My "Sweet Caroline"

Caroline arrived at 4:59 PM on Monday, June 8th. What a precious little girl she is. I can't believe she's 6 weeks old already! I have been busy and haven't had much time to blog, but thought I'd post some pictures. Thanks for all the kind comments asking where I've been. I hope to spend more time blogging again in the future.

I decided to jump in and give cloth diapering a try this time around. My friends (and especially hubby) thought I was nuts. Well, it's been 2 weeks and I'm not at all interested in turning back. I'm saving sooooo much money and my little Caroline's bottom is not being exposed to chlorine 24/7. I do one load of diapers every 3rd day and my cloth dipes leak far less than disposables. It really is so easy! Here's Caroline in her One Size Fuzzi Bunz - sorry about the poor quality cell phone pic.


And just a few more pics of the girls enjoying a day at Mrs. Erin's pool =)

I'm still here...

It has been a long, long time! Lots has been happening in my life these past few months. The biggest has been preparing for baby Caroline, who is due in just 2 days! I have had some episodes of labor that nearly had me calling the hospital, but would fade after just a few hours. Just trying to be patient while waiting. Patience is a virtue!

An update to my past prayer requests:
Dave is more than half-way through chemo and is doing wonderfully. We have seen God's hand of healing and provision the entire time. The doctor's have been very pleased with the results of his treatment so far. Please continue to pray for complete healing!

Erin had an uncomplicated C-section and her beautiful, sweet little girl is now 2 months old!

We've also prayed and watched in wonder as God has preserved and protected my dear friend, Mary Lou and her new little boy, Ben. Mary Lou delivered Ben by emergency C-section at only 28 weeks gestation due to HELLP sydrome. Praise God Mary Lou is doing great and healing nicely. Ben has grown from 2 lbs, 1 oz to 2 lbs, 14 oz and is also doing very well.

But, the real reason I have dusted off my blog is because God has been laying some things on my heart that are just too lengthy to share in a Facebook status ;-). For months, actually over a year, we as a church have been seeking God for revival. We have been praying, really praying, for an outpouring of His Spirit in our church and our families, that would spill out all over our towns and counties, our state and our nation. We have spent many hours in all-night prayer meetings and have wept many tears at the altar in repentance and in prayer for the lost. And we are beginning to see God really move in our midst!

But the past few weeks, while at church, I have felt a little discouraged. Not because I don't think that God is answering. I know that He is! Discouraged as I watch people on their knees, crying out to God while I'm playing referee between my 2 children. Discouraged as I'm holding my 4 year old to keep her still and reminding my oldest that it is time to pray. I sometimes feel like I'm just not effective, or even wonder why I am there if only spend the entire worship service caring for my children. And even worried over how I'm going to keep my 2 oldest in order all by myself once Caroline arrives (hubby is worship leader and is busy playing drums). But God whispered some reminders to me this past week. They were precious words to my heart and I thought they were too good not to share. I know that there are many mothers out there who can echo my feelings.

God gently reminded me that there will eventually come a time when I don't have children fussing next to me, but on their knees, praying with me. The time I spend with them now, teaching them to pray, to worship with all thankfulness, to seek God's face, and many times just to be reverent and respectful while others are praying is priceless. These children that He has blessed me with are our future congregation; our future worship leaders, and Sunday School teachers, and elders and pastors (actually elder's wives and pastor's wives...since I have all girls). They are the ones who will very soon be on their knees, crying out to God for revival and for the souls of the lost. My time each Sunday is not at all wasted, but so desperately needed at this time where real disciples of Christ are becoming fewer and fewer; where persecution of Christians is becoming a reality even in America, and where their lives as followers of Christ will most certainly require so much more strength and courage and grace that will only come from a real and living relationship with their Savior. He has placed me here at this phase in my life "for such a time as this."

