Tim had a birthday yesterday.  When I think about what makes him so amazing – even on a regular basis, but more so when life seems to be in a bit of upheaval – I most often think of his servant’s heart.  This heart that enables him to look past himself to see what someone else’s needs are and then give all of himself to meet that need.

Obviously, I see it most clearly in how he serves me and our family – sacrificing sleep, personal comfort, his own [long] project list, and so much more, so that we are taken care of.  But, I see it everywhere else, too.  With extended family, with neighbors, with coworkers, with anyone that ever asks anything of him…or, really, with anyone that he sees in need…he will lay aside his preferences and go out of his way to make life easier for them.

And it’s not out of obligation (though, he might sometimes assert that it is), but rather, any time his desire to help someone is challenged (I know from personal experience), his response never has anything to do with himself, but is always based on what is best for the other person.  Even if someone has hurt him, or been selfish, or disregarded his help in the past, his response doesn’t change.

Though he will say that he’s not a compassionate person, I can’t say that I’ve known anyone with more genuine compassion than my husband.  It is a joy, and often a source of conviction, to walk beside him and see the outworking of this in our lives.  I am so thankful for him.

The night before Isabelle was born, I had a dream.  I don’t usually apply any significance to dreams.  I don’t usually even remember any dreams to which I could apply significance even if I wanted to.  But, that night, my dream stuck with me, and seemed to have a point.

I dreamed that I was being chased by someone or something that really terrified me.  And then I got away, or thought I had.  And then I was surrounded by people pointing guns at me…caught by whatever/whoever it was that had me so scared.  And as I stood, defenseless, the only thing I knew to do – felt I had to do – was surrender…not to those that had me surrounded, but to the Lord…and trust that He was still in control.  So, I did.  In my dream, I said “not my will, Lord, but Yours be done”…resignedly, I think.  But, there was peace.  And after saying it, inexplicably, this enemy that was surrounding me lowered their weapons and walked away.

To a normal person, this might not sound like it has anything to do with birth, but my first thought upon remembering the dream when I awoke, was of the last time I really felt the Lord tell me I needed to surrender.  That time was right before I went into labor with Bethany, when I was so, so scared of having another cesarean.  And I surrendered, went into labor, and ended up with the cesarean that I feared.

So, as I went through the next day, this dream was stuck in my remembrance.  I thought about how, for the past ten years, I have been doing everything possible to avoid facing another cesarean.  I thought about how I finally felt like, maybe, cesarean was no longer anything more than a remote possibility.  Through the contractions, and the bleeding, and the hospital, and the eventual cesarean, I felt some level of certainty of how it was going to end.

But I didn’t understand why.

I don’t understand why.

While there is comfort on some level in knowing that God knew the end from the beginning of this situation, on the flip side, that knowledge has also been a sharp blow to my already weakened faith.  I acknowledge that the cesarean was the only reasonable response to the placental abruption, but why, in His omnipotence, did God think it right and good for the problem to arise in the first place?  I was desperately hoping and praying for an easy delivery.  As much as it might sound shallow and weak, I needed that prayer to be answered.  I needed a reason to believe in God’s goodness and faithfulness again.  Prior to the birth, I had already lost pretty much every bit of trust in Him.  I thought maybe some could be restored, though, by a simple reminder that this part of my life – this birth – that had caused me an inordinate amount of fear throughout the pregnancy and which represented a lot of past hurt and disappointment, mattered to Him.  But instead, I got almost the exact opposite of what I prayed for.

I’m sure many people would point out that all of this reveals some gigantic flaw in my theology…and honestly, I’m really, really trying to figure out what that might be…but I have yet to hear a legitimate correction…or, at least, one that doesn’t hinge on the presupposition that God’s ways are always good.  When that belief falters, what is there to build it back up?  Why has God been only silent during these past several months when I have wanted more than anything to see His face and hear His voice?  My faith can’t shrink much more before it disappears altogether.

There are a lot of different perspectives that I have had concerning Isabelle’s birth.  Some – like the fact that we have a beautiful, healthy, precious daughter – are pure joy to my heart.  Others, though?  Not so much.  For now, I will try to focus mostly on the former, and maybe down the road, I will be able to adequately communicate the latter.

