We were very lucky to have found each other at such a young age. We dated the rest of our sophmore year as well as both our junior and senior years. Mike would enlist in the Marine Corps and leave right after graduation. When he came home after graduating boot camp he would propose to me. I of course said yes immediately. He left again for the west coast and I enrolled in college. We wrote each other, visited, and missed each other with all our hearts. He would soon deploy to Saudi Arabia for the Gulf War. I was devastated. I wrote him every day, sometimes many times a day. I would eagerly check the mail each day for a letter in return. Most days I would find nothing waiting for me. Still, I waited. After the war was over Mike decided that he did not want to wait any longer to get married. As soon as he arrived home we were married. We had been out of high school less than a year. There were many people who didn't think we had a chance. We did have one cheerleader though, the mother of Mike's best friend. She told me that she knew we would make it. I would cling to her words during the tough times in those early years of marriage.
Over the last 21 1/2 years of marriage Mike and I have been through so much together. We have seen some really, really highs and we have experienced some really, really lows. But, together we made it through and have come out stronger than we ever expected. Our lives are vastly different now than the early years when we were just Mike and Michelle. Over the years we have added to our family by leaps and bounds. Always open to life, we have added 10 beautiful living children to our family and have experienced more loss than most couples will ever face. Still, living open to God's will has always been the right path for our marriage. It has brought us more joy and love than we could have ever hoped for. It's a lot of work but in the end the benefits far out-weigh the struggles we face having a large family.
In the course of our marriage I have been pregnant with 22 lives. It's amazing to believe that God chose me to carry so many lives, even if for a short time. Several of our losses have been later losses, with our last loss being our latest and hardest to go through. It has been less than 2 years since we lost William and my heart still aches every single day over it. I suppose because it was such a traumatic experience it seems that much harder to accept but I am still trying my hardest to make peace with all that happened.
Since losing William we have had another sweet boy, Jacob. I had prayed so very hard that having him would heal all the wounds caused by William's death but unfortunately his birth caused many more wounds. They were wounds that I questioned God about so many times only to receive no answer. You see when I had Jake the doctor knew he was breech and allowed me to try to birth him. When I knew he wasn't going to come and that I needed help they encouraged me to keep trying. I'm not sure how long they encouraged me but there was finally a point where I was scared and in so much pain and knew that I was in trouble that I told them they would have to take him, that I couldn't birth him. I felt the most horrible pain I have ever felt in any of my births and told them they didn't have much time. By the time they finally put me under and took Jake by c-section my uterus has ruptured as did my bladder. The doctors would take 3 hours to put me back together, saying my uterus was like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces everywhere. I asked why they didn't just do a hysterectomy and was told that I was so close to not making it through the original surgery that they couldn't risk taking it out and me not making it. So, they pieced it back together, put my bladder back together, and told me that under no circumstance should I ever get pregnant. They said that my uterus would never hold another baby and that if I were to get pregnant again that my life would be at great risk as well. To try to have another child would more than likely kill me and the baby.
I have never felt such betrayal... by my body, by my doctors, by God. I felt so alone. Why would God give me this cross to bear? After losing William I prayed that I would hemorrhage so that I might lose my fertility so I never would have to face losing a child again. I thought that not being able to have another child would be for the best. Now, I was faced with this very predicament and was questioning that original belief. The only difference was that I actually could get pregnant but now I wasn't supposed to. It was such an incredible cross to carry. I didn't know how I would do it.
Trusting in God has always been my motto... it's the only way I get through life. I know that when I trust God that all things are possible. I know that when I don't trust God that the crosses I have to carry are that much harder to bear. I decided that day in the hospital that I would continue to trust God to help me through and to carry my cross. I haven't regretted making that decision.
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