And He also reminded me that my focused prayer time is still powerful and effective, regardless of whether it is with the congregation during Sunday morning service or alone in the early morning hours while the rest of the house is asleep. There are other times that I can spend in prayer, seeking God's face. At 2 AM when I can't sleep due to heartburn or contractions now, or later when I'm up for middle of the night feedings. I can worship Him as I'm folding laundry or washing dishes. I can praise him together with the girls as we sing in the car or dance in the living room. We can pray together for lost loved ones while we're in the car, driving to see them. What a blessing God has given me in these precious little ones; and what an enormous responsibility He has entrusted me with.

We mothers must never make light of the importance of our role on Sunday mornings!

I have more blogs brewing in my mind. Hopefully, soon, I'll have time to sit down and share them too.

Some prayer requests and an update

It's been weeks since I've blogged...again. Life has been busy and full. Today I am praying for some very dear friends and ask that you would pray with me.

A very dear and looooonnnng time friend, Dave, is having his first treatment of chemo today for Follicular Lymphoma. He is young, a father to 5 children from age 7-20. Please pray for God's healing and for His peace that passes all understanding. My heart breaks for him and his family as they walk this path. Please pray that God's awesome power will be shown and lives would be changed for His glory through all of this!

Another dear friend, Erin, is scheduled for a c-section this morning. This is her first baby and it is very breech. Pray for a safe and healthy delivery and easy recovery.

My hubby and I had a WONDERFUL getaway to a beautiful, rather warm climate. It was so perfect! Just the break we needed in the middle of the craziness of life to reconnect and spend good quality time together.

And just for fun, a few pics of my girls having fun at homeschool co-op. We are very blessed to have a great professional photographer as part of our co-op who so graciously wandered around with her camera the other day to get some great candid shots for the yearbook. Thanks Susan!

And this shot was taken by my good friend, Mary Lou - AKA Miss Lou Lou :-)

And finally, I have 10 weeks and 5 days left until my due date! I can't believe I'm almost there! Can't wait to hold our sweet Caroline!

It's a...

We still have to decide on a name, but she looks healthy and is developing right on target for my due date. Maia is getting over her disappointment rather quickly, and Hannah is ecstatic! As soon as the U/S tech told us the sex, Hannah looked at Maia and said, "See! I told you it's a girl!"

In Sweet Memory

The due date for our little one that we lost in May came and went this weekend, with no labor pains and no big "It's a ________" balloons in the yard. It was just a regular weekend of laundry and errands and shopping. Although I'm now 13 weeks along in my pregnancy with this baby, I will never, ever forget our sweet beloved baby waiting for us in Heaven.

A sigh of relief

I had my 12 week sono on Friday. To say I was nervous would be a understatement. After losing my last baby at 11 weeks, I had been preparing myself for bad news. But God has been so good to me. What a wonderful thing it was to see my baby alive and moving! I had never had an ultrasound at 12 weeks before. I compared this photo with my 6 week sono. I had no idea how much development occurs in just 6 short weeks. Our Creator is AMAZING!

There are no secrets in the family of God...

Secrets are really, really hard to keep around here! I mean, really, really hard! So my secret is out and maybe God just wanted it that way. For those of you who didn't already find out through divine intervention of sorts, here is a little picture to clue you in...

Yes, we are just about 7 weeks pregnant! My due date is June 7th. I had planned all along to wait until Thanksgiving to reveal our little surprise, as I would be past the first trimester by then, but I believe God just had other plans. From running into my sister while waiting for my ultrasound appointment, to others just out right asking (I could never tell a lie!), maybe it was a secret that was just never meant to be kept. *BTW:This is relatively new news, so if you asked recently and I told you no...I really thought the answer was no at the time.* Those who now know keep saying "how could we pray if we didn't know?" They are right.

