Strength

It's been years since I last have posted on this blog. And today is the end of the year 2017. As I look back on the last two years, so many things have changed, it's crazy. My sister is now married with a baby, Travis and I bought a new house and sold the other one we were in, my dad retired, my Grandma needs extra care, we had a failed IUI treatment, had a failed adoption, our weenie dog Buddy was adopted by another family who could give him more attention and Caleb went on a mission and is now home.

I don't write very much about our infertility journey, because a few times one of my family members told me they didn't want to hear it. They told me that it was depressing to them and they just wanted to hear about happy times, and for goshs sakes to GET OVER IT. Well I'm older now, and our fertility doctor recommended to write about it. So I am going to. And I'm going to warn you it's not all happiness and perfection. It's raw, it's sad, but throughout it, there is ALWAYS hope. Hope that one day all of this suckiness will be gone and I will finally have my dream come true of Travis and I being parents.  Because watching others get that happiness that comes from being parents is one of the hardest things I've ever gone through.

One time I had asked Travis about how he got through losing his father, his best friend in the world, and he simply said: "It's something that I was forced to go through. It's not something I was expecting, but it just took one day at a time."
And the truth of the matter, losing his dad is something that I know Travis will never get over. But because of the gospel, he and I both know that they will be together again.

Infertility is like that. It's something that you are not expecting by any means, and it's not something that you would wish on even your worse enemy, because like losing someone, it deals a lot with grieving of what could or should have been if your body functioned the way it should. It's years of always having people treat you differently because you don't have kids, and ask the dreaded question: "Now why don't you have kids?" Most times they just assume that you are being selfish and don't want them, when the reality of the situation is that you just can't have them.

I'm not gonna lie, I hate those questions. I hate the way people (especially those of my faith) treat me like I'm a china doll or that I'm strange and weird. I hate watching my husband not know what to do when I cry after I find out someone close to me is pregnant (without having to wait). I hate the things some of my family members say to me without thinking about how much it hurts me and Travis. I hate it.  However, all of these things are completely out of my control. And as I have gotten older, I have learned to deal with them, or just ignore them completely.

Today has been a hard day. The end of the year always is. And when he was hugging me as I was crying, Travis said something that I will never forget. I had asked him how people have strength. Why some seem to have it and others don't. And he simply replied:

"Strength is not something you have. It's something you find." 

So as the old year passes, and the new one comes, I pray that 2018 will be the year we achieve a pregnancy with the fertility treatments. And I pray that I will find my strength if it doesn't happen and the fertility treatments fail again.