Opening the heart

"We carry around in our heads these pictures of what our lives are supposed to look like, painted by the brush of our intentions. It's the great, deep secret of humanity that in the end none of our lives look the way we thought they would. As much as we wish to believe otherwise, most of life is a reaction to circumstances."

I am inspired by this quote posted by my FTIA friend, Nicole. This quote is from a book called The Sunflower by Richard Paul Evans. This quote is a true reflection of our journey to parenthood and, really, life in general. When we decided we were ready to start a family, we both just assumed that it would come easily like most people. I certainly had an image in my mind of what I thought our family would look like and simply assumed that is how it would happen. I clung to that image for a long time and part of my journey was to learn to let go of those images and expectations. Consequently, I felt stuck for so long. Dealing with infertility was probably one of the most painful experiences of my life. During that time, I really struggled with the idea of never experiencing pregnancy and giving birth. It was simply one of those life experiences that I always dreamed of having and that intention was driving our journey at that time. It was a struggle to let go, but I slowly discovered that my dream and my intention was bigger than that. It was not about being pregnant and giving birth, my intention was to be a parent and to bring a child into our lives. This was a huge shift for me and little by little my heart began to open to other possibilities. Once we made the decision to pursue adoption, it was like the world opened up. Suddenly, our lives were once again filled with hope and possibility. A year ago, I never could imagine being grateful for our infertility struggles, but now I am because it led us to Eli.