Unreal

Last week, God put it on my heart to reach out to my best guy-friend from college.  This guy was one of my best friends throughout all four years of my undergrad.  We lived just down the hall from each other during our freshman year, were involved in the same leadership organization, became RAs together, and he even lived in a tent in my backyard for a couple of weeks during our senior year when he returned from his study abroad experience.  I feel like we truly had that "platonic friendship" that college students always debate can really exist between guys and girls.  The last time that I saw him was about three years ago when he and his wife stayed at our place en route to their new life on the East Coast.

Like I said, God put it on my hear to reach out to him.  He has been married to his amazing wife for about five years now, and his sister just had a baby...so I asked (hesitantly) if he had been getting the "you're next" kind of comments.  From our own experience, I know how hurtful this question can be--but I felt like I had the type of relationship with him to ask it (and in my note to him, I even said "I ask this hesitantly--because I know that it has caused me pain in the past as well").  I then went on to share our story of loss and our new hope with this pregnancy.  I also affirmed that although the traditional path may be "love, marriage, baby carriage", I also realize that he's never been the type to do things in the conventional way (like I said, he lived in a tent in my backyard), so I apologized if I was making up stories in my head about him and his wife.

But his response confirmed that I had intuitively picked up on something.  He and his wife had struggled for 18 months to conceive, only to lose that pregnancy.  When I met this guy during our first year of college, I never imagined that we would both experience such sorrow and loss.  He shared his appreciation for me reaching out to him, and went on to mention that his wife is open to talking about her experience.  So even though I know him better (she attended a different school so I've really only interacted with her a handful of times), I reached out to her as well.

Reading her story gave me goosebumps.  It is so unreal how similar our stories are--right down to how we both lost our first pregnancies on our husband's birthdays.  That just doesn't happen.  What are the odds?  Unreal--that's the only word I can think of to describe it.  Unreal.

I never thought that God would use me this way.  My friend's wife brought up such a valid point--it's so "taboo" to talk about these things, and yet God put it on my heart to contact them to say "hey...I don't know if you're dealing with this or not...but we have...we are still dealing with it...and if you are by chance struggling with it...then I'm here for you".  That's a hard conversation to bring up out of the blue.  And yet, I did.  I'm not usually that brave, so I know that the prompting to do so could only come from God's gentle voice.  I wonder how many other challenging conversations He has intended for me...

Today's blessing is that my husband is finally coming home.  As I write these, he's at the airport waiting for his flight.  I'm usually totally fine with his regular five-day Monday-through-Friday types of trips, but this was a Monday-through-Friday trip that encompassed two weeks instead of one.  It sounds like he'll travel again in June, but until then, I'm blessed to have him home with me for a while.