Eating your greens

Unmet expectations. They will get you every time. It's in expecting perfection that make the bumps in the road so hard to take.

I have been wanting to get pregnant for awhile now and each month I am disappointed. This last month my feelings seemed to be hurt particularly more than usual. I saw the negative test and then jumped in the shower, fighting back the tears.

I prayed, "Lord, WHY?! If I were you and someone had to go through an entire pregnancy AND took tablespoons of cod liver oil and Berry Green (which tastes incredibly nasty!) through the whole thing and ended up having to bury her baby...I would let them get pregnant right away! Why?! I don't understand? I'm just so frustrated!!!"

Yes, it was a tantrum.

It was a dying to my hopes and dreams...again.

Maybe tantrums are just the sound your dreams make as they die.

They don't go down without a fight.

I had this incredibly frustrating realization that I am not in control of my life. No matter how much I want to make my life a certain way...I can't. We think we can, and sometimes God allows us the illusion that we can, but in that moment, I realized how completely powerless I truly am.

I felt like the Lord was showing me that the only reason I am frustrated and disappointed is that my life isn't working out "according to the plans I have for me". He also reminded me that when I give my kids something for dinner that they don't like or want, what they are really saying is that they don't like what I gave them. (Me!! Their loving mother who wants the world for them.)

One might even say they are frustrated with what I gave them. Much like I am frustrated with what God has given me.

He showed me that being frustrated and discontent is simply a nice way (or not so nice way) of complaining about what He (my Father who loves me and knows what is best) has given me.

I prayed and cried and asked the Lord, "Why???????? Wasn't losing Isabel enough?"

Immediately, I was reminded of a story Darlene Diebler Rose told. She was in a WWII Japanese prison camp, beaten regularly and starved, weighing just 60 pounds. While in solitary confinement, she was given rice with worms on top. She tried to pick them off, but it was impossible. She finally decided to eat them along with the rice and she could honestly thank her Heavenly Father for providing her with that food with a bit of protein as well. At one point she cried out to the Lord and begged him to make it stop. He told her "those I love, I chasten". He told her that if He had to take her through the fire several times, that is what He wanted to do, to make her like pure gold.

I looked up 'chasten' and found: "To rid of excess; refine or purify"

In my mind losing Isabel was so hard, and now that it was over, I thought the battle was over. We made it through, now it's time for a rest and possibly some blessing thrown in for good measure! But it seems that it's in the extended suffering that the Lord can really press us and mold us into something more. When we give up and die to our dreams. Die to being Lord of our own lives and thankfully eat what our wise and loving Father has served us, true contentment comes.

After that I read how the Lord answered Job's questioning as to why He had allowed such calamity to befall him and his household starting in Job 38:4 by saying "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding." God showed Job how big HE is and how small Job was. That helped put things in perspective for me. (Check sidebar for John Piper's audio on suffering)

LESSON: Trust God and his sovereignty over all things.

Sovereignty is the exclusive right to have control over an area of governance, people, or oneself

Q. Does our acceptance of God's sovereignty in our lives allow him sovereignty in our lives?

A. Peeshaw! He is. He reigns. Accept it, don't fight it.

APPLICATION: Be happy today.

Not just content, but honestly happy and extremely thankful for every day.

P.S. Lord, I'm working on it.

The beginning of hopes and dreams

I was looking up some information about morning sickness for someone today. I found my journal from Isabel's pregnancy. It reminded me of the day I told my family I was pregnant with her. It was sad to read. We were so excited.

You only expect the picture-perfect life to happen to you. You never think anything bad will happen. We were pregnant and at that point, a pregnancy = a healthy baby and a lifetime of happiness right?

But that was the beginning of our Isabel. Our sweet little girl was with us then.

My journal follows:

First person I told: my 19 month old daughter

November 6, 2006

I just took the pregnancy test and found out I am pregnant. No one knows except for me and God. I am so excited and so thankful that the Lord is giving us another little life to love and share our lives with. I found out that I am 4 weeks pregnant and due July 14, 2007. I am on the computer ordering prenatal vitamins and gearing up for the possibility of morning sickness and also trying to counter that with supplements. I feel the milk thistle helped with T3’s pregnancy…we’ll see if it really did help or just a fluke.

I would like to tell Papa and the boys through a treasure hunt using a Casear Cipher code on my blog. We’ll see if I can do it.

