This Christmas I decided I wanted to make most of my niece and nephew’s Christmas gifts, instead of just buying them at the store. Lucas always looks at me with questioning eyes when I tell him about my crazy plans, I’m sure he wishes I’d just go to the store and buy stuff. Our house was in chaos the week before Christmas trying to finish everything, and we made about 50 trips to the craft store.

One project was my idea to make homemade crayons, now when I say homemade I mean semi-homemade. I bought some cute candy making molds (animals for Gavin, and butterflies for Maycee). I then gathered broken crayons I had lying around my craft room, put them in the mold, and baked them (find the directions for this here). It turned out to be an easy and super fun project, and they turned out so cute (sadly I did not take a picture of the finished product).

It’s been month’s since I’ve shared anything on this blog—it has not been months since I’ve wrote for the blog—those posts just never seemed to make into the public eye. I felt they were too dark, too pain-ridden, too whiney, too everything but hopeful, to share.

I thing this blog has saved me, because it has given me a reason to write, to open up my heart (broken as it may be), and to face my reality. My honesty and freeness in my writing has hurt people I love dearly in the past, which has made me question everything I’ve gone to share.

I’ve shut down for months now, I have rarely cried, I have begun swearing a lot more than I ever have, I have thrown myself full force into ANYTHING that could distract me from the pain. I have faltered as a wife, a sister, a daughter, an aunt…I have dropped the ball in regards to my responsibilities. I have tried to shape myself in a whole new way (physically, emotionally, and mentally). I have tried to numb the pain with nearly any method I could think of.

The truth is, the pain CAN be numbed, attention CAN be re-shifted, and your heart CAN be put on auto-pilot…but only temporarily.

December…as I sit here typing I can’t help but think what might have been.

This month, right now as I sit here typing, we would have our baby, had either of our embryos taken. We would have woken up on Christmas morning with a baby!

It’s hard for me to understand that it has been nine months since embryo transfer, it feels so fresh in my mind, it feels like I’ve had zero time to heal when in reality, it’s been nine months. I wish I could tell you that time has healed me, that I’ve gotten stronger with each passing day, that Lucas and I have only grown closer, that faith has pulled me through, that time has begun to heal my wounds…I wish so badly this was the case.

I wish I could FINALLY update you with glowing news that we have a plan, that we know our next step, that we are stronger than ever because of went we went through. This isn’t the truth though, and this blog has always been about sharing our journey openly and honestly.

I hold on to a seed of hope that someday soon, this will be our story.

I’m in a dark place in my life. I’m fighting to understand God’s plan for me, and I struggle to reach out to Him in my heartache. I know He loves me, as I have seen His tender mercies, (although I’m sure there are many I’ve missed). I know He’s there and loves me, even when I lack the strength to reach out to Him.

Many ask what they can do for Lucas and I, and the only answer I can think of us is to pray for us, because that is something we are struggling to do for ourselves right now.

Somedays I feel completely forgotten about by He who created me and loves me—I know I have not been forgotten, and I strive to feel His love a little more every day—every so microscopically. I’m a broken soul right now and I’m slowly finding new ways to fix me.

Lucas is struggling, the heartache is very real for him. I see the tears well up in his eye, I see his anger seep in, I see the heartache that he carries with him and yet I struggle to carry some of his burden and he mine…we’re both hurting.

The options are still the same, what’s on the table now is adoption, or using an egg donor through IVF, neither choice we hoped for, but it’s our reality. We both have to be ready for the next decision, we have to be on the same page, and God’s timing will dictate that.

There is this though, we will continue to fight, to hang on to ourselves, our goals, our hopes, our dreams, and most importantly…our marriage. We don’t know what’s next but we cling on to hope that we will find our way out of the darkness and find the answers we long for.

Any kind of loss is a battle. It’s going to war everyday with yourself, hoping that you will be properly armed against the daily reminders of what you can’t have, what you can’t control, what you can’t fix. Like this post, it’s not pretty, or elegant, or hopeful…it can be discouraging, and exhausting, and sad. I have faith that this will change, that someday we will understand the pain we feel today, that we will know the path designed for us.

I have learned that my timeline for healing is not reality, that my idea to set aside 9 months to get back to me is not long enough. I have learned that my healing might be a much longer recovery. No matter what any of us may be going through, we must learn to be patient with ourselves. We must take the time to heal, as long as that takes. We must be kind to ourselves in our broken state.

So what the heck is the homemade crayon story about, well it motivated me to write this. I am still very broken, but I’m still “coloring”, even in my broken state. I have grown to love a quote I discovered through this journey, it hangs in my office, and in my home, as a gentle reminder that it’s okay to be broken.

“Broken crayons still color”.

My Open Letter

Recently I was quite moved by a celebrity. I recently read a letter Bill Rancic wrote to his beautiful wife Giuliana on an important day in her life. It touched my heart because I have felt much of the pain they have gone through in recent years...the heartache of infertility.

I have been silent on my infertility blog now for a while. The pain I have been going through the last several months has shut me down, totally and completely. I have felt like I've had to take all my broken pieces and try to re-construct something that resembles me. I have felt ANGRY, more anger has come out of me than I ever knew had in me. I've snapped at people I love and care deeply about, even to my own surprise and shock. The anger element is something I didn't expect to hit me so hard. I'm working on overcoming this and am trying to find new way of coping with my heartache.

