Baby Talk

Hi friends, 

I am pregnant.  I am very pregnant.  39 weeks and 4 days pregnant to be exact.  Our little one could come any day now.  

It's been quite some time since I've written, hasn't it? And now I'm showing up with a blog post that isn't even original.  Well, I wrote it.  But I originally wrote this to share with a group I was involved in at church.  But I think I'm ready to share it with you now.  Hope it speaks to someone out there.  So here it is:

The past year has been the hardest and the most amazing time of my life.  And that is because God is a God of restoration.

The enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy.  And he did.  Last December, I found out that I was pregnant, only to lose our sweet little one that same week.

When we lost our child, I felt like I lost just about everything.  I hid inside of the pain.  I lashed out at my husband because he didn’t seem to be feeling the pain the same way I was.  I stopped returning phone calls.  And worship? What was once a time of freedom seemed like a time of torture.  Did I really even believe what I was singing?  Was I ever going to feel like I could sing without having to try to choke back tears?  I didn’t feel like I could talk to anybody about my loss.  It was just too hard. It hurt too much to talk about it.  And then I had to deal with compassion, and I’ve never been very good at receiving that.  So please don’t be hurt if this is your first time learning about this.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t count you as a close friend.  It’s just not an easy thing to bring up in a conversation.  “Hey!  How are you?”  “Well, my life seems to be imploding right now.  How are you?”  

The loss affected everything.  My friendships were suffering.  My marriage was suffering.  My job was suffering.  My faith was suffering. 

I still believed that God was sovereign, but I was searching for answers.  Why?  Why did I lose my child when his or her little life was just beginning?  Why did anyone who wanted a child lose them, while so many people were having children they didn’t even want?  Why didn’t I feel like I could talk to any of my friends about it?  Why wasn’t my husband grieving the same way I was?  How did this fit in God’s plan?  Was I supposed to learn some big lesson? 

And today, I still don’t have the answers.  And that’s ok.  In that dark time, I was able –by the grace of God- to hold on to what I knew was true.  God is sovereign.  God has a plan.  God is good. 

I still hurt.  A lot.  I’m still fighting tears as I write this.  But God is healing my hurt, little by little. 

On Easter Sunday, after a morning of celebrating resurrection and how life defeated death, we found out that we were expecting a little one again.  A few weeks later I was looking back through my journal, reflecting.  I was flipping through December, and saw an entry I wrote in the midst of the miscarriage.  I froze up, got chills, and broke down all at once.  We lost our first child on December 17^th, 2011.  And the new little one is due to arrive on December 17^th, 2012. 

What does it all mean?  Does it mean that every loss we experience will be filled within a year?  No.  But it is an amazing reminder to me of God’s faithfulness, His love for me, and His love for my children. 

So please, when you’re hurting, when you searching for answers, remember: God loves deeply.  God hurts when we hurt.  God brings life out of what Satan kills.  God restores, redeems, and renews.

New Numbers

Hello!  

Here's another one of our little projects we've done recently- updating our house number.  

When we moved in, they looked like this:

Not bad, but pretty hard to see at night.  (We don't have exterior lights on the front of the house.  It's on the to-do list.)

The first step of our little makeover was taking the numbers down.  We took out the screws, but then had to pry them off with a flat-head screw driver. 

Once they were all down, I spread them out on a tarp.  

Here's what they looked like after 1 coat of oil-rubbed bronze spray paint:

And after 3 coats:

After a fresh coat of paint on the house and waiting a few hours, the Hubs put it all back up for me.

Looks nice, right?

We like it.  Hope you do too!

The Last 3 Weeks

In the last 3 weeks we/I:
-celebrated the Hubs' birthday
-celebrated Sawyer's birthday
-celebrated my birthday
-were both in a wedding
-organized a production at church
-hosted a Bible study
-taught three classes
-went on a retreat
-took my worship team kids to sing at a nursing home
-attempted to nurse a sick husband back to health
-tried to not get sick

So yeah, it's been a busy few weeks.

