More than LOVE

This post is a long time overdue...really long time. I have started and stopped this post several times, but for whatever reason I feel compelled to say thank you to such a wonderful group of people.

You see there was a time (which seems so very long ago) that I actually played tennis.  Yes...I did something somewhat active every Sunday afternoon...which consisted than more of walking the aisles and loading boxes of diapers and wipes and loaves of bread into my cart at Costco. I even practiced during the week.  And...shut the front door...would go to the courts with my husband to play tennis for fun!  I played year round...women's and mixed...and loved every minute.  I haven't really played since 2009 when I {finally} became pregnant with the twins.  I do miss it and I will play again.  Hopefully sooner than later, but right now we are knee deep in babies and a whole day devoted to keeping a little yellow ball between the lines just isn't in the cards.

However...it is the game of tennis to which I owe a great deal.

Two of my best friends graciously invited me to play on their neighborhood team.  We had all played together just out of college on an ALTA team (I suppose we were over basketball that we devoted so much of our childhoods too) and had such fun.  I was happy to be playing with my dear friends and had no idea how many more I would make.

It is no secret that Nick and I struggled to conceive {well...the twins...anyway}. We tried and tried and tried some more and eventually decided we were going to turn to IVF to help build our family. And oddly enough...as soon as I began to talk about my infertility...I made connections with people who also had an infertility battle scar or two or three or twenty...many of them on my tennis team. Some had unexplained infertility, some had PCOS, some had diminished ovarian reserve at a strikingly young age.  Some had recurrent pregnancy loss and some had endometriosis so badly they had difficulty conceiving. Some had already conceived/given birth with assisted reproductive technology - whether meds, IUIs, or IVF.  Some had chosen adoption as their path to parenthood.

These same women donated gobs and gobs of items to our IVF yard sale fundraiser in hopes that we would be able to pay cash for a chance at a baby...and we did! Some of them prayed and asked others to pray.  Some simply gave words of support...and when there were no words...perhaps an imperfect lob served up for the perfect overhead shot.

LOVE means nothing to a tennis player.  But what I have for these girls is much more that.