Tag: Marriage

Finding Happiness After Infertility

Posted on by Evan Glenn

Finding Happiness After Infertility: Our Story of Hope

Finding happiness after infertility has been a journey for me and my husband, Evan. For years, we struggled with the heartache of not being able to conceive, and it took a toll on both of us. But through it all, we’ve discovered unexpected joys and a deeper appreciation for our relationship. I’m excited to share our story with you today, in hopes that it may offer comfort and inspiration to others facing similar challenges.

Our Journey with Infertility
Our Journey with Infertility

Want to hear our story in our own words? Check out our video here, or keep scrolling for more insights and reflections.

 

Our Infertility Journey: Years of Trying and Heartache

Finding Happiness in Our Infertility Journey
Finding Happiness in Our Infertility Journey

We tried for a while and did lots of research. That’s what we do; we’re planners. We saw doctors, underwent tests, and I even had exploratory surgery.

I was prescribed a medication to help me get pregnant, but it didn’t work for me. Instead, it made me very emotional and caused a lot of ups and downs. I realized it wasn’t healthy for me, so I stopped taking it.

 

 

 

We consulted a fertility specialist, but she wouldn’t perform the procedure because I was on anxiety medication. I understood her reasoning, but coming off the medication nearly caused a nervous breakdown. It was an incredibly difficult time.

 

We considered further fertility treatments, but there were obstacles. We were older, the cost was a concern, and there was no guarantee it would work. Plus, I struggled with how I would handle the physical and emotional demands of pregnancy. Ultimately, we came to the conclusion that having children naturally wasn’t in the cards for us.

 

Embracing Life After Infertility: Finding Joy as Aunt and Uncle

Finding Joy in Our Life
Finding Joy in Our Life

Reaching that acceptance was a long and painful process. But now, we find joy in other ways. We cherish our time with our nieces and nephews, who call us “Uncle Evan” and “Aunt Lala.” We love being their fun aunt and uncle, and we’re also proud dog parents. Our furry friends bring so much joy into our lives.

Lisa with our nephew and niece.
Lisa with our nephew and niece.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exploring Alternative Paths to Parenthood: Adoption & Fostering

Adoption was another path we considered, and we were even approached by people who thought we’d be great parents. But those situations didn’t work out. Evan grew up with foster siblings, and the experience of kids coming and going was difficult for him. I also knew the heartache of goodbyes would be too much for me to handle.

 

Healing from Infertility: Discovering Happiness in Unexpected Places

Finding Happiness Together
Finding Happiness Together

Our journey with infertility has taught us that happiness can be found in unexpected ways. I’ve learned the importance of having a partner who is not just a potential parent, but also a best friend. Evan is my best friend, and that’s what has gotten us through the tough times.

 

 

 

Overcoming Infertility Challenges: Hope for the Future

While we’ve made peace with not having biological children, we’re open to exploring other options for the future. I’m seeing a new doctor who is helping me manage my health issues, and we’ve discussed revisiting fertility treatments. It’s a decision we’ll make together, weighing the potential benefits and risks.

 

Sharing Our Infertility Story: Building a Community of Support

I’m sharing our story because I know there are others out there struggling with infertility. It’s a lonely road, but it doesn’t have to be. By sharing our experiences, we can build a community of support and understanding.

Thank you for listening to our story.

With love,

The Glenn Home

If you have any questions or want to share your own experiences, please leave a comment below. We’re in this together!

 

Want to stay connected and learn more about our journey? To learn more about my health and wellness journey, including my experience with the TIF procedure, click here.

Want to stay connected and learn more about our journey?

 

The Journey of Building A Community

Posted on by Evan Glenn

 

What a busy summer it has been! Yes, I know it is already October and close to Halloween, but we just got back from our annual beach vacation…and that brings Summer to an end for us. If you have followed along on our journey through our social media, YouTube, Facebook , and Instagram, then you have enjoyed some of the fun we have had. Lisa and I do a lot of things together. It may be just the two of us or with the company of family and friends. Life is a journey and it is better when we share it with someone, and even more so when you have a community that you can lean on as you travel through life. 

 

We haven’t kept up our side of the journey.

