My husband and I have become “those people”. (and he hates it)
When you are first married you are totally content waiting
to have children. People always tell you that you to enjoy your first couple of
years (or more) just being married. So naturally, we got a dog. Ha.
I already had my 5 year old jack Russell and after we bought
our first house a year into marriage, we got a 5 month old American bull dog-
pit bull mix. I am confident that you just thought in your head, “wow a pit
bull, that’s a little risky” or something along those lines. We weren’t totally
sure what we were getting ourselves into when we rescued her from the humane
society. Once we brought her home,
because of what other people said to us, I became nervous and wanted to take
her back.
Me. The girl who has
grown up with animals my entire life, the girl that took her dog to the
emergency vet and because of my knowledge was asked if I wanted a job and the
girl that can’t walk past ANY DOG without petting it. People told josh and I how
aggressive she could get and told us that she would eat our cat. Seriously,
just wake up one day and decide to eat our cat. (I laughed out loud as I wrote
that)
Our beautiful Tobin (named after a Christian woman who plays
for the US Women’s soccer team) is now a year and 8 months old. Her best friend
is my jack Russell Milo and our cat Bailey. She spends her evenings standing in
the middle of the room as the cat walks around her rubbing her body on Tobin. She,
at 60 pounds, follows our 20 pound Jack Russell around all day long until they
sleep in the same bed at night. She is also currently laying UNDER a blanket at
my feet as I type this.
I look back to a little over a year ago, when I was telling
josh we needed to take her back to the humane society because she “could get
aggressive” and laugh at myself. I was, what my sister and I refer to as “dog
racist”. Seriously that’s a thing!
It is so easy to make a judgment on something, someone, or
their situation when you don’t have all of the facts.
In the last month I decided to take a break from writing. In
the last blog I wrote I was actively experiencing my 3rd miscarriage.
We had 1 month left before school and soccer were in full swing, so I took a
little hiatus. I appreciate the encouragement to continue writing. I love that I
have helped some of you process things as you (and me!) are going through some
though things in life.
In the last month, I have had countless conversations with
people that I didn’t even know were reading my blog! Some have been such a huge
blessing and some have been very thought provoking. I have had friends write
thanking me for the encouragement to be open about what they had experienced. I
also had a woman write me asking “when is enough, enough”.
Wow. I still am not even sure how to answer that question. But it really did make me start to think about
our current situation and the decisions that we have to make. When is enough,
enough? I mean I can see where the question comes from. Why would a woman
continually put her body and mind through SO MUCH? At what point do you throw
in the towel and take control over the situation? I have looked at other women
who are 5 or 6 miscarriages in and thought “ok dude, its time to figure
something else out”.
But what do I know? Good friends of ours had 5 miscarriages
and now have 2 beautiful children, who josh and I love dearly. If I asked them,
they would go through all of them again to have the goofy, wonderful kids they
have now. I guess it wasn’t enough for
them.
We also have friends that couldn’t have their own kids and
started to foster. They had 3 kids (brothers and sister) in their home for a
while and got placed back with dad. After crying and crying while the kids
left, the Lord worked it out where the dad openly knew he couldn’t care for
them and they eventually adopted all 3 children. I guess it wasn’t enough for
them either.
Then here we are. We have had 3 miscarriages. I have 3
children who I never got to hold before they went home to be with the Lord.
That is a hard sentence to type and even harder to say out loud. Josh and I have
such a desire to be parents and we don’t really care how that happens. So our
next thought was adoption. We weren’t at the point to “throw in the towel” or
to claim “enough is enough” yet.
We started to research adoption options, talked to a lot of
people who have been through the process and came to one conclusion. We have to
wait.
If you know Josh and me, we aren’t patient people, at all. (I
mean we got engaged after 6 months of dating… seriously. Ha. ) So this nearly 2 years of desiring to be
parents, is near torture. One of the hardest adult decisions that we have had
to make is waiting. Our current situation does not allow us to save the 10-15k
needed to adopt. But we have made the decision, by staying where we are, where
we are confident the Lord wants us to be.
When you have all the facts about something, someone or
their situation it is easier to see life from their shoes.
The feeling we get from people when we walk our totally
innocent dog around the neighborhood is similar to the way I feel when I open
up to talk to people about where we are in our lives -walking without a
stroller.
You look. You think you know what’s best. You think the
answer to the problem is simple.
If we didn’t want the judgment of having a scary pit bull,
we should just get rid of her, right? If we want to be parents, we should throw
as much money as we have at fertility specialist or adoption, right? If we want
to be in control of our lives, we need to make hard decisions and make it
happen. I have been told that 3 or 4
times in the last month.
While our 60 pound American bulldog –pit bull mix is scared
of the dark (seriously. That’s a real statement) we are scared of not having
children. But I choose to believe the Lord will work it out blessing us because
we are staying where we know He wants us to be. While I understand not everyone
will understand it, the same way that I am sure the thought of having a big
scary pit bull mix in our house may not make sense to you, it is hard to
understand anyone’s decisions with big life changes.
I am a woman at 25 (almost 26!) who is active, healthy and
athletic… who has also had 3 miscarriages in 18 months. Nothing totally makes
sense in life anyways.
So we are choosing to put on our big kid “patience” pants
and see where God takes us.
