A few steps down the path...

There has been so much going on around here lately for us. Some of it has been good, some challenging, but all of it has been a learning experience. Through the past few weeks I've learned more about myself, grown in my faith in God, and learned so much about the people I am blessed to call my family and friends.

We "came out" recently on a popular social networking site in regards to our infertility struggle and our adoption path. Well...I did anyway. My husband was "outed" by default in the process. I did this for several reasons. I've always been open and brutally honest here and on previous blogs about our infertility and the feelings and struggles we've faced because of it, both personally and within our marriage. I have kind of kept a lid on it in other places mostly because I'm tired of the well-meaning ass-vice that people love to give. It's a hard balance to keep sometimes. Well, I'm tired of hiding. If you can have five kids and post a zillion pictures and update everyone about the status of your "miserable pregnancy" then I can say "Hey, I'm infertile and if you don't like what I have to say or the way I respond, then there's the unfriend button, click away honey." I have nothing to be ashamed of because I'm infertile. It's not my fault. It's not my husband's fault, it's not anyone's fault. It's not even God's fault. It took me a long time to realize that. It's taken me a long time to get to the point of accepting that I might never conceive and give birth to a child that is biologically of me and my husband. It hurts to accept that. I'm not going to lie, it hurts bad. There will always be a hollowed out spot in my heart and in our family that I believe belongs to that child that might never be. I will always to long to look at our child and see my husband's eyes, my nose, his cute jutting chin and my chubby cheeks looking back at me. I believe I will always long to have that. But I've gotten to a place where I'm accepting that it just might not happen. I have learned in the past few months that God has a plan that is bigger than I could ever imagine. And I don't believe that God would have put the desire to be a mother in my heart if He didn't have a way in mind to make that happen.

I truly believe that God has plans for us to be parents together. For me to be a mother, for my husband to be a full-time father. However, and what has frustrated me for the past six years is that His plan is not always the same as MY plan. It has taken a lot of prayer, soul-searching, and humbling of myself before I realized that our goals are the same...just the paths are a little different. My path, the path I've been trudging along for five years and five months has been me wandering in the jungle, hacking away at the dense choking foliage with the machete of my iron will. It was dark, stifling, treacherous, claustrophobic, and filled with the scary sounds of jungle creatures and sometimes myself screaming in the night. Most of all it was lonely. Good grief was it fucking lonely. God's path however...how mightily different the few steps I've taken on it have been.

Wait.

Let me back up a bit.

I've already stated here before that several months ago I began to re-explore my relationship with God, or lack thereof. My husband and I sought out and found a church "home" we feel comfortable in and have been attending services regularly (well, as regularly as my nutty schedule will allow anyway). I began taking time daily to read my Bible, and have been reading several books geared toward "new believers" pertaining to establishing a relationship adn walk with God. My best friend and I have had several very interesting and fulfilling conversations about faith, religion and our personal walks and challenges in our faith. I look forward to spending time with her every week not only because we have fun together, but because we can talk faith and I know both of us enjoy that immensely.

One particular book that has totally changed the way I pray and view my relationship with God is called "Just Enough Light for the Step I'm On" by Stormie Omartian. I highly recommend it. She likens our walk with God to that of a child learning to walk. Instead of the goal of INdependence when teaching our children to walk (and in raising them altogether), we must learn that without total DEpendence on God, we are unable to take even the smallest of steps along the path He has laid out for us. I'll be the first to admit, it sounds a bit simplistic at first, but as I've delved further into this book I've found that it's a very comforting premise. I've also learned a lot about the concept of "God's will". For years I've had a knee jerk reaction to those words. My hackles raised, my eyes involuntarily rolled, and I could feel the bitterness bubbling up like acid in my stomach burning a hole right through my soul. Mostly because those words were always prefaced by some well-meaning idiot who decided that it would be comforting to tell me that my infertility or my friends' pregnancy losses were "God's will" and that it was "God's will" that I wasn't meant to have a child. I call bullshit on that one. I have learned that God does have a plan. That doesn't mean that He CAUSES bad things to happen. He doesn't want bad things to happen to His children any more than any loving parent does. He never promise there wouldn't be struggles or hard times. He just promised that He would be there to comfort us if we allow Him to. It is NOT God's plan for any child to die. It is NOT His plan for any of His children to experience loss and disappointment. Bad things happen. Sometimes there are no explanations, and that's hard to accept. It's hard for me to accept, I know that for a fact. But I believe it to be true. God has a plan for me, and there is no way for me with my human eyes, heart and mind to comprehend how awesome it is. I've glimpsed tiny visions of it, because He has allowed me to. He has shone a light just big enough on the path before my feet to let me know I'm going in the right direction.

