Special People Deserve Special Somethings

Hey everybody :)

I hope the weekend has left you as rested and refreshed as it has us!!

I think any time I looked over at BE with my typical,

"so....what do we do now?" look,

he promptly replied,

"um...naptime!!"

Sometimes between him and the dog I wonder if I really need a kid ;)

Anyway,

I come to you with a special request.

I mentioned this wonderful family back when I first had my blog,

but now that I have so many more amazing fans,

I figured I would re-spread the word!!

Meet the Prowse family.

They are dear friends of ours (a.k.a. Brinn kept me sane while our husbands were at OTS

and Blandon kept BE sane, and then there's Harper, who is just plain handsome)

and they have the most beautiful family.

But after a long trial with secondary infertility,

they decided to venture into the world of adoption.

Now, they are done with their application paperwork,

AND THEY NEED YOUR HELP!!

I don't usually post things like this, 

so you should know how special they are.

Brinn and Blandon are truly one of the sweetest, most loving, most optimistic, and just plain good-hearted couples we know.

Go read their story

(disclaimer: you WILL need tissues)

and please contact them if you think you can help them

or even if you just want to throw some words of encouragement or prayers their way!

Visit them HERE

ok...now GO!! :)

An Ode To Fitting In

This will be a slightly rant-tastic post.

Mostly because I clearly woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

Or maybe because I worked six 14-hour shifts this past week.

Or maybe because I'm just frustrated today.

I don't know.

But whatever the reason,

be warned.

Today I really hate it that I can't get pregnant.

I know I talk about this all the time,

and I know this makes me a whiny person.

But today, I'm just mad at the world.

I have seven friends who have already had babies this year,

four more who have announced their happy news all over facebook in the past week,

and five more who are expecting in the next few months.

I am literally surrounded by everyone's happiness but my own.

And it's crushing.

I want to delete my facebook,

just so I don't delete every friend anyway because I'm sick of seeing their hourly baby pictures

or hourly status updates.

I am so sick of failing every single month.

Failing as a woman.

Failing as a wife.

Failing to myself.

For something I can't even control.

Being a military wife makes it even worse,

because you literally don't fit in unless you have a young child.

Our spouse's group online is pretty much just there so people can coordinate playdates

or ask advice of other moms.

Even our adult bible studies that we used to love

are now just playdates for toddlers

or forums for everyone else to talk about how great being a parent is.

Gee, I wish I could contribute to those conversations.

Oh wait. We can't.

So we just sit, and listen, and feel as out of place as we are.

I get asked at my job daily whether I have children,

and honestly I'm sick of responding with,

"no, but it's not for lack of trying".

I thought I had gotten over this.

I thought I had come to some kind of peace with it when we hit the year mark.

I guess I didn't.

I'm bitter.

I'm angry.

I'm sad.

I'm jealous.

I'm resentful.

And I feel like an outcast.

 If someone tells me they are pregnant, my first instinct is to practically shut them out of my life

just so I don't have to live with the daily reminders that everyone else's body seems to function like it should.

When you say, "Being a mother is the best job in the world!"

I think, "I'm sure it is - I wish I knew."

When you say, "I love seeing my husband with our son!"

I think, "My husband should have married someone who could have given him a son."

When you say, "One day it will happen for you!"

I think, "How in the world can you possibly know that?"

When you say, "It's only been a little over a year, you know."

I think, "Obviously you didn't know this pain for a year or you wouldn't say that."

I'm happy for other people,

but at the same time, I'm hurting so much for myself.

I know it's selfish.

But some months, it just sucks.

This is one of them.

This month, I realized that I didn't even allow myself to think I could be pregnant.

I just went and bought pads and tampons,

and prepared myself for Aunt Flo's monthly visit.

I realized this month that I don't even think it can happen for me.

I don't know how people do it,

who actively try for years and years

and live with this disappointment

and don't go insane.

We're barely over a year of trying and I feel like a shattered vase some amateur glued back together,

that is just waiting to fall back into a million pieces again.

I want it so bad.

I crumble to the floor in tears whenever I realize that I have no control over this,

that my greatest dream,

the only desire I have for my life here on earth,

may never come true

and there's nothing I can do about it.

I feel trapped

and helpless,

while I watch 70% of the world around me experience what I may never know.

I have dreams about being pregnant so real I wake up and reach for my belly.

I'm sorry for the rant.

I'm sure my husband is sick of hearing me say all of this at least once a week,

 and there aren't any other friends going through the same thing I can talk to.

Everyone we were trying with this past year got pregnant.

So all I have left is a random rant on a blog every once in a while.

Plus, it's my party and I can cry if I want to, right?

I just hate living in a world of constantly having to put on a smile

and be super happy for everyone else,

when I'm drained inside.

I just want to know how it feels

to not be empty.

Brick By Brick

How good it feels to write again with a light heart.

 In short, things have gotten better.

Much better.

Both of us have come to terms with the fact that we are making a choice,

a choice to fight.

My choice to not believe him when he said he wasn't in love,

his choice to forgive things from the past,

our mutual choice to decide this wouldn't be the end.

Because you see,

it can't end.

In my moments of the whitest-hot anger,

when all I heard ringing in my ears were all the voices saying,

 "you don't deserve this, you should leave,

he says this or he says that,

you need to just give up"

it seemed easy to accept the worldview that says that it's ok to stop wanting your marriage to work,

 that it's ok to no longer pray "God, please keep us together, please restore our love"

and instead pray, "whatever happens happens".

No!

It's not "whatever happens happens."

Don't you see?

It CAN'T be.

 No matter how much you're hurt,

no matter how easily you could imagine yourself with a new life,

no matter what angry words are said,

no matter what everyone around you says,

it's your MARRIAGE.

And everywhere I looked

trying to justify myself if I gave up and stopped hoping for it to work out,

I only found scripture telling me I was wrong.

It's painful when you've blamed the other person the whole time

and then realize that you had faults too.

Me?? Have contributed to this?? No way!

Yes way.

It's painful.

But it's true.

And once I was done licking my wounds,

I realized that I had no justification to quit on my marriage.

God wasn't going to back me up later.

God wasn't going to look at me and say,

"You know, I would have done the same thing. He was being so mean to you! You were such a strong woman to go be on your own and start over like that, and just kick that jerk to the curb!"

I would get no pat on the back from my Father.

In fact,

I don't think I could have ever lived enough good deeds to justify the fact that I, a human,

had help destroy something God had put together.

"Let no man put asunder..."

And I realized, as hurt as I was,

I still love that man.

And I know he still loves me.

And I've seen so many amazing changes over the past few weeks;

I have watched our love shine through the fog,

I have seen a miracle.

We hold hands again,

we help each other around the house,

we find ourselves fighting to make the other coffee in the mornings,

even when we otherwise could have slept in.

He winks at me across the table at dinner,

I watch his stupid movies.

I write love notes in dry erase marker on his side of the sink,

and he makes me dinner on nights I work late unexpectedly.

GOD MAKES ALL THINGS BEAUTIFUL.

My faith sometimes stumbles.

I am not a perfect person.

But I am working toward a perfect relationship with the One who has given me everything.

And it is restoring my soul.

Brick

By

Brick.



"Though one may be overpowered,

two can defend themselves.

A CORD OF THREE STRANDS

IS NOT QUICKLY BROKEN."

Ecclesiastes 4:12