This birth story starts out fairly innocuously.  Thursday night, May 15, I started feeling some cramping…not contractions yet, but previous pregnancies had taught me that this cramping usually meant real labor was only a day or two away.  About 4am on Friday, I felt my first “real” contraction.  It wasn’t long or painful, but I took note nonetheless.  Over the course of the next few hours, there were 7 or 8 more, so I emailed my midwife just to say that labor was likely to happen sooner rather than later, but my expectation was that I still had a while.  We went about our day as usual.  Tim’s plan was to do a shopping run to Massena that afternoon, and though we debated briefly whether or not he should go, it was fairly easily decided that nothing of any significance was going to happen that afternoon, so he went.

At 2:30, though, as I was baking cookies for the kids’ Academy Night, I felt something leaking.  I thought maybe it was a small leak of amniotic fluid, but when I got to the bathroom, I discovered that it was blood, and not a small amount.  I panicked, a little.  I called Tim, he didn’t answer.  I called my midwife, she said she would call back in 15 minutes to see if the bleeding had continued.  I struggled to discern whether the blood was “bright red” or “dark red”.  I bled some more.  I called Tim, he answered, and I told him to leave his almost completely full shopping cart and come home now.  The midwife called and told me to head to the hospital, and said she would be on her way shortly.  It was 3pm.  Tim got home in about 20 minutes, I think.  He was (understandably) frazzled.  After making sure his mom had whatever info she needed to run the household for the evening/night, we left for the hospital.

By this point, I didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore.  We got checked in at the hospital and taken to labor and delivery.  While I had waited for Tim to get home, I  had tried to figure out what might be causing the bleeding…the most likely options being placenta previa (where the placenta covers the cervix) and placental abruption (where the placenta pulls away from the uterine wall)…so I was trying to prepare myself for the advice I felt sure was inevitable, but I was also praying desperately for wisdom and clarity.  I absolutely did not want to get stuck on a slippery slope that led to another c-section without good reason.  The first couple hours were spent getting an ultrasound and a non-stress test.  The baby’s heart rate seemed fine (or so we were told at this point), and the ultrasound showed low amniotic fluid, but the placenta was high, which ruled out previa…however, it was mostly behind the baby, so it wasn’t possible to tell if there was an abruption.  We hadn’t yet seen the doctor, but he went ahead and order some bloodwork (which was supposed to help determine if there was internal bleeding happening) and a test to determine if there was any amniotic fluid present near the cervix.  Eventually, (before any test results were back) the doctor came by and said his working diagnosis was an abruption and that his recommendation was cesarean.  Since his diagnosis was, at this point, based on next to nothing, we insisted that we wanted something more concrete to base our decision on.  He then told us that he wasn’t happy with the variability in the baby’s heart rate (never mind that the nurse had previously said it looked great), but when pressed, couldn’t/wouldn’t tell us exactly why.  It was at this time that the results came back which indicated that my water had broken (I think probably just a slow leak), which explained the low fluid on the ultrasound.  The doctor decided to order a biophysical profile (BPP), which would apparently give a better idea of how the baby was tolerating life inside the womb.  The BPP was a timed ultrasound where the tech measured movement, muscle tone, fluid levels and breathing “movements”.  Movement and muscle tone were fine, fluid was low – but for an obvious reason, however, there apparently weren’t enough breathing movements (when the baby mimics the breathing action, though it actually serves no useful purpose in the womb), so the overall score for the BPP was low.  Once again, explanations were not given that could explain why it mattered if the baby was mimicking breathing, we were just told that it wasn’t good.  During the ultrasound for the BPP, another attempt was made to view the placenta.  This time, it was more visible, and it was determined that there was a clot on the placenta, which apparently equated to a partial abruption.  After learning this, the OB was pretty set on doing a cesarean.  If the BPP had not been low, there may have been the chance that he would have approved a transfer to another hospital…if there were one willing to let me labor.  But, as it was, he would not approve a transfer.  My midwife (who arrived around 9pm) at this point was convinced the birth needed to happen in a hospital, so we were left with the option of having a cesarean, or – in the unlikely event that there were any hospitals within a few hours that would have even considered a trial of labor – leaving the hospital against medical advice, while in labor (contractions were pretty consistently about 10 minutes apart at this point), and risk the possibility of a full abruption while making the hours long trip to another hospital.  In other words, there really was no option.  And as much as I did not want another cesarean, I was thankful that the choice was made clear for us.  We agreed to the cesarean.

