I decided to set my alarm ten minutes early. Imagine all I could do each workday with an extra ten minutes?  Give an efficiency queen ten minutes, and you will be shocked at what she can accomplish. My options were limitless. Okay, okay, I admit that statement might just be just a tad dramatic.

So my very first morning with an extra ten minutes, I start off with a bang. How about I began a load of laundry. “Jackie you are so efficient, nice work! Before the coffee is even made, I was ‘technically’ doing chores. 

Next it was coffee time.  So I do the coffee thing… and still proud of my ten minute morning accomplishment.  But I hit a snag… I notice while sitting at the computer that the coffee is taking longer than usual to percolate. Why so sluggish? I thought only I was allowed to be lethargic in the mornings.  I go over to investigate and find that instead of hitting the brew button, I hit the button right next to it that says, “CLEAN”. So I had to wait for the clean cycle to complete in order to start again. But now I also had to grind more beans because I only had enough in reserves for that one pot. 

Do you see where I am going with this, mamas? That was how I spent my extra 10 minutes! Sometimes our best-laid plans can go array.

For my mama readers that have experienced infertility hiccups, you know firsthand how quickly our best-laid plans can go array. When in the throes of infertility, baby loss and grief, sometimes it is easy to think ‘if just this one thing could go the way I WANT, it will all be better”.  

Where is my genie in a bottle with three wishes?

Mamas, I understand this sentiment all too well. During our baby journey, my husband and I were juggling fertility treatments at a hospital hundreds of miles away from our home. Each doctor appointment meant a trek across the mountain pass, an almost six hour round trip. We were also in our fifth year of paying a mortgage (yes, I said FIVE), and trying to sell our house in our old hometown. Add to that paying rent in our new town and moving four different times to five different rentals.  

And the cherry on top…

We lived in a state where in vitro was not covered by health insurance. So in addition to paying a mortgage on a house we didn’t live in, paying rent where we did live, and paying who knows how much on gas, hotels, time off work, we NOW also had the pleasure of paying for in-vitro.  ‘If we could just stop paying for ONE of these things, life would be better.’

Then I got my ‘wish’; everything stopped all at once when God said no. When we lost our very last baby that very same month our old house finally sold, and our trips over the mountain pass ceased.

I learned during those hard years, that so many of our questions don’t get answered, and many things will never make sense this side of heaven.  Today, instead of lamenting the past and asking my ‘whys’, I choose to focus on the present. Sometimes all you can do is focus on the next 10 minutes.  

Lets take a breath together and plan our next ten minutes mamas. We’ve got this!