Thought You'd Be Here By Now

When I was 19 I was dating a guy 9 years older than me. He was ready to get married, I was not. I told him I had a plan - a 5 year plan. Over the next 5 years I planned to finish undergrad, go on a mission, then get married when I was 24. That's what happened. And that's pretty much how my life had always worked. I planned out how I wanted things to work, and then they did. Another part of my plan was that after I got married I would start graduate school, then when I was a little over half-way through we would start having kids. So, two years into graduate school I got of birth control. I have 23 nephews, 6 nieces (well I now have 7 because my nephew just got married!!!!!!!!!!!!) - my family does not struggle with creating kiddos. I have always wondered if it would be a little harder for me just because of some wording in a blessing I received when I was 17. But a year after I stopped birth control and I decided it was time to discuss it with my doctor. We saw 4 doctors, did multiple tests. It was awful. But not until the day when one of those doctors told us that we would likely not be able to conceive on our own did I really start to worry about whether we would actually ever get to be parents in this life. I really thought we would just be told some simple things to do and then things would work out. It was a long wait from when we first decided we were ready to start growing our family until that amazing day of parenthood finally came. A LONG WAIT. Even when we were told about how hard it would be I thought it would maybe be a year or two. And then after that time had come and gone and we started to pursue adoption I again thought maybe a year, maybe two at the MOST. It took longer. Luckily, I have a very loving Heavenly Father that told me sometime during that wait that WE WOULD be parents, but we were just going to have to wait, there was nothing we could do to speed up the process. That was comforting, for many reasons. It was good to know that the day would come that we would be parents. It was good to know we hadn't ruined our chances - part of me wondered if we had waited too long to start trying (I was only 26). And it was good to know that things would work out according to His timing. There is this feeling when you are trying to have kids that you should do EVERYTHING possible - foster, in vitro, every agency you can possibly afford (and get some loans or something if you can't), etc - and if you're not doing all those things at once then you must not want to be a parent badly enough. But He told me, there was nothing we could do but wait. We waited, not super patiently smile emoticon. But Abby was worth the wait!
Each day this month I will post a song that reminds me of adoption and that kind of goes along with our adoption story. My song for today is "Thought You'd Be Here" by Wes King: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8QqKe5d95U

(Some of other songs along the same theme are "Haven't Met You Yet" by Michael Buble, "Beautiful Things" by Gunger, and "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" - by Aretha Franklin and George Michael)