Assumptions.
My worst enemy. They have been for most of my life actually. I remember being
in high school and thinking about the upcoming youth group camping trip or my
next basketball game and imagining all the grand, magical things that were
going to happen. I still struggle with this in my own household. My husband
jokingly calls them, “expectation talks” when we are making plans or getting to
leave for a trip. He knows that in my head I have the entire thing planned out
and I intend for it to be executed in that exact way. So in order to save our
marriage another ridiculous fight he always asks me what my expectations are
and then we work out a realistic plan together. See, the problem with
assumptions is that when those assumptions do not become reality, we usually
get mad or disappointed and then we find ourselves in our planned outing with a
sour attitude. This tends to just make life miserable a majority of the time. I’ve
had to learn to fight these in myself so that I’m not letting amazing moments
pass me by because they aren’t happening just the way I expected them too.
My
biggest battle with this has of course been my infertility. I assumed, as most
women do, that as soon as I decided to have kids it would be in my control to
do so and would happily play out the way I wanted. When Kurtis and I decided to
start trying it was the beginning of August, so I did all the calculations and
if it took a month or two to get pregnant we could still make a charming
announcement at Christmas to all our family; little baby shoes wrapped up with
an ultrasound, everyone’s surprised and delighted faces. I seriously imagined
the whole scene on multiple occasions. So, after 5 months of trying and some emerging
medical conditions, guess who cried and hated Christmas that year? Yep, this
gal. It was early February when I finally got into the doctor, had all the
talks, made a plan of action, and then boom, expectations right back up there!
What a whirlwind cycle!
Even
after 3 years, failed fertility treatments, and beginning an adoption journey I
find myself still struggling in different ways. I have now started to assume
that I can handle pregnancy announcements, baby showers, and walking through
the children’s aisles at Target and while I have made great strides in this
area, I still catch myself getting really angry or sad, when an announcement crosses
my screen on Facebook and I have to step back and remind myself that this
should not steal my joy.
What
it comes down to I think is that I’m ready to find out how this story ends. I’ve
imagined the ending for so long. I’ve made up multiple endings in fact. Through
this whole journey it’s felt like I’ve been reading a multi-part thriller and although
I’ve found out the ending of each individual book, the final book in the series
hasn’t been released and it’s getting harder to wait to find out how the entire
journey ends. But, this is real life, there is no “release date.” Only time,
patience, and an everyday battle with imaginary scenarios and assumptions. This
takes effort on my part every single day and constant, gentle reminders from
those around me. So, once again, here I am writing this post to help remind
myself in an effort to grow through this unpredictable journey.
