thank you."
"Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for blessing us with each other.
Thank you for our families and friends that support us and help us.
Thank you for the children that surround us that we can love and enjoy until we have our own someday.
Thank you for doctors, medicine, and science that can help us uncover what does and doesn't work in our bodies.
Thank you for love..."
Now this was the hard thing to thank him for.
"... Thank you for this trial."
To be grateful for the very thing that was breaking our hearts was so hard, but we knew we had to. Deep down we knew that Heavenly Father wouldn't give us a trial that was beyond our abilities to take on or give us something we weren't supposed to have right now. So, somewhere in this trial were blessings. We would never find the blessings if we chose to let it overtake us. So, instead, we chose to be grateful and the blessings became so evident.
We relied on each other more, shared our feelings more, talked more, loved more.
We relied on the Lord more and prayed more than ever.
We put the atonement to use better in our lives, knowing that only Christ had felt our heartbreak and could understand.
We grew closer to the Savior, felt him more, loved him more.
We had such amazing friends and families, and feeling their prayers for us was a huge blessing.
And once we acknowledged all of this, and felt the blessings of our trial we were overcome with the purest, sweetest PEACE.
God knew we needed peace in our hearts to know that hope is never lost. That even though we weren't having a family right now didn't mean He wasn't listening and didn't mean He didn't care. We needed peace to know that the Lord's timing is the right timing, because we don't see what He does. We needed peace that would bind our breaking hearts and give us the faith to keep moving forward.
Peace was the miracle we needed, not the miracle we'd been begging for, but the one we needed most. Heavenly Father knew that, and he blessed us.
