Hope

I have a tiny hope.

Or, at least, it began as a tiny hope. As much as I keep trying to push it down and not let it grow, it grows by the day. I feel my heart latching onto it, despite my brain sternly telling it not to. It won't listen, it needs something to hold onto still. It needs hope again, for the first time in months there's a little ember of hope.

Bill starts going back to school next month. He is doing an accelerated program, turning full semesters into only three month semesters. If he keeps up with the schedule, he'll be finished in July and ready to apply his degree to jobs in August. Finally, after months of searching, we found something that he can do while working and can speed up the process. It's online courses and labs that he can come in and do when he wants - the faster and longer he attends, the faster he graduates.

Once he graduates, he'll be able to walk into a job pretty easily, and there are dozens of places in the area that will be an option. At least one of those options completely covers IVF.

Which means, there is now a possibility that we could try IVF as early as the end of next year.

There's a lot of sacrifices we're making for Bill to go back to school, but it means better lives in the coming years. There's a chance that one of those better things may mean another baby.

It's been ten months since I was rendered infertile. Ten months that I prayed to not want more kids, to take the need from my heart. I have truly tried my very best to feel completed and happy with my little family. It would be so much easier, so less stressful, to just accept my infertility. But the acceptance has not come. It hasn't happened for Bill either. We both crave that baby we feel we know so well, the baby that's been in our hearts for years. Not not try that that baby feels like we're giving up prematurely and like we're not complete. I don't think our family will ever feel complete without that baby. I think my heart will be healed if I can have one last pregnancy, one last baby, one last infancy and toddlerhood, etc. That way it won't feel like my future has been stolen from me, my choices taken away, and my family being incomplete.

A tiny hope, but one that won't stop growing. It'll be a long wait to see if we'll have a chance at it, but it'll give us lots of time to pray over it as well.

We have been so absent of any hope so long. Everything in our lives felt like it was falling apart around us. But now there's such a pin sized light coming through the vast darkness, and I can't help but to chase it.