Getting Real.

Amy writes one of the blogs that I most consistently read and have read for years. Amy and her husband have been battling infertility for years, and she is one person I find myself praying for very often. Today she is offering up stories of encouragement to those of you out there that are waiting on husbands or children or whatever the case may be, and I thought I'd share a bit of my story you might not have heard before.

Mr. Perfect and I met, fell in love, and got married in a whirlwind. It was so fast, it literally made my head spin. In our first year together, we also found ourselves dealing with not one, but two, miscarriages and the repercussions of those losses. For a couple of people that had only known each other for a year, it was a lot to deal with.

Infertility is hard on a marriage. Very, very hard. Even though you go through it as a couple, it can also be a ridiculously isolating experience. I had so many fears about our miscarriages; was it me? Was it my fault? Was I going to be the reason my husband never got to be a father? Did I do something to deserve this?

I turned in on myself after my second loss. I could have cared less about myself, my marriage, or what I was doing to us as a couple. It was hard. In the middle of all that, we were moving all over the place, I missed home, my family, my friends, I was twenty two.. It was just too much..

Things got better and then we suffered our third loss. After that loss, we called it quits on trying to have a biological child. I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't deal with getting my hopes up just to have the rug pulled out from underneath me. I couldn't deal with the pain of recovering from surgery. I was just over it. It was too much.

At the end of 2008, I began to push everyone away again. I don't know how Mr. Perfect put up with me as I went on a self destructive tangent. I needed everything to quit hurting and I couldn't find a way to make that happen. I ran from everything. I ran from church, from Mr. Perfect, from God, from my family... I just wanted a break.

Somewhere in my haze that was the end of 2008, I got pregnant again. Our relationship was on very shaky ground, but we came together for this child. We prayed over it and asked God to forgive us for who we had become. Right before I got pregnant, Mr. P had gotten saved and was a totally different man. He really stepped up to become the leader in our household. I fell in love all over.

We lost that baby at Christmas. I got saved in February.

Marriage is the hardest thing I've ever done. I'm not good at opening up at all and when you add in the recurrent pregnancy loss, well, it makes it even more difficult. I've gotten called out in emails before about how I portray my life as "perfect". Maybe I do. Because to me, it absolutely is.

After I got saved in 2009, it became so clear to me the damage I had caused. But somehow, I was forgiven for all of that. Mr. Perfect was still here, my marriage was better than ever, my family still rallied around me. God's grace was amazing and became even more so.

In August of 2009 I got another positive pregnancy test. And exactly 39 weeks later, I got my miracle child.

Y'all. She was so, so worth the wait.

I let you in on a darker side of this girl for one reason; there is always, always hope. I thank God that He watched over the two of us, even when we weren't listening to anything He had to say. I thank God that He is a God that forgives and always loves us, even when we don't love ourselves.

Life is hard. It's downright heartbreaking sometimes. I don't pretend to understand why we had four miscarriages. I don't say that it didn't just about kill me, because it did. But I made it to the other side. We made it to the other side.

And life is pretty much, almost perfect.