The older I get, the younger I seem to be to the rest of the world. Not that I'm complaining that people don't see how old and battered I really am, but it gets a little tiresome when life has taught you alot already and people don't want to see your maturity because of how "young" you look.
I was a mother at 18, I know that doesn't seem too young, but I wasn't ready. I was barely out of the house, still at college, trying to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. :) I moved across country to clear my mind and to handle my problems. Sure, some might think I was running away from my problems, but that wasn't the case. Infact I was running towards my solution. After months of prayer and deep soul searching, I realized I wasn't old enough, nor in the position to handle raising a child. I didn't want a life of struggle for my child, I didn't want my child to suffer because of my immaturity. I was 15 weeks along when I decided to give my child a better life, and chose his adoptive parents. I went through the rest of my pregnancy knowing that the child I was carrying was going to have a better life than what I could have provided it at the time. I had a peace about the situation. Our God is amazing, he really has a plan for everything, he carried me throughout my pregnancy and the emotions afterwards.
During my pregnancy, God brought my husband back into my life. We went to middle school and high school together and always knew each other from a distance. We both happened to be living in California at the time. Isn't it amazing how God works?! From Indiana to California, and then we fall in love! :) We got married in February of 2005, when I was only 19 and he was 20 by the way, and we've had a great relationship ever since. I've learned that in a marriage you must think about your spouse before yourself. Infact isn't that the way we are always supposed to live? To treat others the way we would like to be treated. I think this is something God has really pushed on me hard. I always try to look at things from the other person's eyes and put myself in their shoes.
I've been through many trials in my life, but the last 5 years seem to be the most trying. My husband started to have pains right after we got married. He is a Marine, so he wasn't going to tell anyone about these pains because he didn't want to look weak. (yeah right like a 6'4" 200 lbs. Marine can look weak) After months of telling the Marine Corps that something was seriously wrong, yelling at comands, writing the President of the United States, Jimmy finally got medical treatment. And guess what....something was seriously wrong! He had a problem that made him infertial, and caused him great pain. He had surgery and 3 months later was shipped overseas! He spent 6 months serving overseas before coming home. Do you want a real test of your marriage?? Send your spouse to a combat zone for 6 months, waking up everyday hoping that your spouse is doing the same! After his deployment we started infertility testing, and we got the results around November of 2006.....because it took the Marine Corps so long to realize the problem my husband was now infertial and the only possiblity of us ever having kids would be to do invetrofertilization. However, it would be slim picking and we probably wouldn't get pregnant. How do you, at age 21 & 22, deal with the reality that you will never be able to have kids naturally? And on top of that, just two years prior you gave your perfectly healthy baby boy up for adoption when you could have kept him! My answer at the time was to get angry and upset and to cry, cry alot!
In December '06 we found out that Jimmy would be shipped out again in February for 7 months to Iraq. With the Marine Corps you typically have around 6 months of intense training before you deploy to prepare. Jimmy had 3 months to fit in 6 months of training, so I didn't see him very much. He was scheduled to leave on Febraury 20, 2007, he came home from a 2 week long training mission on the 13th and said that the deployment was cancelled! Yeah! You would think that I was instantly happy, my husband was not going back to war and would be home for the remainder of his term out of harms way, but I was upset. I just spent 3 months of preparing myself to not see my husband for 7 months, I got the house ready for him to be gone, I got mentally ready for the worse to happen and now nothing was happening. My husband was coming home every night. It's a little bit of an adjustment.
In April '07 we said goodbye to all of our really good friends, whose deployment was not cancelled! It wasn't until summer came around that Jimmy and I really started talking about our inability to have children. At this time my answer changed from crying to relying on God. We knew that everything happens for a reason and that for some reason God didn't want us to have children right now. We were bummed, but we were learning to deal with it. And then we had to make the desion to re-enlist in the Marine Corps or get out, and if we were getting out do we stay in California or do we move back to Indiana. Decisions decisions, and they weren't easy decisions! So we decided that we would get out of the Marine Corps and purchase a new townhouse/condo and stay in sunny southern California.
