New World Wired Blue

The electrician told me softly, that inside your fleshy walls, the nervous wires are all jumbled up. The sensory signals sent out, come in upside-down-inside-out. 

I watch your beautiful tip-toe ballet through this new world wired blue. Your flickering bright light, always spinning dizzily out of place. I sense they turned your volume down oh so low, that your body has no choice but to surge back on full blast, as you fly from floor to ceiling trying anything to fill that sensational void.

Come down from there, and take my hand in yours. I’ll learn this new trade, and follow you into to your world. I'm the linesman hoping to memorize the way through your electrical current, and find my way back to you. 

"Your daughter is autistic." 

Everything is so fresh and close to the surface in this 360 shift, and yet it seems we've known all along.  While our sweet girl needs help to overcome many challenges, she doesn't need fixing. Autism is her neurology. It's how her brain is wired and an integral part of how she experiences the world around her. 

Hearing those life changing words meant that we found the key.  We're able to find her, to understand her world. Hopefully we can help her navigate the best we can...we have so much to learn about this new world wired blue. I've never seen her in a more beautiful way. I'm so grateful for finding the key. 

Miracle

That hollowness after my hysterectomy haunted me...the gutting question "What if our chance for a miracle is gone?"

You know what I've realized? How could I ever forget? How!?  Being sick...that was the miracle. Being sick, that lead us to her. From sunup to sundown...she is our miracle. Every single day. Maybe someday we'll be lucky enough to encounter another such miracle...I look at her face and she fills that hollowness of mine full of hope.

The End

"It's important that we share our experiences with other people. Your story will heal you and your story will heal somebody else. When you tell your story, you free yourself and give other people permission to acknowledge their own story."  -Iyanla Vanzant

“Wow, so you’ve gained some serious weight since your last physical. Are you just sitting at your desk all day? You need to get you moving!” the physical therapist at my annual work physical blurted out. As if I wasn’t already super conscious about my rapidly changing body…his blunt comments sealed the deal.

“Well, I just got married…maybe it’s the “freshman 15” x 2?” I tried to joke back to lighten the mood, so I wouldn’t start crying.

In all honesty, I had no idea what was going on with my body. I was exhausted, no matter how much sleep I got the night before. I was achy down to my bones and moved like a brittle old woman. I loved to run, but I just simply couldn’t get my body to move that way anymore. I felt stressed all the time. I was gaining weight fast, my body inflamed and swelling up like I was stung by a giant bumblebee. I was pretty sure I was becoming the new poster child for the bearded woman…every woman should rock a 5 o’clock shadow, right?! I hadn’t had a period in 6 months. As much as I wished I were miraculously pregnant…I was left empty and barren month after month.

Doctor, doctor, doctor. Test, test, test. Please, please, please…will someone help figure out what’s wrong with me?

“Well…you’ve got Hypothyroidism. You’re so tired and gaining weight. Here’s a pill to help that.”

“Well…you’ve got a nasty case of Bell’s Palsy. You’re stressed and have so much inflammation, you’ll have permeant facial paralysis. There’s no pill to help that”

“Well…you’ve got Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. You’re an achy ballooning, barren bearded woman. Here’s a pill to help that.”

7 different doctors. 3 different diagnoses. 5 years. 100’s of pills. 1 body…continuing to fail. 

“Well, well, well…you’ve got Adenomyosis. You’re crampy, clotting, bloated, nauseous, anemic, and hormonally imbalance.  Your hair is falling out in clumps. You’ve gained 70 lbs. You’re depressed, anxious and you have pain everywhere. There’s no pill to help that. You’re getting worse. At this point we can do a hysterectomy.”

32 years old. 0 pregnancies. 0 miscarriages. 1 broken body. 1 broken womb. 

So…The End has finally come. Hysterectomy. It's a sad and happy grief at the same time. While glowing women around me are in their prime of birthing babies, I will lose that part of me to a hysterectomy. My miracle babies will hopefully still come to me in a different way. Hopefully The End means a new beginning, with a less broken body.

This story of ours, the heartbreak and healing, trials and triumph, mourning and miracles, grief and gratitude, pain and pure joy, has taken the blinders from my eyes. All of our stories are intertwined. Loss, grief and sadness seeps into all of our lives, in one way or another. And we all have experiences that leave our shoulders pinned beneath heavy boulders. Some loads last only days, others last months to years and some last a lifetime. Some loads simply titter off, while some threatening to come crashing down on us. Despite these rockfalls of life, these burdens don't have to render you worthless. You have worth, no matter what load you are carrying. You are always enough. You are always loved. Someday you will be stronger...because of these loads. Be gentle with yourself and love yourself...because so many others do.  

We'll make it through. 

We found our missing piece...

