When John and I found out I was pregnant, we wanted to share our baby news with everyone we knew and we wanted to do it in person, because we wanted to witness the excitement on people's faces. We also wanted to share our baby news as fast as we could because exciting news should ALWAYS be shared! We planned a special way to announce the news to our families and we called the family members and friends that were too far away for us to drive to and we giggled out of joy with them.
And then someone said...
"Oh! You are only 6 weeks along? You are still in the danger zone!"
My smile went away and I began to worry. I worried because I had no idea if our baby was going to make it to full term...I worried because miscarriages are real. I worried because I was in the danger zone.
If I could go back and relive my early pregnancy days, I would worry less and enjoy each day a little more. I would repeat the verses below every morning and I would trust God's plans for our family.
"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Matthew 6:25-34
God has been teaching me that as Christ's child, I live in the danger zone all-the-time. Living a life of faith is the equivalent of walking into the great unknown! Danger is all around. When I opened my heart and declare to the God of the universe - "Not my will but thine" - I opened my life to all kinds of possibilities. When my desire is to bring glory to God through all circumstances, I have to get ready to bring him glory in the midst of jubilation and devastation. I have to remember that "all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." Colossians 1:16-17 Trusting God is hard and it requires me to be vulnerable and humble, but it is in the midst of my nothingness that God shows me exactly how great He is. When I come to him with an abandoned heart, He shows me that the plans He has prepared for me are far better than anything I could come up with on my own.
Sariah Faith made it to 39 weeks of gestation and was born full of life and personality. I have celebrated every day of life with her because every day with her is a gift, but I am still following Christ; asking Him to be the lamp unto my feet and the light unto my path. In other words, I am still living in the danger zone, asking him to lead me where my trust is without borders, having faith that I do not have to worry about anything.
So, here I go..."Highway to the Danger Zone...Gonna take you...Right into the Danger Zone...Highway to the Danger Zone..."
Monday, November 11, 2013
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Finding Joy in the Mess
My brain works better when things are organized, clean, filed ... I am a better person when everything is in its place and my "TO DO" list has a bunch of things crossed off.
Before I had a baby, my life was neat. I had time to make things pretty and I was always on time.
Before I had a baby, I imagined being able to continue living the same life once the baby arrived. I thought that if I was organized enough, I would still be able to clean, cook, do the laundry (including loads of cloth diapers), work on photography, read my Bible, hang out with friends, go grocery shopping, paint my nails, exercise, spend quality time with my husband, work on crafts, etc.
I didn't know that my world was about to change in the most terrifying and wonderful way.
For a while, I allowed frustration to set in when I couldn't get everything done that I planned to do. My TO DO list kept growing and growing and I kept praying that God would multiply the hours like he multiplied the fish and bread in the Bible.
God didn't multiply the hours, but he provided a community through MOPS that has helped me prioritize what is most important to me. I am learning that life is a beautiful mess and it is time to embrace it!
I looked around my house yesterday and was discouraged by how messy everything looked: clean dishes waiting to be put away, dirty dishes waiting to be cleaned, a load of dirty cloth diapers waiting to be washed, clean clothes waiting to be folded, emails waiting for a response...
I wanted to pack a bag and go out, ignoring all that had to be done, but it was cold and cloudy outside and I didn't have anywhere to go. I had a choice to make: Be grumpy about my current stage of life or embrace it all with a good attitude.
I turned on some worship music (worshiping God always does good to my soul), danced with Sariah while we wore out pajamas and slowly started working on the day's TO DO list. By the end of the day, I had accomplished quite a bit - not everything - and dinner was yummy!
Night time arrived and I was tired, Sariah was tired and John was not going to be home until late, so I decided it was time to have some fun relaxation with my baby girl! I got her in the bathtub and decided to join her. She was so excited to be with me she never even played with her bath toys. We just splashed and practiced whistling and sang songs and gave hugs and kisses. We had a wonderful time!
Our time together is precious and I don't want my life's mess to get in the way of finding joy in this stage of life. Some days are better than others, but I am working on leaning on God and doing the good works that He prepared in advance for me to do!
"For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." Ephesians 2:10
Monday, October 28, 2013
Church Mountain
We have been enjoying these past crispy clear Autumn days by spending some time hiking around Mt. Baker! John and I absolutely dislike spending time at a gym, but we love to be outside enjoying the Pacific Northwest beauty that surrounds us.
