9 years - HOPE, Part 1

Nine years ago.  While I didn't know it at the the time, that's when my journey to hope began.  It didn't feel like it then.  Instead it felt unthinkable. 

At the time, we were both teachers, living in a townhouse with our cat out in Phoenix.  Life revolved around work, grading papers, watching a heavy slate of television, and going to AZ Diamondbacks baseball games.  We spent too much time discussing how we would be perfect parents (who would always check our child's homework each night and never have crayon decorated walls!  :)  ).  For the most part, life was under our control.  If we wanted to eat out, we did.  Go to a movie?  Sure, any time.  Buy a new car?  Head out one weekend and drive one home.  Have a baby?  Just go off the pill and wait for our carefully planned out schedule to match up maternity leave and summer vacation unfold. (Are you shaking your head yet?  Yes, it was bad.  My planner side had gotten totally out of control, and I didn't even realize it.) 

We didn't even realize what else was missing from our lives then.  At that point, God wasn't invited.  My husband hadn't been raised with any sort of religious upbringing, and while I'd grown up in church, life as a college student and young adult out on my own had pushed me far away.

After several months of trying to start a family, we had gotten a positive pregnancy test early one Saturday morning (by this point we were off the carefully constructed schedule, but had begun to worry about getting pregnant at all.)   I drove across town to a baby shower for one of our young teaching assistants and for the first time, felt responsibility for new life.  My smile that day had to be huge, as I nursed the secret.  We were going to have a baby!  All those months of planning and reading ~ I thought we were ready.  Dreams began to take root in my mind.  What would she look like?  What would we name her? Who would she become?    Who would I become, as a mother?

I remember someone snapping a picture of me at a school event a couple days later and thinking that it was the first picture of me pregnant.  Our little secret!  We began planning how we would surprise our families with the news at Christmas, and starting dreaming of her due date.

Little did I know that our child would be born much sooner than expected ~ and born not into this world.  Before I even was able to make that first doctor's appointment, I had an early miscarriage.  I had so many questions.  Was it my fault?  Did I make a mistake being on my feet during that event?  Was the test wrong?  (Not likely, since I'd taken many.)  Was something wrong with me?  Wrong with the baby?  Was it even really a baby, happening so early?  The doctor acted skeptical that I'd even been pregnant, stating that it had perhaps been a "chemical pregnancy". 

There's an innocence about a first pregnancy, an uneventful pregnancy.  That was shattered on that day nine years ago.  I'm sure that I'd read about pregnancy loss in at least one of that giant pile of pregnancy books that was sitting on the bedside table, but must have skimmed right over it in that "Oh, that wouldn't happen to us" confidence of someone used to being in control.  But at the same time, I clung to the reassurance that we could get pregnant and that all the statistics said that after a miscarriage, most women went on to successfully have a baby.

That's the beginning of our story, really.  Where I first began to realize that maybe, just maybe, life wasn't under my control as much as I thought.  But we still had far, far to go, and hope felt a long way away on that day.

To be continued . .  .

Happy heaven day to the baby that made me a mommy, even if only for a short time together here on earth. 

Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere . . . Psalm 84:10