First, we want to apologize for the lack of posting on this blog and more recently, not uploading our vlogs. I, Evan,  had a technical issue with my computer  and thought that all of the photos and videos that were copied to the editing hard drive were lost. My typical routine is that as soon as we finish with the cameras at the end of the day I copy all of that footage to an editing hard drive on my computer so that it can be fine tuned before being posted/uploaded.  Once it is exported, I then move it to an external storage drive. We had been so busy with work and going on our trips that I had been putting the footage on the drive until I had time to edit it. When the time came for me to start editing, the hard drive was not showing up. I am a computer tech/nerd(25+ years), so it took time to recover the data from the drive, copy it our external back up, purchase a new hard drive, and finally move the recovered footage back to the new drive. Even though we had this issue going on, we continued to keep the cameras rolling and used our external hard drive for storage. Whew! That was a close call.  If you want to learn more about the technical side of how to capture your precious memories, I have separate website and social media platforms to help you learn more about them at casuallysharpmultimedia.com.

 

The reason for the journey.  

Second, let’s be clear. We are not a vain couple who wants to show ourselves to the world in a selfish way. The true reason we do this is to be an example to those who care about having a loving, caring, fun, and meaningful marriage themselves and to build a community that encourages one another. In doing so, the hope is that you will find the posts to be interesting, entertaining at times,  thought-provoking, challenging, encouraging, and conversation starting.

 

 

Onward with the journey.

Third, we have a lot of catching up to do. The technical issue put us behind on our posting. We will be several weeks behind on current activities, but this will allow for us to enjoy the activities and not feel rushed to come home and start editing right away. We also work full-time. With this in mind, we are thinking about making our posting on a regular schedule instead sharing a lot and then being silent for periods of time. We have an idea as to what that schedule will be but don’t want to put it in black and white just yet. Please be patient with us as we get this routine down. 

 

We hope you have had a great Summer as well and that the Fall brings you warm thoughts as the season changes.  If you would like to be on the journey of building a community with us and be involved in our community, please subscribe to this blog, follow us on Facebook, Instagram and subscribe to our YouTube channel!

 

 

Have Cake and Eat it too!

Posted on by Evan Glenn

I do realize that I am behind on this particular post. And this post is kind of long. But I am at least posting.

On June 25, 2012 Lisa and I celebrated our first full year of being married! It has been a wonderful year! Bringing our two lives together and learning to live as one is beautiful, awe-inspiring and life changing. She is still and will always be the beautiful bride that I first saw coming through the back door of the church and walking down that long, long isle. I remember trying hard to control myself and not run down to pick her up and carry her myself back up to where the minister and wedding party were standing. And I still need to control myself every day that I leave from work and not speed home, like a race car driver headed to the finish line on the last lap, to see her. I know, I know  what some of you are thinking, still in the “honeymoon” phase. It will change. But the reality of it is, it has changed!

According to tradition, the first year anniversary is also when the couple is supposed to pull the top-tier of their wedding cake out of the freezer and eat it, although not all couples indulge

in this practice. Our cake top was wrapped up and sealed up tight and had many layers of cellophane and aluminum foil and then put into a freezer bag. When we opened it up on the night of our one year anniversary it still had its beautiful appearance and shape nothing was out-of-place nor lost is brilliant colors.  Let me just say, that a one year old frozen cake with fondant icing tastes gross! And I like me some cake. However, we indulged in this tradition with happiness because if that cake had made it stored in a freezer for one year untouched it deserved to be eaten, at least some of it.

One-year wedding anniversaries are particularly special for many reasons. Couples are still considered newlyweds when this anniversary rolls around and this is the first anniversary that couples can celebrate as a married couple. Completing the first year of marriage is definitely cause for celebration. As I just mentioned above, things have changed. But for the better! In the last post 40 More Years, Please. , I stated that,  I had not been married before, nor have I experienced the happiness, excitement, and even frustrations of marriage. I look forward to each and every moment to experience with my bride. And continuing that wonderful thought, I am looking forward to many, many years of excitement, frustrations and happiness. The first wedding anniversary is a significant event because it celebrates the fact that the couple is still together after the first year of adjustments to married life.  Reaching the first wedding anniversary means that the married couple has weathered the adjustments to married life so far. The benefit to celebrating this event is the recognition of a couple’s love as well as their resolve to stay together as a married couple.

We have resolved! We have resolved to adorn each other with devotion of love to each other. That cake did look good when we first opened it up. I remember how it tasted, the little bite of it she shoved all over my face. It was yummy! And so I was anxious to try it. As we started to cut it and it began to melt and all of that icing became a gooey mess and the cake inside had lost its fluffiness. It was awful and sad. But cakes that are made for eating do not last forever. No matter how well you wrap them up and seal them up.