So this is my prayer request as well. That God will protect this little one and bring it safely into this world, and that He would grant me the peace that I will need just 5 months after such a painful loss. Thank you to all of my friends and family who have been praying and praying, and waiting, and praying... And to those crazy bestest friends of mine who even secretly kept track of my cycle and were watching each month for any tiny little sign that I might maybe possibly be pregnant...you know who you are and I know about your little scheming :0)

Amazingly, I have already seen a healthy heartbeat by ultrasound. The u/s tech was astonished that she was able to find it so early (not even 6 weeks at the time). I felt like that was just a little gift from God to ease my fears that day. I have been feeling quite nauseated, which is a new thing for me, and chronically exhausted. So I'm not sure how long I would have been able to keep it a secret anyway. It isn't easy to act like my normal happy enthusiastic self when I feel like I need to puke and go to bed for a week.

BTW: I would still like to wait until after my next ultrasound to tell the girls, so please try to keep it quiet when they're nearby. It would be nice if this just trickled quietly through the grapevine.

Praise God for His protection...again!

My "baby" sister, Laura just gave birth to her first child, a precious baby boy, yesterday (more than a month early). He weighed in at 3 lbs 3 oz. There had been problems with the placenta and he was growing very slowly. They had already planned to induce her this coming Monday, but we never made it that far. Laura began having excruciating pain under her ribs and her husband rushed her to the hospital in the wee hours of Friday morning. Her blood pressure was sooo dangerously high, so they put her to sleep and quickly delivered baby Paul by emergency C-section. Laura was in pretty bad shape, showing a several of the symptoms of HELLP sydrome. Praise God that today, she and baby Paul are doing much better! Paul did not need to be sent to a NICU, but is just steps away in the Intesive Care section of the regular nursery. Laura has had a rough recovery, but is doing well. I know she is so heartbroken that she has yet to see Paul. Please pray that she is able to see and hold her new baby soon and that God would give her peace. But PRAISE Him for His protection over them both! I have a new nephew!

Do you trust Me?

Octamom just posted a wonderfully written blog on reproductive decisions. She ended with the following questions, so I thought I’d dive in and try to answer.

“So what about you? So how about your family? Are you done? Are you just beginning? What questions, fears, dreams have shaped the number of people in your family? How do you know if there may be someone else lining up for membership in your family club? How do you know when the club is complete?”

Did you ever play that game as a child where you stand facing away from a friend, close your eyes and fall backwards…trusting them to catch you? I believe the name of the game was actually called “Trust”. I played it many times. I can remember wondering if they would really catch me, or just watch me fall. I was sure that my true friends would try to catch me…but what if they dropped me?! I always knew that there was really only one person I could totally trust to catch me – my Dad. It was such a cool game if you could really totally trust the person behind you to catch you!

After 11 years of wondering how I really feel about family planning, God has recently brought me to a place of totally trusting Him. I know that if I leave it completely in His hands, He will not let me down. Like that game of trust, I know that He will never leave me or drop me. He knows so much better than I do what is best for me and my family. I have always felt that by using “birth control”, I was trying to take my future out of God’s hands and “control” it myself.

In no way am I saying I believe it is wrong or a sin to prevent pregnancy. I believe that there are times when serious health issues require prevention of pregnancy, and God uses medical science and our doctors to direct us. What I am saying is that for me, it is a matter of trust and complete surrender to God. It is saying “God, You are sovereign. Your ways are higher than my ways. You see the beginning from the end. I trust Your plan.”

Some would say it is easy for me to think like that because I don’t get pregnant very easily. It has always taken years of trying. I don’t have to worry about having children a year apart or having 3 in diapers. But right now, God has me on the other side of the issue – yearning for another child and trusting that His timing is perfect. The same convictions still apply. He is the opener and closer of wombs. Although I desperately want more children and at times feel impatient (ok, lots of times), again, I still must leave it in His hands and surrender my hopes and dreams completely to Him.

I LOVE the way that Octamom put it. I hope she doesn’t mind my quoting her:
“So in the end, the answer is this: we are standing on holy ground. To be invited by an infinitely creative Creator to participate in such an amazing way to make people is holy. To see those people enter our lives is miraculous.” She goes on to say of her 8 children, “To look in each of the faces around our dinner table, to know that we thought we were probably done with the baby thing after 1, then after 2, then after 3...sometimes my heart is in my throat as I think, "What if I had called it quits? You wouldn't be here! I would have missed the amazing miracle of you..."...wow. That's heavy.”

