Don't Stop Believing

Infertility was so long, so hard. It truly was just a chapter of my life, but man, in the midst of it, it seemed like the sum total of all of my days, as if it would consume everything about me. One of the brightest spots throughout the darkness were the friends I made along the way. So many are special to me. There's a whole list of friends I'd love to meet one day. The truth is that motherhood makes that kind of travel about 10,000 times harder than it once was. By the grace of God, a few of us managed to make it happen recently and it was so good for my soul!

Six weeks to write a blog post seems like a totally reasonable amount of time, right? As promised, I wanted to write a post about my trip to Indiana, (in September) if nothing else because this was a very long time coming and something I'll want to remember. Seriously, Sam started talking about going to the Georgia/Notre Dame game years ago when the announcement was made. I kind of rolled my eyes at the thought, and then he said the magic words, "you know, South Bend is pretty close to Suzanne." Oh, well, why didn't you just say that?

I tried not to get my hopes up. What are the odds we'd get tickets? But as the months ticked by and Sam became more and more motivated, I started to see this as a real possibility. Earlier this year, we were hoping to make it a long(er) weekend. You see, Suz is just an hour away from South Bend, but my sweet, sweet friend Annie lives just a few hours away from Suzanne. It seemed too good to be true. Take a few days off of work, spend some time in Indiana, travel over to Illinois, spend a few days there...magical. And then the adoption process stole all of our days off of work. Sam literally had one day to give...that's it. Sigh.

So the trip was not all that I had planned. It was the exact opposite of relaxing. Following the car-ride-that-would-not-end, I suddenly feel very different about flying. My aversion is melting away at the mere thought of another 10 hour car ride with Garrison. We were in Indianapolis for a whopping 40 hours, but...

this made it all worth it. I hadn't seen Suz since Garrison was a teensy, tiny, little nugget, which means that I had never met her THREE babies. Guys, that's a lot of change. Like a lot. And despite some serious effort on Annie's part, we'd never managed to meet up at all. Plus she now had twin toddlers that I had never met. It was an absolute joy to see these friends and to see all. the. babies. Seriously, if this weekend isn't just a might middle finger to infertility, I don't what is.

While Sam went to South Bend to see the campus and spend the day being football-y, I hung with Suz and spent the day with the wild ones. In light of our extremely tight schedule, we couldn't make it to Illinois, but Annie drove all the way over, just for the afternoon. You guys, how great is she? And Suz hosted us all like her home is a toddler daycare every day of the week (which it sort of is, but still). Wild? Yes. Exhausting? Yes. Life-giving? Absolutely. Worth 10,000 hours in the car with a cranky, screaming two year-old? Without a doubt!

Next time, the girls should absolutely plan to leave the kids with the boys and spend the afternoon getting pedicures and sharing stories. The one thing I was sad about was there was just not enough time to spend talking with my friends...but motherhood does that to you, right? And I'm pretty sure we wouldn't trade all the afternoons relaxing in the world for the lives we've created.

I'll be honest and say three years ago, I didn't know if this would happen. We were all thick, deep in the trenches. The sh@% was hitting the fan left and right for all of us. It just didn't seem likely we'd all crawl out of the pit. And yet, in the matter of 450 days exactly, we collectively went from zero to six kids between us. These ladies have stories worth making a movie about and it was such a privlege to walk through it all with them.

Infertility was a dark chapter in my life. I didn't handle it with have the grace or belief I wish I had, and yet, I'm so thankful for that season of life...for so many reasons. One of those is the ladies. I'm not sure I would have kept my head without them and it was such a joy to celebrate all that grace has given us.