So excited!!!

P.S. Cass got her braces off today too.


Here are the clues on my blog:

Understood Betsy Post:
"Fluffy cheeks are irresistible"
(go to fluffy cheeks post)

Fluffy Cheeks Post:"Clear your calendar"(go to Calendars lists, and forms to go post)

Calendars lists, and forms to go post:"Fam Fest"(Go to Treasures post)

Our Treasures: Reveal"may have to wait. TFOUR due July 14 2007!"
We call our kids T1, T2, T3 & T4. This is short for Treasure #1, Treasure #2, etc.

Papa and the boys sat down at the computer to break the code. While they were working on it, Aunt L and Cass stopped by to show us Cass’s teeth without braces. I was glad, so they could be included in the news. A little before they figured it out, K dropped by too so we were all here to hear the news together. Papa wasn’t suspicious at all, until right toward the end he started looking at me in a funny, questioning way like “Is this…?”

November 9, 2006
Grandma and Grandpa Gary figured out the code so they know now. They are excited.

I am gearing up for the possibility of morning sickness. I’m really hopeful that it won’t be that bad with the supplements I’ve been taking.

November 25, 2006 – 7 weeks
I am now 7 weeks and still waiting for any sign of morning sickness. I guess I felt a little (teeny, tiny bit) queezy yesterday but that was it. I feel like I’m living in an alternate universe where I could actually be pregnant and still care for my family. It’s wonderful. I am also a twinge nervous as well. I know they say that if you have morning sickness it means it’s a healthy pregnancy, and sometimes when there is a miscarriage, there was no morning sickness. But I am taking all the supplements so I pray that that is the cause.

December 4, 2006 – 8 weeks
Feeling great still. I have very small twinges of questionable queasiness, but really nothing worth even speaking of. I am walking on air, this is amazing that a new life can be forming inside of me and I am not layed up on the couch or leaning over the toilet. Names I’m thinking about this week: Beatrice, Blythe

This video is so refreshing and beautiful, I wanted to share it with you.

Brevity

It was somewhere between sunset and dusk as I sat at the computer on a very hot August night. I glanced outside at the evening sky. It was incredibly beautiful. Various shades of pink, purple, blues and grey. Breathtaking really.

I turned my attention back to the screen for a few brief minutes.

When I looked back, the difference was striking. Already the light had begun to fade. Night was closing in.

Immediately it made me think of Isabel's brief life.

A bursting forth and then a fading away.

Protection vs. isolation

One morning at the breakfast table while we were reading the Bible, Isabel came up. I had been feeling bad because no one talks to me about Isabel. This includes my immediate family. Whenever I do mention her, I get the deer-in-the-headlights look. Everyone stares at me in silence. Most of the time no one says anything. My middle son occasionally says things to try to comfort me like, "Well Mama, maybe you can have another baby that won't die next time."

"Yes son, that would be nice."

It really makes me chuckle, because his heart is so sincere in his attempt to comfort me. He has no clue how horrible what he is saying sounds. It makes perfect sense to him.

I told the kids that I know they feel like they can't talk about Isabel because they don't want me to be sad. My 8 year old concurred with this. One time my daughter mentioned Isabel and he told her not to talk about her because it might make Mama cry.

There's a fine line between protecting and isolating someone in grief. Right after Isabel died, there was a lot of 'shushing' of my middle son. I know my husband told him that if he wanted to talk about Isabel to talk to Papa because Mama was too sad. And I was. He would casually say very inappropriate things that were very hard to hear when the wound was so raw, in his innocence of course.

On this day, I told them that whether they talk about her or not, I will still be sad. But I wanted them to know that she was and is a part of our family. She will always be our daughter. She will forever be their sister. If we can never speak of her and include her as a part of our family, that would make me even sadder.

Then my 8 year old was able to express how he felt that day at the ultrasound, the day we first found out. He said, "We were so excited about our baby, telling T3 that she was going to have a baby sister, and then BOOM a huge cannon went off! A huge explosion."

I thought that was such a poignant way of explaining what happened emotionally to us that day. It was like a huge explosion. In fact, when I wrote about that first ultrasound, I likened it to a bomb being detonated. How funny that he could articulate it so well, so similarly to my post.

It's sad. The boys must feel a torn. They want to protect me so they keep these hard feelings bottled up inside.