There was a lot more in the way of thoughts and feelings that came up before, during, and after the cesarean, but of greatest importance was that at 11:41pm, Isabelle Sophia arrived (though nameless for more than 24 hours).  She was our smallest baby yet, at a slight 7lbs, 10.6oz, and 20.5 inches long.  She was healthy and strong.  While I couldn’t hold her until an hour or so after her birth, when finally given the chance, she nursed easily and often.  I am thankful for that.  I am thankful for her.  I am thankful that she’s here and doing wonderfully well.  She is a priceless gift and whatever the “cost” to ensure her safe arrival was more than worth it.

Fourteen years of sharing life with my best friend

Fourteen years of falling asleep beside him, every night.

Fourteen years of learning, and then being reminded over and over again, just how much strength and love and grace there is in my husband.

Fourteen years of long conversations about everything and nothing and lots of things in between.

Fourteen years of work and babies and sleepless nights and hard decisions.

Fourteen years of house projects and learning to cook and learning to garden and figuring out what we can live with and what we should live without.

Fourteen years of never going to bed angry.

Fourteen years of growing a family and everything that comes with it.

Fourteen years of coming to grips with imperfection, in myself and in him, and realizing that imperfection in loving doesn’t mean absence of love.

Fourteen years of leaning heavily on him and becoming increasingly aware of how much of a “weaker vessel” I am.

Fourteen years of, almost daily, wondering how in the world I could be so blessed that he thinks I’m someone worth loving.

Fourteen years with a husband who I am thankful for beyond words.

Life lately has been a very strange mix of extremely full and heartachingly empty.  I can’t really do much to explain the emptiness, but I can write about the “full” portion…superficial though it often seems to me…maybe more to just have some marker of these days than anything else.

Obviously, a lot of the busy-ness is because the calendar says that I am due in just over 2 weeks.  While I am trying to brace myself for what I think is an inevitably “late” delivery (the earliest I’ve ever gone into labor is 5 days late), 2 weeks sounds really soon.  Especially as I sit here with my fourth cold in the past 4 months, that has made doing anything for more than five minutes at a time utterly exhausting.  My list of baby prep to-do’s is still pretty long, and that is after having reconciled with myself that some things I would like to have done are just not necessary.  We will travel to Albany one last time, next week, for a final midwife appointment, and then wait until this baby makes his or her entrance.  With any luck, we will have decided on a name by then.

A week from tomorrow, Tim’s mother arrives.  She’s coming to be on hand to wrangle children during birth and the crazy few days after.  But, since she has trouble with stairs, we’ve needed to come up with a guest room alternative (a couch in the living room just didn’t seem a viable option for any of us). If you’re experiencing difficulty with your stairs, don’t hesitate to contact the professionals at https://stairlifts-near-me.co.uk/ for expert assistance with your stair-related needs.  The solution has been to make the back room of our house…formerly an unfinished utility area with only half a floor and stairs going down to dirt for the other half…into a functional guest room.  And, really, while “functional” has been taken to its most basic form, it still has been quite an undertaking.  Tim first had to empty the room of our stuff (which was quite a lot) and gut the whole area (just extending the floor wasn’t a great option), then construct a new floor, almost entirely within the confines of the room, given the cold and rainy weather we have had, which isn’t so easy when dealing with 16′ boards and an uneven dirt floor.  Of course, his meticulous nature has necessitated a lot of planning and a couple moments of backtracking to make sure that the final product met his standards, but we now have a room.  Floors are plywood (I think we we’ll be adding a large area rug for the short term to make it seem a little more finished) and walls are brick, but as my mother-in-law has insisted she’s okay with it that way, we are saving drywall and flooring for another time.

Of greater priority right now is getting a chicken coop constructed.  In mid-March, we bought seven chicks to have as laying hens, and this past weekend bought eight more, to raise as meat birds.  The kids are enamored with them and [mostly voluntarily] assist in cleaning and filling food and water…Tim does the rest, and though I am hardly an animal lover, I do love the thought of having our own eggs in a couple months, and I appreciate the opportunity for responsibility and reward it offers the kids.  However, as much as the kids have really enjoyed having the chicks in the middle of the living room, the older ones are now officially cramped in the crate we have housed them in and need bigger quarters.  The plan is to move them to the second story of our garage with a covered ramp down to the yard and compost area.  Tim can picture it all – I’m still a little fuzzy on the details.  Hopefully, though, by the end of this week, at least the older chickens will have more room to roam.

