Delivery

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this video!  I've always loved this song!  It all speaks for itself.  Enjoy!

Anyone Who Wants To Be A Parent, Can Be?

During some of my online reading and research, this news story caught my attention.  Although I have lived in Idaho for the past year, my life up until then was spent in Utah.  Maybe that's why it hit close to home.

The current Mrs. Utah is a woman who has struggled with infertility and multiple miscarriages.  She has been able to give birth to two healthy children and has plans to continue fertility treatments to grow her family.  Part of her platform as Mrs. Utah is to educate the public about infertility, which I love.  She talks about her involvement with the Utah Fertility Center and how they are putting on seminars together to educate the public.

The part that rubs me the wrong way is at the end of the article where she says that "anyone who wants to be a parent can be".  There was no discussion at all about adoption or what happens if your health issues make it impossible to become pregnant, only about pursuing fertility treatments.  The fact remains that there are some people who will never get pregnant, no matter how hard they try.  And what about adoption?  Adoption has been an amazing way of having many, many, many children join their forever families.  Why not at least mention it as an option?

However, if you feel that adoption is not right for you, or if you are trying to adopt and haven't been successful, there are many cases where no matter how badly you want to be a parent, you aren't.  So, while I'm glad that Mrs. Utah is trying to bring awareness to infertility, I feel like her statement was wrong and possibly hurtful.  What do you think?

I Am Not My Body

I found this video about an amazing woman that I wanted to share with you.  Although she is not struggling with infertility, she is dealing with a severe trial of her own, and I felt her story resonate with me.  I love the part where she says, "I am not my body."

All too often, we allow our physical appearance or limitations to define who we are.  When I was struggling through infertility, that infiltrated every part of me.  I believed I wasn't as good as women who could get pregnant.  That there was something intrinsically wrong with me that had caused this.

The logical part of my brain told me that this wasn't true, but it took a lot of time and healing for my heart and mind to believe it.  That's one of the reasons I love this video.  She has learned something that is definitely worth sharing:  I Am Not My Body.

She also talks about her new feelings about motherhood.  Again, my heart was touched.  I have often told people that I don't think I love my children any more than any other mother, but I do think that I appreciate them more because of the long and painful journey it took to get them here.

The video closes with one of my favorite scriptures, that I have written about before.  What a great story about someone who is choosing happiness in the face of living a life that she never planned on.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?f​eature=player_detailpage&v=KHD​vxPjsm8E

Make Your Decision, And Then Make It Work

Grandpa taught me to make a decision, and then make it work.  About two years ago, my sister (who also has infertility issues) and her husband were considering adopting a sibling group of 4 children from foster care.  They had 2 children already, an eleven-year-old daughter she had given birth to, and a seven-year-old son who they adopted as an infant.  This sibling group consisted of a twelve-year-old girl, and three boys ages five, three, and two.

After much prayer and soul-searching, they felt like they were going to adopt them, but my sister called Grandpa to talk to him about it first.  He told her, "Well, it sounds like you have done everything you need to to make a good decision about this.  The best advice that I can give you is that once you make your decision, that is the end of it.  Then just get busy making it work."  They did adopt these four children and they are busy making their wonderful family work.

Not only is this great advice for adoption, it's great advice for life.  Now, I know as well as anybody, that our best laid plans are not always successful - no matter how hard we try to make them work.  But, when that happens, I believe that - although it is difficult - we can make the choice to move forward and seek healing and happiness anyway.  And once we make that choice, then we just need to get busy making it work.

Thanks, Grandpa, for these (and so many other) lessons that you have taught me.  Thank you for the life you have lived and the example you are to all those around you.  Thank you for your love and the legacy you have built.  A legacy that has nothing to do with earthly riches, and everything to do with serving, loving, working, and living.

Only God Can Do That

For my neighborhood book club this month, we read The Silence of God by Gale Sears.  I enjoyed the historical aspect of this novel (it's based on the lives of the only LDS family in St. Petersburg at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution), but the thing I want to talk about is the Christian side.  At one point the father of this family explains to their neighbor (who also happens to be the very best friend of his daughter) that no person - not even Marx or Lenin - knows how to change man from a selfish, self-centered being into a hard-working person who helps those around him.  That kind of change can not come from outside sources; it comes from a change of heart, and "only God can do that".

