Life's not always peachy

Sometimes, I am overwhelmed by everything.  By the situation of being pregnant, being far away from the father of the baby, wracked with doubts about the decisions that I am making and have made, stress of a new job, etc; I become overwhelmed with emotions - as well as with feeling numb.  There are breaks in the numbness where I feel pain, deeply. In these moments I think about many things. I think about other peoples lives, all over the globe. I think about other people's pain and suffering.  I think about my own pain and suffering, which is mostly self-inflicted and accrued from shame.  In my lowest, saddest moments, I like to play the song by Matt Maher "You were on the Cross".  It is also a sad song, but ultimately it speaks the truth that God is with us during all of these moments, all of the lowest of the low moments that we have in our lives.  He was on the cross, dieing for us, feeling all the pain and suffering that sin creates in our world - and He did that for us.  He took all of that on His own pure shoulders - all of the pain that we feel, all of the suffering we feel, He too has felt it - He too, was there with us. He too, is here with me in my moments of sadness. Below are the full lyrics of the song.

Matt Maher - You were on the cross

Lost, everything is lost
And everything I've loved before is gone
Alone like the coming of the frost
And a cold winter's chill in my stony heart

And where were You when all that I've hoped for,
Where were You when all that I've dreamed,
Came crashing down in shambles around me?
You were on the cross

Pain, could you take away the pain?
If I find someone to blame, would it make my life seem easier?
Alone, all my friends are asleep
And I can't find anyone to stay awake with me

Where were You when sin stole my innocence?
Where were You when I was ashamed?
Hiding in a life, I wish, I never made

You were on the cross, my God, my God, alone, alone
You were on the cross, You died for us, alone, alone
You were on the cross, victorious, alone, alone

You were there in all of my suffering
And You were there in doubt and in fear
I'm waiting on the dawn to reappear

Baby Bump Update

Picture at 18 weeks pregnant

So, here is baby and I at 18 weeks pregnant!  Sucking in my belly is no longer an option, and I am starting to think I need to start eating healthier again : ) I've let myself eat more sugar than normal the last couple of weeks, and haven't necessarily been choosing the best options for every meal...three hundred extra calories isn't much leeway to be letting myself eat whatever I want!

I will probably not be able to wear the shirt in this picture in another month, without the bottom of my tummy sticking out. But we will see! I am going to start taking a picture each week to see how I grow.

I now am feeling movements frequently, this baby likes to move! Which makes me happy, because it gives me relief to know that baby is in there doing just fine.  I get my ultrasound this Friday, which is so exciting to finally see baby!  I won't be finding out the gender until Super Bowl Sunday, however, because I want to wait until my family and I are all together. It would be very unexciting to have the ultrasound technician tell me "boy" or "girl", so instead, I will be having a cake made with either blue or pink in the middle, and cutting it on Super Bowl Sunday, revealing it to both me and the family!

I continue to have the weirdest dreams, all mostly related to boy-type or violent things, so I still think it might be a boy.  Either way, I'm just excited to know! That way I can start really looking at baby things (which I find myself doing anyway...every time I'm at a store, I always wander down the baby aisles...just to look!)

Mercy of God

"If you wish, you can make me clean."
Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand, touched the leper and said to him, "I will do it. Be made clean"
Mark 1:40-41

I am deeply touched by today's gospel reading for many reasons.  One reason is the simple humility of the leper.  The leper is completely faithful.  He has total trust in Jesus that Jesus can perform miracles, is the Son of God, is our Savior.  He has complete faith.  He says, "if you wish", like he knows it is not he himself that wills him to be made clean, but that it is Jesus who wills it.  Sometimes, in our prayers, don't we ask for things rather abruptly?  Like we are already deserving of the things we are asking?  As though it would be some sort of affront to us by God if God did not protect us from harm, or did not allow us to have a good interview, or did not get us through the day without something bad happening.  I feel like sometimes we tell God what we want, what we want him to do for us. Like it's some kind of deal.  "You do this for me God, and I will totally believe in you truly."  That somehow it's conditional.

