Positive?

Three pregnancy tests.  All indicated the same thing.  Pregnant.

Now, before you get excited for me, let me tell you what happened.  

I took the first test.  Got the little plus sign.  I couldn't believe it.  Couldn't wait to tell Rob. 

Woke up and realized it was a dream.

Took the second test just to make sure the first one was real.  It said Pregnant.  

Woke up and realized I'd continued the dream from before.  

Took a third one. Again, positive.

Again woke up and realized it was a dream.  Why was my subconscious torturing me?  

Went and took a fourth one.  A single horizontal line.

Well, at least I knew for sure that I was actually awake this time.

I've been a little emotional today.  I know it's mostly hormones.  I cry sometimes.  I admit that I'm starting to feel the let down every month that I'm late, but not pregnant.  Not to the point that I hate people talking about their babies, and baby showers, and pregnancy pains, etc.  I hope I never get to that point.  I love hearing about my friends' excitement and I share in that.  I'm just extra weepy for a couple days a month.

I'm going to be super open for a second.  I've been married just over 2 years, and have never been on any kind of birth control.  People ask if I'm trying to get pregnant and I'm never sure how to answer.  I've never really not tried.  If they're talking about keeping track and trying especially hard on certain days, then up to a couple months ago, not really.  But it's been hard to keep track anyway because I'm so irregular.  I haven't really gotten frustrated about not being pregnant because from the start, I figured I'd take it whenever it happened.  

As a side note, I don't want those friends of mine that have difficulties to take any offense to anything I say here.  If I happen to say something insensitive, it's truly not meant to be.  I know it's a tender subject and I can't imagine what some of them must feel with the circumstances they have.  I have my own set of circumstances.  We all react differently.

I had an advantage going into marriage.  I think it would have been extremely difficult to have all the expectations and hopes that we all have, go into marriage, and find out afterward that things wouldn't be as easy as always planned.  I found out a few years before I got married that it would be harder for me to get pregnant.  I was diagnosed with PCOS in 2006, and found out that low fertility was part of it. Because of that, I was somewhat prepared.  My heart goes out to those that were hit with it out of the blue.  

I know this is all a little scattered.  That's how I am today.  

Reflecting

Every now and then I flip through my scriptures--specifically the ones that I got when I first started college.  The beginning of my real life.

The ones that would carry me though the most important decisions of my life.  The ones that would be my companion as I cried and searched for answers that weren't coming when I wanted.

The ones that would feel like an old friend standing with open arms when it had been far too long since I'd visited.

In these scriptures, I have countless papers to mark important places so that I can remember where an opening of mind and heart had occured.

Today was one of those days that I needed something.  I flipped through and looked at the spots that had papers in them.  Some of the papers themselves I looked at.

Like this one.  

Lately I've started to feel a lot of uneasiness.  I feel this from time to time.  Most of the time it's because I need to straighten something in my life.  When I saw this, it made me think.  How had I been doing?

Admittedly, not as well as I should.  

I don't know if anyone else is feeling like something's coming that we need to be prepared for, not just temporally, but spiritually too.  I am.  I'm not feeling spiritually strong like I feel like I'm going to need to be when whatever it is, hits.

It's strange.  I feel a lot of happiness in life right now.  I have an amazing husband who works hard, supports us, and loves me tons!  I have the flexibility that I've wanted to have and I love that.  I have learned more patience when it comes to others and have also been more patient with myself.  There's an incredible amount of peace that comes with that.  

I'm happy.  But then I read something negative somewhere or hear it on the news and suddenly I feel deep despair in my heart.  I'm feeling negativity affecting me possibly like it never has before.  It's like I have a glimpse at how much hate there is in the world and it's overwhelming.  For some reason, I take it all in. 

That's when I have to drag myself back to perspective.  Remember what I have control over and make that the best I can.  I have to choose to focus on the good things.

And I have to do what I know I should be doing.  That's how I'll have strength.  One of the places in my scriptures that hit me the hardest today was Doctrine and Covenants 19:23. "Learn of me, and listen to my words; walk in the meekness of my Spirit, and you shall have peace in me."