To make life just a bit more scattered, baseball has also now started.  Four evenings a week (when it isn’t raining) will find some of us at the park for practice.  Once games start, we will probably all go, but I’m not entirely sure what that will look like with (at some point) a new baby.  In the meantime, we will divide the baseball responsibilities so that our evenings are not entirely unproductive on the home front.

During the days, we are attempting to wrap up schoolwork.  Extra math and English lessons are added in whenever time allows in the hopes of being done in the next couple weeks.  We’re trying to catch up on spelling (which gets too easily forgotten on a normal basis), science is getting down to just a few lessons, and history is slated to be done whenever necessary.  This whole year has been a bit muddled, school-wise, with pregnancy and sickness and my struggles with organization, so I am looking forward to being done – to having a summer to plan and prepare for a new year, to a fresh start in September after a few months “off” to maybe clear my brain.

And, of course, during those more relaxed summer months, we will have our garden to tend to.  I was tempted to forego gardening altogether this year, but Tim was insistent that we could still manage, despite my very pregnant state at the moment (when gardens are needing to be prepared) and the arrival of a new baby that could make weeding, pruning and harvesting a bit more complicated.  But, I’m glad he insisted.  I am growing to love gardening…or, at least, some aspects of it…and even when I am up to my eyeballs in zucchini, I find so much enjoyment in the harvest, and am always in awe of God’s creative power.  So, we have one small garden planted with our cold-weather seeds (minus a few that just didn’t fit), strawberry plants are green and growing, chives are flourishing, and maybe, once a chicken coop is done and the rain stops, we’ll get a few more areas prepped and planted before our window of opportunity closes on some of the not-yet-planted early-season veggies.

In addition to all of that, May is just a busy month.  A good kind of busy, but I keep worrying that I’m missing something important in my inability to really keep everything straight in my head.  I’m not generally good at multi-tasking, so life right now has me trying my hardest to not focus on more than one thing at a time, lest I find myself too overwhelmed to accomplish anything.  I’m just hoping to be able to look back in a month or two and see that some order, some productivity was accomplished in these days.

Jesus, Jesus all I want is to be like You.

But, I am nothing like You.

I pray and I beg…please change me.  And I try…I read and I pray and I repent.

But, nothing changes.

I hear about how You set free and make new and sanctify, and I wonder, why won’t You do that for me?

I think I must be doing something wrong, but it shouldn’t be about my doing at all.  It’s supposed to be You, right?  That’s the point isn’t it?  You can do a work in us that we can’t do ourselves.

So, maybe I just don’t matter enough to You.  Maybe this life of mine just won’t ever be good enough to bring You glory.  Maybe other people are more important.  It makes sense; that’s been the story of my life.

But I want to matter to You, more than anything in the world.

I want my life to bring You glory.

I want to be like You, Jesus

And it’s the worst feeling in the world to know that I’m not.

In somewhere around 4 weeks, this baby will be here.  In those four weeks, we need to (hopefully) finish schoolwork, make our “new” guest room usable, clean all the baby gear, figure out baby names (which are completely up in the air at the moment), make one last trip to the midwife in Albany and make more of a dent in our garden prep.  Somewhere in there will also be baseball, our anniversary, Mother’s Day, lots of miscellaneous birthday/anniversary/Mother’s Day gifts to purchase and mail, and welcoming Tim’s mom in early May for what will be about a month’s stay.  To top it off, there is poor sleep (as always), really bad heartburn, more fears about labor…not that things will go wrong, but simply that I’m not strong enough, emotional and spiritual struggles, and the feeling that we’re alone in all of it.

But, there’s a baby to look forward to.  And a summer with no real obligations.  And garden goodness.  And visits from family.  And the hope that this is as bad as it gets.

