As I sit here on my 29^th birthday with no real plans, and no desire to do anything, I sit and reflect on the year I’ve had leading up to this day. The year of 28 was a very blessed one for me to say the least. This is not to say that it was a perfect year, because surely I’ve experienced some lows, but the good outweighed the bad. I’ve lost loved ones, friends, and things, but I’ve gained so much more. I’ve come to realize that as I grow and experience new things in life I learn that there are multiple levels to everything. There are levels to love, levels to faith, levels to failure, and levels to forgiveness; but you won’t realize it until you experience it. Year 28 has brought me to new levels, and man is it amazing.

Love

After being four months into my 28^th year, my husband and I learned that we were six weeks pregnant. This came to us as a beautiful surprise because every month we’d silently wish “this is the month,” but we’d soon find disappointment. So even though we’d been waiting on God to bless us with a baby, we had no idea that this time it was really happening. Month’s prior I’d been filled with joy and love after finding out that two of my best friends were pregnant, but there was a different level of love that I experienced when I heard the heart beat of my embryo. We decided that we would wait until after the first trimester before we spread the news, as we’d experienced loss before and didn’t want to give family and friends false hope again. We also selfishly wanted to be able to enjoy this to ourselves for just a moment. We completely understand the love and excitement that others have for us, but this was our joy. Because this is the first born on both sides of the family we knew people would be overjoyed…but we wanted to bask in our own joy for the moment. After we told our loved ones we decided to reveal our good news to more people around month five, during our trip to Europe. We called it “A Second Chance,” though it was our third time in Europe, it was our second time at the London Eye, which is where we did the reveal, and our second chance at becoming parents. This led my husband and I to a new level of faith.

Faith

The first four to five months were a bit challenging for us. The pregnancy was progressing extremely well; however I had no appetite or energy, but thank God I have a supportive husband. Antonio was there to do all the things I no longer had the energy to do. He’s always been amazing to me, but this was the icing on the cake. BUT, he was also very annoying, because he’s obviously been pregnant before so he had all the answers. He researched everything to nausea, and became an expert on the subject matter. In his mind, my sickness, loss of appetite, and lack of energy could all be fixed if I would just eat and drink water. Because most women gain significant amounts of weight and have extreme cravings, I was doing this pregnancy thing all-wrong in his eyes. And I get it. We’d had a failed pregnancy not even a full year ago, and he as well as I couldn’t bear to experience that again. But instead of worrying, let’s pray. We prayed about everything…you name it; we prayed it. We got through this entire pregnancy on our faith in God.

My pregnancy has been classified as high risk, so we spend most of our time getting ultrasounds, non-stress test and having follow up appointments. But these things never worried Antonio and I. Someone once said to me that I have crazy faith, because whenever a test shows an irregular result my first response is always “They don’t know what they’re doing…Harper is fine,” and sure enough she’s always fine. It’s always something so minute, and had I not had crazy faith I would go crazy over something that wasn’t even worth it. Those that know me know that I’m a firm believer of not stressing over things that I pray over. So yes…maybe her head is measuring smaller than it should at our current date, but have you seen her dad’s head? Perhaps God is just looking out for me, so I don’t have to push out a bigheaded baby.

Failures

A lot of times we as people don’t like to discuss our shortcomings, but how can you learn from them if you don’t accept them. Perhaps failure isn’t the proper term, but I have failed to do a lot of things that I set my mind to at the beginning of year 28. For at least 9 years I’ve wanted to start my non-profit, and I’ve never made the time to do it. I always found a reason why it wasn’t the “right time,” well that was going to change in year 28. I’d found other likeminded people to partner with and we were going to get it done. I’d done tremendous research, completed the legal documents, set up meetings to secure a location, created a website…I was on the right path. But then I started to get overwhelmed; I started to feel like I was stretching myself too thin. I let one disappointment stop my growth and discourage me from moving forward. On top of that, my husband had visions, and I wanted to support him. I was still running my soy candle business, which is a one-woman show. Antonio and I had started our blog. And a host of other people and organizations had expectations of me that had really taken a toll on me. I then used my pregnancy as an excuse as to why I needed a break, a break from it all. But I’m a firm believer that you make time for what you want to; so how I could I use my pregnancy as an excuse.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is something that I learned a few years ago, but true forgiveness comes when you learn to forgive yourself. This is something that I am still learning. So in year 28, I forgave my body for rejecting my baby….I forgave my husband for being annoyingly supportive…I forgave myself for not following through on my dreams…I forgave the doctors and technicians for giving us unnecessary worry…I forgave all those people that overwhelmed me with their expectations…I forgave my husband and I for letting our blog fall to the wayside. I’ve had so many plans to write so many blogs throughout my pregnancy; but we all know how that turned out. Antonio and I have both started blogs and failed to finish. But we’re still failing, and forgiving, and learning new things daily.

Right now we’re learning how to become parents, because soon we will see that beautiful perfect face, and again we’ll fall in love.