I’m Back!

Man oh man, what a blogging sabbatical I’ve taken! And what crazy, wild, unexpected, life-changing adventures I’ve been on in the meantime!

A couple months ago, I was working through the devastating loss of one of my long-time companions and friends: my horse Ashah. Ashah had been a cornerstone of my youth and a constant feature in my life for the past fourteen years. She was clever, sassy, sweet, and everything a little girl who loves horses dreams of. And, in the twilight years of her life, had been living with a particular equine disease that is essentially a brain tumor on a very important part of the hormone-regulating section of the brain. There are treatment options, but no cure, for this progressive disease.

Ashah and I dancing in the front yard together.

We’d always known that we’d have to choose a time to say goodbye to this majestic spirit, but that doesn’t make the reality of losing her any easier. As her disease progressed, her spark was dimming and we all agreed that it was time to let her rest before she lost all of herself to the tumor.

She had just had her 33rd birthday, which is a ripe old age for any equine, and I’m proud to say she didn’t look a day over 20!

Photo credit goes to Andre Hilliard http://www.andrehilliard.com/

At the same time, the hubs and I were struggling with the reality that we were not being successful in starting our family. We’d been trying for a year and a half and, after many false alarms and some doctor appointments, were coming to the conclusion that it just wasn’t happening for us. You’ll recall, if you read The Unlikely Runner, that I’ve had a lot of…strange things happen to me over the course of my life. Another side effect of those strange things is that I have an unusually high amount of scar tissue in my abdomen, and one of my ovaries had been taken by the scar tissue. The running hypothesis was that my other ovary wasn’t functioning properly without its’ twin.

Always my darling

Disheartened and crushed by both of these events coming to a head at the same time, I gave up and started mourning the loss of Ashah and the loss of my motherhood. All the while, the hubs was my rock and comfort, and would frequently remind me of the story of Abraham and Sarah from the Bible. Here’s the gist:

“Once there was a man named Abram.  One day the Lord came to talk to Abram, and Abram asked, ‘Who will have all my things when I die?’

God promised Abram and his wife Sarai that one day they would be parents, even though they were old and had no children.

God wasn’t sure that Abram understood.  So that night He took him outside, and said, ‘Do you see all the stars that are in the sky?’  When Abram looked up, the whole night sky was full of stars, so many in fact that he would never be able to count them.  Then God said, ‘That is how many descendants you will have.'”

Believing that promise took a lot of faith, especially since the both of them were past the point of being able to have kids. And they struggled to believe the promise that God had made them, even trying to make it happen on their own (through adoption options that were available at the time). The story continues:

“Quite a few years later when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord decided to change Abram’s name to Abraham, which means ‘father of many.’  He also changed Sarai’s name to Sarah.

God told them again that they would be parents and that they would have a boy.  This time Abraham laughed so hard he fell on his face!  It was hard to believe that he and Sarah would have a child in their old age, because they were almost 100 years old.

One day three visitors came to Abraham’s house. While the visitors were eating, they asked Abraham, ‘Where is your wife Sarah?’  Abraham replied, ‘She’s in the other room.’

Then one of the men spoke and said, ‘I will come back to see you at this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.’

A year later Sarah did have a son.  She and Abraham named him Isaac, which means ‘he laughs.’

They were very excited, and remembered to thank God for Isaac.”

http://biblehub.com/genesis/18-14.htm

There’s your (super abbreviated, left some details out, but you get the general idea) Bible story for the day! The hubs would frequently remind me of this story (that I had actually reminded many of my friends about when they struggled to start their own families–oh, my own medicine!) when I stopped trusting God to be in charge of our unborn children and started trying to do it all by myself. It was MY body that was damaged, it was MY body that wasn’t behaving properly, it was MY body that needed to change. I didn’t leave any room for God to do His thing, and it was really humbling to have the hubs remind me of that fact.

A few more weeks passed, and the sting of letting go of Ashah became less intense, though I wasn’t sleeping well and I wasn’t feeling well most of the time. I definitely didn’t feel like I had anything to blog about, or the energy to put my experiences into words. I just let myself drift for a bit to process my losses.

The morning of Ashah’s last day. It’s still hard for me to look at these photos.

And then something bizarre happened…I started feeling nauseated ALL THE TIME. I blamed it on the stress, not wanting to get my hopes up again. And I was late. Again.

Still, I didn’t want to get my hopes up. These symptoms had all happened before, and they all meant nothing. Why would this time be any different?

And then the hubs noted a, shall we say, very obvious change in my physique. I was in desperate need of new bras!

“Aright,” he determined. “That’s it, we’re getting a pregnancy test!”

I took the test, and didn’t even need to wait the three minutes. Immediately that little window with the plus sign screamed at me, “YES! BELIEVE IT! YOU’RE PREGNANT!”

There are no words for our elation that followed. Just, trust me; it was awesome. And we cried a lot.

Turns out, though, that because I had convinced myself of my not being able to conceive so thoroughly, I’d actually been pregnant for over a month without knowing it…okay, more like two! And, while I was saying goodbye to a love that I’d had for a long, long time, I actually had already been blessed with a new love that I didn’t even know yet! There is something deeply comforting to me in that; the fact that as Ashah drifted on to Rainbow Bridge, a new life was knitting together inside me.

One of the last photos of me and Ashah. She was very nearly sleeping in my arms here. And, without knowing it, my baby was here with us, too!

I’m not sure what the take-away from this post is supposed to be. For me, I’ve learned to not take anything for granted, and at the same time to not put my reality into a box. I need to step aside and let life, love, and that Higher Power handle the big stuff. Because tomorrow isn’t set in stone, and your possibilities are not limited because of your past, and (even if your doctor believes that maybe you’re actually infertile) ANYTHING is possible.

In conclusion, I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long, I’m so happy to be back, and blessings to you all! 😀