The leper was humble.  Sometimes, we are not.  But if we can keep the humility in the back of our minds, and don't feel so entitled to protection or so entitled to all the things we are asking for, and realize that we are but little specks of dust in the whole scheme, perhaps Jesus will be moved to pity us, to have mercy on us, when we take away our pride and stand humbly before him asking him please, showing Him our weakness without Him.  Tell him that it is up to Him, to grant us His peace, to lead us, to be by our side.  That we need Him, that we rely on His strength, that our strength is not enough.

Happy New Year 2012!

Well, I have officially turned old.  It happened so quickly, like the blink of an eye, that I became "out of touch" with what is cool in the eyes of the youth.  Although I have been seeing signs of this for months, it became drastically apparent last night, New Year's Eve, while I was lying on my brother's couch, dozing during a movie, mentally coaching myself to stay up until the ball dropped at midnight.  When we turned on the 40th annual Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve, we saw Ryan Seacrest interviewing several people who had performed earlier that night.  The only person I recognized was Santana and Justin Beiber, and I started commenting on how WEIRD the other people looked, and how I didn't even know what band they were from, and how I couldn't believe people like them were even famous...Brandy looks over to me, and says "well, congratulations, you are officially OLD". 

It's not my plan in 2012 to fight the "oldness" that I have recently acquired, but rather view this as one giant leap of maturity.  I don't care to bother with pop culture, I don't need to know who Justin Beiber is dating or how to even say his name and I really don't care to fill my mind with secular, materialistic nonsense all day long by watching TV.  Does that make me old, or is that just what my personality always was, but was just overshadowed by immature drinking habits that I had all these past 5 years?  I have no resolution this year (besides flossing...DAILY!!), but perhaps my only one goal is to embrace each day more and more the person and woman I am becoming.  To make no excuses for the "way I am" and to instead focus on being the best I can be each day. . . to let the good parts of me shine, and not get so caught up on the negatives. 

This is easier said than done. I wish I could be some champion for single mothers out there everywhere, some positive light to others, a cheerleader to others going through a similar situation as I am.  But, I will admit, I am not always positive.  I am sometimes racked with anxiety and doubt.  I fret about decisions in the future that have no meaning to me on this day.  I fret about decisions already made, the wheels already put in motion, and how life can't be turned back, can't be re-done.  There are no re-do's in life, you just have to keep moving.  But it's so hard to know, when faced with a decision, what is the right thing to do?  Our decisions are made often times in the heat of the moment, clouded by emotions and opinions and thoughts and feelings....it's hard to step back, pray, and discern our decisions with reason, instead of emotion.  At least, that seems hard for me to do.

So, here we are, now starting 2012...all I can do is promise myself I will try and floss daily, and to be the best I can be, taking one day at a time, and turning to prayer instead of fretful worrying.

Choked down some vegetables...now can I eat some Mac&Cheese?

For me, the hardest thing lately has been eating VEGETABLES.  I never seem to want them, they look so unappetizing, and when I eat them, they make my tummy unhappy.  Yet, I'm supposed to be eating 9 servings of fruits and vegetables each day so that baby and I are healthy!  Even dipping veggies in hummus or ranch dressing does not appease me.  Cooked vegetables seem a little easier, but also take more time and lose nutrients.  To me, the things I really want to eat are bagels and cream cheese, macaroni and cheese, or even Ramen noodles!  I have little to no interest in healthy things, but I want to be healthy!

So, I do just choke down the veggies.  I don't like it, but it's not about me anymore! It's about this little baby, and doing whatever I can to help baby grow into a healthy, adorable little cutie-pie. I am anxiously waiting my next OB appointment, December 28th...it seems like the last 2.5 weeks have dragged by so slowly, and all I can think about is hearing the heartbeat again, reassuring me that little baby is doing just fine!

Let the new journey begin...

