Searching for the missing piece of my heart

When we moved from Kentucky to Florida I tried to be excited, but in reality I was sad leaving my musical/theatrical world and friends in Maysville and Cincinnati. Where we were moving to in Florida offered nothing like what I had in Kentucky. We were moving to a retirement community on the outskirts of Vero Beach so that my husband could pastor a mission church, which turned out to be yet another church made up of retirees. Almost from the beginning I hated Florida. It was hot, humid, scrubby, ugly, and expensive. I soon learned that the only people who loved Florida were the retirees and tourists who had enough money to love it. After only a couple of months after we moved there it became quite apparent that we weren't going to make it on the meager salary that my husband was offered, so I bought a paper and started to look for a job. In no time I was hired as a floor clerk and window dresser in a very exclusive dress shop on the beach in Vero. It was about a twenty-five minute commute, but I didn't mind it so much. It paid well, and I worked in fashion retail and got nice discounts on some really nice clothes. It was a good job. After about six months in the job, my manager sent me to a modeling school (paid for it too), and I was trained to become an in-house model. I did tea room modeling and some runway shows. Mostly I modeled business and formal wear and I really loved it. It was sort of like being on stage, only I was showing off the clothes rather than my voice. In other words, I was a pretty hanger.

As far as my music was concerned, there really wasn't much for me. I played the piano at the mission and sang solos. We tried to get a choir started, but that fell through. It seemed as if my music died, and with it died my soul. I desperately tried to fill the hole with other things--my job, work at the church, etc., but nothing seemed to fill it. At the same time, my relationship with my husband was going nowhere, and I was literally in a panic over that. I couldn't understand why we didn't seem to have the closeness that we were supposed to have. All we ever talked about was the church, or religion, or politics and religion, or church work, etc. We didn't have much else in common. And as far as our sex life was concerned, well that was flat-lined almost from day one of our marriage, which REALLY confused me. Here I was, this curvy, sexy, fashion model, and my husband wasn't interested, so I made the mistake of thinking that if we had a baby that all of our problems would melt away as soon as we held that cute little bundle of joy. "Maybe he'll love me if I give him a child," I thought to myself.

The problem was that for me, giving my husband a child wasn't going to be easy. I had problems that would require that I see a specialist. I soon found a specialist in Orlando, and within a few weeks after my first appointment I began a course of treatment that took us on a three-year roller coaster ride and put my body through hormonal hell. I soon became obsessed with having a child and I didn't care what it cost financially, or what it cost me physically and emotionally. What I didn't understand was that I was looking for that missing piece of my heart. I couldn't find it in my marriage. I couldn't find it in my music. I couldn't find it in church, or religion, or even in my "personal relationship with Jesus". I couldn't find it in my job. Perhaps I would find it in a child...