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Last week…

we ran across a hexagonal turtle shell pattern while looking at an art book…

which led to looking at pictures of turtle shells to see if they’re ever truly hexagonal (sort of, just not symmetrical)…

which led to our attempt to re-create the original, mythical, symmetrical, hexagonal turtle shell.

It doesn’t take much to entertain us… or to send us on a rabbit trail.

Reference books that made this rabbit trail educational:

A Child’s Book of Art, Micklethwait
National Geo Wild Animal Atlas

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Here we are at the end! This is where it gets a little crazy. As in… were these events just a coincidence, or…?? If you’re up for finding meaning in “coincidence” (with a couple of goats thrown in), please read on.

Almost-seven years is a long time to go through infertility. By the time I neared the end, I was becoming confused and frustrated by stories with happy endings – probably because I had no way of knowing whether my ending would be happy.

Instead, the stories I liked to hear best were from people who were living in the middle of loss, but still – somehow, mysteriously – they were content to follow God.

Then, when my ending turned out so well, I had no idea what to do with it! “My” story was out of my control, from the first miscarriage to the way it was all resolved.

(Of course, I also would never have chosen goats to be part of the story I’d tell someday. Nope, not at all.)

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IVF involves lots of needles. Lots of needles. Months and months of needles. The treatment starts a few months before the actual procedure, and it goes on for months afterward.

During the big week of IVF, there are two important procedures: oocyte (egg) retrieval and embryo transfer. (There are variations on this, but our case was fairly straightforward.) Oocyte retrieval involves getting the eggs out of the mama-to-be’s body. Then they go into a sort of petri dish, where hopefully they mix with the other half of the equation and become embryos. Embryo transfer usually takes place three to five days later. It involves placing one or two (or more) embryos back into the mother.

In the second post, I described how I asked for a rainbow as a sign that God was involved in this journey. I saw nothing, and this marked the beginning of a long, awful silence from God.

It seems that God was just holding out for the right time.

The days between oocyte retrieval and embryo transfer, I didn’t just see a rainbow. No – I saw double rainbows – so many that I lost count! Our embryos developed for five days. Most of those days I saw double rainbows, sometimes more than one per day. Two of my embryos made it, two were transferred, and eight months later, I delivered – you guessed it: twins.

This may have been just a coincidence. 😉

After so many years of infertility, we never expected to have more than the twins. So when our next daughter was conceived, it was a delightful and very unexpected surprise. I honestly can’t remember whether I saw a double rainbow when I was expecting her. And it doesn’t matter. Every child is precious, whether there are fireworks and trumpets or a mother’s joyful tears to announce a new little person in the world.

We were overwhelmed, though, and we didn’t intend to have any more children.

Then our fourth child was conceived (oops). Within an hour of the, uh, blessed event, guess what was stretched, neon-bright, across the horizon? God knew I needed to see that double rainbow. There were many times in the next couple years when it reminded me to be grateful for the overwhelming blessing of having four children in a 38 month span. I could never have imagined how difficult it would be – but it doesn’t remotely begin to touch the pain of longing for children. I imagine it’s like stubbing a toe versus losing a leg.

Still, I was really hoping I’d never see another double rainbow again, and I was wondering how God would manage that feat, since they do appear now and then. Would I always have a new baby cooking, every time I saw a double rainbow?!

Enter the goats.

A few months after our youngest was born, we sent one of our horses to stay with a trainer. To keep the other horse company, we brought in a couple of miniature goats. They were baby goats, or “kids.”

So… glancing up at the sky on the way home from picking up our new “twin kids,” yes, there was a double rainbow. Who ever said God has no sense of humor? He was just “kidding” with me, I guess… (oh dear – sorry!).

I’ve seen several double rainbows since then, and I’ve had a few pregnancy scares, but I think God effectively closed the door on the rainbow as a sign of pregnancy for me. And I think I’m done with pregnancy, too.

I’ve struggled with whether to close this story by trying to find a “moral.” Mostly, I simply learned that it’s ok to trust God when I can’t understand what’s happening.

If I tried to extract more morals, they would be these:
– God knows what he’s doing. He really, truly does.
– The longings we have aren’t inherently bad. God placed in us those longings!
– Prayer makes a difference – ask faithful people to pray. Sometimes answers take a really long time. Waiting doesn’t mean that nothing is happening.
– God doesn’t work how we expect, and no human can predict exactly what God’s plan will be for each person.

Our family’s continuing story is in the posts on this blog. These posts read a lot differently than they would have if my husband and I had proceeded with our original plan to have “as many children as God gives us.” Are things better than they would have been if all had gone as planned? Are they worse? Have I been helped or hurt by the years of disappointment? I have no idea, but I still trust.

The story is God’s alone, and it isn’t over yet.

[P.S. Wow, was I ever right when I said our story wasn’t over yet! What joy, to know that God continues His good work in our lives! The silent years are definitely over, and God is leading me into a deeper understanding of Him – a much deeper understanding of what Jesus did for us on the cross – and into ministries that I wouldn’t have imagined for myself. Please, if you are in the middle of dark, silent years, hold onto God. He’s holding tight to you, and His plans for your life will prevail. Trust yourself to Him. The dark times do not last forever. There is great hope.]

This post is part of a series on our journey through unexplained infertility. To read the other parts of the story, please click here to see the index of posts.

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“When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.”

I learned this as a kid, and ever since, I’ve been mispronouncing words like bear, build, and group.