This really struck a chord with me!  It's so true!  And not only as it relates to this specific situation.  No matter what trial we are going through, no matter what heartache we are facing, no matter which character flaw we are striving to overcome, no matter the type of pain that we are trying to heal from....none of the help and change we need comes from outside sources.  It must be a change of heart, and in order to have that, we need to allow a Higher Power into our lives in whatever form we believe.

For me, that Higher Power is a loving Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ.  So, I daily do the simple things that bring me closer to them...things like praying, reading scriptures, serving others, enjoying the miracle of a flower blooming, watching the birds hop around the grass in my back yard, pausing to watch the sunset...anything that elevates my thoughts and feelings.

So, whether you are trudging through infertility, or trying to find healing after placing a baby, or watching a loved one go through one of these experiences...please know that peace can come, but my experience has been that "only God can do that!"

Monday's Infertility Myth

Monday's Myth:  If you had more faith, you would get pregnant.

Unfortunately, this is a myth that gets passed around, even (at times) from well-meaning religious leaders.  All it takes is one glimpse around a hospital maternity ward, or a playground, or a kindergarten classroom, or just about anywhere else before you realize that babies are not handed out based on faith or religious ideals.  That's simply not the way our mortal world works.

It is easy to combat this myth logically, but believe me, I know that it is harder to bust it emotionally.  I often tossed this myth around in my mind because I thought that if I just prayed harder or believed more firmly, my body would miraculously be cured and a baby would result.  Since that didn't happen, it must be my fault, right?  Wrong!

Maybe you're tired of hearing me say that I don't have all the answers, but the truth is that I don't.  I don't understand why conceiving and bearing children comes so easily to some and is so much more difficult and heartwrenching for others, but I have gained the understanding that it has nothing to do with the quantity or quality of faith.  It might be genetics, it might be environment, it might be illness, it might be chance, it might be an all-encompassing plan that God has, or it might be a little of each.

Whatever the reason you are struggling, please don't give up your faith - but don't berate yourself for your lack of faith either.  Just keep doing the best you can one day at a time.  I believe that's all God really asks of you, anyway.

Healing!!!

On Monday, I promised to follow up with something that I believe can put each one of us on the path to real healing.  Since today is officially Wednesday's Words, I'll quote a wise man, and you see if you can pick out what leads to healing.

"If ye will turn to the Lord with full purpose of heart, and put your trust in him, and serve him with all diligence of mind, if ye do this, he will, according to his own will and pleasure, deliver you out of bondage."

Can you find the concrete piece of advice?  The thing that can help lead us out of the bondage of pain and anger?  Service!  Now, I know that it says we should serve the Lord, but to quote another wise man, "When ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of your God."

Sound too simple?  Let me give you a very honest example from my own life.  After my husband and I had adopted first our daughter, and then our son, and even after our youngest son (who I conceived thanks to five years of fertility treatments) came home from the hospital after 8 1/2 weeks in the NICU, and after I had slowly recovered from the after effects of toxemia and a mini-stroke which led to our youngest being born via emergency c-section nearly 3 months early, I still had a very hard time whenever someone announced a pregnancy.

I had a hard time when women complained about the discomfort of their last trimester, when all I had wanted was for my baby to be big enough that my husband could feel him move inside of me.  I still got angry when people wished their pregnancy would hurry and be over, and it hurt my heart to watch mothers leave the hospital the day after giving birth with their perfect, newborn baby.

One night as I was praying about how to move past these feelings, I had an idea.  At the time, there were a dozen or so women that I was acquainted with, who were pregnant.  The idea came to me that I should make a receiving blanket and burp rags for each one of these ladies as their baby was born.  I dismissed the idea.  I didn't want to even acknowledge that they were pregnant, let alone make a gift for them.

However, the idea would not leave me alone, so I went to Wal-Mart and bought a bunch of material and went to work.  The first few that I made, I cried most of the time making them, and cried even harder after I delivered the gift.  It was hard for me.  But, I felt compelled to continue with what I had started. 

As the weeks and months went by, it started getting easier to make and present my gifts, and before long I found that I was enjoying it.  My stomach no longer twisted into knots when a pregnancy was announced.  My heart stopped aching when I saw a woman with a 38-week belly.  I even found that I started feeling some sympathy for the women who were sweating through a third trimester summer.

To this day, I love to provide service to women who have just had a baby.  Whether it's throwing a baby shower, tying a quilt, sewing a receiving blanket, or taking dinner to them, it makes me happy when I serve.  The heart-wrenching bondage is over.  Healing has come.  But not because I pampered and treated myself.  Because I reached outside of myself and tried to help someone else.