I have recently changed the way I pray. In all my years growing up in the church, I never truly learned how to pray. I was taught to thank God for what you do have and ask for what you want. That was it. So, for years, that's what I did. I spent the last six years basically begging God to let me get pregnant and to give us a child. To cure me of my infertility and stop the pain of my breaking heart. I spent the last six years hacking my way through the jungle, forging my own path through the wilderness, believing that since God wasn't answering my prayers and giving me a child, that I was being punished. My punishment for whatever I had done in my past that was so heinous was walking the Hell of infertility. There were a few people who tried to get me to understand that this was simply not true. I didn't want to believe them. I believed that I was such an awful person, God decided to refuse the one thing I truly wanted in life. The Bible even says that children are a reward, that if I ask I shall receive. Apparently (in my mind) God had deemed me not worthy of that reward, of that blessing, and I certainly wasn't going to receive no matter how many times/how loud/in how many languages I asked.

It's ok. Go ahead and laugh. I laugh at myself just writing that.

My first step was to accept that my infertility was not and IS NOT a punishment. That was a hard step to take. I am not unworthy. Like a lot of people in this world, I seemed to enjoy playing the "victim card". Woe is me, the lonely bitter jaded misunderstood infertile woman. Granted, infertility is lonely; sometimes we do become bitter and jaded; and a lot of people don't understand it. I see now though, that I overplayed it a LOT.

My second step was to accept that there are things in this life and in this world that I am simply not meant to understand or have control over. As much as it frustrates me and hurts, my infertility and the possibility that I might never conceive a child is one of those things. I don't know why I might never know the joy of conceiving, carrying and birthing a child. And maybe I'm not meant to understand.

My third step was to admit that I am helpless to overcome this aching chasm in my heart without God's help.

My fourth step was to accept that God has a plan for all of us. Just because it doesn't look the way we imagine it SHOULD look or the way we WANT it to look, doesn't mean that it's not a fantabulously amazing plan. God wants us to dream. He puts dreams in our hearts. He put the desire to be a mother into my heart, that I know for a fact. But pursuing dreams that are not in line with His will for our lives will only bring misery, frustration and unfulfillment. I'm learning that more everyday.

My fifth step was to learn a new way of praying. And that was to declare my total and utter dependence on God, ask him to reveal to me his plan for my life, and for Him to show me the path that is in line with his plan for my life.

A few months ago, I said my prayer of "God, I admit that I have no control of this situation, but I do know that you placed the desire to be a mother into my heart for a reason. I trust that you have a way to make that happen, and I am fully dependent on you to lead me down that path. I am surrendering my life to Your will. Please make Your will known to us. If it is Your will for us to be parents, please show us the way and the path we should be moving on".

When I began praying in that manner, praying for God to reveal his plans for us and to make his will known, and when I consciously surrendered the grip of control I wanted to have on my life...things began to change. My relationship with my husband changed. We became softer and more open with each other. We began going to church together, reading our Bibles together, reading a couples' daily devotional together. My relationship with several of my friends began to change. My heart has opened and started to heal enough that I was able to spend an evening with my best friend and her two adorable sons without wanting to run from the room bursting into tears of jealousy and anger. I didn't even feel that when I was with them. I truly only felt blessed to get to witness my best friend, the little girl I've known since the day she was born, who used to sit in my bedroom and play Barbie's and trade secrets with me mothering her children. I didn't feel that old pang of "I can't be here, it's too painful". There was a moment of "yeah, I can't wait for that".

One of my biggest hindrances in my faith is being open to hearing the answers God has for me regarding my life rather than begging him for something and getting pissed off when He doesn't answer the way I think He should. Hmm. Pretentious much? I'm learning that I can't put limits on God. He works in His own way and His own time. Just because we don't get the answer we WANT, doesn't mean the answer is NO. Maybe the answer is "Well, maybe not now."

Soon after I changed my method of praying and truly opening myself up to the answers God was giving me, we heard about the adoption situation I discussed in my previous post. Even though that didn't pan out, we still feel that at this moment, we are being led to pursue adoption. I'm not saying we are giving up TTC. We will probably still keep trying as we move through the adoption process. We always wanted two anyway. The adoption process is going to be a while anyway, so anything can happen in that time.

All of that being said...we have started the process for adopting through our county Children's Division (DFS). I printed out and have begun completing the home assessment application. I contacted several of our friends to ask if we could use them as references. I have a list of items we need to gather to show that we are prepared (materially and physical space wise) for a child placement. A friend from work has donated a crib to us, and several people have offered us clothing from their children or relative's children.

I spoke to a case worker at the Children's Division today and even though I wasn't real encouraged by what she had to say, it was still a step in the right direction. She is mailing us out a homestudy packet and information on the adoption program, and I should get that next week. We have to go through the foster/adopt classes, and unfortunately they aren't having another one until September. We can take it in a different county as long as it's still in Missouri, and they might have one sooner. They will probably come do our homestudy in the next couple of months. As soon as we get the homestudy done and complete the classes and are approved, all we do then is wait for our child! She did say that we will probably have a longer wait because we specified that we are "adopt only" and that we prefer an infant up to 2-3 years old. There's a longer wait for that. But...one thing she did say is once we get the homestudy done, if we find out about a private adoption situation, we can use that homestudy for that and it's one less thing to go through.