I thank all of you have been around me and have been able to sense my heartache, anger, and resentment and have loved me anyway.

Bill's letter to Giuliana prompted me to write a similar letter to my husband. An open letter of love. I cried writing this letter, but smiled too to know I have found the one person who will love me no matter what (he's proven that the last few months). Poor guy deserves a break, but he doesn't take it, he's by my side every pain-staking day.

So here's my open letter of love to my Sweet GQ

Dear GQ,

I realized tonight that it has been far too long since I sat down to write you a letter. I need to do better about letting you know how much you mean to me and how much you make my life better. This year has been one of the hardest of our relationship together, yet one of my favorite’s so far. We have hit the peak of our struggle with infertility-finding out that we lost our final two little embryos-and that my eggs are not even viable. Infertility can be absolutely draining on a marriage, it’s exhausting, it’s defeating, and it’s painful in every way. If anything can break a person/couple down, it’s infertility! Infertility has just been the biggest of our trials this year, there have been many others little things that have tested us individually and together. We always try to focus on the positive and stay strong, but we’ve come to realize that falling apart, together is okay too.

Instead of dwelling on the hard parts of our year, I want us to always see the good parts too. I have grown to love you on a whole new level this year. I have never felt so broken in my life…my body is broken, my positive attitude is broken, my strength is broken, and my heart is broken…but you love me like I’m WHOLE. You wrap your arms around my broken soul every day and hug me until I feel a little less broken. You stop me in the middle of a study session or tear-soaked Netflix fling, and you dance with me. You dance with me like it’s our wedding day and we’re dancing for the first time as husband and wife-you hold me so tight and I feel safe for a minute. You wrap me up like I’m the most precious thing you’ve ever held, and you take away some of my deeply-seeded hurt. I love you!

I know this journey has been hard for your too, and I haven’t always been there to wrap you up because of my own hurt…I’m sorry for that. I will try harder to be there for you when you are hurting and love you with the zeal in which you love me. I often lately feel forgotten by God, like why is he giving me this kind of heartache, but He always reminds me, “Deja, I gave you Lucas!” I know you’re my gift, always have always will. Thank you babe! :):

Always & Forever

I love you and I like you,
Deja

Dark Days

Image foundhere.

For any one of you who ever experienced a tragedy in your life, you most likely understand this post all too well. In the midst of the storm, when lightening first strikes and the pain and heartache is fresh, you are surrounded by people. You are wrapped in a warm blanket as the rain (and the world) come crashing down around you. You get phone calls, texts, messages, people coming by with food and gifts, more offers for help than you know what to do with when the storm first strikes. You might be experiencing the greatest heartache of your life, but you are surrounding with arms and helping hands. If you’ve ever been through this, you know how comforting this feeling is. You also know what comes next…

The sun comes out, well for the rest of the world the sun comes out. For you, you might have a brief time period where you are hanging on to the lingering love that’s just been poured down on you. But then, then you suddenly find yourself curled up in ball lost, confused, heartbroken, ALONE, scared, devastated, depressed… The phone is no longer blowing up, Social Media is quiet, your house has become a disaster (you feel like your life has too), you struggle to get dressed, you can’t focus on anything you need to, you cry all the time and if you’re aren’t crying you’re on the verge of… The energy from others you once used to sustain you has run out. You feel broken, lost and so incredibly alone.

For many, the days after the harsh storm are the darkest, and the hardest. It makes sense, people have to move forward with their lives, they too get exhausted reading, hearing, following your story, and you can understand, it’s exhausting! But for you, the one still in the midst of the storm, it is debilitating and moving on seems impossible. You want to move forward as well but sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can’t. You’re stuck. You’re moving forward but it’s like being on a treadmill, you go nowhere. Your heart is still broken, it still aches as much as it did the day the lightning struck. You find that people expect you to get back on track with life, work, study, be a parent, be a spouse, keep up on chores, fulfill your commitments, finish projects…you can’t blame them, things have to get done, you certainly can’t drown in your tears forever.

But…

Pain has no expiration date. You don’t have one or two weeks/months/years to get over it and move forward, your heart and your brain don’t work that way. When those around you have moved forward from your story, you still have to live it, EVERY SINGLE DAY, every SINGLE WAKING HOUR. Your heart has NOT stopped working, you still find yourself shivering alone in the rain, and although this time you have to find the strength to wrap yourself up. It’s dark, the days following the storm are so, so dark.

Someone close to me said to me a week after we lost our embryos, “Smile, life goes on!” I wanted to punch her in the face. Everyone talks about the rainbow that appears after a storm, but it doesn’t seem to appear for you. You try your hardest to see it, but you see a dark sky. Some days the literal sun is out and you hate it, after all how could it be shining when your heart is aching so badly.

The dark days following the storm can seem lonely, scary and bleak, there is no rainbow, although people might try to point it out to you. Will the rainbow come, I imagine it will, it has always eventually came for me. I’m in the midst of my dark days, I don’t have an answer for you as to how to get through it, how to survive it, but can only simply say you’re not alone after all I’m just another girl sitting here hoping for a rainbow, too and I love you broken and all.

XOXO,

Deja