The Lord Giveth...

In the past few weeks, I’ve had a lot on my mind regarding the upcoming events of life that will forever change our family. Without going into a whole lot of detail, I will say that the biggest event will be the birth of our second child.

This is going to be a long post today, because before I get started, I’m going to give a brief history of how we got to this point in our lives.

Drew and I met in the fall of 2005, my last semester of high school. We started dating over Christmas break, and I never returned to school. I call him my high school sweetheart, but I guess that isn’t totally true. Anyway…he didn’t graduate until May 2007 and we were married in July of 2007.

Before he would marry us, our preacher gave us a premarital counseling workbook to fill out together (then he met with us later to further discuss and work out any issues). The biggest point of this workbook was to open communication lines about difficult topics we would face in our marriage. One of the topics was the number of children we each desired and when we planned to have them. We decided we wanted to wait four years before trying to have any children.

I can’t remember exactly how the conversations went or the specific reasons why, but that idea flew out the window pretty much immediately after we were married. We just couldn’t wait to start a beautiful little family. Of course, life didn’t go exactly how we planned. The army was partially to blame for our obstacles, but we also discovered through fertility testing that it would be nearly impossible to conceive on our own.  Many of the doctors and nurses looked at us like we were crazy when they found out our age and the fact that not only were we trying to get pregnant, but we were willing to do just about anything to make sure it happened. For a long time we kept very quiet about our desires and our struggles, and it’s still not something I feel 100% comfortable discussing.

However, you all know that story has a happy ending because obviously we are the proud parents of a 2 ½ year old. We truly consider him to be a gift from God, because in reality, it shouldn’t have been that easy for us! We are so grateful for him and the fact that we didn’t spend years in the infertility clinic.

I was 100% content with one child and certain that I never wanted to go through all of that again. Also, I went back to college and had the dreams of a dental hygiene degree in front of me. Another child would only complicate everything. Anytime the topic came up, Drew would agree to whatever I said, realizing that I truly do a lot of the parenting on my own, due to his job.

About a year and a half ago, I started having a lot of health issues. Scary words like Ovarian Cancer started surfacing in conversations with doctors. At the time I just wanted “everything” taken out and to be done with all the issues. However, no doctor is willing to do that to a 23 year old woman unless it is an absolute necessity. After about 5 months of pain, testing, poking and prodding, I was thankfully given a clean bill of health and we were able to resolve all of the issues.

 As you can imagine, the conversation of more children came up A LOT during this time, and I started to notice the heartache in my husband’s eyes. I always knew he wanted more children, but he was willing to sacrifice his wishes to keep me happy. (I really married a stellar guy, if I haven’t told you all 1000 times already!) So after a change of heart on my side, we had literally a five minute conversation that ended in our agreement to try again. However, we also agreed that if it was meant to be, it would be. Neither one of us were willing to pursue to the route we previously took. So we decided to leave it all up to God. This might be a little too much information, but literally one month later, right after our 4 year wedding anniversary, we found out I was pregnant!

While we were both VERY excited, neither one of us were expecting results so soon! After a few months of disbelief and denial, I finally accepted the fact that this was really happening. However, I still have a lot weighing on my mind in regards to the timing. My husband is currently attending one of the Army’s   (well technically Navy’s…) most challenging schools, with an extremely high attrition rate. While we are thrilled he will (hopefully) get to be there for the birth of this child (he was in Afghanistan when Houston was born), newborns don’t exactly make things easier on an already exhausted and mentally drained father. Also, his 10 days of paternity leave, which are usually a welcome treat to a new mom, will set him back further and put him in with a different set of peers approximately halfway through the course. I should also add that although he is physically here, between the hours of 4:40 AM and about 6:00 PM he is totally unreachable via cell phone or anything else….which might not seem like a big deal, but you’d be surprised how many issues arise during those hours that a simple text or phone call could fix almost immediately. That’s really a minor annoyance and inconvenience to me though. More than anything, I am feeling guilty for the stress he will be under.

This brings me back to the point of today’s post…. Here I am feeling scared to death and completely stressed out over having a second child for the above reasons and a long list of more that I won’t go into detail about….

Last night the season finale of 19 Kids and Counting was on TV. Although I don’t watch the show regularly, I like to watch it when I can catch it. (Don’t judge too harshly!! LOL) Drew rolls his eyes every time I turn it on, but he sits there and watches it with me! While I don’t agree with ALL of their views, for the most part I feel they are right on target. It’s refreshing to watch a reality TV show with positive messages and a faith based family behind the cameras. For those of you who don’t watch or know what has happened to them recently, they are in the mid-40’s with 19 kids. Michelle, the mom, was expecting her 20^th child. At her midpoint ultrasound it was discovered that the baby no longer had a heartbeat. Three days later she gave birth to the body of a little girl, about 18 weeks old, who they named Jubilee. As I watched the episode with tear-filled eyes, I was in awe of how they were handling the situation. They kept saying “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” (a translation of Job 1:21, which the NIV translates as “….The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised”).  In this episode they had a memorial service for their daughter and said goodbye. Throughout all of this, although they were mourning a loss, they remained positive and kept thanking God for the gift of her life, even though it was so short.

