Archives for March 2011

Continuation from Part 1 of  My Journey…  (For Part 1: Click Here!)

Are you still there? I look at my phone to make sure it’s still counting minutes.
“I’m here” he says, I can tell he’s crying.
“OH MY GOSH!! you’re gay!! You’re gay, aren’t you???” my fear/sadness turns quickly. I asked him excitedly.
He reiterates, “this is harder to say to you than it was to tell my parents.”
“your kidding, right?” I laugh at him.
YOU’RE KIDDING, right????

It just comes to me and flows naturally
“J, I love you. I will always love you. I don’t care if you’re
gay. Good for you. But this doesn’t change us one single bit. You’re
still my J. We will always have our glasses, shucks, and bowling
shoes”
(I would give a million dollars for you all to hear him say “shucks”
while wearing his glasses. Thinking about it still melts my gay loving
heart into a GIANT puddle.)

That was it. I had my first ever openly gay friend. My first love
could always be my love. We have such a different love.

He’s so happy now. Everything my heart has always wanted for him. He has.

I hung up the phone that day after we had a few good laughs and immediately thought. He needs a family.
Immediately. It was the first thought that crossed my mind.

That wasn’t the first time the thought of surrogacy crossed my mind, but it wouldn’t be the last.  What better gift could I share with someone? If someone needed help moving, if someone needed help watching their kids so they could run an errand.  I’d be there. I’d help.
So why wouldn’t I help if someone needed help bringing their child into the world? I am able. I would never say no.

My heart needs this. My heart needs to help a family have their child. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.

Is he the reason? No, not entirely. But I think about him a lot on this journey.
I think about a lot of my friends. Friends that have struggled. I see their pain but will never know the feeling.

I think about “my IP’s” A LOT. (IP is surrogacy talk for “Intended Parents.” In other words, the parents of the child I will be carrying. You’ll see that a lot here, SOON!) I think about my IP’s Multiple times a day. I see my friends pain, I know my IP’s have this pain. Their pain, their grief is so deep. And we’re so close.

I pray multiple times a day for them to be comforted and filled with peace.
We’re so close.
They’ve, more than likely, waited SO LONG. and now, we’re maybe months away from meeting each other.
We’re so close.
Their baby is so close.

I can feel it.
Is that weird? My heart is so open. So ready for them.

I want everyone to know this wasn’t a venture I entered into lightly.
That day on the phone with J was 11 years ago. And that wasn’t the first time  I had thought about it. This has always been a part of me. A part of my heart.
I’ve prayed. (isn’t that the standard Mormon answer?)
I’ve prayed a lot. I KNOW in my heart of hearts that it’s MY time.
That my IP’s are so close. I can feel it.

This baby (or babies!!) is ready. And waiting. How can I deny them that?

Will this be easy?? No. It won’t be. I know it’ll be hard. I know it won’t be sunshine and roses all the time. There will be a lot of waiting, a lot of medications and ultimately 10 months of pregnancy followed by (HOPEFULLY) a natural birth. While taking care of my family and my home. But God is bigger than that. HE knows why I’m doing this. He knows it’s because of Him. This is His plan. Not mine or ours. The way it should be. It won’t be easy. (cliche ahead)

IT WILL BE WORTH IT.

Do you remember holding your baby for the first time? I can’t wait to see them hold their baby for the first time. That feeling. I can’t wait to witness it. THEIR baby. Don’t ever forget that. THEIR baby.

Will I get attached? If you were with someone 24 hours a day for 10 months, wouldn’t you? Absolutely I expect to get attached. But could you even imagine reuniting that person with their family after that long apart? The tears if joy you’d shed for them?

I can’t wait to reunite them.
To make  their family whole.

I can’t wait.

It was a Wednesday. (but the day if the week doesn’t matter) everyday of high school was the same.
Get to school, drop off everything in our lockers and head out to breakfast.
Everyday was the same.

Today started like every other day. We went to breakfast then headed up the canyon to go four wheeling. Today it was just the two of us.
Just me and him.

My feet sat on the rusty floor board of his old Ford Bronco. It felt like home. I smiled knowing this I’d where I belonged. Next to him.
In that car.
In that canyon.
At 10am on a Wednesday morning.
This is where I belong.

We turned the corner into the muddy part of the side road we were on. He gunned it. We went splashing and slopping down the bumpy, oh so bumpy “road.” I grabbed the bar above the glove compartment and laughed. He always knew how to scare me just to the brink of tears then back off. I was never really scared. I trusted him with my everything.
We were getting to my favorite part of the canyon when suddenly the Tim McGraw song “Something Like That” came on the radio. He looked over at me and smiled. That smile always melted me.
The look we shared was epic. He turned it up. LOUD. We sang at the top if our lungs.
“It was Labor day weekend, I was seventeen,I bought a coke and some
gasoline,and I drove out to the county fair.When I saw her for the
first time…”
We smiled, laughed and couldn’t stop that special smile we shared.
That moment.
Forever ingrained in my head.
Love.

That moment, that smile, that boy.
By the chorus it hit me like a ton of bricks.
I love him. I LOVE HIM. my heart almost jumped to my throat so full of
love. He was all I needed. That smile confirmed it.

He was my everything through everyday of high school. My best friend.
We never went a day without talking. We spent so much time together.
He was my everything.

Nothing ever went past best friend status.

2 years later:

My phone rings on the way home from my boyfriends grandmas house.
We’re in rush hour traffic, perfect time to talk to my best friend.
I answer SO excited to talk to him.
His tone is serious, too serious.

“I need to talk to you,” he squeaks out.
“Oh my gosh, YES! anything I’m here for you, you know that.” I assure him.I look over at my boyfriend with a worried look on my face. He mouth ‘what?’ and I shrug my shoulders but I can feel my heart beating faster.
I’m worried.
“I have to tell you something, but I can’t”
“Sure you can. You can tell me anything. You know I”ll always love you” I’m assuring him, feeling terrified in my heart and trying to figure out what could be wrong. The tension is so tight you almost couldn’t see through it.
“I can’t say it to you.” he tells me.
“It’s harder for me to say to you than to anyone else. I can’t say it out loud.”
So I start guessing…
“your parents are getting divorced?”
“you did something bad?”
“you got someone pregnant?”
I went on and on, he just kept answering no and asked me to keep guessing.
Saying over and over again that he just can’t tell me. “it’s going to kill me to tell you.” he said.
I look over at my boyfriend who can hear everything going on.
He can tell I’m upset. My eyes are filling quickly and about to overflow with tears.
He mouths “is he gay??”
I give him the worst look and actually shout NO!
J could hear him saying something and asks what that was about. I tell him, “nothing”. But he insists.
I half laugh as I say “he wanted me to guess; you’re gay.”
He’s silent. More than silent.
Hello???

To be continued in PART 2  of  My Journey... (Part 2) (Click here for Part 2)