Being human and being subject to this mortal existence, the concept of me or my perception of myself will always be changing, as life is always changing. If I didn’t change I would be a hard, rigid and intolerant being. I try not to be that. I want to be a kind, caring and gracious woman. That being said, I feel that infertility has robbed me, taken away parts of me that I am sill piecing back together, even two years after our last miscarriage. Along with Infertility, Joseph’s loss of sight has wounded me, wounded us. Those trials have been a severe beating personally for each of us as well as to our marriage.
“Heavenly Father loves us unconditionally especially in the face of out trials. He knows our individual worth and our potential. For some reason, when we are faced with seemingly unending trials, we may feel that our Heavenly Father doesn’t love us. He does, and He knows exactly how we will benefit from our trials. He is the master sculptor and refiner, and though we cannot see our ultimate potential when we look in the mirror, He sees us for who we will ultimately become.” (Lost Children, R.J. Christensen)
While Heavenly Father never loses sight of our individual worth and divine potential, we can and do. I know I have. During the thick of it I became what I had to in order to survive & cope. Having “witnessed the repeating pattern of life, which begins with birth and ends with death, and [viewing] this as natural and normal. But death before birth…well that does not seem to fit our understanding…” (Christensen) I built up walls to protect myself during the constant upheaval of my idea of what my life was supposed to be. I did what I knew I had to. Some days I just went through the motions. All the while trying to figure out and understand what was happening, why it was happening, what was wrong, how to fix it, if it could be fixed.
Miscarriage is so difficult to understand, even more difficult to talk about as it is somewhat of a taboo topic. This quote is the best I found to express my feelings about it. "This was a real baby, and we were planning and preparing for it. But not everyone [understands] the whole gamut of emotions we [face]. For many, miscarrying may not seem the same as losing a loved one, but for the mother (I'll add father as well) experiencing it, that pregnancy was the beginning of the greatest love of [their lives]." (Christensen).
"The most severe cases of grief result from a death that is unexpected, tragic or unexplained. Miscarriage falls into each of these categories." I will add that Joseph's blindness fits also. We mourn our lost babies, our failed attempts at parenthood, we mourn for the family we could have had. We mourn for Joseph's sight, and how that has changed our relationship. These things are HUGE, they are life-altering, they've helped make us who we are today. They've helped us bond together, throughout it all there has been one constant: our marriage. We face our challenges head on, face first, together holding hands. We are a team.
We've deal with infertility: the uncertainty, the tests, the hormones, the drugs, the surgeries, the scars, the bills. We deal with Multiple Sclerosis: the uncertainty, the MRI's, the Dr appointments, the medication, the heat sensitivity, the steroids. We deal with blindness: the uncertainty, the doctor visits, the diagnosis, the exams, the resting nystagmus, the white cane, the paperwork, braille, adaptive technology. We've done adoption paperwork: the pile of paperwork, the health checks, the background checks, the fingerprinting, the interviews, the research, we've had our personalities, relationships and marriage dissected and investigated then spelled out on paper for a committee to tell us if we are approved to be prospective adoptive parents.
Life is hard, it's brutally painful, but what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, right? Sure. I am helpless to fix Joseph's vision, as much as he was helpless to fix my reproductive system. But we are both here, one-hundred percent absolutely unconditionally for one another. We are growing, and learning together. I am fighting for Joseph's right for health care. He is doing all he can to adapt and learn new skills, in fact he is currently looking into getting some sort of internship and getting back to work. Yes, he IS absolutely amazing!! The adoption stuff is in limbo- our situation is what it is and we've let our case worker know as our profile is near extinction (in other words they only keep profiles inactive for so long, and we've gone a little longer than that). We are now waiting to hear if in our current situation we can be approved to adopt, if we can we'll finish, and fast! If not... well we will see now won't we?!
We're doing all we can we're trying to be proactive in advocating infertility awareness, adoption, multiple sclerosis and blindness. But we're getting impatient. When will life stop being so darn hard? when can we have a home of our very own? When will we be a family that includes children?
Neal A Maxwell said "Patience is tied very closely to faith in our Heavenly Father. Actually when we are unduly impatient, we are suggesting that we know best- better than God does, or, at least we are asserting that our time table is better than His." I hope one day soon our patience in the Lord's time table will pay off...
