Grace

This week has sure been an exercise in mental health. And not an exercise in the metaphoric I’m-not-sure-I’m-gonna-make-it sense but in the more literal strength building, hitting the bags, lifting those mental weights to make you actually stronger exercises. I’ve encountered a recurring theme this past week. All of the well-wishers that reach out and comment on our posts or call or text me are so appreciated. Here lately I have noticed many of them wishing and praying for me to experience some grace as we navigate this waiting. It is said in passing or the whole point of some people’s reaching out. I have heard it so much that it really got me thinking, is the world conspiring to calm me? Is this divine intervention? After today I am ready to accept it is the latter.

Normally, I post each Sunday with a few things in between. After a long wedding day on Sunday, the only calling I could truly commit to last night was my bed. I was so tired and creatively exhausted after the wedding, I knew I would be better off hitting the hay than staying up late and working through my writers block. Again, it was divine intervention. This afternoon at exactly 12:20pm I came face to face with true grace, that thing I had been contemplating posting about all week, that which has been wished on me for this whole experience.

In case you need a refresher on grace, it is “the love and mercy given to us by God because God desires us to have it, not necessarily because of anything we have done to earn it. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life. It is understood to be a spontaneous gift from God to people generous, free and totally unexpected and undeserved that takes the form of divine, love, clemency, and a share in the divine life of God.”

Grace is the favor, free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call. This is what hits me most. I have long believed that I have a calling and that it is multi faceted and complex. For example, I have always felt called to help others. Tim is the first one to get on to me because I often have a vey hard time saying no to anyone that asks. My time working in animal rescue, doing therapy work with Daisy, or donating time to use my talents to the benefit of others will attest to that. And all of those things have fed my calling to nurture. Bottle feeding day old kittens, fostering dogs needing some direction, spending hours in a shelter to find a home for a pup I’ve connected with, helping to soothe a three day old baby to capture the perfect picture of them for his or her parents.. the list goes on. I could accomplish none of these things without the help that God has given me to answer his calling.

I know I have been called to motherhood. While I hope our endeavors now will lead to children biologically parented by Tim and me, I know if it doesn’t happen that way my calling will not change and we will explore the other equal options to experience parenthood.

All of the prayers for grace have enveloped Tim and me this week. I was meant to not post until tonight because at 12:20pm today I got a call I wasn’t expecting until September.

These were the hurried notes I took when I received that call from Walter Reed today. You can even see my shaky hand as I wrote so fast I almost completely missed the last letter on “cleared”. By God’s grace (and some really serious sweat equity), we have been cleared for the next IVF cycle at Walter Reed. The nurse was just a little confused when i deeply exhaled and said “oh.. wow..”

She said, “ummm… is that ok?” To which i responded, “thank you SO much, I’m so relieved!”

The next line refers to Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection, a procedure our eggs and sperm will have to undergo that is outside the scope of “normal” IVF, though it is very common.

The final line is the balance we owe before we will get our actual dates.

One last hill to climb: raise those funds.

BUT, for now, I will bask in the pure elation of answered prayers. We are officially doing IVF in two short months.

With just a little more grace, we will climb this next hill, too.

Thank YOU for EVERY thought, prayer, vibe, call, text and message. I would still be at square one without the unending support of the amazing community around me!

Also, we made cookies today for Uncle Tim, isn’t Olive the cutest?

❤ Katie

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