So I’ve answered the question from my heart. All that being said, I cannot leave my answer as it is and not warn anyone who doesn’t already know the disturbing and horrifying facts about “The Pill” that I have just recently learned over the past few years. It breaks my heart to know that I took those pills for nearly 3 years altogether without ever knowing exactly how they work. Most doctors will not volunteer this information, but after hours upon hours of research, I have found enough evidence that I will never use “the Pill” again. Although I have found many sources, the video below is the simplest explanation I've found. Pastor and author Randy Alcorn has also done extensive research on the subject and has posted his findings here, as well as in his book titled Does the Birth Control Pill Cause Abortion? which includes endorsments from many doctors. Please watch!

Please pray...

...for my sister, Laura, who is pregnant with her first baby. Below is a copy of the post she sent out yesterday.

Hello dear friends,

I have a request. As you all know, I am 33 weeks pregnant with a little boy, Paul Matthew. I went in for an ultrasound today and found that our little one is only measuring about 2 and a half pounds. My placenta is not working properly and the doctors are concerned that he is not getting the proper nutrients. They want to monitor me twice a week and if things do not change I will have to deliver early. I know the Lord has it all under control and that little Paul is in His hands, but the more prayer there is, the better. It is so interesting for me to think about his name. When we first found out that we were having a boy, his name was already determined. Paul after the Apostle Paul and Matthew after my husband. I am really big into the meaning of names. Well, Matthew means "Gift of God," and Paul means "Small, or humble." I feel that God is just confirming his name that he truly is a small gift from Him. So if you could please keep this small gift in your prayers that would mean a whole lot. Thank you so much. Laura

A little whisper from Him

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;" Proverbs 3:5

I have the Women's Devotional Bible and just happened to open to the devotional written for this verse yesterday. My recent reading has been in 1 Corinthians, so it wasn't planned. It just caught my eye. Below is the devotion that I read, written by Ann Kiemel Anderson:

This is another verse with a command: "TRUST...LEAN NOT on your own understanding"; and a promise: "he WILL make your paths straight" (caps mine).
Trust is such a lovely word in a world thoroughly self-indulged and complicated. It is quiet, simple. It represents freedom. Rest. Letting go.

A favorite, old hymn my father would often sing was, "tis so sweet to trust in Jesus, just to take him at his word...just to REST upon his promise..." Most of us are too busy and noisy to hear the "still, small voice." To identify it. To trust in its power above our human strivings.

Friends of ours, who had been down the battered road of infertility, longed for another baby. A perfect situation came about. A young birth mother who felt the only answer for her baby was adoption.

A precious baby girl was born. I loved the birth mother and knew that this was a very painful decision. The adoptive couple came from another city to meet the birth mother and to take their new baby home. It was Thanksgiving week. Relatives had flown in for a family celebration. The birth mother signed the papers, releasing the baby from the hospital. But in the courtroom, days later, she broke down. She just couldn't give up her baby. She drove hundreds of miles on Thanksgiving Day to take back her baby.

The couple's celebration turned to heartbreak. Immediately, they began to trust. Not to figure it all out, or judge the birth mother. They waited quietly. In a year, twin girls were born and theirs was the chosen family. They lost one, and God gave them back two.

There are very many unknowns in life. A husband's job. Our children's struggles. A tentative move. Critical talk behind our backs. A search for our own identity. Bills to pay. Aged parents to look after. Let go completely. Trust. Live with it all in an open hand before God. Jesus promises he WILL work it all out. I do believe for you, always...a new sunrise.

I totally believe this was a little gift from God, as I had just discovered that once again, this month I am not pregnant. Not even 5 minutes after this disappointment, God opened my Bible and drew my eyes to His word for me for that moment. I LOVE the way God works! I LOVE that He cares so much about our little disappointments. I LOVE that He cares enough to send us encouragement that is so obviously straight from Him!