SHE'S HERE! We're home...and we are in love with this little lady! What a miracle she is! We met the newest member of our family this last Monday! What a whirlwind week...her birth dad delivered her at home...he called 911 and they walked him though the delivery! What heroes her birth parents are! She is a 5lb 8oz bundle of pure joy...and we are so grateful she is here. We are so grateful to her sweet birth family for sharing her with us...she's a miracle to us! They gave us the greatest gift ever...the missing piece of our family! Welcome baby Lucy!! 

Thank you everyone for all your thoughts and prayers! My goodness, we couldn't have gotten here without them! Please keep the prayers up for our sweet Lucy's birth family...we love them!

ReMoved

We've started something big...

We've started getting things in order to become foster parents to babies. This has been something we've approached with wondering and searching hearts...is this the path we need to be on in our adoption journey? We don't know yet...

What we do know is that our hearts hurt learning about the hell these little survivors have been through. Imagine being taken out of your house, with your belongings in a trash bag, not knowing when you'd see your family again, and suddenly being in a place completely foreign to you. You can't help but to put all your worries and fears aside when you really and truely begin to grasp the magnitude of what these children have been through.

Getting to know you...

I've always looooooooved pictures...photography has been my hobby for years. For the next 60 day's we're doing a fun Instagram challenge (check-out the hastag #hopingtoadopt60days) with other hopeful adoptive couples. Each day we're posting a different "getting-to-know-us" picture. #awesome #weloveadoption #hopingtoadopt Come follow along and get to know us better! Our instagram user name is: @amissingpieceofus 

The In-Between Moms

I LOVED this post. There are SO many emotions that come with facing infertility...and this sweet some-day momma's thoughts have honestly and bravely summed up so well what it feels like in the day-to-day thick of this trial...

"We are the in-between moms. Our hearts feel like moms, but our homes don’t have much to show for it. We’re actively attempting to grow our families. We’re starting the adoption process or fostering another mama’s babe or trying to conceive naturally or starting fertility treatments.

We sometimes feel like outsiders in groups of other women. We aren’t trying to get that big promotion. Or sometimes we are, but we’re considering what stay-at-home motherhood would be like, too. We aren’t exhausted from being up at night with our baby or chasing our toddler through Target. But we wish we were. We chime in with the potty training and breastfeeding and kindergarten stories of our friends and sisters, but we wish we had our own.

We pay attention to the latest products and trends. We know about babywearing, but we’ve never had one to wear. We know all about the benefits of that yucky nose sucker thing, but it’s sitting on our registry, not in our home.

We have a room for our future children in different states of preparedness. A toddler bed bought during a can’t-be-passed-up sale, a stack of perfectly-new never-read books, a diaper pail bought at our neighbor’s garage sale, or a piece of art thoughtfully gifted to us by a mom who has been here, done this.

Or maybe our in-betweeness is less obvious. We’ve had quiet conversations with our husbands about what route we should take if we aren’t pregnant by our anniversary. We have a box in the basement with that little purple dress we just couldn’t stand to pass up at the mall. We bring our box of Christmas decorations up and find those extra two stockings we bought last year, but we quietly tuck them back in the box to go back into storage.

We make plans, but we always keep in mind the potential for changes to our plans. Let’s just go to Chicago for vacation this year, but if their adoption is finalized, it wouldn’t be too hard to travel across country borders to Toronto instead. Let’s buy tickets for that upcoming concert, but let’s sell them on Craigslist if we get the call that we’ve been matched. Let’s start looking for a new job, but let’s stay open to staying at this job so we can keep the health benefits and time off.

We have emotions and outlooks that might resemble roller coasters from day-to-day. We have days of bitterness and despair. And we have days of total contentment and understanding. He has a plan for our lives. He has a plan for growing our families. He will meet our every need. (But what about our wants?)

We feel a little sorry for our complicated feelings and family status. But should we be? We wish you had first-hand experience with these feelings. We wish we had first-hand experience with what it feels like to have a child who is legally, permanently in your family.

We long for that. We long for an easy answer to the are-you-a-mother question."

True Love

True love...seeing your sweet husband so graciously let go of something he wants more than anything in the world, and in spite of his broken heart, he reaches out in love. He has the biggest of hearts and kindest of souls...oh how I love that boy! 

Cold

I thought I'd start writing about little snapshots of our life. I feel like our everyday-here-and-now life story IS a story worth telling to you too. This is us! I get so caught up in looking so far ahead, waiting to see that day when our little babe is here in our home...that I forget that the here-and-now of our life is pretty beautiful too. 

Today, it snowed...and the coldness seeped it's icy fingers into our little home. Frosty lace raced up the window panes, while the furnace furiously whooshed warm air in response to it's threatening advances.  We fought off the sting of the harsh seasonal slap by spending the day hunkered down in hibernation mode. Piling on layers of sweats, drinking steaming mint hot cocco, crafting away (me), writting away (him), and snuggling up together under a mountain of blankets. All in all, it's been a pretty dang good day...coldness and all.