Life: reloaded.

I feel I'm starting over today. I'm 15 days away from turning 27, and yet it feels like God just hit the "reset" button on the console of my life. Everything is different now.

Of course it started out like any other day: just another Monday, and I enjoyed staying busy, even enjoying grumbling against the client who changed her mind three times in the final hours before launching the new site. Michelle called about 5:15, asking me to come home soon, as she was quite ready for dinner. There was only one clue that something different was up as I pulled up to the house: all the shades on the windows were wide open (usually those in the dining room are closed).

When I walked in, Michelle was much more smiley than usual, which was somewhat suspicious, especially since last we talked she was on the verge of a breakdown. I immediately assumed (correctly) that she went ahead and had a little something to eat. What I didn't expect was a funny look on her face and her exorting me to open an early Christmas present as she grabbed the camera. I unwraped the small soft package to reveal a sock. And there was apparently something in a sock -- a pocket knife or some such implement. I take it out and, lo and be-freakin-hold: two pink lines! Two!!! And the little diagram next to the lines: [ ](|) = not pregnant, [|](|) = pregnant!

So with fear and trembing and an amazing amount of excitement welling up in me, my eyes started to fill with drops of joy mixed with unbelief.
"No."
"Yes!!" as she takes another picture of me.
"Are you sure?!"
"Yes!!"
"It's not because of the pill?"
"No, I asked the doctor, and he said that couldn't happen."

You see, we never expected it to happen this way. There was a time not long ago when Michelle had her cycle perhaps twice a year. Not exactly predictable. But since she's been on the treatment for fibromyalgia, we both have held out hope that her reproductive issues might be resolved when the fibro cleared up. Since she's less than a year into the treatment, it seemed like it would be a while before the ovaries would start behaving, if at all. Since there's family history, we both assumed that we'd be visiting the infertility clinic sometime next year, and if you can't read between these lines: we haven't bothered to prevent pregnancy for a while now. And she just went on the pill to regulate her cycles. We still don't know if the got pregnant before or after she started taking the pill, but it would be just like God's sense of humor and perspective.

The stronger Michelle has been getting this year, the more she's wanted to start trying to have a baby. We would talk about it now and then, and it would end up in the "we'll cross that bridge" category, at least in my mind. Little did I know that we were crossing the bridge already. After watching family and friends struggle with various infertility treatments, I was truly dreading having to wade through that emotional and physical stress. We talked about it not long ago: "I really don't want to go through all that so soon after dealing with all this fibro stuff." So she replied: "Let's pray that God will bless us and let us have kids on our own." So we prayed. And God answered. Like so many folks of old, God worked a miracle in us. He heard our feeble prayers and answered in an amazing way. Why did He choose to answer us this way and our loved ones another? Certainly not because of us, and perhaps we'll never know. We just pray that He'll bless others in His good time.

After just a few hours of "shock and awe" it feels like it's going to take a while to get used to this. I had her take another pregancy test, just to be sure. Two more pink lines. As they say in the movies: woah.