We were excited to hike Church Mountain with some friends and like always, we got our stuff ready to go the night before so we could get out the door a bit faster the day of the hike. Unfortunately, we managed to leave Sariah's carrier by the door and didn't realize it until we were almost at the trail.
Did I mention that Church Mountain is 8.5+ miles roundtrip with an elevation gain of 3750 ft?
Lets just say that we are NEVER going to forget to bring Sariah's carrier again! I was thankful that we were able to pass Sariah around from person to person, but that was still rough.
We improvised by attaching two tourniquets and using it as a sling to help hold Sariah's weight...and I thanked God Sariah is a light-weight baby!
This was a hard hike and the circumstances made it even harder, but the view was spectacular! We will definitely be coming back in the future with a carrier.
We were excited to hike Church Mountain with some friends and like always, we got our stuff ready to go the night before so we could get out the door a bit faster the day of the hike. Unfortunately, we managed to leave Sariah's carrier by the door and didn't realize it until we were almost at the trail.
Did I mention that Church Mountain is 8.5+ miles roundtrip with an elevation gain of 3750 ft?
Lets just say that we are NEVER going to forget to bring Sariah's carrier again! I was thankful that we were able to pass Sariah around from person to person, but that was still rough.
We improvised by attaching two tourniquets and using it as a sling to help hold Sariah's weight...and I thanked God Sariah is a light-weight baby!
This was a hard hike and the circumstances made it even harder, but the view was spectacular! We will definitely be coming back in the future with a carrier.
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Thirteen Months Old
Sariah...
- Likes to color with crayons
- Kicks her soccer ball around the house and invites others to play with her
- Had a rough month of sleepless nights
- Got her fourth tooth
- Likes to go on walks
- Attempts to say a few words: ball, apple, baby, there, this, that
- Gets a little nervous around animals
- Imitates everything mommy and daddy do
- Washes her own hair during bath time
- Gets excited when we put her shoes on because she knows we are going outside
- Is becoming more caring with her stuffed animals and even puts them to sleep on a pillow
- Plays peekaboo with anyone
- Has great problem solving skills and is very persistent
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
National Pregnancy & Infant Loss Remembrance Day
I read this post a couple of weeks ago and was deeply impacted by its message.
SUFFERING IN SILENCE NO MORE
'“So what happened last week?” the vendor asked, wondering why I’d disappeared for several days in the middle of a critical deadline. “Did you have the flu?”
“It was…” I trailed off, trying to decide how much I wanted to share with someone who was really more of a professional contact than a friend. “It was…lady stuff.”
Just like that, I slapped a vague label on the most excruciating loss of my life.
Mere days before this conversation took place, I was chipper and dreamy and carrying a baby. Then, in the course of one horrid day, it all unraveled. Now, I found myself sitting back in my office chair, stunned, grieving, and facing an urgent mountain of work.
I pawed my pile listlessly, wondering how the world could go on when mine had surely ended. All around me, keyboards chattered and telephones rang. Coworkers eyed me suspiciously, clearly not buying my excuse that I was ambiguously under the weather.
I’d just lost a baby. And it had dropped me into a hell of despair so deep that it hurt just to breathe.
So, why was I keeping it a secret?
Miscarriage is death. It brings with it all the agonizing grief that comes with losing a loved one. But miscarriage is also a taboo topic. It’s the very reason that we hide our pregnancies during those first dicey months, fretfully waiting for the danger to abate before making any announcements.
When bad news comes, couples that lose a pregnancy tend to mourn in secret, telling only close friends and family about their loss.
There are no funerals. No memorials. You don’t get sympathy cards and bereavement time. Instead, routines go on, and you take sick days.
We reduce a miracle to a topic not fit for polite conversation.
An estimated one in seven pregnancies ends in miscarriage. Each year in the U.S. alone, over 700,000 babies don’t survive to be born. Millions of people must be mourning them. So, where are they?
As a society, we let ourselves believe the lie that miscarriage is a minor event in a woman’s life. “It happens all the time,” people tell you, as if knowledge of its frequency will put the loss in perspective. (Imagine giving that same line to someone who just lost a grandparent.)
“It really wasn’t a baby yet” is another line people glibly offer. Or, “You hardly even knew you were pregnant.”
I ultimately had two miscarriages, both at about 10 weeks. Both times, I knew I was pregnant for nearly two months.
