I Was Made For This...

It’s hard to believe that we are almost to point where we can finally say that we are starting this crazy IVF journey TOMORROW!  So many mixed emotions.  Excitement-for the first time in ages we are making a forward move in our quest to become parents.  Fear-will they find some roadblock in my body that makes it impossible for me to conceive?  Peace-inexplicable.  Though we have done fertility treatments in the past, it never felt this peaceful going into them.  I guess I always felt like maybe we were trying to force it to happen or something.  I don’t feel that way about this process at all this time.  I wholeheartedly believe that if God places something on your heart, He intends to see it through.  He created me to be a mother, so that desire has always been there for me.  But just before I married Jonathan, He began stirring that longing in my heart for real.  And for years I wondered why He would start that stirring so soon if His intention was not to fulfill that longing for many years down the road.  For a long time I resented that…I even prayed that He would take that longing away if He did not intend for me to be a mother.  But He never did.  On the contrary, He has spent the last 5 years intensifying that desire in me.  Creating the perfect scenario for motherhood for me.  Preparing my mommy heart, setting up my support system, perfectly orchestrating the perfect timing for our babies to arrive.  He had lots more to do in me and in my life those 5 years ago.  It wasn’t the perfect scenario yet!  It still would have been good, but it wouldn’t have been perfect.  God is playing to my perfectionism…oh how He knows His daughter so well!

I’ve been thinking this weekend about how different I am now than I was 5 years ago.  I’ve been thinking how up until about 6 months ago.  I was wracked with jealousy ALL the time when it came to other women getting pregnant.  Even women that I love!  It was this very sharp pang that would hit me very intensely anytime I would find out someone was pregnant or when I saw yet another baby belly on someone who was not me.  Once the baby was here, lots of that jealousy melted away and all that was left was that achy longing in my heart for my own babies to get here.  That jealousy and envy nearly ate me alive sometimes though.  But this weekend as I’ve been holding and snuggling my 8 week old nephew Levi, I’ve been enlightened a little.  You see, my perfectionism sometimes gets in the way of me relaxing and almost always drums up anxiety in my heart.  How grateful I am that nearly all my girlfriends AND my sister have been through and will go through all the “mommy muck” before me.  They will be and have been trailblazers for me and my babies!  I imagine my desire to be “the perfect mommy” will sometimes well up in me and I’ll be desperately calling Angela when my baby won’t sleep through the night, or frantically calling Rachel to ask her a nursing question, or calling Sara in the middle of the night because I’m freaked out about my baby being sick, or phoning Amanda just to FaceTime me through newborn baby bath time.  You see, God knew me well.  He knows what an amazing mommy I will be, but He also knew how much I would need my girls behind me.  He knew I would need more than a listening ear.  He knew I would need tangible HELP…a voice of experience, a tried and true remedy, an extra set of hands that are attached to someone who actually knows what they’re doing!  How perfectly wonderful He is…and how perfectly He knows me.  Praise God for His divine wisdom and praise God for waiting (even though He’s hated to see me cry all these years) for the perfect scenario to bring my babies into.  I can’t express my gratitude for His “ultimate parenting” in my life…

I mentioned that I’ve been snuggling my newborn nephew this weekend.  That’s kind of an understatement, because really I’ve been “Bogarting” him…  My mom will say “Do you want me to take him?”, and I’ll say “Do I want you to take him?  No.  If you want him, just come and take him.  But I probably won’t give him up voluntarily…”.  I just can’t get enough of his sweet after a bottle breath, his little baby grunts and squeaks, his softer than air baby hair, the beginnings of a smile starting to form on his little face.  The warmth of his tiny 11 pound body resting so perfectly and peacefully in the crook of my arm, his intoxicating baby smell wafting into my nose as his snuggly little face nestles into that perfect space between my neck and my shoulder.  I would change a million diapers, change my spit up stained shirt a million times, endure ALL the anxieties of motherhood for even just a minute of all of that to be only mine.  And to think that motherhood may be just a few months away for me is deliriously exciting.  I was made for this, y’all.  God created me to be a mommy.  I’m a nurturer by nature.  Always have been.  THIS will be my one great “claim to fame”…that I was a mother in this lifetime.  That my heart was finally full when God entrusted me with one of His perfect creations.  And if you happen to be anywhere near me when they finally get here, be prepared to see His BRIGHT light shining through me.  Because I’ll be that much closer to Him and His heart.  I will have walked the broken and beaten road that is infertility, blazed a trail of my own, and I’ll be sitting at the end of it in a peaceful rocking chair holding my magnum opus...

It’s time, y’all.  It really is…