It’s hard to imagine that one year ago we were doing our first (and only) IVF cycle.

I had overcome my fear of poking myself with a needle and by now it really was routine to wake up in the morning, mix my meds, get the needle ready and then inject myself.

This time last year my emotions were very delicate. I knew the stakes were high. This was our one shot at having a biological child. I was so weary after month after month of hearing the same news … No, you’re not pregnant. Sorry. I was cautiously optimistic that maybe, just maybe, March 2009 would FINALLY be our month to hear “Congratulations! You are pregnant!”.

Just this week I received a call from someone wanting information about the adoption agency we used. At the end of our conversation we got to talking about infertility and all the emotions it brings.

When I told this girl that all those dark feelings that just consume you when you are in the middle of trying to conceive with nothing happening are no longer there for me, it brought her great encouragement.

I think anyone in the middle of it all desperately wants to know that one day all the pain and heartache will end.

My answer to that is, “It will – in God’s Timing.”

I know in God’s Timing is not what someone who is in the middle of failure after failure wants to hear, because I certainly didn’t want to hear that after three failed IUIs and then a cancelled IVF cycle. Hearing that is probably almost as annoying as hearing, ”Relax. It will happen eventually!”

But looking back over my own personal infertility journey, those words are the utmost truth. (God’s Timing, not the relax :) )

God had His timetable for us to become parents and it was absolutely perfection and timed in a way that would only bring us our precious daughter, Little Bug.

God opened our hearts to adoption in December 2009 – the same month Little Bug’s birth mother contacted the adoption agency.

Little Bug’s first adoption plan fell through just a week before I walked into the lawyer’s office ready to get the adoption process started for us.

God’s Timing … worth waiting for.

I told the girl I was speaking to on the phone that the emotional pain I endured is now a distant memory. It is something I most certainly will never forget as long as I live, but those emotions are most certainly not an every day battle for me like they were just a year ago.

Yes, maybe the reason is because I am a mother now. But I tend to think it has a lot to do with a choice.

A personal choice that we all have to make about unavoidable, non-favorable circumstances that unexpectedly enter our lives.

Are we going to be bitter about it or become a better person because of it?

- Elaine