Mischief

This occurred a few weeks ago... Savannah was being awfully quiet, which is never a good sign. I went looking for her and heard some faint noises coming from the bathroom. This is what I found:

"What Mom??? Why are you staring at me?"

"Oh that... that wasn't me!"

"Really Mom, I didn't do it... I just found it like that!"

The little stinker! I caught her as she was sauntering out of the bathroom and she really did look at me like she was the most innocent thing in the world. Kind of like, "Did you see what happened in here? I didn't do it!" It was pretty funny, despite the poor fate of the toilet paper roll.

Update

A quick update: I had an ultrasound on Tuesday and found out that I have a 5cm (nearly 2 inch) cyst on my ovary. It's most likely a remnant of my last cycle. From all that they could tell, it seems to be a simple cyst. I was told that if it were a complex cyst they would need to surgically remove it, but the kind I have should go away without any intervention. So this cycle we're on our own, no Clomid or mid-cycle ultrasound. Hopefully it will go away! If it doesn't, the doctor will likely want to put me on birth control for a month to get rid of it... and I really don't want to have to do that!

"Because Your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.... I think of you through the watches of the night. Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings. My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me." Psalm 63:3, 6-8

Find Rest

I thought I was pregnant. I really thought I was pregnant. I had spotting mid-cycle which I've never had and the timing was perfect for it to indicate implantation. But then I got my period... a week early. So now we start over and try to figure out what in the world happened this cycle. In the meantime, I'll be clinging to these verses:

"Find rest, O my soul, in God alone;
my hope comes from Him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation;
He is my fortress, I will not be shaken.
My salvation and my honor depend on God;
He is my mighty rock, my refuge.
Trust in Him at all times, O people;
pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge."
Psalm 62:5-8

I've decided that if this is what it takes to bring God glory, so be it. I know He loves me and I know He hears my prayers, so this must be where He wants us. So I will cling to Him and trust that He will provide exactly what I need when I need it.

Prayer Request

Friday at 11:30am we have an ultrasound and I would really, REALLY appreciate all the prayer we can get. This has been my third cycle on Clomid and my second ultrasound. Last month didn't go so well... we went in for our ultrasound to see if I had any follicles large enough to ovulate and I didn't - just a bunch of small, undeveloped follicles. We met with the infertility nurse after the ultrasound and the first words out of her mouth were, "this just isn't working..." It wasn't the most encouraging conversation I've ever had. So this month we upped my dosage and we're going back for my second ultrasound. I so badly want to be positive about it and full of hope, but all week I've had this bad feeling about how it's going to turn out. I'm praying God will perform a miracle... that He'll remember me and open my womb and lead us out of this dark and tiring journey.

It's so strange the emotions that come with infertility. Some days, I have an inexpressible joy that I know comes only from God. But just as quickly as the joy comes, it can disappear, for no apparent reason and leave in its place doubt and dread and confusion. One of the hardest parts for me is not understanding how God wants to use this in my life. I know He has a purpose, but it doesn't make any sense to me right now. I know God is sovereign and controls all things, which can be comforting, but can also make everything that much harder because I know God has complete power to open my womb, but for whatever reason He is choosing not to. That is a hard thing to wrestle with... to praise and worship God despite feeling like He is holding back one of my greatest desires. But He is bigger than me and I'm constantly humbled by that fact and my lack of faith.

So I'm praying that God proves me wrong this month - that all my gut feelings are wrong and we walk out of our appointment Friday with renewed hope and joy... because right now my hope is starting to run low. It's just exhausting trying to conceive month after month with no success. Thank you all for partnering with us in prayer and I will let you know how it goes. My prayer is that God can be glorified regardless of what happens.

Blessings

Sometimes there is a song that helps define a period of your life; a song that nearly perfectly describes what you are feeling or what you are going through. ‘Tis the case with Laura Story’s song Blessings. I feel like it captures so much of how I have felt during this period of my life:

We pray for blessings. We pray for peace.

Comfort for family. Protection while we sleep.

We pray for healing, for prosperity.

We pray for your mighty hand to ease our suffering.

But all the while you hear each spoken need.

Yet love is way too much to give us lesser things.

‘Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops?

What if Your healing comes through tears?

What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You’re near?

What if trials of this life, are Your mercies in disguise?

We pray for wisdom; Your voice to hear.

We cry in anger when we cannot feel You near.