That’s a lot of mornings to wake up enchanted that there’s a child growing inside you. It’s many long afternoons of fatigue, strange cravings, and nausea. It’s countless cups of decaf coffee and glasses of wine declined. It’s 60 prenatal vitamins.
I don’t blame society for being so callous about pregnancy loss. If nobody ever tells people how much it hurts, how are they to know that miscarriage is such a big deal? Why shouldn’t they think that it is no worse than blowing a job interview or having your team lose the big game?
As with so many verboten topics, perhaps the answer is simply for people to be more open. To stop pretending that if we ignore miscarriage, it won’t hurt.
Years later, I still think about that miserable afternoon at work and how much easier it would have been if I’d just exhaled the truth. If I could have let people say, “I’m so sorry.” If I hadn’t had to pretend that it was a normal day even as I was in the grips of soul-swallowing grief.
Because the only thing worse than losing something that meant the world to you is pretending that you lost nothing."
Author
- Jody Pratt
Please re-share for your friends and family. Hopefully it will help this taboo topic, be taboo no longer. So many women, men, and even others close to the couple, have experienced this heartbreaking pain alone.
VIsit Jodi's words here:
http://www.babble.com/pregnancy/coping-with-miscarriage-pregnancy-secret/
SUFFERING IN SILENCE NO MORE
'“So what happened last week?” the vendor asked, wondering why I’d disappeared for several days in the middle of a critical deadline. “Did you have the flu?”
“It was…” I trailed off, trying to decide how much I wanted to share with someone who was really more of a professional contact than a friend. “It was…lady stuff.”
Just like that, I slapped a vague label on the most excruciating loss of my life.
Mere days before this conversation took place, I was chipper and dreamy and carrying a baby. Then, in the course of one horrid day, it all unraveled. Now, I found myself sitting back in my office chair, stunned, grieving, and facing an urgent mountain of work.
I pawed my pile listlessly, wondering how the world could go on when mine had surely ended. All around me, keyboards chattered and telephones rang. Coworkers eyed me suspiciously, clearly not buying my excuse that I was ambiguously under the weather.
I’d just lost a baby. And it had dropped me into a hell of despair so deep that it hurt just to breathe.
So, why was I keeping it a secret?
Miscarriage is death. It brings with it all the agonizing grief that comes with losing a loved one. But miscarriage is also a taboo topic. It’s the very reason that we hide our pregnancies during those first dicey months, fretfully waiting for the danger to abate before making any announcements.
When bad news comes, couples that lose a pregnancy tend to mourn in secret, telling only close friends and family about their loss.
There are no funerals. No memorials. You don’t get sympathy cards and bereavement time. Instead, routines go on, and you take sick days.
We reduce a miracle to a topic not fit for polite conversation.
An estimated one in seven pregnancies ends in miscarriage. Each year in the U.S. alone, over 700,000 babies don’t survive to be born. Millions of people must be mourning them. So, where are they?
As a society, we let ourselves believe the lie that miscarriage is a minor event in a woman’s life. “It happens all the time,” people tell you, as if knowledge of its frequency will put the loss in perspective. (Imagine giving that same line to someone who just lost a grandparent.)
“It really wasn’t a baby yet” is another line people glibly offer. Or, “You hardly even knew you were pregnant.”
I ultimately had two miscarriages, both at about 10 weeks. Both times, I knew I was pregnant for nearly two months.
That’s a lot of mornings to wake up enchanted that there’s a child growing inside you. It’s many long afternoons of fatigue, strange cravings, and nausea. It’s countless cups of decaf coffee and glasses of wine declined. It’s 60 prenatal vitamins.
I don’t blame society for being so callous about pregnancy loss. If nobody ever tells people how much it hurts, how are they to know that miscarriage is such a big deal? Why shouldn’t they think that it is no worse than blowing a job interview or having your team lose the big game?
As with so many verboten topics, perhaps the answer is simply for people to be more open. To stop pretending that if we ignore miscarriage, it won’t hurt.
Years later, I still think about that miserable afternoon at work and how much easier it would have been if I’d just exhaled the truth. If I could have let people say, “I’m so sorry.” If I hadn’t had to pretend that it was a normal day even as I was in the grips of soul-swallowing grief.
Because the only thing worse than losing something that meant the world to you is pretending that you lost nothing."