One year later

As Isabel's birthday approached, it was really strange. I became very emotional at times, seemingly out of the blue, without really thinking that the year mark was coming up.

It was back to the sobbing-in-bed-at-night-in-the-dark type of crying, with the pillow over my face, trying not to wake my husband. I honestly don't understand it, but I suppose it's somewhat normal.

My husband and I weren't sure what we were supposed to do on her birthday. It's obviously not a happy occasion, she isn't one year old.

Instead it's one year of emptiness.

One year of bathing my daughter and seeing two little girls sitting in the tub.

One year of holding hands around the dinner table, picturing Isabel in the empty spot.

One year of making small talk with people about absolutely nothing important.

One year of feeling guilty about whatever it was I did in the early weeks of my pregnancy.

One year of fighting back tears.

One year of wrestling with God.

Here we are after Isabel's graveside service.

Not a good day.

Two of the kids were sick, it was extremely hot, my milk was coming in and we had just buried our daughter.

Approximately one year later on Isabel's birthday. My husband took me to a nice spanish restaurant we've always wanted to go to. It was a sober and sweet night. We hadn't been out together alone for ages, and now there was so much more between us.

Like soldiers who had gone through a bloody battle together, we had gone through that terrible experience clinging to each other. All of the doctor appointments, ultrasounds, the grim prognosis, the fear of facing the reality of giving birth to our daughter and then watching her die. The memories of all of that and that hellish night hung like a thick fog between us, all unspoken.

We knew.

We remembered and still hurt.

But the Lord had brought us through it.

In the end, we concluded that we were wrong. It shouldn't have just been us. Next year and all the years that follow, our whole family will dress up and go out together to acknowledge Isabel's birthday and honor her as a member of our family. To remember that one day we will see her in Heaven.

So what else have we been up to in the last year?

Papa took up running. He ran his first half marathon in June and is training for his first full marathon this fall. He's also lost about 45 pounds and looks great.

And me? I suppose I've knit my way through miles of yarn. These are some socks I knit for little Jewel. She is one of the new babies at church.

Faith that endures

The heart can only rest upon and enjoy the blessed truth of the absolute sovereignty of God as faith is in exercise. Faith is ever occupied with God. That is the character of it; that is what differentiates it from intellectual theology.

Faith endures "as seeing Him who is invisible" (Heb. 11:27); endures the disappointments, the hardships, and the heart-aches of life, by recognizing that all comes from the hand of Him who is too wise to err and too loving to be unkind.

But so long as we are occupied with any other object than God Himself, there will be neither rest for the heart nor peace for the mind. But when we receive all that enters our lives as from His hand, then, no matter what may be our circumstances or surroundings, whether in a hovel or prison-dungeon, or at a martyr's stake, we shall be enabled to say, "The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places" (Ps. 16:6).

But that is the language of faith, not of sight nor of sense.

But if instead of bowing to the testimony of Holy Writ, if instead of walking by faith, we follow the evidence of our eyes, and reason therefrom, we shall fall into a quagmire of virtual atheism.

Or, if we are regulated by the opinions and views of others, peace will be at an end.

Granted that there is much in this world of sin and suffering which appals and saddens us; granted that there is much in the providential dealings of God which startle and stagger us; that is no reason why we should unite with the unbelieving worldling who says, "If I were God, I would not allow this or tolerate that."

Better far, in the presense of bewildering mystery, to say with one of old, "I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because Thou didst it" (Ps. 39:9). Scripture tells us that God's judgments are "unsearchable," and His ways "past finding out" (rom. 11:33).

It must be so if faith is to be tested, confidence in His wisdom and righteousness strengthened, and submission to His holy will fostered.


The above excerpt is from The Sovereignty of God by A.W. Pink. It was first published in 1928. I love this book! I bought it used off ebay and it is packed with so much wisdom. I highly recommend it. You can print the entire book free online here or purchase the audio verision and listen while you do dishes. It's deep reading. I can't read much at one time. I have probably read over this portion (above) between 10 and 20 times.


This passage is so true, the only thing that has brought me comfort and peace is (as Pink puts it) recognizing that all comes from the hand of Him who is too wise to err and too loving to be unkind

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!


For who has known the mind of the LORD?


Or who has become His counselor?


Or who has first given to Him


And it shall be repaid to him?


For of Him and through Him and to Him


are all things, to whom be glory forever.


Amen.


Romans 11:33-36