One of my greatest life lessons

Brace yourselves...I'm putting on my serious hat for this blog.

Ken and I both come from large families. I have 3 siblings, and he has 4. We always knew we wanted to have more than one child. When we decided to start our family initially, I was only 24 years old, a mere baby IMHO. My pregnancy with our little Levi went really well, and 2 1/2 years later, we were thinking about having another baby. Little did I know that I was in for one of my greatest life lessons.

Most of you know that it would be a year before we could get pregnant again. During that time, it seemed like everyone I knew was getting pregnant with really no effort at all and almost making jokes about it. "That was easy" or "he just looked at me and I was pregnant." AAAAHHHHHHH! To this day, I can't stand it when I hear those words.

And the advice that people would give me...where do I start with that? My all time favorite has got to be, "If you just relax, I bet you'll get pregnant." SERIOUSLY? Anyone that says that has obviously never struggled with infertility. Relaxing is the last thing you can do. I think people are really trying to help, but come on people. Whoever said "sticks and stones...words will never hurt me" is quite mistaken.

It was quite frankly one of the hardest times of my life. I wanted another baby more than anything, and I couldn't figure out why it wasn't happening to me like it was to everyone else. It just didn't seem right, and I couldn't explain why.

It is so hard for me to watch people that I love go through something similar. And even though I, of course, don't have a cure or an explanation, please know that I am here to listen. That pain is still very real to me, and I will cry along with you every single time.

I believe everything happens for a reason, and even though the reason(s) may not be immediately apparent, I still believe that to be true. I will probably never know completely why we struggled, but I think I am beginning to see a tiny glimpse as to why.