When Hindsight Becomes Foresight

Spoiler alert: this blog post mentions infertility, depression, and suicidal ideation. I've tried to address these topics with sensitivity and authenticity, but if you need to skip this post for the sake of your own mental health, I completely understand.

About seven years ago, I decided it was time to have another kid. We already had three, but I'd thought for several years that our family wouldn't be complete until we had one more, and now the time finally felt right. My depression was under control, I'd stopped taking medication, and we'd moved closer to family. Plus, it felt like God was telling me the time was finally right. I was energized and hopeful.

I didn't get pregnant the first month, which wasn't weird, so it was fine. I didn't the second month, either--but my sister-in-law did. They announced their awesome news at a family gathering. I probably felt a little bad, but the women in my husband's family are notoriously fertile. It was fine. Completely fine.

I told my brother-in-law's wife that we were trying to conceive. She knew exactly how I felt. Though she and her husband didn't have trouble conceiving, she did have a hard time carrying pregnancies to term. We'd bonded before over our shared misery of having married into such a baby-come-easy family.

Then, a month or several later, she said she was pregnant, too.

This made me feel a little worse--or, you know, maybe a lot worse. I tried to be happy for her, but I wasn't, not at all. Now I was an awful person in addition to *not* pregnant.

This was sometime in the winter, which was colder, snowier, and generally more miserable than my last ten winters had been. I'm sure this had something to do with my worsening depression, but I was too far gone to make that logical connection, and my depression quickly spiraled into suicidal thoughts. Church was soul-suckingly bad, and family gatherings were worse. At least my *other* brother-in-law's wife had no bun in the proverbial oven and showed no signs of wanting one. We didn't talk as much, but I decided we were tight, on the same side, and all of that.

Until--you guessed it--she announced that she was having her first baby.

There were now three babies coming to my husband's family, and not a single one was mine. Why was God rewarding them but somehow not rewarding me? Was I less righteous, less deserving? Then why had I felt so strongly that the time was finally right?

This was in, like, February, and my suicidal thoughts were pretty much out of control. After sitting down to talk about it with my husband's parents, I decided I would give myself two more months to conceive. The thought of giving God a deadline didn't sit quite right with me, but even I could tell that this was rapidly becoming a life-or-death situation. Two more tedious months passed, and I didn't get pregnant.

Still.

I was beaten. I was vanquished. Scheduling that doctor's visit felt like admitting defeat. I mean, I knew I had to do it--for myself, my family--but I didn't *want* to do it. And I didn't understand why God had let me wander recklessly so far down the wrong path.

The day of the appointment came. I told the doctor all my crap. (I've been doing authenticity since before it became cool.) Then she told me something wondrous, something I'd wondered about but never let myself believe: there was a type of medication that would *not* affect the fetus even if I took it straight through an entire pregnancy.

This, of course, was the solution, the detour I couldn't see from where I was firmly stuck. I started this new medication, and after working out the dosage over the next several months, I managed to sweet-talk my husband into trying to conceive again. (He was understandably gun-shy after the year that we'd endured.)

We got pregnant right away, and our Gummy Bear was born in April of 2018.

This wasn't the first time that, with the benefit of hindsight, I could see how Heavenly Father's plan was so much better than *my* plan, but I swore it would be the last. This ordeal had to have changed me. The next time I hit a roadblock, I couldn't spend weeks, months, or years working myself into a frenzy or shaking my fists at God. I had to hope. I had to trust. I had to let myself believe that God really does know what He's doing, that He's looking out for me, and that He knows how to do more with and make more of my life than I ever could alone.

I didn't know it then, but as it turned out, my next hard thing had already begun. EARTH TO DAD had sold to Capstone in February of 2017--right when, incidentally, I was going nuclear--and since then, perhaps you've noticed that I haven't sold a thing. *I* didn't notice right away, but it's become hard to ignore. I also had to leave an agent after he didn't connect with the new stuff I was writing, and the new agent I found had to medically retire in May earlier this year.

But honestly? I'm fine. Actually, completely fine. Do I wish I'd made a sale in the last six or seven years? Um, of course, yes, absolutely. But am I foaming at the mouth because my journey hasn't gone the way I wanted it to go? For once, thankfully, no. I still have some not-great days, but for the most part, I've been able to keep writing, writing, writing and give God the time and space to lead me down the proper road. I hope I'll know it when I see it, but until then, I'm content to keep waiting on the Lord. There are much worse ways to wait.