Author
- Jody Pratt
Please re-share for your friends and family. Hopefully it will help this taboo topic, be taboo no longer. So many women, men, and even others close to the couple, have experienced this heartbreaking pain alone.
VIsit Jodi's words here:
http://www.babble.com/pregnancy/coping-with-miscarriage-pregnancy-secret/
Monday, October 14, 2013
Sleepless Nights
I did not read a whole lot about sleep training a baby when I was pregnant, but I did spend a lot of time praying that God would bless me with a child that loves to sleep. My prayers were inspired by the fact that I cannot function without sleep. I pretty much become Godzilla when I don't sleep well for a couple of nights in a row.
The newborn days were hard because babies have no concept of time and want to nurse every2 minutes 2 hours. I felt constantly tired and wondered if I was ever going to feel like a normal human being again.
God heard my prayers and Sariah started sleeping through the night when she was 2 months old. I felt like a new person the morning I woke up and realized I had slept a whole night without any interruptions.
I wish I could say that Sariah continued to be a great sleeper...but the reality tells a different story.
This past summer, Sariah got a cold and then she got a couple of teeth and then she got Roseola and as a result, woke up multiple times a night. I let her nurse as much as she wanted because she felt comforted and safe. When she got all better, I expected her to go back to her old sleep patterns but it never happened. Sariah continued to wake up once a night to nurse and while I was slightly annoyed, I figured that getting up once a night for 10 minutes was not bad.
Our little sleeper turned one year old three weeks ago and for some unknown reason, decided to start a new sleeping routine which includes hours of screaming in the middle of the night. Sariah goes down to sleep just fine and wakes up at 3:00AM screaming. I always let her nurse and put her back in her crib, but she continues to scream for the next 2.5 hours. John and I are SO tired!
For 2.5 hours I sit in her room, encouraging her to lay down, assuring her that she is okay, telling her it is night-night time... while praying for supernatural patience and love.
These last couple of weeks have been extremely challenging to me and I can truly say that my prayer life is very active.
I keep hoping that tonight will be different and that this is just a stage, but sometimes when I am up for hours in the middle of the night, I start wondering if it is going to be like this forever. My logical self reminds me that Sariah will eventually sleep through the night again, but my emotional and tired self whispers that if this is the new normal, our child is never going to have a sibling because I can't handle having another child that will keep me up like this.
I am being reminded almost constantly that I need to lean on God for strength. I am thankful that the Spirit reminds me that I can find rest in the arms of my Father.
The newborn days were hard because babies have no concept of time and want to nurse every
God heard my prayers and Sariah started sleeping through the night when she was 2 months old. I felt like a new person the morning I woke up and realized I had slept a whole night without any interruptions.
I wish I could say that Sariah continued to be a great sleeper...but the reality tells a different story.
This past summer, Sariah got a cold and then she got a couple of teeth and then she got Roseola and as a result, woke up multiple times a night. I let her nurse as much as she wanted because she felt comforted and safe. When she got all better, I expected her to go back to her old sleep patterns but it never happened. Sariah continued to wake up once a night to nurse and while I was slightly annoyed, I figured that getting up once a night for 10 minutes was not bad.
Our little sleeper turned one year old three weeks ago and for some unknown reason, decided to start a new sleeping routine which includes hours of screaming in the middle of the night. Sariah goes down to sleep just fine and wakes up at 3:00AM screaming. I always let her nurse and put her back in her crib, but she continues to scream for the next 2.5 hours. John and I are SO tired!
For 2.5 hours I sit in her room, encouraging her to lay down, assuring her that she is okay, telling her it is night-night time... while praying for supernatural patience and love.
These last couple of weeks have been extremely challenging to me and I can truly say that my prayer life is very active.
I keep hoping that tonight will be different and that this is just a stage, but sometimes when I am up for hours in the middle of the night, I start wondering if it is going to be like this forever. My logical self reminds me that Sariah will eventually sleep through the night again, but my emotional and tired self whispers that if this is the new normal, our child is never going to have a sibling because I can't handle having another child that will keep me up like this.
I am being reminded almost constantly that I need to lean on God for strength. I am thankful that the Spirit reminds me that I can find rest in the arms of my Father.
Friday, October 4, 2013
Who You Are
I have watched this video a couple of times today, because one never gets tired of receiving words of encouragement.
May we never forget our worth in the eyes of our Creator. It is time to find that woman and set that woman free!
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