It is a Journey not a Race

First, I hesitated about publishing this post as it is sort of personal. I wrote last night and held it in the saved folder. But this AM I was thinking about writing a post and my mind kept going back to what I written the night before. I decided to post it :-).

A ten hour drive home from Detroit help me think lots. Thinking is a good thing. Being disconnect from distractions and there was no getting away from thinking my situation so thoroughly. My heart did ache a bit but I knew I could not deny the feeling, I had to let the feeling help me move in the right direction moving towards peace.

This situation of me chasing my big running dreams parallels another difficult path that I had been down just 9-10 years. There are so many similarities into the emotionally and physically struggle that took place during that struggle. That struggle was finding motherhood.

In my late 20s, I had everything a loving relationship with an amazing man and a corporate job making a dream salary but my heart was yearning for a child. We started trying casually for a year and nothing. Soon our friends were starting to have kids. We heard stories of "we just tried twice" and stories of "we weren't even trying'. I begin to feel like something was wrong with us and started to struggle to be happy for family & friends wonderful news. As the first year of no pregnancy came & went and moved into 2 years of trying, I started to get sad and baby showers and announcements hurt my heart. Than we decided to seek fertility help, we did every test and nothing came back. We had "unexplained infertility" which is when nothing is wrong but you are not getting pregnant. We decide to start a costly both emotionally & financially road of infertility treatment. We went all in with our desire to have a child. I started taking a fertility drug that caused me to gain lots of weight and played with my mood like a cat playing with a mouse. Than we started the emotionally charged process of IUI which included lots of blood tests, ultrasounds, and the dreaded 2 week waiting period after the insemination to see if the egg was fertilized and than implanted. We did this for 6 months with no success. Our hearts were constantly being broken and rehealing with the hope of the next cycle. Our love help us endure this trying time. This all took a huge toll of me. The constant roller-coaster of emotions of hope, hurt and healing put in a place where I needed a break from trying. We took this wonderful trip to a spa in Arizona where we let go of the whole process and decide to no longer try fertility drugs. I spent the next 2-3 months losing all the clomid weight and emotionally rebuilding my heart & mind. I become a stronger version of myself. I realized that I could not control everything and let go and started living again. I did have hope of having a child but I no longer obsessed over it. I found a way to be happy for all my friends having babies and celebrating their joy with them. My husband and I than started to consider adopting. My mind was occupied with those thoughts and not the thoughts of fear when one day I didn't get my period. I didn't think much of it by several days went by and no period. I still couldn't even contemplate that I could be pregnant. I finally told Nick and he was beyond hopeful that he went right away to get a test. He was braver than I was at that time as I didn't want to handle the heart break of a negative test. I remember this feeling of it can't be and than the celebration of relief and immense joy when that test came back positive.

Those 3 years torn me down and rebuilt me into a stronger women with a heart more compassionate & full of gratitude. Those years taught me that I could not control life, how to be more flexible and allow the wind to blow through and not to break. It made me the mom that I am so proud to be. I appreciated deeply the gift of life that was entrusted to my care. I would not be the mom I am today had I not gone through those years. We savored every moment of my pregnancies, labors, and baby years. I gave up my career to savior more and more of my babies. I did everything to spend time with these precious babies of mine. I breastfeed, I carried them in maya wraps to keep them always close to my heart, I held them while they slept, I co-slept and I was so happy and did not let a moment go by where I didn't Thank God for my babies.

Maybe God keeps us from our gifts so that when we finally get them after enduring the obstacles that we truly understand their value.

Thinking about the journey of having our dream family & the dream of reaching my running potential really gives me the faith that I can endure and continue to believe even though it may not be happening in my timeable of what would be perfect. God's timing is perfect! I only have to look at my babies faces to realize how perfect God's plan is for my life.