A cycle?

This is the week I say good-bye to my kiddos. I have two days left with them before they hit the road to GA. It's bittersweet to say the least. While I scramble at the thought of what I will do with myself every day without them here, I am also looking forward to some free time. But knowing myself, I give it a few days before I'm ready to drive to GA to pick them up from school and kiss their sweet faces. They gave me some sweet gifts in preparation for our parting. I now have a beautiful picture of the three of us adorning my media console. Catherine asked me yesterday what I'm going to do on Monday instead of watching them. I told her I will probably lock myself in the house and cry all day. Her response? "Well at least you can look at our picture while you get depressed." Little booger. I love them.

Yesterday I woke up to a very welcomed surprise. **Disclaimer** Before I go any further into this paragraph, I just want to remind you that this is a blog all about our ups and downs to parenthood. This paragraph may or may not consist of a detail or two that you may or may not want to know. While I am not an advocate of going too much into detail, I do feel that some biological details are necessary to fully tell our story. If you shudder at the word period, then stop reading. Before I woke up yesterday morning, I had been on a cycle of 332 days. Basically, it had been that many days since I last experienced a period. That last period, nearly one year ago, happened because it was medically induced by synthetic Progesterone. After that "menstrual induction", since it was ineffective, we just kind of let it go. Okay, we completely let the issue go. We just figured that it was better left in God's hands. So, 300+ days went by with nothing. Not a symptom to be experienced. I felt fine, I functioned daily, and just went on with life as normal. Then all of a sudden, yesterday morning, it happened. Out of the blue. I spent the day reintroducing myself to the feeling of cramps, relocating all of my "supplies", and rejoicing for the first sign in a very long time that my body works.

For all this time, my prayer to God was just that He would move my body in His perfect timing. All of this, medically points to something being wrong. This absence of a period has obviously been the result of my body not ovulating, which we all know is one of the main keys to getting pregnant. So doctors were always on the hunt for that reason why it was not happening. Between me and God, I just knew that He had something to do with it. Although I've always been gravitated towards the world's reasons of why, I knew deep down that God had this. And I can say that because with my DEEP desire to have babies, there is no earthly way I could have gotten through this past year with absolutely NO answers, had it not been for God's presence in my life. Only He can bring a calming peace like the peace it has taken for me to get through the past year.

So you can imagine the excitement that came over me when I realized that my body was doing what it is supposed to yesterday, AND all on it's own. At the sight of it, I was more convinced than ever that prayer works. Just the other night, a woman prayed very specifically over my body. I'm talking very specifically for me to have a period. Hello!! Prayer answered.

Slowly but surely as the day rolled on, however, the cramping began to lessen until I couldn't feel it anymore, despite my choice to refrain from pain relievers. Those cramps were a sure sign to me that it was still happening. But, soon they were gone, almost as suddenly as they arrived. And whatdoyaknow, the bleeding subsided as well. All in the same day. Weird, I know. Part of me wants to curl up in a ball and let discouragement and pity have its way with me. But the other part of me still rejoices. There are so many questions, but there is only one answer in our situation. We've been praying for this to happen, and God made it happen. Sure I wonder why for only one day, but we also did not pray for a specific number of days. I was just yearning for a sign that God's hand is in this. And He showed up in the very way I hoped that He would. That was enough for me. At times I have struggled with the fact that I felt like my faith for God to do something miraculous here was all for nothing. But I feel so strongly like this was just a small way for Him to show me to keep the faith. To keep believing. To keep praying. To pray specifically. And maybe, just maybe, He knew that I needed a fresh reminder that He is still here and still in control. Does yesterday's surprise mean that I ovulated? I don't know. Does it mean that I will ovulate or have a regular cycle again? I don't know that either. But it did remind me how powerful He is. How loving He is. And how good He is.

We are also gearing up for a training meeting with the adoption agency on Monday night. The more I look at the bigger picture, the more amazing things look to me. I mean, could all this period stuff happen at a more ironic time? Here we are pursuing adoption, and God says Oh hey, here's a new cycle for you! He is so much bigger than we are. There's no irony with God. He has it all figured out, we just think that we do.