A New Year with new dreams.....

I've been thinking about what I want to write about for quite a while on here and it seemed like after the past 5 months of journaling I had developed writers block! I could have written a lot about how we tried to cope and get through Christmas, but the words weren't adequate to describe those feelings. And now the new year is upon us and it made me start thinking about things. Jeff and I are both looking forward to 2011 coming to an end and praying for 2012 to bring us some happiness. We will never regret carrying our Gracie to term and meeting her but it was the most difficult and the most joyous thing either of us have ever done. I find myself sitting and staring at pictures of her and wondering how she would have been as a two month old baby. How would her features have changed and what would her personality be like. Last year as we started the year 2011 we had gone through all the fertility testing and were finally going to be able to take some medication to help us try and have that baby we had longed for. We really thought this would be the toughest part of our year and after we found out we were pregnant we really did think the hard part was over....well the rest is history on that topic. In the past as the new year would roll around I would think about all the things I was going to change and like most never really followed through on them as most were rather petty when I look at things now. You don't go through the loss of a child and come out the other side the same person. I have discarded petty behavior and petty items in life, as they are just not something I want to waste my time on and I just don't tolerate a lot it in my life anymore. Things have more meaning to me now....so when I look at the new year rolling around and start thinking about what the year will bring my husband and I, it's not the same old small things I used to think of.....like losing weight (I'm just going to be a girl with meat on my bones and that's all there is to it) or going on a trip or anything of that nature. I want some peace in my life along with some happiness and the feeling of contentment. I want my soul to be able to heal. I think sometimes life can sweep us along and we can lose touch with our faith a bit. I have never been far from my faith but I have learned to rely on it much more heavily after what we have gone through. On Christmas Eve, Jeff and I went to mass in Napoleon at my home parish. It was what I was terrified to do as I knew there would be lots and lots of babies there with the holiday. I didn't do as badly as I was anticipating and at one point in the mass I prayed to Gracie to give us a sign she was with her mommy and daddy at church. The minute I asked this of our little girl, Jeff jerked his arm that was touching mine and I looked over and he had large goose bumps on his arm and he said he has gotten this tingling sensation up his arm that went down his spine. This happened to him two more times afterwards. During the closing song it happened to me. I do not feel that this was a coincidence by any means....I know this was Gracie giving us the sign we had longed for. What a special Christmas gift our daughter gave us. Our faith in God is what has carried us through this year and it is what we are carrying into the new year with us. We pray for a much less stressful new year than the year we are leaving behind and we pray for some much wanted happiness in our lives. We both feel very fortunate that we came through this life changing event a stronger, more loving, and more faith driven couple than when we entered it. We plan to enter the New Year as a joined force and we continue to muddle our way through this journey together. No one told us marriage was going to be easy. I used to ask my 90 year old patients in the hospital what is the key to marriage and after the good old joke cracked by the husband of, "Keep your wife happy" they would all tell me the same thing...."love." They all told me to love your spouse unconditionally and I do and he loves me back. We are fighters....not quitters. We are hoping 2012 is kind to us and blesses us with the family we long for. We are hoping with our beautiful angel up in heaven to help us out that this time around will not be as difficult. We feel blessed to have had our daughter and no matter how difficult it was to lose her, we will never regret our decisions we made in the year 2011. So with this new year, comes new dreams.