Here's the story {part one}

Because sometimes you just want to clear things up with a simple answer...this is the long version of the simple answer (in several parts)! And I don't do condensed versions- they don't seem honest. 

For the better part of the last decade, my beautiful, stunning and amazing partner in this life and I have attempted to complete our family. We have seen specialists in Chicago, Indiana, Champaign, Peoria and our hometown. Each giving us different answers. Each offering varied solutions. Each leading to a dead-end, empty promise filled roads that were lined with gold we just didn't have to spend. Tests. Probes. Pills. Shots. Pictures. Scans. Meetings. Cat scans. MRIs. Three surgerical procedures. Tears. Lots of tears. But we stood hand-in-hand and took every blow together. The hardest losses were those we suffered when we thought we were actually winning. Those devastated us. Devastated our family and friends as well. 

So we kept busy. We both have careers we love and have worked so hard to cultivate.  We've taken extra classes, gotten extra degrees and taken hold of every opportunity we could.  Teaching is my true passion and there is no job I would pick over being a teacher. I love my students. The harder they are to love, the more I love them. I take this honor of spending my days with them very seriously but I always remember to laugh with them too. I get so nervous and anxious to meet them the first week that I can't sleep. Hoping that I will be what they need and that I will be able to meet them where they are causing insomnia. Then at the end of the year I cry. I cry huge tears as I hug them and send them to the unknown. When they come back to visit, oh! I just can't even explain that feeling. It's nothing short of amazing. 

We kept busy by coaching. We gave back to a sport we absolutely love. Softball gave us a chance to play outside and share our passion. First at different schools and then we found a small town where the players captured our hearts. We love our players and cared for them as they were our family. Hmm. Maybe we were completing our picture and didn't even realize it. We've cheered "our girls" on not only from the coach's box and dugout but from the sidelines of life as well. We've cried many tears of joy for them. And with them. We've been blessed. 

During this decade we've loved our family and created a circle of friends that are the family members we would pick for ourselves. We enjoyed dinners and holidays together. We celebrated milestones and consoled family members and friends over the bumps of life. When we have fallen down, there were others to pick us up. We've been blessed. 

Above all, we have created a life together based on love and trust and support. Our relationship is my everything. Having a love I can laugh with, shed tears with and who knows when to hold me or when to make me laugh is priceless. And during the past two years, just as in the decade of infertility that preceded it, that is where our strength has come from. Love and trust.