I felt compelled to write this down this morning. It must be for posterity’s sake, or perhaps there’s someone out there who just needs to read it. Because heaven knows I don’t much like to talk about it. But I have that feeling, so I’m going to try my hardest to write this down.
We married at the ripe ages of 22 and 24. Eric is a year and a half older than me, and wiser too. It was a beautiful sunny day with lots and lots of great friends surrounding us. We felt loved and bolstered up. On top of the world. There was nothing we couldn’t do. Fearless, I guess.
We went back to school that Fall riding on the honeymoon love and the puppy love and still not really diving into marriage, because that comes later. We were just enjoying being with each other. Forever. We finished up that Fall and the next Summer semesters and began the next Fall semester. A little older and a little wiser too. We had a full year of marriage under our belts. A full year of bliss and figuring things out and finding the we in me. We decided that was the year we would start trying to have a baby. To really get our family going. We were still young, and still figuring out marriage. Still learning how to speak each others love languages and how to divide the household responsibilities and such. But we were still fearless so we decided it was a good time to throw a baby into the mix.
That was when things started to unravel. That was when we started to crack a little bit, and then wedge a bit more and then perhaps break a little too. At least, that’s what happened to me.
Every month without fail there was no baby. Every month my heart broke and my spirit lost a little bit of it’s fire, of its fearlessness. My heart began to have great fears. So great in fact that I couldn’t separate the baby fear from the marriage fears and I began to push away my greatest companion. I began to retract and to snap and to hurt all over, all the time. I would pick fights just to feel something because I was beginning to not feel anything. And it was scary, and sad, and heartbreaking all at once.
Two years. It took just over two years of waiting and searching and fighting. Of losing myself and then finding her again, hidden in the corner, beat-up and bleeding because that’s what I had done to her. She was quite a mess. She needed a lot of work. But the Lord was there, and that husband. That awesome husband with his endless patience and desire to help me. I would have been lost without them. I was lost a little with them, but only because I was choosing not to see them. I saw them then. And they were beautiful, and she could be beautiful again.
When I picked myself back up and opened myself to the idea of love, and babies, and forever, my baby was waiting. That stick showed me two beautiful lines and He told me it was a boy. Nine months later Quinn arrived. Just as happy and healthy as could be, and my heart was full, but still not fully mended. My heart still hurt and was still a little wedged and maybe a little broken.
Our love story is fraught with turmoil, albeit self inflicted, but it was heavy and hurtful all the same. And our pregnancy battle was in fact a full on battle. And one that could have ended so differently. But He knew how it needed to end and the husband knew somehow that things would be okay. And me. I learned to have a great deal more faith, and patience and long-suffering. Because this isn’t just my life or my families life, this is the life that He created and leads and guides.
And now, we know that we were never pregnancy broken, just impatient. We are in fact quite fertile so much so that we’re having twins! Two beautiful bouncy babies at the same time. And a whole new range of emotions are flooding through us, but we are stronger. I am stronger, and He is with me. And this? This I can handle.