I can't count the times that I've read, and marked, and double marked that scripture, but here it was again  giving me counsel and an answer.  I also looked at one of the footnotes: Micah 5:5.  "And this man shall be the peace when the Assyrian shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds, and eight principal men."  This made me realize that I haven't studied the Bible perhaps like I should, because a lot of it didn't make sense to me.  But what it did say to me in my heart was basically, when evil men come and try to take away everything that I hold dear and sacred, Christ will be the peace and will overtake them.  If I am prepared, I shall not fear.

So, I went to the gym yesterday.  It had been a couple months.  Half of that was because of my health problems that I mentioned that kept me at home a lot.  I was nervous to start back up again because of those.  The other half was probably laziness.  I'll admit it.  There have been times that I just didn't want to go.  I was comfortable.  

But I went yesterday.

And I pushed harder than I have for a really long time.

And I felt good.  

I even found myself smiling during it.  Of course, that could have been because of my choice of music.  There's something about Unstoppable, Firework, Determinate, Who Says, etc. that just gets me going.  Disney Channel anyone?  :)

I felt good after.  Tired, but good.  

Went home. Stretched. Did my meditation breathing. Good.

Then I got up.

I could barely put any weight on my feet.  Booo!  I guess that's what I get for not easing back into it.  It's hard when my body and mind tell me to go for it and then later my body changes its mind.  I guess the little bit of running that I did pushed it over the edge.  Gotta remember that even though my mind is ready for it, my body takes a little bit more conditioning.

Point is though, I went, I pushed, and I'm still alive.  

The End

I tried to come up with a good title for this post, but none of them seemed to work.  For the last little bit, I've been working on cleaning out our 2nd room which we use as an office.  We've also been using it as a storage space.  So much so that it got to the point where we couldn't see much of the floor.  I decided to start tackling it because I knew that it was going to be there, in the back of my mind bugging me, until I took care of it.  One of the main reasons that it has been on my mind is because of things that Mom has been going through with the death of Grandpa.  It's been almost a year now, but it's been a year of stress for her.  She was given the task of taking care of getting Grandpa's house and land ready and sold.  But there's been a lot of things she's had to try to organize and go through.  It got me thinking that if something happens to Rob or me, I want to have things organized so that it won't be too much of a burden on family and they'll be able to find the things they need.

So, that brings me back to the process.  A lot of it is a little difficult because much of it isn't mine, so I don't know what is important to keep and what is fine to get rid of.  I looked back at some of my blog posts and realize that I've never said much about Rob's life before we got back together.  As some of you know, he was married before.  Her name was Leslie.  I went to their wedding reception and they seemed like a good couple together.  Well, about a year after they got married, she suddenly passed away.  About a year and a half after that is when Rob and I started dating again.

As I've been going through the boxes in the office and closet, I've found several pictures and belongings of Leslie's.  Rob was the one who put stuff in the office closet, so there were a lot of things I had never seen before.  I knew there was probably some of her things in there somewhere, but I wasn't sure what or how much.  It doesn't bother me that he has these things.  I understand.  I just don't know what to do with some of them.  If they'd had children, it'd be easy because I would just put the stuff aside to pass on to them later, but because there weren't, where should it go?  It's hard because I'm trying to be sensitive to his feelings.  I just don't know how sensitive I need to be.  It's tough because I haven't been in this situation before.  It has been interesting going through some of her things though.  It has made me wonder how similar we are.  I didn't know her when she was alive, and so sometimes it's hard to get a real understanding of who she was.  Some of her things explains it a little.

It's been a few weeks since I started this post.  I successfully made it through all of the stuff and have most of it organized now.  It was interesting to sit down with Rob and ask what of Leslie's could go and what he still wanted to keep.  It wasn't as hard as I expected it might be.  He seemed to do okay with it.  Of course, I picked a time that he was in the office with me and was on the computer, which I think helped him to not think too much.    

It's interesting to see where I've come over the past couple years.  I'm still not sure where Leslie fits with me and with our life, but I don't feel the insecurity about her that I used to.  At least, most of the time.  I think I'm growing.  I guess we'll see how much I continue to grow.