Thank you!

Can I just say thank you so much everybody for all of the love and care and kindness and just general amazing-ness you have show me and Donny over the last few weeks? We are overwhelmed by you all.  Thank you.  So many people (some of you I haven't even met in person or seen in years!) have been contacting us to say that you're praying and it just means the world to us.  PRAYER WORKS! God is teaching us a lot of lessons through our infertility/adoption journey - and taking prayer seriously is one of those unexpected lessons.  People are praying and we feel good - we know those two things are related.  It's been a hard week since we found out that our transfer didn't work - but it's been a week that's also been filled with joy and love and peace. So yes, basically I just want to say we are so grateful to God and to you for loving us!

So what's next?
We're not quite sure yet.  The day we got "the" phone call our nurse said that our doctor wants us to wait about a month to let my body re-regulate.  I stopped all my meds cold turkey that Wednesday afternoon (that was fun) and am back to just being a regular ol' person.

I'm trying to take advantage of all the things I couldn't do when I hoped I was pregnant (coffee, rides at Disneyland, coffee, sushi, coffee, etc...) and have also resumed teaching classes at the gym.  My first real workout back after about 3 weeks of "taking it easy" was challenging, to say the least, but putting energy and focus into exercising has been good for my heart too.

This week's schedule of activities has been pretty light, which has been really good for Donny and I to just be together. After our relationship with the Lord, our relationship with each other as husband and wife is what's most important. If it ends up that we're not called to be parents, we still have Christ (which is all we need) and we'll still have each other (which is an awesome bonus) and we're still called to love, serve and put each other's needs before our own.  We don't ever want to lose sight of that in the crazy world of trying to get pregnant/parenting and we feel very grateful that the Lord has made that easier for us right now.

My Valentine's gift to Donny was 12 travel around the world themed stay-home date nights - so in April we went to Italy! Complete with pasta, pizza, gelato, water color painting and sculpting statues (with play dough). 

We have a phone appointment with our doctor tomorrow afternoon, so I'm assuming we'll get a better sense of the schedule after that.  We're sad about the loss of our embryos, but we're also anxious to try again.

One of our snowflakes didn't survive thawing, so that means that three of our children have now entered heaven.  A friend from my Embryo Adoption support group on Facebook sent me a very sweet message. She too has experienced failed pregnancies and I've taken a lot of comfort in her words in the last few days. She said that even though our hearts break at this loss, knowing that my body was a vessel to finally free these frozen lives to go meet Jesus, has been incredibly encouraging. Our embryos were frozen for 12 years before coming to us and who knows how much longer it would have been before they would have been adopted by another family.  So at the very least, we can rest in the knowledge that instead of being unaware in a petri dish - they're in heaven praising God.  What a blessing!

Again, thank you so much! We feel the affects of your prayers and feel so so loved!

I'll post again when we know more.

Soli Deo Gloria

(by Donny)

We’re not pregnant.  

Our little embryos were unable to hold on and result in pregnancies.  This is a bummer, this is a trial, this is hard, this is God’s perfect will.  

Can I ask something of you, reader?  Would you keep praying?  We’ve felt so, so blessed in hearing about and feeling your prayers over us, and so we would ask that you keep doing that in this time.  Instead of well-intentioned consolation with biblical references (which we’re totally holding onto right now), and/or asking about, “well, what’s next?”, would you simply weep with us (Rom. 12:15) for now?  That would be the best thing you can do.  That’s what The Church does.

If you believe that life begins at conception, then so far, 3 of our little lives have gone to be with Jesus (also assuming you believe that babies who die go to heaven, which I think there is very good reason to believe, but that’s for another topic).  During the thaw process, one went to be with Jesus, and now, two more went to be with Jesus.  (How cool it will be to see them in heaven!?) And so it’s hard, but we trust an amazing God with a perfect will that can often be hard to swallow.  Job said it well, “Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”

In the midst of this, we still have hope because we have God.  Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, we have hope in Salvation.  That’s all we need.  As a bonus, we also have each other.  We know that this will work together for our good and God’s glory.

“The road of disappointment runs where unseen mercies wait for us.  And all is well because of God’s great love…Through every failure, every fear, the Lord of comfort draws us near.  And all is well because of God’s great love.”

-From “All is Well” by Steve and Vicki Cook

To God alone be the glory (Soli Deo Gloria).