Needless to say, this really shook me out of the funk I have been in lately. For whatever reason, God has blessed Drew and me with two sons, and his timing is always the right timing. Although I might be stressing over issues such as our financial situation, I trust that the Lord will find a way for us. He always has, and trust me, we’ve been in situations worse than this before! I will continue to pray for my husband and his success at school, however I know if this new career path isn’t God’s will for him, then we must accept it too. Any changes in life are scary, so I’m not going to say that I’m totally at ease with the new tasks I will be undertaking soon as a mother of two. However, I know I can get through it, and I’m actually starting to get really excited.

For those who are so eager to ask, “Is this it?” all I am willing to say is, “We’ll see”. J

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” James 1:17

Feeling Blessed at the Beach

We have lived here in Florida for close to six weeks now, and honestly the time has flown by! We are almost completely settled into our house and are becoming more familiar with our surrounding area.

This afternoon we decided to enjoy the nice 80 degree weather at the beach, which is a short 15-30 minute drive from our house, depending on which beach we choose. The water here is absolutely breathtaking – aqua blue and crystal clear! The sand is soft and white and adds to the beauty. Since we came from North Carolina, where neither is really the case, and loved the beaches there, you can imagine this is like heaven! Today we chose the first public beach we came to on Okaloosa Island, so it isn’t too far into the tourist areas and it isn’t exclusively military (which is another option here….).

I enjoyed the first 40 minutes or so of our stay relaxing in my beach chair and reading a book, while Drew kept Houston occupied. Then a group of four military wives, alone with their children, claimed their spot about 8 feet away from me, completely within hearing distance.

If you know me even a little bit, you know that I am very selective in which military wives I socialize and associate myself with. Just because our husbands work together, doesn’t mean I want to or have to be your best friend. I have very good reasons for doing this, although it may come off a little snobby to some. I choose my friends based on similar interests and values. There can be far too much competition and cattiness in groups of women, neither of which I have a desire to take part in. Also, if you know both of us as a couple, you know that we don’t usually advertise the fact that my husband is in the military. It’s his job, not the only thing that defines us….

As I was reading, and involuntarily eavesdropping to their conversations, several topics really started to bother me. The discussion started out with one of them asking if another’s husband had made it to the next promotion level yet. (Competition….) Rank is a tricky and tacky subject matter, in my opinion. I listened to them gossip about their husbands’ duty assignments and coworkers’ wives for quite a while….

Then one of the other women, who moved here from the same place in NC that we did, started whining about being here. Now this may come off as hypocritical on my part, since I have done my share of complaining about the circumstances. However, most of that stemmed from the fact that I moved here and set up ALONE  (which we found out isn’t nearly as easy as you might think). A hormonal woman in a completely new place, without her husband’s help in dealing with the military issues, is allowed a few breakdowns.  Anyway…. Her main complaint was that all we have here is the beach. She misses the shopping we had in Fayetteville and the surrounding areas in NC. This I found to be comical! I will admit there are a few stores Fayetteville had that I truly miss (Hobby Lobby, Salon Centric, and Babies R Us), but those stores are only an hour away from here, in Pensacola, and there are so many MORE stores within a shorter distance! There is a mall in Mary Esther that is much nicer, in my opinion, than Fayetteville. It has almost all the same stores, and I wouldn’t be afraid of a shooting in the parking lot on Black Friday!! There is a pretty big outdoor mall in Destin with variety I would equate to Raleigh, and whatever you can’t find there is located just a little further at the outlet mall in Sandestin. So I am not sure exactly where she shops, but that was definitely an entertaining complaint.  A few phrases came to mind as I listened to her….Bloom where you are planted. Look on the bright side. Make the most of every situation (or in her case duty station!!).

Then the conversation turned to one of the women who was noticeably far along in her pregnancy. They started discussing baby showers and family members who would and wouldn’t be coming. I listened to this woman complain for quite a while about her husband and mother-in-law. She told the others her mother-in-law would be coming to visit and started listing off everything that drives her crazy about her being there. I won’t go into great detail, but this particular complaint hit close to home for me. Granted, we all have troubles with our in-laws and even our “blood” family, but that’s what makes a family normal! I am actually very sad for my mother-in-law because she won’t be able to come down after Cameron is born. Since I don’t know when or even IF we will get to visit Wyoming this year, I have no idea when she will even get to meet her new grandson.

So, to wrap all this up, my point was that today I was feeling 100% grateful for everything in my life right now. A positive attitude can totally change a person’s perspective. Of course most of you have heard me complain about the weird military rules here we aren’t used to, the higher cost of living, etc, but now that I have opened my eyes, I am realizing what a blessing it is for us to be here. We will only be here until the end of the year, but we’ve already made some great new friends, we found a wonderful church to worship with, and we are getting to enjoy, in my opinion, some of God’s most beautiful creations! I intend to make the most of the situation God has put me in! I know sometimes I probably sound just like those women at the beach, who had virtually nothing positive to talk about, but it’s my goal to live my life with a smile and a cheerful heart. I want people to remember my laugh, not my scowl!

“Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18