We doubt Your goodness. We doubt Your love.

As if every promise from Your word is not enough.

But all the while, You hear each desperate plea.

And long that we’d have faith to believe.

‘Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops?

What if Your healing comes through tears?

What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You’re near?

What if trials of this life, are Your mercies in disguise?

When friends betray us. When darkness seems to win, we know…

The pain reminds this heart that this is not, this is not our home. It’s not our home.

‘Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops?

What if Your healing comes through tears?

What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You’re near?

What if my greatest disappointments or the aching of this life is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy?

What if trials of this life, the rain, the storms, the hardest nights, are Your mercies in disguise?

Infertility has been my companion for nearly two years. It is like this invisible devastating force in my life that just will not go away. No matter how much I hope, how much I ignore it, or how much I pray, it never seems to leave my side. It has changed my life. As much as I have tried to live in spite of it and not be defined by it, I truly believe that it is one of those things in my life that will forever change me. As a result of all we’ve gone through, I have wrestled with God more times than I can count and been humbled to my knees more times than I can even remember. Infertility is such a humbling thing because you realize you have no control. When you can’t even control what happens within your own body, this body that allows me to live and breath and think and move… to realize that I have no control over it, is incredibly humbling. To know that no matter how much I beg God for a child, no matter how much I pray or read His word, or plead with Him to hear my cries…. it doesn’t change the fact that my womb is still empty. It’s humbling. It’s humbling because it makes me realize that I cannot control God. It reminds me that I can’t always get what I want and sometimes God has plans that are different than mine. Even when His plans don’t make sense, when I can’t understand or comprehend why this journey can’t finally come to an end, He knows. And He loves me enough to keep asking me to endure it, to keep putting me in situations that get harder and harder at every turn.

This song describes my heart perfectly. We pray for things to go how we want them. We even pray for good things, things we know God loves. But just because we pray doesn’t mean God is going to answer and just because God doesn’t answer doesn’t mean that our cries weren't heard. I know He hears my pleading. He sees the aching in my heart and my longing to hold a child. The desire I have to teach a little boy or girl about our Savior, to see their eyes light up over the silliest things, to hear their cries knowing it is my arms alone that can soothe them… He sees it all. The hardest thing to do is to wrestle with the emotions of feeling abandoned and cast off by God and somehow begin to view them as blessings, as His mercies. Because how can something so painful, something that seems filled with darkness and loneliness and silence, how can that be God’s blessing?

There have been times when I have cried out to God, asking Him where He is, why He is so silent, why He seems so very far away. Sometimes I’m angry, but most of the time I just hurt because I don’t understand it. I don’t see it as God sees it. I only see little snapshots of this life, I can’t see the whole canvas, I can’t see the whole story He is writing and fulfilling day by day. I’ve doubted who God is and how He can love me when He feels so far away. And regarding those emotions, Laura Story brings up one of the most piercing lines. “As if every promise from Your word is not enough.” That thought pierces my heart to the core because infertility does not change what God did for me. It doesn’t change the fact that He died for me; in fact it just shows me yet another reason why He died for me. He died to rescue me from the death and darkness and diseases of this world. He died to rescue me from the sin that brought about infertility in the first place. I firmly believe that if there was no fall, no sin, there would be no infertility. This cannot be how God intended it. Christ died so that I can one day be free of everything that fills this world, the sadness and darkness and depravity. This isn’t my destiny forever. Regardless of what happens today or tomorrow or next year, someday I will be free of all that grieves my heart. I will see my Savior and fall at His feet and for the first time truly understand what He did to set me free, what it cost Him to allow me to walk into His presence and spend eternity with Him.

My heart knows all that, my heart knows that this world is not the end, but it still hurts. It doesn’t change the fact that I still have to walk through this journey today and feel the weight of unfilled desires and unanswered pleas. I have hope that God has good things planned for our family, but I daily have to grapple with the fact that even if God never answers our prayers for a child, He is still good and sovereign and worthy of our praise. He is Adonai and Abba, both my Lord and my Father… my Savior whose grace daily sustains this beating heart.

My desires is to be able to be more open about where we've been and where we're going. I know we have a family that desires to walk with us through this journey and it is hard to be supportive when you don't even know what is happening... so here begins our postings about this arduous journey (that will hopefully have a sweet and beautiful ending sooner rather than later...).

