Today is the first day of the rest of my life

I have spent a lot of time in self-evalution...after all...a life without that is not worth living. At 42, soon to be 43, I feel like I have learned a lot about life and it's up's and down's. I don't have all the answers. But, I decided to start my blog to process what I am going through every single day. How do you live in this society that is centered around children when you can't have one? That is the question that I am spending my time trying to answer these days.

My husband, Steve, and I never planned to be in this place. We never expected to be put in this position. But, here we are. We have good careers. We love each other. But, we had this goal of sharing the adventure of parenthood. And, that is a goal that illusive and unatainable. Not because we haven't tried. We have been through hell and high water to get there. I just didn't pan out for us. We tried foreign adoption...that cost us money and didn't work out. We tried adoption of embryos and implantation of those babies, but that didn't work out either. We have exhausted our options, energy and ideas over the last 12 years. And now, we have to face a life without a child. How do you form a family of 2? That is the ultimate question.

Today, we put our nursery in the attic. Over the course of the last 12 years, we have aqcuired everything necessary to set up the perfect nursery, if there is such a thing. We had all the equipment, books, stuffed animals, and space for a nursery to be set up. We had the walls painted, the amenities collected, (such as sheets, blankets, quilts and paintings that matched our theme for our Noah's Ark nursery. We had it all...but a child. That part seems to be impossible for us. After we spent Christmas sitting in our home drained of all hope because we found out on the 18th we weren't pregnant, we finally decided it was time to put the nursery away. I told Steve I couldn't look at it any more.

But, when he put it all away today and I went to vacuumm the empty room, I had no idea the feeling that would leave in my gut. I know, I am supposed to trust God. I do. We know that he has a plan, and we are trying to follow that plan. We just have no idea what to do next. When you spend years trying to find a way to create children, and those attempts turn out to be futile, what do you do after that? When the nursery goes in the attic, where do you put your hopes? What dreams do you create for the two of you in your old age?

Today is the beginning of a "do over." Remember those? When you were a kid and you played a game and no one could figure out what the call should have been, you just did a "do over"? That is my life. A "do over"? When we go to make a play, what will we get this time? That remains to be seen. But, we do know that we will not have a nursery in the back of our home waiting for a child. That is done. And, that is the symbol of what is to come. Hope for something different? Something that involves the two of us being close and undistracted. That could be something really special, right?

The first day of the rest of my life started with the crib being put in the attic. How about yours?