A GIVEAWAY AND AN ANSWER TO A QUESTION PIONEER PROMPTED IN MY MIND...

Pioneer Woman has a Giveaway today and I want to thank her so much for her question she would like answered to enter her giveaway. It made me stop and think about my life. I am already feeling great about my day today but this made it even more clear to me WHY I am feeling this way today.

Her question was:

“How different is your life now than how you’d always pictured it?”

Are you exactly where you always thought you’d be?

Are you mildly where you thought you’d be?

Or are you nowhere near where you thought you’d be?

Seems like a simple question but kind of deep at the same time.

I gave the short version of my answer on my entry but my post will have the long version. The version that is now floating around in my head ever since reading the question.

How did I always picture my life?

From as far back as I can remember I always new I wanted to be a mom. I wanted to get married and I wanted to have children and I wanted to be the best mom possible. I also always said that I was going to adopt. My words "There are so many children in this world that need mom's and dad's I'm not going to have my own (biological) children, I'm going to adopt." The rest of my picture was basically......"and they lived happily ever after."

My reality?

I married my high school boyfriend. We were together off and on throughout high school. He was two years ahead of my in high school and shortly after "I" graduated we got married. We bought our first home and it was finished being built a few weeks before we were married. (There is a story there for another post).

Within a couple of years I was pregnant and had a miscarriage. The Dr. said I needed to wait 3 months and then try again. To be honest I wasn't trying the 1st time but found myself very sad that I had miscarried. Three months later almost to the day I found out I was pregnant again. I had a pretty rough pregnancy and spent a few months on bed rest and ended up with a C-section delivery. And then there were 3.

Hunk and I had a pretty rocky beginning. We argued a lot and weren't in a very happy place. I ended up going to work for the State (Cal Trans) until I got pregnant with our 2nd son (that was a SHOCKER) again, wasn't trying and I was on the pill. But after the shock wore off I was very excited. I again had a tough pregnancy. This one worse than the first. I was in and out of the hospital, on bed rest and then had to be induced in the end. My doctor said I shouldn't have any more children. He didn't feel it was safe for me. So I had a tubal ligation.

Hunk and I then sold our first home and bought the home he grew up in, in the country, from his parents. A lot of blood, sweat and tears went in to that home. This ended up pulling us closer together. Hunk was happier being back in the country and out of the city and we started getting closer and closer.

A couple years later we started our own business and our oldest started kindergarten and I got the itch. I wanted another baby. I really wanted a daughter badly. I was out numbered there in that house! Too much testosterone going on. I needed reinforcements.

I started visiting new doctors and seeing about having my tubal ligation reversed. There were mixed reviews on this but I had a friend who knew someone who had this done successfully. My new OBGYN said that if I was on bed rest and listened to him, he thought he could get me through a pregnancy successfully. Hunk wasn't so sure.

I set an appointment with a Dr. in Southern California to see about the reversal. The date they had available was February 12th. It was a ways away and it was also the day one of my best friends from high school was killed by a drunk driver. This made me uneasy.

I also couldn't get out of my head what I had always said growing up. So we started checking into adoption, but leaving the reversal on the table as an option. Soon after we were talked to by a friend who had done foster care and she told me of two little one year old twin girls and their 4 year old sister. Part of me wanted this so badly and part of me thought the other part of me was CRAZY. Plus they were not able to be adopted as of yet. We checked in with an adoption consultant.

Hunk had now decided whether we did adopt or not he did not want me to get the reversal. He felt it was too big of a risk on my health.

Short version (sort of) of a very long story, we ended up getting placed with a birth mother and she was pregnant with a girl (or so the ultra sound said.......by the way our 2nd sons ultra sound said girl too, until the month prior to his delivery) so we were excited about that but both knew it could very well be a boy and we were 100% on board either way. We just wanted another child at this point (but of course, hoped for a girl). The baby's due date? March 21st.

Remember my friend in high school who was killed by the drunk driver? The one who passed away on the same date as my tubal reversal was scheduled? Well her BIRTHDAY was March 21st. I felt this was a flashing neon sign telling me this was the right thing to do! I also felt that God was trying to "remind" me of what I had always said I was going to do.

And we did. And she is the most precious thing we could have hoped for.

Skip a bunch of drama things that happened and about a year and a half later we were contacted about our daughters younger sister who was now in foster care. They had been told we had "the sister" so we were given the option to foster adopt (another looooooooooonnngg story here). End result? We did. And our family is now complete.

A few years later we bought property in another neighboring town and built a home. Life couldn't seem to get any better. Then I was diagnosed with Cancer. It was a devastating time for me and for my family. In one moment I felt that all that I had been blessed with was being taken away. It was one of the most difficult times of my life. However, would end up that it was not "the most" difficult. (years later we almost lost our son to a ruptured appendix, THIS was the most difficult time of my life)

A couple years passed and I kept having "clear scan" results...... (pass over a few more things, or this post will take 3 hours to read) and we bought property on a private lake up the hill further and built a home (well a barn home, main home to come).

And we live happily ever after........

Is this how I had pictured my life would be? Some parts yes and some parts no. But when you look at the whole picture.

Aside from the concern of my Cancer returning.......It's better than I could have ever possibly imagined it to be. I have four beautiful children (to which I HONESTLY forget two came to us via adoption. There is NO difference AT ALL in our love for them, than the love we have for our biological children) and a husband who loves me very much. I am blessed financially, spiritually and with many great TRUE friends.

Could life be any better? Possibly.........but I don't know if I could stand myself if it was.

Thanks for the question this morning Ree. You let me travel through time in my mind and reminded me just how much I have to be thankful for.

How about you? Did your life turn out how you imagined it would be?

Momma out.

Ciao Bellas~