2016 Word of the Year: Brave

When I joined Hubster's family, I was inaugurated into a family tradition: New Year's Resolutions.

Every New Year's Eve, whether we are together or not, we come up with Resolutions and share them.

My fabulous Mother-in-Law started picking a word of the year for herself. One year she chose FIERCE and another she chose BOLD. As an artist, she often picks this word strategically as she thinks forward to what the year holds for artistically and personally.

I liked this idea, so I started doing the same thing.

Over New Year's, we headed up to our friend's cabin outside the East gate of Yellowstone, where we spent four days relaxing in the isolation of no cell service and no internet.

When New Year's Eve came, I found myself really thinking about what word I wanted to pick as my anthem for 2016.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, my mind settled on what's been a major part of my life recently: struggling to conceive.

In case you've not been following my story, let me give you the shortest rundown: we've been trying to get pregnant since 2013; I have endometriosis; I had a laparoscopy in September; Lupron therapy has made getting pregnant impossible--which has been a welcomed break--now I am on a few rounds of birth control.

Around the first of March, we can start trying to get pregnant again.

I can't lie: I don't really want to.

I know that sounds crazy, right? Getting pregnant has been the goal for a long time now, and it seems totally nuts even to me that I would find myself reluctant to try again.

But I am.

I am resistant.

I am reluctant.

Bottom line: I am afraid.

Now that I've gone through a laparoscopy to deal with my endometriosis, my odds ought to be pretty good that we can get pregnant.

However, we still might struggle.

And that scares me A LOT.

Because from here on out, the interventions become more serious. There's no more relatively simple thing we can try. Now it's meeting with an Reproductive Endocrinologist or giving some serious thought to adoption.

These are big things.

These are scary things.

These are things I don't want to deal with.

I realize that I don't have to deal with it quite yet, because I have time before we have to face it. And let's be honest: we very well might get pregnant when we start trying in March.

But either way, once I reflected on where I am and where we're headed, I decided that I really needed to be Brave. 

One of my Nine Splendid Truths for my Happiness Project is a Japanese Proverb "Fall seven times, get up eight."

And that's where I'm at, I think.

I don't want to get up again.

I'm tired. I'm discouraged.

I'm OVER IT.

I don't want to think about fertility, charting, ovulation, endometriosis...I just want to move on from this place, from this valley that I've been walking.

But I can't make any of those things happen.

Hubster reminds me often that our children are in God's hands, and He will give them to us when the time is right.

I know he's right, but I struggle to feel it in my heart.

So it's time to Brave, even if I don't feel that way. In March, it'll be time to pick up and give it another try, and face all those fears I have about not being able to get pregnant.

And while I don't believe that those fears are going to go away, I do believe that I can be brave as I go forward.