Six Months Ago

Six months ago, I was in another country, on a bus with four other people (including the driver). We'd just come from the airport, where we'd deposited the rest of our teammates for their journey to Paris. For all I knew, we would be in Ukraine another four weeks. We were realizing that four weeks is a very long time when you have just one teammate.

We stopped at a gas station to get something to eat, about halfway into our trip. I went to the bathroom, and I knew.
I don't think I've ever prayed so fiercely about something in a bathroom stall before. I asked why, of course, and no answer came. I asked for it to stop, I asked for my fears to be nothing more than ridiculous worry. Though the beginning of the bus ride was filled with laughter and an attempt to take a nap, I could not stop thinking and praying on that very long second leg of our trip. If I've ever wished to be wrong about a premonition, it was then.

June 11th feels like another world away, but oddly, I can relive everything as if it were yesterday. I feel the emotion, the fear, the absolute helplessness. They're emotions that I feel so sharply that I almost wonder if it was all a dream, because it doesn't seem like it could have happened.

But it did.

I try not to, but I can't help wondering what would be different had things gone differently. I probably wouldn't remember that worry on the bus. It's likely that I'd have spent that next four weeks in Ukraine with little to no concern in my pregnancy (other than morning sickness. Bleah.).

It's more difficult to realize that six months after the fact, I'd be a month away from giving birth. That I'd know what all those mothers are talking about when their faces light up when they feel their baby kicking for the first time. That the empty room downstairs might just have a crib in it and we'd be debating names, going to doctor's appointments, washing tiny outfits.

I think about that at the most random times, and every single time, my eyes water.

This is something that I can't escape. Even if I do have children, I will remember this, and that stings a little. I will always know that there was a little person that I won't ever meet in this life. I wonder if, when I do get pregnant again and people say "Is this your first?" if I'll feel like I'm lying.

I've mentioned before that there has been a lot of good that's come out of this. I still stand by that position, but that does not mean that what happened was a wonderful thing. It means that I am praising God through it and there are things to be thankful for, that good does come through bad.

We were so thrilled to be parents... I took a video on this day when I told Carson (I had just picked him up from work which is why we're in the car) but I can't find it anywhere - I think I deleted it on accident when I got my new camera.

This picture is something I debated putting on here. It's a little strange to compare those absolutely ecstatic emotions with the ones we dealt with so soon after the photo was taken. But the thing is that it's all a part of what's happened in the last year. I'm so glad that I have this picture and about a million other ones where you CAN see those two little pink lines so that I can remember THESE emotions as well.