I shouldn’t be here?

‘I shouldn’t be here.’ That thought creeps in my mind every now and then.  It comes without a moments notice.  Last night, as I was removing my eye liner and starring in the mirror, I thought ‘this isn’t where I’m suppose to be.’  Sometimes when I go for a run I think, ‘I shouldn’t be able to do this right now.’  That thought pisses me off, so I run harder.  I see a beautifully pregnant woman at the store and think, ‘is that what I would look like now?’ I walk past the ‘nursery’ and see the memorial of our two precious babies and think, ‘this room should have a crib.’  Those thoughts hit me from time to time.  But after those thoughts, I get contradicting ones.

I think, ‘I can’t imagine not being here.’ Sure, I can imagine anything, I can imagine I could fly if I wanted to.  Maybe I can’t believe that not being here is where I’m suppose to be.  Sometimes, when I see that pregnant woman I think, ‘that’s her life, not mine, not yet.’  When I see our memorial, I know that those two beautiful children existed and that our souls are connected in a way that is different and special than it would be if they were alive. I think about my upcoming due date and can’t believe that right now I would probably have everything prepared, and to be honest, I don’t even know what all of those things are! (a blog topic for another time)  The life of infertility and loss has become my reality so much that, sometimes I can’t believe what life would be like now if I were pregnant.  I think, ‘this is who I am.’  This is where I’m suppose to be, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.  It’s not like I am here by choice.  I didn’t choose this life for myself, it was made for me.

When I make a choice or choices and I end up in a place I don’t want to be, it makes sense to say, ‘I shouldn’t be here.’ Like when  I decided to stop eating healthy and stop running and working out and then gained nearly 20 lbs from this time last year, yeah, I’m not suppose to be here!  I shouldn’t have given up.  I could come up with a long list of excuses,

1) no strenuous activity was allowed with my FET

2) my back/butt hurt from the PIO injections

3) pregnancy gave my food cravings & aversions

4) I was too depressed to get back in the routine

The list goes on and on.  And now, I have to live with the results of my actions, I have to live with regret.  I have to work my ass off, literally, to get back to a place that I worked so hard to get to in the first place!  That is a place I SHOULDN’T BE!  I had a choice.  I could have gone for walks. I could have done modified versions of exercise. I could have drank A LOT less beer.  I’m not beating myself up over it, but instead justifying that my thought of ‘I shouldn’t be here’ shouldn’t pertain to things that are out of my control.  Again, I didn’t choose the life of loss & infertility, it just happened to me.  For a reason? I believe so.  So I feel as though I shouldn’t look at myself in the mirror and think, ‘I’m not suppose to be here.’

Ten years from now, when I think about my life with Brett, I don’t want to look back on those 4+ years of trying to make a baby and think that it was a place that we weren’t suppose to be.  I don’t want my time with my husband to be a time of regret because I didn’t achieve my goal of giving birth to a living child.  Who am I to question the blessings that God has given me?  Who I am to say ‘ I wasn’t suppose to be there.’?  Because, I believe I am.

Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.

1 Peter 4:12-13