Just kidding. But I taught this rule to my kids last week, and now I’m noticing exceptions everywhere.

I’m also noticing that the kids don’t know which letters are vowels.

We’re all set now.

It’s amazing how much more quickly a concept sinks in when it’s posted all around the house. Thirty seconds here and thirty seconds there is a better approach for some things than a focused 20 minute session.

When we moved here, I pinned lots of beautiful home decorations onto Pinterest. These weren’t among them, but it works…

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Need I say more?!

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Last week we had to say goodbye to one of our cats from this post. The hero of the story is alive and well, but his orange buddy has gone on to greener pastures (the back west pasture, to be exact). This story happened when they were both tiny. (The pictures were taken when they had grown up more.) We try to celebrate these good, fun things, keeping in mind that faith is a relationship, not a formula.

One morning, a few weeks after we got the kittens, Nutmeg’s much-beloved light-haired kitty escaped the garage. My husband, needing to leave for work, cracked the garage door slightly, then carefully backed out and drove away.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t aware that…

the kittens enjoyed crawling up into the engines of vehicles.

I called and called for the poor kitten. He had never wandered more than five feet away from the garage. Seeing neither hide nor hair of him for more than an hour, I called my husband and asked…

if he could go out to his truck and look for…

little bits of fur…

He did, but he saw nothing.

When Nutmeg woke up, she wandered out to the garage to greet the new kittens, and I didn’t enjoy telling her that her light-haired one was missing. We kept looking throughout the morning, to no avail.

I expected my daughter to be heartbroken. She can have a stormy temperament, and the kittens were the joy of her life. After lunch, I patted her on the head, and she looked up at me with a smile and said,

“Mom, can you ask Jesus to find my kitty?”

Yikes. This is the type of prayer I dread praying, (more…)

We picked mulberries off the trees last week. It reminded me of the huge, old mulberry tree that stood near the front of our house growing up.

It was the best climbing tree ever, with large, low, sprawling branches – my favorite place to play. Our feet were stained purple all summer long.

I was so sad when my dad cut the tree down. The berries covered the ground by the front door, and we kids were getting rich off swatting the summertime flies in the house, at a penny per fly.

My dad left a very tall stump, and he built a fort on top of the stump. Annie and her friends climbed the ladder up the stump and entered through a trap door in the floor. It was cool – really cool.

After several years, the stump started to rot, and my dad had to take the tree house down. Now it sits in a field, where grandkids as young as my littlest can play safely.

I wonder whether I’ll have grandkids one day. I wonder whether we’ll still live here then, and whether they’ll climb our mulberry tree.

I know things don’t always work out as planned, but the ability to make creative adjustments and keep going is an invaluable gift.

Thank you, Daddy, for giving us lots of good memories. And thanks for giving us the kind of stability that equips us to adjust when life calls for it.

P.S. I hope you have fun “adjusting” to retirement! Congratulations!

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Junior has been fascinated with coins lately. He can regularly be found counting his 7 pennies, 4 nickels, 2 quarters, and 6 dimes.

I bought him a piggy bank a few months ago. It shattered before it made it into the house. This is not at all unusual, and I’ve refused to buy another one until the kids can drive themselves to the store. (I figure I’ll have bigger worries than broken piggy banks then.)

Junior is not one to be discouraged for long when duct tape might do the trick. He emptied a cracker box onto the kitchen floor, cut open a corner of it, and taped it up to make his own piggy bank.

I thought we could do a step better for him.

We found some foam bowls in the cabinet. (Although I understand now why children’s crafts are often made from items that would normally be considered trash… I also look forward to the next phase. I’m hoping for a happy middle stage between breaking household items and driving cars.)

The kids decorated the bowls as their muses directed. Then we set one bowl upside down on top of the other, fastened each set with a short piece of pipe cleaner, and cut slits for coins.

The piggy banks were all very different from each other.

Impressionist Watercolor piggy bank:

Watercolor doesn’t stick to foam, but Nutmeg liked the effect – and watercolor is so wonderfully washable. Yesterday I branched out into bigger-kid territory by adding tempera paints to the shopping list.

Whimsical Boo’s Southern Belle piggy bank:

Loan Shark piggy bank:

I made the turtle piggy bank for little Manny:

He contributed to the project by taste-testing the glue before I stuck the tissue paper onto the bowl.

Coins are great for learning to skip count. (For some wonderful skip counting charts – all numbers up to 15, see Homeschool Creation’s free charts.) The coins have also inspired the kids to be very helpful around the house. At this age, I give them a nickel per chore, to trade for a quarter when they’ve earned five nickels.

Between the foam bowls and the nickel-per-chore rate (who keeps lots of coins on hand anymore?), I may need to take out a loan from Junior. Thank goodness we homeschool – no need to teach him about interest until I’m good and ready… like when he borrows money from us for his first car.

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At this stage of parenthood, “developing my own interests” may be as simple and uninvolved as chasing backyard butterflies.

Add a little Wordsworth, and it seems more aspiring… 🙂

I’ve watched you now a full half-hour;

Self-poised upon that yellow flower

And, little Butterfly! Indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed.

How motionless! – not frozen seas
More motionless! and then

What joy awaits you, when the breeze

Hath found you out among the trees,

And calls you forth again!

(William Wordsworth, “To a Butterfly”)

Hoping you find joy in something simple and uncomplicated today, too.

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