Reflections...What if

'What if' usually gets people into trouble. 'What if' can bring up painful memories. But, 'what if' can also remind you where you came from.

I was pondering a 'what if' recently. About 6 years ago I had my first uterine surgery. My world was completely upside down and whirling around me full of things I didn't expect. I was going on a journey I had NEVER expected to go on, one that will be continuous probably beyond my child-bearing years. One that has been ... difficult in many ways. My mom told me one time on the phone (when I called her upset and crying about how unfair everything was), that maybe I was going through this to help others. I was hurt and offended. Maybe I don't want to help others with this, how unfair for ME to have to go through this to help someone else? She also went on to tell me that God shapes us through our lives like a jagged rock that needs polishing to become perfectly round and shiny. Only He knows what we can truly become. Like a refiner's fire to make metal...it goes through much change, heat, pounding from tools. The rock and the metal go through difficult molding processes to make them what their maker's know they can become. I was upset about this too. Little old me? Being shaped in, what I felt was, a harsh way. I didn't want to be shaped and molded and tried. I didn't think it was fair for me to have to go through it. It was too painful. I didn't feel like I was strong enough to handle it.

But God knew I was.

Here I am years later. Everything I've gone through has changed me. I hardly recognize who I was. So young, so naive, so ... closed off to this world that affects so many (the infertility world if you didn't know what I was talking about). I look at our wedding pictures and just think, wow, you have NO idea what's headed your way. And good thing too, because not knowing about it until it hit and not knowing how long the hardest parts would last are probably a blessing in themselves.

So 'what if' my body didn't have the issues it had? 'What if' my first and 2nd pregnancies hadn't been miscarried? I'd have an almost 6 year old and an almost 4 year old. And who knows what else, maybe we'd be done having kids. But where does that leave Ella? I don't think I'd have her, or not the Ella that I have now, a different version. And those other babies just weren't meant to be, I really believe that. Our family is just how it's meant to be. We're happy. Happy-that's something that was hard to grasp 6 years ago in the midst of my confusion and pain and frustration and loneliness and..... everything.

Turns out my mom is pretty wise (of course), I have been able to help a couple of people, which ended up coming back to help myself (oddly enough). I've been lucky enough to meet some pretty amazing people through my struggles too.