I just turned 35.  This past year has been one of the worst of my life.  It sounds melodramatic, I know.  And the reality is that even knowing the reasons why, most people would likely think I’m being ridiculous.  Usually, I think the same.  Nevertheless, I’m not at this place of doubt and hopelessness for no reason. Somehow, it’s these little things – these small trials that seem so insignificant  – that are most effective at tearing down my faith.

I’ve thought about it a lot.  There are a ton of explanations I could give as to why.  I don’t know how much any of that matters at the end of the day, though.  What matters is that I am here, and here is not okay.  Here is where I find myself unwilling to trust.  Here is where I don’t believe His love (again).  Here is where my faith seems pointless.  And here is where I need to make a choice.

Because as much as I just don’t want to believe Him, or His Word, or that I can trust Him (and I honestly don’t want to right now), I also don’t want to believe my heart, or my circumstances, or whatever other changeable notions are filling my vision at the moment.

As much as I feel like He has failed me over and over again these past few years, I also know my tendency to build a wall and push away so that I can’t be hurt too badly – which, at the same time, makes it impossible for me to trust too deeply.

As much as I want to staunchly assert that what He has given is just.not.enough, I also can’t deny that at least in this moment, I have what I need.

So, my choice is this: to accept that my rationale and analysis and emotions are sufficient and conclude that faith just isn’t worth it; or to acknowledge that there are ways higher than mine, that it is possible that One who knows the end from the beginning might have a better perspective, that the truth that God is, which is cemented in the deepest part of my soul, should be enough to make me dig in my heels and keep pursuing, no matter the cost.

It isn’t a choice that I like.  I guess my selfishness and pride run a bit too deep still for me to like the thought of dying to myself.  But, I think, the choice I will make has never really been up in the air.  I will abandon my logic, my ideals, my heart – though probably not with any ease.  I will call myself a fool in light of the only One who I can be certain is wise.  It’s hardly a revelation, this decision.  More like a painful refining process that thus far has left me feeling small and weak and pitiful.  I don’t understand the point of it.

But, maybe that’s the point of it.

Today, Bethany is 8.

More and more frequently, I find myself being stunned by the realization that she is growing up.

I see it in her sense of humor which, though still not really refined, shows thought and understanding beyond the silliness of a little girl.

I see it in moments of conscientiousness – times when I previously would have expected words of direction or correction to be ignored, she is starting to take them to heart, and remember, and apply appropriately.

I see it when she explains a Bible passage and she really gets it, and doesn’t just repeat what she has read or heard.

I see it in how tall she is, in how strong she is, in how capable she can be when she sets her mind to task.

Yes, she is growing and maturing and learning.  She has far to go, still, but she has come far these past few years, too.  I don’t often take time to acknowledge that.  Too much, I miss her triumphs in the midst of trying to address her weaknesses.  But, when I really think about it, I can clearly see the refining process that is happening, and I am reminded of the beautiful, precious gift she is…to me, to us, to the world around her.

And because it pretty much sums up Bethany, a brief recounting of a recent interaction.

Bethany:  Who isn’t excited about tomorrow?

(I raise my hand…I’m honest, if not inspiring)

Bethany:  Why wouldn’t you be excited about tomorrow?!?!  Who knows?  It could be the best day of your whole life!!

I love her.

Happy Birthday, Miss Bethany.

This is our fourth year doing Upward basketball.  Today is the first game I have missed.  Elijah isn’t feeling well, so we’re home.  It’s probably just as well, since I was sick yesterday and am still weak and dizzy, and the idea of sitting on hard bleachers for three hours while supervising too-energetic children is likely not a great one.

It’s snowing outside, again, and for the first time this winter, I just can’t appreciate the beauty of it.  I just want it done.  I want the cold and ugly, wet mess gone.  I want sunshine and flowers and warm breezes and green grass.  I want to be able to take walks and turn off the furnace and open windows.  I want to forget winter.  But I look out my window and there it is – still.

It’s getting hard to hold out hope for a new season.  I mean, obviously, it will be warmer some day.  I just wonder where grace is for today.  I wonder why this unwanted snow keeps falling.  I wonder what it is about a new, better season that has God saying not yet.  I’m not finding any lessons here.  This has been a hard, hard winter.  Sickness, and discouragement, and things breaking, and lots of moments of thinking things can’t get any worse, then realizing that, sometimes, things not getting any better can be even harder still.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle the rest of this winter.