I wish I could report my heart is full of joy with a new day beginning, but it is not.

I am at a loss for words in attempting to describe what the past 24 hours have been like, except to say I feel as though someone very close to me has died and now I have to somehow figure out a new “normal” and continue living.

I am numb that this journey has brought me to this place. I have always relied on the truth that God does have a plan and purpose behind all this, a good plan, but at this time, my heart is even numb to that.

Interestingly enough, I ran across a random blog of someone going through infertility and they were saying they no longer believed there is a God, because how could God let something like this go on. At the time, I thought, Wow, that is harsh, but now I can understand how someone would believe that. Before you panic saying I no longer believe in God, that is is NOT what I am saying. I know there is a God. I walk and talk with Him daily. I’m just at the the lowest of the lows and I feel that person’s pain.

It is disturbing to grow up thinking and believing one thing only to wake and realize one day what you have been thinking and believing all your life is just that, thoughts and beliefs that will never become reality.

There is NEVER a time in my life where babies and taking care of children hasn’t been a part of my life in some way.

My earliest memory is that of me at the age of 3 years old. My baby brother had been born. He was coming home from the hospital and I was SO excited. I remember dashing to the front door and reaching for the lock. Then in an instant I was dashing back to what is now the dinning room of my parents’ house but then was a den. There was a couch against the back wall. I remember even then a strong desire to get that baby in my arms. The desire didn’t stop there.

As the years went on, I longed for a baby sister. My mother went on to have five miscarriages after she gave birth to me and my brother. The first four miscarriages I do not remember at all. The miscarriages always happened early on in the pregnancies, so my parents probably never had the chance to tell me. The last miscarriage occurred when I was 10 years old. I found a home video of my parents telling me that Mama was pregnant. My reaction was pure elation. I was SO excited.

I remember the morning of the 11-week ultrasound. I was going to get to go and see my baby sister (I was convinced it was a girl) on the ultrasound. Mama got on the examine table. I stood nearby. It wasn’t long and I could tell something was wrong. The thing I remember the most is Mama getting up from the table, walking past me, and going to the bathroom. She had been told to empty her bladder and then they were going to try and look again. I don’t know when I exactly understood that there was no heartbeat found but I do plainly remember bursting into tears.

I never had a little sister.

But I had Aaron and Levi, twin sons born to my parents’ friends, when I was 10 years old. Their mom would drop them off at our house to run errands and leave me in heaven taking care of two babies. I never ever remember having to learn to care for them. I just instinctively knew what to do and did it.

I also had a lot of cousins that were at least a decade younger than me. I LOVED Thanksgiving and Christmas because it meant I would get to take care of little cousins.

And then when I was 17 years old a little girl named Grace entered my life. Her daddy worked at the same church as my mom and one day my mom volunteered for us to watch Grace while her parents went somewhere. Soon, I couldn’t get enough of Grace and her parents would let me watch her every so often. Before Grace turned a year old, her mom was in the hospital for a week or so. Grace’s dad would bring her to my house every morning and pick her up every evening, only to bring her back the next day. Fortunately, I was a senior in high school and classes had ended just days before Grace’s mom was hospitalized. Those days with Grace, taking care of her every need while her mama was in the hospital, are some of my most precious memories with Grace still to this day.

During college I regularly babysat for a family with three small children, Justin, Hannah and Caitlyn. Once again, I took much pride in caring for those children. They became very special to me. The year I graduated college, the family moved away and I lost contact with them for almost 6 years! During those 6 years I thought about the children often and wondered how they were. Through facebook, just recently, I was able to reconnect with the family and find out the children are doing well and excelling in school and sports. It did my heart so much good to have contact again because children I care for have a way of crawling into my heart and finding a permanent location.

I went to college for education knowing without a shadow of a doubt that motherhood was in my future. I honestly could not imagine loving my own flesh and blood any more than I loved all these children because I always put my everything into loving and caring for them.

Right after I started my first year of teaching Evan, Grace’s little brother, was born. Not long after, Hannah was born and Jonah followed 2 years later. Hannah and Jonah call me “Aunt E” because their mama is like a sister to me. Soon after the births of Hannah and Jonah I would stay the night and sleep with the baby, bring the baby in to nurse, and then take the baby back to bed and get him/her back to sleep so their parents could catch up on some much needed sleep. Fond memories, to say the least.

After teaching for four years I quit because it was FINALLY time to start having babies of my own. While waiting, I began nannying for a family with two children, Bella and Jude. Like all the other children in my life, those two found their way into my heart even though I knew they would be in my life on a temporary basis.

And then came Ella and Ava, the 16 month old twin girls I nanny for now. I met them at a time when my heart was already breaking in two because getting pregnant wasn’t happening month after month. Those girls were, and still are, like a soothing balm placed over a gaping wound.

All of these children are really: Grace, Evan, Hannah, Jonah, Bella, Jude, Ava, Ella.

God strategically placed them in my life for a specific purpose and a specific time.

As we started IVF I knew the possibility of never conceiving a child was staring me in the face. I’ve never shared this on the blog before but God opened our hearts towards adoption back in December.

What ripes my heart in two is that I thought adoption was the answer to having the 3 or 4 children I have always dreamed of. I thought God had opened our hearts towards adoption as a means of growing our family, not starting our family. I thought I would be okay if God chose to give us children through adoption only and not through birth but now as I am staring that reality in the face, I am not okay.

To say it hurts is an understatement.

It rips me to the core of who I have lived almost 28 years believing God created me to be.

And somehow, someway, I am going to have to release this desire to God, stand up once again, grit my teeth, armor myself with God’s Word and press forward STILL believing that God can and WILL make something beautiful out of all this.

Coming to the place of complete surrender is very hard, but very necessary.

For now, I need to cry and mourn as if someone has died because, in my mind, the blue-eyed, blonde-haired little girl I imagined looking just like her mommy, has died.

- Elaine