I painted the baby's room...

...three years ago.

Three years ago, I painted the room that I prayed would someday soon be for our child. I painted it just a few months after our first miscarriage. The room was (and still is) DH's office and our guest room. For months and months after that first miscarriage I begged, pushed, and pleaded with DH to let me paint that room. Work was crazy busy for him and he didn't understand why I would want to tear up his office (and make a mess of the house) in order to paint the room, in light of the fact that we were no longer pregnant so there was no longer any urgency to the task.

I finally reached the peak of my intersection of grief and desperation and ended up melting in a sobbing puddle on the floor one day. I was able to finally find the words, and he was able to hear me, that if I couldn't have our beloved baby in my arms, DAMN IT, I at least I should get the pleasure of still painting the room. I at least deserved that.

He heard me and held me in his arms. That weekend in September 2008 I painted the room. And it was just what I needed at the time.

But that painted room has also continually been a lingering place of grief- a symbol of dreams unfulfilled. Of tears shed. Of hopes, crushed.

Two years later, during a particularly hopeful time, I bought a bookshelf for that room. Looking back, I don't know why I was feeling hopeful then. We were almost three years into TTC with no end in sight. No savings in our bank in order to move on to IVF or adoption. No answers. And no viable option laid ahead of us. And yet hope was returning to my heart. When I blogged about it at the time- I wrote about how ridiculous hope seems at times.

Today DH and I started pealing back the layers of clutter that have amassed in DH's office/guest room, the room that will be our baby's very soon. The bookshelf that I bought, 9 months ago, has been stored in our garage all this time as I needed a) DH to clean the office b) move the guest bed out in order to c) rip out the current shelving in the closet so we could install this new bookshelf in there.

Once again, I don't think DH understood at first why I have been so insistent on getting this project started. Until...until the tears started falling. As he is ripping out the last of the shelving in the closet, he turned around to unexpectantly find tears quietly running down my cheeks as I stood there watching him (they are flowing again just typing this). All I could whisper in between the tears was, "We have wanted this for so long..."

I am often left speechless when I think back on this past 3 1/2 years. The path through miscarriages and TTC was the darkest time I have known in my life. And yet seemingly insignificant gestures like painting that "damn" room and buying that bookshelf seemed to keep me going. They were gestures that carried with them an outward expression of the little bit of hope I could hang on to. And that hope, even when it seemed so faint, is the only thing that kept me going.