The Hardest 8 Months Of My Life

I know I’ve been a bit MIA for the last few months. For this, I apologize. Especially if you’re a follower and supporter of our Blog. We do want you to know that we genuinely appreciate your support. It’s very encouraging.

One of my personal goals with our blog was to create a safe place to share about life. The ups, and the downs. I wanted a creative outlet and a place to be completely transparent, because well, that’s just who I am. I’ve always lived my life like an open book…and I don’t want that to change.

That being said, the past eight months have been the hardest of my life thus far. I fully planned to share the entire experience someday, I just needed some time to process and take it all in myself before sharing it with the world (or at least our tiny part of it).

I guess the story starts in August of 2021. That was the month that I went in for a routine skin check that ended up with a diagnosis of Stage 1A, bordering 2A Melanoma (Skin Cancer). Now, let me just first say that I am extremely thankful that the diagnosis was as mild as it was. I am extremely blessed that we caught it early. Some are not so lucky, and for this I am so grateful. I’m not trying to compare my experience with others, but all I can do is transparently share my personal story.

Beginning in August, I started to undergo a total of seven surgical procedures to remove all of the Melanoma as well as any other suspicious spots. This resulted in almost 4 months of doctors visits, procedures, stitches, bruises, scars, etc. They did remove all margins of the cancer, and got it all. Praise the lord!

But, even though it resulted in great news…it was still a very lengthy and painful experience. I am now left with seven pretty gnarly scars to remind me of this experience.

The last of the procedures happened in November 2021. After that, I was excited to go into the Holiday Season having this experience behind me and ready to celebrate with friends and family. We enjoyed Thanksgiving and Christmas with loved ones and it was a great way to end the year and the past several emotional months.

Now, I’ve not openly shared about this next topic before… so please grant me some grace here.

Last year, it was starting to weigh heavily on my heart that I was starting to feel ready to grow our family. I prayed endlessly and had several deep conversations with my husband, our preacher at the time, and our mentors and friends around this topic. It was something that I didn’t want to rush into, but I knew the God had been preparing me.

Towards the end of the year, when the Cancer scare was behind us…Russell and I began talking about growing our family more seriously. We decided that it was the right time to just trust the Lord in this area, give it to him, and see what happened. Needless to say, we stopped preventing but weren’t really “trying” to conceive in our eyes. We knew that God had given us this strong desire for a reason…so we decided to trust it full-heartedly.

God was obviously at work, because we found ourselves pregnant after only two months of not preventing. I found out on January 10th, 2022 (the day of our last Blog post) that I was expecting our first miracle. I told Russ the following day, January 11th.

We were completely over the moon! This was the provision of our hearts deepest desire. God gave us this enormous blessing.

Of course, we could barely contain our excitement and decided to share our joy with only our closest friends and family. It was such a precious experience to share the news with loved ones and have their love and support.

My body began changing, we started having doctors appointments and all was going well. During this time, we got even closer to God and started to strengthen our confessions around this pregnancy.

Somewhere around week five, I began spotting. I was reassured that this can be a completely normal part of pregnancy, and that some women even bleed heavily (sorry if this is tmi) throughout their pregnancy. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared, but we stood strong on the word of God, spoke what we were believing for and got in unity. It was when the bleeding continued to get worse and I started having some pretty intense pains that I knew I needed to get checked. We scheduled an early ultrasound appointment with our Midwife, and it was at that appointment that we were told they couldn’t find the baby. We had lost our pregnancy at 6 weeks and 2 days.

When I say that I collapsed, I mean that in every possible sense of the word. Physically, emotionally, spiritually…I was devastated. As was Russ.

The life we had begun to celebrate, envision and pray over had been taken away from us. We never even got to see our baby on a monitor, learn its gender or share our news with our entire circle. It felt as if our world had stopped…but the world around us kept on going.

We are still grieving and learning to cope with this loss, but I truly felt that a part of my healing would come in sharing our story. As heartbreaking as it is. This experience has caused me to well up with righteous anger and my desire is to be able to be there for and support others who must endure this circumstance in their own lives.

I am now 1 in 4.

Miscarriage awareness cannot happen unless stories like these are shared, and we are willing to open our hearts to bring attention to the topic. That’s now one of my life goals.

We’ve taken several steps toward honoring our baby; including giving it a name, devoting a space to it’s memory in our home, and finding ways of carrying it with us at all times. This is the beginning of a lifetime of pain that we must endure until we can finally greet our baby in Heaven, but God will provide the strength we need to withstand. Of this, I am hopeful.

We’ll share more soon, but for now…I simply hope this will suffice as an update as to what we’ve been going through and where we have been.

Prayers are much appreciated.

Thank you for reading about our story and sharing in our truth.

Blessings & Love,