P.S. In time, we’ll post about “what’s next.”  But for now, we’re going to grieve, regroup, and worship God.

The Weight of the Wait

(Ok, I should start this post by saying Gabby and I don’t necessarily feel a ‘weight’ per se, I just can’t resist a good homonymous alliteration)

Raise your hand if you like waiting.  Ok, if you’re a smarty-pants like me, you may have thought of situations where waiting is favorable, and you can leave those in the comments below if you’d like.  But for the sake of this post, my topic sentence is this: (In general) No one likes to wait.  Gabby and I love to go to Disneyland.  We dislike WAITING in traffic to get to the parks and having to WAIT in line for Casey Jr.  Our Siamese cats love Kitty Din-Din, but they dislike having to WAIT ‘til 9:30pm for their song and dinner routine.  There are rooms designated for WAITING, and these are not places where you relax and kick-back or have a party.

WAITING is hard because it takes patience.  Especially as mankind advances, so many things involve WAITING less and less.  We have “Insta-gram,” which has “instant” in the title, because we need to brag to our friends about what we’re doing RIGHT NOW!  We have “On-Demand” online tv viewing devices, because we have the right to DEMAND when we watch our shows.  Car places try to draw you in with how fast they can change your oil. “15-minute Oil Change,”   “10-minute Oil Change,” “2-minute Oil Change.”  (Which, by the way, doesn’t instill confidence in me that they’re doing a thorough job).

Patience is hard because it infers that we’re NOT IN CONTROL of something.  We have to WAIT for some other factor to play its part, and then we’ll get to do the thing we want to do.

Gabby and I are in one of the most impactful, surreal, and crazy ‘WAITS’ of our lives (especially in our marriage).  As many of you know, yesterday (Friday, April 10th) was our embryo transfer day.  We went to our Doctor’s office, went into a room to WAIT, and then a few hours later we were heading home!  There are two embryos inside Gabby!  The Doctor said something to the effect of, “Alright, we’ll see you in X amount of days/weeks and we’ll see if you’re pregnant.”  Umm, Ok.  We’ll just go WAIT at home to find out, then.  So…here we are.

It’s crazy because after this WAITING period, we may either hear miraculous, happy, and God-glorifying news OR we may get discouraging, trying, and God-glorifying news.  We have no idea what God is going to do, but we do know He will be glorified whatever the case.
So how should we WAIT?  In Psalm 27, David talks about not being afraid because he trusts in the Lord.  It’s a fairly familiar Psalm, including the passages “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?  The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”  David goes on in the Psalm to talk about all the ways he trusts in the LORD in the face of enemies, danger, and trials in general.  He ends the Psalm in verse 14, “Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!”  David uses the word “wait” several times around the Psalms, and with it comes the idea of “to expect actively; to look upon with dependence and trust actively, not passively.”  This type of WAITING allows believers to be strong and courageous in the face of trials.  To be clear, these scriptures DO NOT mean, “if you WAIT on the LORD correctly, He’ll answer your prayer the way you want it.”  That’s bad theology.  These scriptures DO promise that whether we get pregnant or not this time, we can find peace, joy, strength, and courage through the grace given to us by God.  We can experience this because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Happy Easter, by the way). 

SO, I come to the part where I let you know what you can do for us, (if you’d like to do anything)
1) KEEP PRAYING.  Keep praying that the embryos would stick!  We’ve been so encouraged by your “likes” on statuses, your comments, and just your prayers in general.  Keep ‘em coming!  There is power in prayer! (to the God of the Bible)

2) WAIT WITH US.  Many of you may have been in situations similar to us.  Perhaps you have WAITED for some type of important news.  One thing that can be a little bit tough is when many, many people ask you, “Any news yet?  Do you know if you’re pregnant yet?”  If you’ve asked this before, don’t worry, but we’re asking that if you see us in these next few weeks, instead of asking “Do you know if you’re pregnant?” a simple “I’m praying for you!” will be worlds more encouraging.  We will share the news with everyone as soon as we’re ready to share it with you guys.  It’s been really special and important for some of these big steps along the way that Gabby and I have time to process it together first before sharing.  It’s been a kind of weird thing to balance, who knew you could bring hundreds of people along your infertility/embryo adoption/pregnancy quest journey, right?

Welp, I think that brings this post to a close.  Thanks for WAITING to read through it all.

- Donny & Gabby