So I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about the direction my life has taken.

I am unbelievably happy.

Yes, I get stressed.  Yes, I get cranky.  Yes, I occasionally fight with my husband.  Yes, I feel overwhelmed sometimes.  Yes, my dog sometimes pees where I don't want him to.

My life's not perfect.  But it is pretty damn good.

As I think about this, I can't help but wonder how/if my life would be different if things had gone the way I imagined they would.

In an effort to be transparent and not to "vague-blog," let me share a little background information.

After a brief courtship, Jeffer and I got engaged in March of 2009 and hitched in May of 2010.  He's a liiiiiiiittle bit older than me, so we pretty much started trying to have kids right away.  Actually, like 6 months before we even got married (see you in hell!).  After a couple years of this, we went to the doctor to figure out why we hadn't gotten pregnant yet.

Turns out, we can't have kids.

A legitimate medical condition, and people will act like if you just "relax," it'll go away.

Words can never describe the devastation we felt at hearing this news.  It was soul-crushing, isolating, and unbelievably painful.  Every pregnancy announcement felt like a knife in my heart.  Every baby shower invitation got thrown away, ignored, or lit on fire (seriously, this was really therapeutic for me and was a tiny joy in my pit of infertile despair).  I cried ALL the time.  I took ten tons of crazy vitamins.  Jeff had surgery.  We tried some more, trying to be hopeful.

Still, no baby.  All in all, we tried for over 3 years and spent a ridiculous amount of money to do something that drunk high schoolers on prom night somehow achieve with puzzling regularity.

The good news is, we're at a point now where we're actually really happy we couldn't have kids.  Except for feeling invalidated as a woman by many people (honestly, if you have kids you can't possibly understand this part, but people - even "enlightened" people - view you as incomplete until you've pushed a human out of your body.  It's insulting, demeaning, and infuriating), we have no complaints.  Our only regret is not figuring this out BEFORE we spent so much time, money, and energy on trying to produce an heir.

Now, what in the eff does this have to do with the rest of the blog?

EVERYTHING.  Also, nothing.  But really, EVERYTHING.

If we'd had a child, I can pretty much guarantee our lives would be worse, and that includes our health (not trying to insinuate that kids ruin lives, 99% of my friends who have kids are very happy with their decision to procreate...just saying our lives are spectacular right now and I can't imagine a tiny human improving matters at this point).  When you're a parent, you come last.  Your kids and usually your spouse come first, all the time, no questions asked.  It's not a bad thing, it's just the way it is.

I already work in a profession where I put my needs after everyone else's.  It's the very nature of nursing!  I don't need that kind of environment in my home, also.  

As I said, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the direction my life has taken, and I'm so thankful things turned out the way they did.  It was impossible to see at the time, but I think the universe (or God, Jesus, Allah, Tom Cruise, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Ganesh, the Goddess, Bigfoot...whoever you think runs things) was steering us in another direction and we were too focused on babies to see it until that option was completely taken off the table.

Since then, our lives have changed a LOT.  We have made amazing strides and improvements in our health.  Our marriage has never been better.  We are boring and spend most of our time at home, snuggling with the dog.  But we make each other laugh every day.  I've gone back to school, yet again, to achieve a long-time professional goal of mine (and am kicking ass at it, so far).  I volunteer with Big Brothers/Big Sisters and have an awesome little brother.  We adopted a dog who otherwise would have been put down.  We save tons of money by not needing birth control.

Here's the moral of the story:

God, the universe, Allah, Jesus, Tom Cruise, Bigfoot, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Ganesh, the Goddess...whoever or whatever you think is in charge.

If things aren't going your way right now, don't freak out.

Something better is coming.