My good friend Beccah Ray, gave me this encouragement. She said "I know this isn't what you had planned for your life, but you're an adventurer, and this is your next journey".  That is a true statement, and anybody who knows me knows that I do like to make my own path, preferring to do things my own way.  My brother-in-law always jokes about a time during my teen angst years (which seemed to have followed me well into my 20s) when I responded to him, "well Josh, you know I'm not a conventional girl!" in a huffy, exasperated tone.  Deep down, I love the conventional.  I love houses with gray siding and white trim and porches and a garden.  I love fall traditions of pumpkin carving and apple picking and hay rides and campfires.  I love Christmas songs and movies and cookies; and making New Year's resolutions, and playing card games, and living in a suburban area that is quiet and safe.  I love the idea of family, although my family unit is going to be smaller than the norm.  I love many conventional ideas, but I don't discriminate against the creative, or against lives that are led in different ways.  Life can be lived a million ways, and each person's experience in life is unique, it is one of a kind, it is their own.  Life is as different as our fingerprint - to each their own.

And to me, this is now my life.  I have already felt myself being changed, doing things I previously wouldn't do or think - thinking more about someone else than myself, than my own feelings.  I have a little, tiny, living infant inside my belly, and it is time to think about them already.  I don't overdo my "work outs" because I know that I need to take it easy on myself so that the baby will be safe and sound, undisturbed in the little home they have.  As I am cleaning out the things I have kept over the years (because I am a packrat), I have found many things that are awakening my creative side once again, a side of me I lost many years ago.  A side that appreciates fiction novels, and idealism, and critical thinking about what is around us and presented to us each day.  I want to share one of, possibly my favorite, poem:

A Dream Within a Dream - Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep-while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

First Precious Moment

Today I had a life-changing moment while at my first appointment at the obstetrician's office.  Yes, you read correctly, I had an appointment with the obstetrician.  I am eleven weeks pregnant, with an "unplanned" child, and thus I have moved home to transition into a life of working as a nurse and becoming a single mother.  I have accepted a job to work in Labor and Delivery at St. Vincent Women's Hospital, which is my dream ideal job at this point in my life.  I will be in a warm, supportive environment, and learn so much in my first nursing job in the USA.  It's not something I, or anybody, expected at this point in my life, but this is the situation, and it cannot be changed.  I am so blessed, lucky, and fortunate to have a family and group of friends who are extremely supportive of me, and who will stand by my side through all of the rapid changes that are to come.  At this time next year, I will have a 5 month old to take care of! But back to the life-changing moment...

Today, at my first doctor's appointment, I was able to listen to the heartbeat of the baby.  That was the precious moment that stole my heart and filled me with such a joy unlike anything I have ever felt before.  To hear the heartbeat, beating so rapidly, so cutely, and know that there is a tiny little two-inch baby thriving inside of my tummy, was an amazing moment not to be forgotten. It affirmed and reaffirmed a million times over my belief that life is an absolute miracle, a gift, a gift which only God can provide. It honestly is an amazing thing.  I can now understand how people ooh and aah over those fuzzy ultrasound pictures that they get of their little babies!  I still will have to wait nearly two more months in order to get my first ultrasound picture, and to find out the gender of the baby. 

I will be updating this continually, documenting the ups and downs, surprises of both pregnancy and parenthood, as well as how to continue my love of Jesus Christ while struggling with the stigma of being a single mother.  I am a firm believer that I do not have to succumb to being a product of my past, but that today and each day forward can be a way of moving forward and growing closer to Christ, to becoming a brighter and brighter light despite a dim or dark past.   Life isn't just perfect, it takes the struggles and the failures to show us the strength of our own character, and to get back up and try again.  To admit our flaws, but not to be defeated by them.  There is nothing that can separate ourselves from God's love, not anything but our own pride, or the Devil whispering to us that God surely can't love us after we have sinned, or that we aren't good enough to be loved.  All that is sillyness, and it is a shame to waste the amazing, infinite love and mercy that Jesus wishes to share with all of us, solely if we do not believe that we are worth it.

All of that and more, coming soon!