A Longing Fulfilled

After much consideration, I've decided to change my blog up a little. My hubby has been helping me create a new header and change the template, but the most important change is the title. I will still be sharing my thoughts about how infertility and miscarriage have affected my life; that's why I started a blog in the first place. My perspective has changed a bit now that my life has changed a great deal. I wanted to rename the blog to reflect that, using a favorite Bible verse:

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." Proverbs 13:12

Miscarriage brought about a lot of changes in my life -- in who I am and how I relate to others, and in many other ways. It was my "hope deferred." All I ever wanted to do with my life was to be a wife and mother. It became very healing to write about my experience, but I wish that I had started blogging about it much earlier than I did. By the time I started blogging in 2008, I had lost six babies and, while I certainly wasn't alone thanks to my family and a few very supportive friends, I had been through recurrent pregnancy loss without having people around me who could truly understand what it felt like. My heart was sick, to say the least. I didn't know what else to do except to finally open up and write about it. I didn't know if anyone would ever read what I wrote, but it felt great just to get it all out.

The past few years have brought with them great healing for me. Blogging has been part of that. Having the opportunity to have a successful pregnancy was definitely a huge part of it. Bringing home a living, healthy, beautiful baby after so much pain and loss, after so many years of hoping, has been my longing fulfilled. Lily has changed my life and my heart. She is the answer to so many prayers. Every single day that I get to wake up and be her mother is an incredible blessing to me. It's something I don't take for granted. And I know I say this often, but I can't forget about the babies that I lost. I don't want to forget about them. They didn't live or grow for very long inside my body, but they certainly did in my heart. They were loved and they were wanted and we will always feel their absence. I believe that one day we will see them again, although I have no idea what it will look like or feel like when that happens. But it makes me look forward to heaven even more.

So, this is the same book, I guess, but a different chapter. It's still part of my story, and I'm very grateful to those of you who read it.