So why have I gone on and on about that cake? To me it is a symbol of a couple of things.

First. It bothers me that I hear married couples with years of experience behind them speak about how things change in a negative way. Why are you showing the younger, inexperienced generation an unenthusiastic view of such a beautiful union. The union that God created! The husband is a blessing for the wife and the wife is a blessing for the husband. A gift from the Creator to each of you. How do you think He wants you to show others His work? With happiness and willingness and an attitude of love!

Second, Are they the ones that have left their cake in the freezer and get it out for special occasions expecting it to be just as fresh and delightful as the day they first tasted it? We are to enjoy the cake. We are supposed to share the cake with each other. By feeding each other unconditional love and be willing to sacrifice selfishness to make the other happy. The cake will never run out as long as God is making the cake in your marriage.  Just as Christ made more wine for the wedding he will make more cake for you. Notice that I did not say another cake will be made, I said more cake will be made. And each time that you taste it, it will be more fulfilling and more sweeter.

I pray that Lisa and I continue to have our cake and eat it too, every day! And some days we may even have some ice cream with it!

40 More Years, Please.

Posted on by The Glenn Home

Life is short, so make sure to enjoy as much as you can. The death rate for human beings hovers right around 100 percent, and is expected to remain there for … well, forever. Consider this: if the average life span is 77 years, then that means we only have 77 summers … 77 winters … 77 Christmas mornings … 77 New Years, and that’s it. It’s easy to get caught in the day-to-day craziness of life and, in the process, take our spouses for granted. A widow named Betty, married 54 years, says, “Now that he’s gone I wish I hadn’t had so many headaches.”

Les & Susan Glenn at Wedding

On Saturday, September 3, 2011 my parents celebrate 40 years of marriage. What a wonderful occasion! The ruby anniversary is a special one. Spending 40 years together is a great reason to celebrate! Their example is inspiring. Of course being one of their children, I witnessed this first-hand. They are by no means perfect, to the outside world, but to my brothers and I they are. What I mean by this is, they showed no exit strategies or desires to call it quits.

Over the years, dad learned to become the leader of the house, providing stability and security for us. Mom stood by his side and supported him. Together they became one, in all means of the word. Love and care for each other, the two way street called marriage is traveled together meeting each other’s needs.

Commitment. Something that is missed in today’s society. Committed to staying together for better or worse. As Bon Jovi sings, “lay you down in a bed of roses”, he should have included, thorns and all. There is no perfect, fairy tale life, let alone marriage.  Living together for any length of time, there are bound to be annoying, irritating, and frustrating experiences. The best marriages are served with an extra helping of acceptance for one another.

So many marriages these days end in such a terrible mess. Instead of seeing boiling points through, couples are using one eye to find faults in their spouse and keeping the other open eye for an exit.

A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity.  The order varies for any given year.  ~Paul Sweeney

As many of you may know, Lisa and I were married just this year, June 25, to be exact. Such a wonderful, beautiful blessing! God has truly blessed me with such a wonderful, beautiful woman. It means a lot to have someone my life that has a strong moral and christian background. She also was brought up in a family with parents committed to each other. Having lost her father, soon to be two years now, I can see how much of an influence her mother and he was in her life.

In today’s world, some people don’t understand the importance of lasting marriages. Either they don’t understand it or don’t know it. Having not being raised in an environment where there is a mother and/or father, they miss out on the things that are in God’s plan for marriage. Now I am not speaking of the ones who have lost their spouses due to circumstances of life, but to the ones that can’t seem to get past the annoyances and frustrations of living together with a spouse. Men and women alike.

Friends and co-workers on different occasions have asked me, “how is marriage life?” My answer is always, “great!”. Wait, before you say what they say when I give that response, “just wait” or “give it time”, I need to let you in on a little insight of mine. I am almost 32 years of age and never married. I have not experienced the happiness, excitement, and even frustrations of marriage. I look forward to each and every moment to experience with my bride. Sound mushy? Its not to me. Why? It comes back to watching my parents. Their example of love for each other and for us, their children is inspiring. It has to be a awesome feeling of celebrating an event that gave root to so many experiences in their lives.

I can only ask God to lead Lisa and I down a road of marriage so that we are be able to look back on the many years spent together and be able to feel such a marvelous absolution.

Evan