Life

I know this post is going to be a little outdated now, but I'm slow at blogging and I finally have a little time to spew my thoughts out to whoever might still be reading our decrepit blog. As a bit of a preface, I'm a people pleaser by nature. I don't particularly like conflict and I have a tendency to try to see all sides of an issue before I say anything. It seems like a good quality, and can be at times, but sometimes it's a hindrance because everything can start to feel like it falls into a "grey" area and people oftentimes have strong opinions about something only until they get placed into that life situation and suddenly they see things from a whole new light. But isn't the whole point of a blog to share life and have a platform to speak on issues that I'm passionate about, regardless if they please the whole world? So this is me speaking out about something that I think does not fall in that "grey" area, something I'm quite passionate about.

I recently changed jobs, which has been an interesting experience. For the past few weeks when we've gone on break, the Casey Anthony trial has been on the tv in the break area. I don't really know much about the case to be honest, but a lot of people I work with have followed it pretty closely. On the day when the verdict came out, it was the talk of the day. A few people specifically requested to be able to get info about the verdict as soon as it came out, so that's what happened. When people heard the verdict, "not guilty," the whole room was full of people's shock and horror and anger. The most frequent comment I heard is that someone will probably try to take justice into their own hands and right the mistake made by the lawmakers of letting her get off so easily (except their language was a little more colorful). I sat back and watched all of these people get so worked up, so angry, so passionately horrified that such little justice was done for a beautiful three year old little girl. Many people thought the mother should have gotten the electric chair. Passionate anger. They felt she was a murderer through and through. I don't know what happened to that little girl and my heart breaks about the whole situation.

What struck me the most, however, is this fact: if that little girl, the same exact little girl with the same DNA, who would grow up to have that cute little face and the beautiful brown hair, if her life had been taken a few years earlier - no one would care. Most people wouldn't have known and most people who would know would probably advocate for her death. The nation wouldn't be horrified, it wouldn't be the talk of the day at work, people wouldn't get passionately angry and fight for her rights. Her mom could have walked into an abortion clinic, had her little girl removed from her womb, and that would have been the end of it right there. No trial, no uproar, no investigation.

How is it different? Why at three years is it murder, but at three weeks it's freedom of choice? At three years people want to put that mom to death, but at three weeks people stand up for her and fight for her right to live out life how she wants. Maybe it's at three weeks she decides she doesn't want her daughter, maybe it's at three years... aren't they one and the same? If it isn't alright at three years, why do we have such apathy at three weeks? "But it's not a child yet, it's only a fetus and has no rights... it's not a person... it's has no soul, no spirit, no rights..." Really? That child when it is born will have the same DNA, those little bundles of cells will turn into a little boy or girl that will smile and learn to talk and maybe change the world. But we make pathetic excuses to make ourselves feel better when life doesn't go our way and we want to avoid the inconvenience or the pain or the turmoil that might come with having an unplanned child. We somehow think that getting rid of that little pile of cells in our womb isn't murder. We tell ourselves that we aren't murdering our child. But that's what it is and it's what our nation has done. According to the CDC, over 800,000 abortions were reported in 2008 alone. I read that number and my stomach turned upside down, I wanted to throw up at the mere thought of it. Over 800,000 in one year? What are we doing as a nation? Freedom of choice? The freedom to choose is a right that exists before a child is conceived, not after.

I know there are women hurting and I know it's a hard issue and I know I'll never know all the circumstances involved, but there are no good excuses. Every life is precious, every life is a gift, and it makes me want to weep when people can view a child's life with such disregard. It's an issue that makes my blood boil. Equally as bad, however, is that we've made it a cultural norm and have lied to our teenagers with a message that abortion is an accessible, easy way out. We let them think that it's a way to make the issue disappear, yet fail to tell them they will carry those wounds for the rest of their life. There's no easy way out. That's not how life works.

I'll step off my pedestal now and say a few prayers that those mom's considering abortion would consider adoption instead - that those children would have a family to nurture them into the child God intended, a child who just might change the world.

Follow up

Let me set the record straight. We will not, and I repeat, will not become vegetarians. Period.

