Did God Abandon Us?

In my last post, I talked about having a second surgery to repair my uterus and taking some time to refocus. To continue...

We moved to Lafayette in April because it seemed very clear that God was moving us. My husband had a much better job to move to, and we were offered a great relocation package that would help us sell and buy a home and put us up in temporary living for up to three months. We put our Texas house on the market with the expectation that it would sell very quickly, and that we would break even financially because we were confident that God would come through since he was moving us.

The first week of May, we lost our baby Gabriel with a tubal pregnancy, thus affecting my future fertility. Our loss was devastating and discouraging. Then a couple of months on the market, we discovered that our home in Texas was not generating much interest. I became concerned because I realized that our time in temporary living was flying by. We were going to have to move out before the middle of July. And we didn't have anywhere to go...

And then, in the middle of June, I got a call from a friend in Texas who was checking in on our house every couple weeks. She called to tell me to get a plumber there ASAP. I frantically called a plumber, my husband, my parents for prayer, and my friend back to ask her how bad it was. Apparently, water had been shooting out of one of our upstairs bathroom sinks and had flooded half of the upstairs and had leaked into the downstairs. I packed a bag, put Abigail in the van, and started out the 4-hour drive back to Texas.

I spent the drive praying and on the phone. The plumber fixed the problem, but also said that we needed to have a drying company come out. I think that was when I realized that this was not going to just be a clean-up job. I arrived at the house to find the kitchen counters swollen, the hard wood floor in the living room swollen, about 1/4 of the walls swollen, the bathroom completely saturated, and carpet on both levels soaked and discolored. And I cried.

Since all of our furniture was still at the house, we were very fortunate that none of it was damaged. We were also fortunate that we didn't have any mold. In total, though, the insurance claim was more than $25K.
 
Initially, I handled all of this pretty well, considering. But after I started getting bills, and our mortgage company messed up getting us the settlement money to pay the contractors. Well ....that's when I started to fall apart.

 Our baby was gone, and we couldn't even start trying again for probably another month, with even less fertility than when I had two fallopian tubes. We had now lost almost $10K in mortgage, utilities, and deductibles and additional repairs for a house we weren't selling. My daughter, whom I had been cloth diapering since infancy was now in disposables full-time, and I was feeding her processed foods and fast food because of the chaos of our lives. She had been sleeping in a Pack-N-Play for three months now with no end in sight, and I was not even sure where we were going to live in a month. The house that we had decided to build wasn't going to be ready until August, and I was pretty sure we couldn't really afford it anyway, so we bailed on it and had to start looking again. Everything was a mess.

Where was God? Had he abandoned us? Was this move a move out of His will? What did we do wrong?

All of these thoughts were spinning in my mind, and I was dealing with a lot of anger. 

What is worse was that I had just started writing this blog. I was in the process of telling the story of our struggle with infertility and our first pregnancy and subsequent loss. I was writing this blog so I could help other women with these struggles see that they were not alone in their pain, and that God could bring victory even when you feel you are in the most desperate situation possible. How could I reach out to other women and how could I talk about victory when I was angry at God and questioning whether he even cared about me anymore?

On July 26-27, I was texting a close friend of mine about my frustration with God and my insecurities about whether we would ever be blessed again. And then on July 27, while I was still frustrated and feeling abandoned, I wrote the blog "Counseling and The Promise". My friend wrote to me later and basically called me out for questioning God after He had given me such a beautiful promise.

And I began to pray for God to change my heart and make me more grateful for the blessings He had already given me. A few days later, I woke up refreshed and feeling relieved. I was grateful for my husband, and for Abigail. I was grateful for a job that my husband loves, and that we had the ability to start over in our house hunt. I was grateful that we had this temporary apartment for another couple of weeks because of an extension we had been granted. And I was grateful for the children God was going to bless us with. The only thing that had really changed was my attitude, and it made such an amazing difference in my whole family's lives. 

Another surgery (3rd this year)

In my last post, I talked about deciding to go to a new fertility specialist after the loss of our baby to a tubal pregnancy. To continue ...

So we went to the fertility specialist, only about a week after losing our baby Gabriel and my left fallopian tube to a tubal pregnancy. Of course, we knew that we were not going to immediately pursue another pregnancy, but we wanted to make a plan. I also had some fear in my mind that we could have more tubal pregnancies because of my new increased chances of having another. My husband hoped that we would get pregnant without assistance this time, and I did as well. The visit to the fertility doc was to get my system checked and cleared for another pregnancy over the next couple of months.

He recommended that we do a full check on both me and my husband to be sure everything was working properly. Hubby's test was just a semen analysis, which we had refused during previous checkups because we knew he didn't have any issues. I underwent two blood tests and another HSG, which is an x-ray of my uterine cavity while saline and iodine is injected through the cervix. This was the test that my last fertility doc had done after the surgery in January that was supposed to repair my uterine septum. I already knew that some of the septum was still left in the uterus, but they were not able to measure the amount left over.

Since the last fertility doctor had recommended going back in and removing the remaining septum, and we had seriously considered it, my mind was already thinking that it may be a good idea. So before I went in to have the HSG, I decided that if it was any bigger than 1cm, I would have surgery again. The doctor said it was about 1.5 cm, and so we decided to have the remaining septum removed while waiting to be able to get pregnant again.

And so, my third pelvic surgery in 6 months was performed the Friday before July 4. This time it was a laparoscopy, 3 holes in my tummy for cameras, lights and air, and a hysteroscopy, which goes up through the cervix and performs the surgery. The surgery was a complete success.

The recovery was not very bad at all. I had a few days with pain, and about a week of low energy and low activity. I also had to refrain from picking Abigail up for 2 full weeks though, which is complicated and difficult when you are a full-time mom of a 1-year-old!

The coolest thing that happened while I was laid up from surgery was that my new friends in Lafayette poured out so much love on me and my family. I had joined a group called M.O.P.S., Mothers of Preschoolers, just a few weeks before, and we had also found a great church, so we were starting to get to know some people. The ladies in my M.O.P.S. group were amazing! They brought us dinners for a week, and even ran to my aid when my husband got called into work while Abi was napping and I couldn't get her out of her pack-n-play. I was amazed at the love shown to me by people I had just met.

I decided to re-focus the attention that I had been spending trying to get and stay pregnant. I started focusing more on my precious little girl and helping her develop into the intelligent, happy little princess she was becoming. I also started researching adoption and planning for our move into the new house that was being built. We were waiting two months after the surgery before we could start pursuing fertility methods to get pregnant again according to the fertility doc's instructions. So I was in a bit of a holding pattern, and it was a great time of recovery and restoration.