I hope to always remember how it felt to not be able to get pregnant. I still have that desire even with Declan home, but I am now among those who are no longer waiting to become a mother. I am a mother now. But, I do remember the pain of not being able to get pregnant and the pain of failed infertility procedures. I hope to not become complacent to those and antipathetic to those who are still waiting mothers. I want those mothers to know that joy of motherhood does await no matter what path to motherhood is taken.
People have said Gary and I are lucky and people can't believe how fast everything happened for us with the adoption. In reality, our lives have been anything but lucky. Luck had nothing to do with anything that has happened. And, the reality of the short wait is that it really was a very long wait.
When I say that luck had nothing to do with our adoption, I mean that it was God that orchestrated everything.
Those closest to Gary and I know our extended story, but many do not. When you are in the middle of a challenge in your life, you don't look at that challenge and say, "Oh, I bet God is really doing something great in our lives right now." It usually happens after the challenge is over that we can look back and see God's hand in everything.
When I was in college, God called me to join a summer missions trip. I declined that call on my life. The next year, God called me again and let me know that it would be His last call and I needed to obey. I did and it changed my life forever. I was in college to become an Interior Designer and I was great at it. But, after a summer working with children in camps, churches and clubs I knew I was to be a teacher instead. When I came home from California that summer, I went and changed my major to Elementary Education. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I wanted to become a designer. My professors tried to keep me from leaving. I cried for hours battling over the decision that was not mine to make. God had already decided for me.
Little did I know at that time (I was dating the WRONG person at the time also) that God had His plan already in motion and I was falling into it. I changed my major and began planning the rest of my college career. It turned out that after three years in design, I had a good bit of catching up to do on my courses in order to complete the new degree. After changing my major, I finally broke up with the guy I was dating who wasn't a Christian and began to focus more on God and my new studies. Soon after I did this, I ended up meeting Gary through a mutual friend. We were friends for a year before we began dating and when we did began dating, it was a natural development. We dated for 5 years before marrying, but we both had our Master's degrees and we both had jobs when we did end up getting married.
After a year in Mississippi, we decided we needed to move elsewhere in order to fulfill our dreams of owning a home and beginning a family. Gary applied at many different companies throughout Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina, etc. None of his applications were for Georgia. But, we ended up here after friends invited us to stay with them for the weekend when there was a teacher job fair. I ended up getting a job soon after that in Georgia as a teacher. The principal called me right after the interview and offered me the job. We didn't have a plan. We didn't have money. Gary didn't have a job. We were shocked at the cost of living here even for an apartment. We ate beans and rice and shed many tears during the 6 months of no income during the summer and my first few months of teaching. We were very down and were rethinking our decision to move here. But, God worked it all out. Gary found a job and began bringing in a salary. That time tested our faith for sure. We thought we would never be able to buy a house and begin a family.
It just so happened that an elderly man lived across from us whose wife had recently died. He was lonely and sad and we befriended him. He became fond of us and introduced us to his daughter who happens to be a realtor. She helped us find and buy our first house.
We moved into our home feeling very awkward in a neighborhood full of families and kids. We had already began to try to conceive, but we had no luck and we didn't have the money to begin seeing a specialist.
Timeline at this point: Married 2005, Move to GA 2006, Bought our house in 2007
We finally began to get back on our feet. God had taken care of us so far. But, we still hadn't been able to get pregnant. We began to see specialist. They ran test, they sent us to different doctors, they ran more test. No one could tell us what was wrong. We kept trying and praying. In 2010, we finally found a doctor who gave some sort of diagnosis. We both began to exercise, changed our diet, began to get healthier. Surely we would get pregnant.
If you read our previous blogs, you will see what we went through from this point until we decided to follow God's will for our lives to adopt.
So you see, luck had nothing to do with it. God was in everything from the very beginning. In my career choice, in Gary and I meeting (Gary has his own story of how he came to MS from Hong Kong-- that is a story all in itself), in Gary and I moving to GA, in Gary and I being in this neighborhood, in the friends we would meet and in our adoption. God has led us and we have chosen to follow. If we had not followed, it wouldn't see to everyone as if we were so lucky.
Stay tuned for my summary of how God was in our adoption from the very beginning and why it seemed to happen so fast to everyone on the outside.
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