Prey

I was just staring out the patio door watching my puppy as she eyed a Robin. In the past week, she started chasing birds. It’s quite entertaining to watch because she hasn’t quite mastered the skill of stalking and she just starts wildly running through the yard after them. At this point, I’m not sure the Robin has much to be worried about. Oddly though, I found myself cheering for my pup – almost hoping she could catch the bird. Now I’m a huge softy at heart. For Pete’s sake, I’m the one who rescued seven baby raccoons from being smashed at a busy road crossing (but that’s another story). One day in high school I hit a cat while I was driving... I had to pull over because I was bawling so hard. I’m the one always cheering for the antelope to get away from the tiger on the jungle chases or the buffalo to outwit the lion. I cringe at the moment when they make a kill and the poor creature lies defenseless – it’s almost as if my very being cries out against it.

However, as I’ve watched my pup grow, I’ve seen again and again that her prey drive is woven into the very fabric of her being. Nobody taught her that, it’s just part of who she is. It’s how God made her. Now, knowing that was God’s design, why do I struggle so much with it? In the wild, if that tiger doesn’t catch the antelope (or whatever else it’s chasing) and that happens often enough, that tiger will die. Now the antelope can eat grass and whatever other plants it can find, but because the tiger needs meat, I cheer against it. Why is it better for one to die than the other?

As I sat and pondered my “soft heart,” it dawned on my just how much a hypocrite I am. I hate the thought of death, yet I don’t bat an eye at eating meat every night for dinner because I don’t have to see the process it goes through (unless I’m butchering chickens at the Ternes farm). I totally understand where vegetarians are coming from and their plight for people to really think about the food they eat. I’ve pondered becoming a vegetarian a time or two, knowing that my lifestyle affects the lives of numerous creatures. But watching my pup I started to think about it differently.

I firmly believe God didn’t originally design our planet to work in this fashion – with death of one creature being needed to bring life to another, and I don’t believe it will always be like this. One day Christ will return and there will be a new heaven and a new earth and I don’t think carnage will be a necessary part of it. However, right now, it is. And if I can’t accept that God designed it that way, than I need to reevaluate how I view God. Does that mean I’ll go hunting just for sport? No. Nor will I probably ever find any joy in seeing a creature die (and it will most likely always cause me to cry). I firmly believe that life should be highly valued and the weight of death strongly considered. I also believe humans are MUCH more valuable than animals. With that said, I do believe God designed some creatures to be prey and some creatures to be predators.

That statement reminds me of Romans 9 where it talks about God designing some people for noble purposes and some for common use, how some are designed to be objects of righteousness, and some objects of wrath. I don’t understand this, and I can’t say I really like it. If I could have my way, everyone would repent, and everyone would go to heaven, but that’s not the way it works. On the flip-side, I’m so grateful that we’re not all damned as we deserve to be, but that God has chosen to save some and desires for all to be saved. God is sovereign, He is good, and He is also just. Those things ALL must fit together. When I don’t understand a piece of it, I can’t just make up my own theology or discredit His design. After all, death had to come to His Son, a painful, bloody death, in order for me to be made righteous. God has a purpose in His plan and I need to accept the good parts, the bad parts, and the parts that I don’t understand.

Thanks pup for chasing that bird and bringing about a theological discussion in my head. I’ll try not to cry when you finally catch one some day.

Meet Savannah Mae

Time to get my bum into gear and start blogging again. No promises, but I’ll do my best to keep it up. Our most recent adventure was to buy a puppy and take on the hefty task of trying to raise and train her. I spent the last 9 months baby-sitting my nephews – with that in mind, I feel like I have my own two year old. Sometimes she’s sweet as a button and my heart just melts, but other times…. oh goodness… she can be a pistol! So without further ado, here’s our little lady – Miss Savannah.

7 weeks - the day we got her

8 weeks - with a delicious looking treat in her mouth

9 weeks - "Mom, isn't this how everyone sleeps?

10 weeks- getting ready to play with her favorite toy: a ball on a string

11 weeks - visiting my parent's house for the first time

She's pretty cute, I will admit! She had cute little floppy ears when we first got her, but a week later one ear went up and by the next week both were up. Based on her paws and big ears, we're thinking she might be one good sized German Shepherd. As long as she behaves she can get as big as she wants (if only she'd keep the puppy fur!).

Today she found a cockroach. I'd share the video, but it's kind of gross. She had a blast chasing it around... until it got stuck to her nose. It was pretty funny. It met its demise with a nice loud crunch that nearly had me gagging!

One final picture:
This is how she was sleeping one day last week. How can that possibly be comfortable?

Fun with my nephews

Silly faces

Making a fort

Hanging out in a makeshift house

Adorable smiles!