Also, since the last time I blogged, we've been doing lots of little projects around the house.  One of them was taking down the border in our bathroom.  This is what it used to look like:

And this is what our floor looked like halfway through.  Messy.  A wallpaper border graveyard.  

Because our bathroom doesn't have a fan (it's on the to-do list), the humidity has been prepping the border for removal for a long time.  It was much easier than I thought it would be!  (Unlike the guest room wallpaper, which has been much more difficult than expected.)

When I climbed up near our toilet, I got a glimpse of the top of our little medicine cabinet.  And I cringed.  SO MUCH DUST!  I am not good housekeeper.  Don't worry, once I finished taking down the border, I dusted it.  

By the time I finished with my little afternoon project, my arms were apparently too tired to take "after" pictures.  No worries, though.  I found these- along with an opportunity to embarrass myself.  Hehehehe... 

Before we get there, here's back-story.  During my last year of college, I moved in with 2 strangers who became some of my best friends within a few months.  And while we lived together, it became tradition to take pictures while we were brushing our teeth.  So when the little lady and her hubby came to visit a few weeks ago, we had to revisit that tradition.  

So feel free to laugh at our goofiness.  

And check out the lack of border in our bathroom!

So there you have it.  More mini make-overs to come.

Loss

I've been wanting to write about this for a while, but haven't known where to start.  So I'll just keep writing and see where this ends up.

We've all experienced loss, right?  Loss of health, loss of time, loss of friends.  Most of us have experience the loss of a loved one.  The loss of a job, a loss of financial security, a loss of patience.

I've recently lost.  And partly because I want to spare you the details and mostly because I'm just not ready to go into it on the world wide web, I'm going to leave it at that.  I've lost.  And it sucks.

But in the midst of the suckiness, I'm finding hope.  Love.  Peace.  Comfort.

From some friends.

From some family.

From my sweet husband.

From my faithful God.

One of my other sources of hope, of comfort, is music.  Music has an ability to cut through emotional walls and pierce our souls.  And music paired with lyrics that are overflowing with truth is one of the most powerful modes of communication I can think of.

Since you've lost in the past, and will lose something sometime in the future, I wanted to share 2 songs that have meant a lot to me recently.

He's Always Been Faithful by Sara Groves is an all-time favorite of mine.  I couldn't find an official music video to link to, but just please do yourself a favor and go look it up so you can listen to it.  Here are the lyrics:

  Morning by morning I wake up to find
  The power and comfort of God's hand in mine
  Season by season I watch Him amazed 

  In awe of the mystery of His perfect ways

  All I have need of, His hand will provide
  He's always been faithful to me

  I can't remember a trial or a pain 

  He did not recycle to bring me gain 

  I can't remember one single regret 

  In serving God only and trusting His hand

  This is my anthem, this is my song

  The theme of the stories I've heard for so long
  God has been faithful, He will be again
  His loving compassion, it knows no end

  All I have need of, His hand will provide
  He's always been faithful to me


The other song that has meant so much to me in the last month and a half is Give Me Faith by Elevation Worship.  Here's a Give Me Faith video you can watch.  Here are the simple and super powerful lyrics:


    I need You to soften my heart
    To break me apart
    I need You to open my eyes
    To see that You're shaping my life
    All I am, I surrender

    Give me faith to trust what You say
    That You're good and Your love is great
    I'm broken inside, I give You my life


    I need You to soften my heart
    To break me apart
    I need You to pierce through the dark
    And cleanse every part of me
    I may be weak
    But Your spirit's strong in me
    My flesh may fail
    My God You never will


Little by little, I'm crawling out of this pit of loss.  Well, mostly I'm being pulled out; I can't take the credit.  Some days I don't want to talk to anybody.  I just want to sit in bed and cry and feel sorry for myself.  But most days I have peace.  A peace that I can't even begin to understand.  But I know Who it's coming from.


God has been faithful, He will be again.  


I think that will be my theme for 2012.