The Longest Road I've Ever Traveled...

Infertility.
Let's just cut right to the chase shall we?
Something that I never thought I'd have to deal, something that a LOT of women have to deal with, and something we have HAD to deal with for the last 3 1/2 years.
Hopefully our journey is on it's way out the door-
but my heart aches for those that it has only just begun.
It's a hard road, with ambiguous questions and sometimes no answers.

Two days ago I had surgery to clear out the endometriosis that we think has been causing all the problems.

We've been through all types of fertility treatments this past year and none of them worked- although my body responded well to them.
We knew that I had endometriosis (from a surgery three years ago) and for whatever reason, endometriosis tends to mess things up...
thus my doctor felt like the best thing to do, would be to clean out the endo.
And it's a good thing we did! I had some pretty severe endometriosis going on inside...
The worst part about endometriosis is they dont' know why some women have it, they don't know what causes it, and there's really no cure for it...
Super frustrating.

 They gave my ever patient husband a restaraunt pager to know when I was done with surgery...
"Mr. Brame- your table is ready"

 And I was out the same day.
Feeling pretty good!

 And I had these movies to get me through the days of restlessness ahead!

Now hopefully with some clean insides- we can have another go at fertility treatment.
Sigh.
It's a beast.
I think it's interesting when people think infertility is a taboo subject and one can't talk about their kids or getting pregnant for fear of hurting feelings.
I ALWAYS feel happy when friends or family tell me that they're pregnant...
I ALWAYS feel happy when people tell me about the successes of their kids...
It only makes me sad when women who CAN get pregnant easily take it for granted or act like it's no big deal.
Don't forget, that it's such a beautiful gift.
Hopefully, whether through adoption or other means, this road of infertility will be over for us soon.

The End of a Looooong Week...

It's raining outside...

It's been raining cats and dogs all day (who made up that expression anyway?)

I love the rain on two conditions:

1- I don't have to be out in it.

That was probably the worst part about the mission... walking around in the rain.... getting soaking wet and not being able to do anything about it. Oh you COULD try and use an umbrella- but the wind would tear it to shreds. Oh no- I gave up on that about month six. We walked through many a Polish rainstorms and I vowed I would never walk in the rain (if I didn't have to) EVER AGAIN.

In fact- I got so sick of the rain (and slugs... oh the slugs...) that I started carrying around salt with me and killing slugs as a way to get out my anger of walking in the rain... morbid I know.

Rain is just so much nicer and cozier from the inside of a house, don't ya think?

And number 2- As long as I have someone to be with.

Which I don't.

At the moment... he's on his way home as we speak.

BUT knowing my luck- his flight will be delayed... because of said rain.

Oh well... I'm just glad he's on his way home.

It's been a long week.

Life is harder when Jon isn't around.

I've decided that husband and wife are meant to be together.

Shocker I know.

It's not like the scriptures tell us that or anything ;)

Because I've been home alone- I've had a lot of time to read... and I finished this book.

I know it's wildly popular- and I kinda followed the crowd on this one...

but this book was amazing.

It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me re-evaluate the way I treat others, and definitely made me glad I didn't live in the 60's because I probably would have been lynched for speaking my mind.

I'm definitely planning on reading this book again...

and soon.

Speaking of the mission (from above)... I checked the Polish mission blog today and had a wonderful surprise.
They had a chapel open house at the Warsaw 2 branch in (you guessed it) Warsaw.
That was my first area of my mission and I don't remember a whole lot, but when I saw this picture- the lady in orange looked strangely familiar.
The caption on the picture talked about her and her two sons and how she has a baptismal date set in two weeks.

I clicked on the picture to make it bigger and I was sure of it-
I had taught her!
In fact- my trainer and I were her first contact with the missionaries!
I immediately rummaged through my mission pics...
and found this...

Same girl... 4 years earlier.
*Sigh*
It's just that sometimes as a missionary you wonder if you did any good.
I only saw a handful of people baptized...
a lot of them became inactive.
It just warmed my heart to see that a seed that Sister Brown and I planted 4 years ago-
will lead to her baptism in 2 weeks.
No matter what the situation- seeing someone come to Christ is a good feeling.
And seeing that picture made me feel good inside.