Even though I was disappointed in the "hurry up and wait" aspect of everything, I'm relying on God to get me through it. One of the biggest lessons God has been trying to beat into me teach me for years is patience. September is only five months away. This gives us more time to get the projects done around the house that we have planned (remodeling the bathroom, rebuilding our front deck, painting inside and outside of the house).

Everyone we have told about this has been nothing but supportive and incredibly helpful. To be honest, I've been quite amazed at the outpouring of support we have received. I know I have amazing friends and family, but still. It's a little overwhelming when you receive text messages and emails for a full day from people offering help and support.

God is GOOD!!!

Oh yeah, Happy Birthday To Me! I'm 36 today, and although it's a little later than I wanted it to happen, I'm finally on my way to being a Mommy! That's the best present I could ever dream of!!!

(Stay tuned for a fun knitting update post this weekend!)

What's not to be...

Hello fellow travelers! 

I would like to thank you all for your continued prayers since my request. 

Unfortunately, the situation didn't work out the way we were hoping.  I know that God's plan is bigger than us and what we know, but it's still a disappointment. 

Since it's not going to work out, I guess I can share it now.  About a month ago we heard through the grapevine of a 17 year old girl who was about 8 weeks pregnant at the time.  She knew she didn't want to keep the baby and didn't want to have an abortion.  We made it known to people that knew her that we were very interested in pursuing adoption and were more than willing to speak to her about possibly adopting her baby if that's the way she wanted to go.  I prayed every day that if this was the child that we were supposed to raise, that God would find a way to make it happen.  If this was the plan that God had for us, to adopt a child, that He would lay the path for us. 

Well...we just (as in while I was typing this post) got word that her aunt is going to take the baby. 

I tried, God did I try, to not get my hopes up.  I should have known better.  I should have known that nothing good will ever happen to us.  I should have known better than to think that something like this could really happen for us.  For me. 

I had a lot more to post about, but honestly I don't feel much like talking now that I've gotten this news.

A request for prayer

Dear Fellow Travelers Along The Road Of Life,

Will you please pray for my husband and I? 

A situation has presented itself, which if it follows the plan God has intended for us, will significantly change our lives.

All I ask is that you pray for God to guide us in this decision, and if it is His will for it to be...that it WILL BE.  

I apologize in advance for the vagueness of this post, but I'm just not ready to discuss the particulars of the situation at this moment in time.  I know you all understand.

In His Love,

Rebecca and Matt

"Felt" Up

Well friends, I'm finished with my very first felted project!  I actually finished it last weekend.  I just haven't had (or taken) time to post the pictures of it yet.   

Here's my "Booger" Bag before felting:



And after felting:



Project specs:

Pattern:  Booga Bag

Yarn used:  Nashua Handknits Wooly Stripes (colorway: Key West)

Needles:  US size 10 1/2, 29" circular

Finished (felted and blocked) dimensions:  7in wide x 7.5 in high x 4.5 in deep

I am really happy with the way my first bag turned out.  I still think the colors are hideous, but in a good way.  In an "E.T. he's so ugly he's cute" kind of way.  I must admit, I'm completely amazed, intrigued and utterly fascinated at the entire felting process.

I was so enamored with the entire knitting/felting process while making this bag that I made another one.  In about three days.  :)  Imagine this one right side up with the handles attached (it's blocking and drying right now).  One thing I did different with this bag from the first one is that I hand felted it.  Instead of throwing it into a hot wash cycle in the washer, I agitated it in the kitchen sink with water as hot as I could stand it.  I believe I prefer the hand felting method better.  I had more control over how much it felted and I think I got a more uniform felt out of it.  The machine felted one had really felted spots and some felted but not so much as the really felted spots.  And I love love love the springy colors of this one too.  One last note to self about creating another Booga in the future:  KNIT THE I-CORD HANDLES FIRST!!!  Good grief, by the time I got done with the bag and realized I had six FEET of i-cord handle to knit, I thought I was going to induce vomitation by swallowing my own knitting needle.  I hate i-cord.  Oh, it turns out nice, and all that...but I just don't like making it.  It's boring.

The other change to the second bag was I knitted it a touch bigger than the first one.  I cast on a few more stitches than it called for to make the bottom of the bag, and I knitted several more inches onto the length (it turned out to be 9 in high when felted). 

Specs:  Same Booga Pattern, same brand of yarn (colorway Pastels), same needle.    



I'll admit, I've become addicted to this pattern and can't wait to make some more!!!  I'm picturing all the poor naked sheep wandering around out there that will be feeding my upcoming wool stash requirements! 

***On a totally unrelated note, does anyone have or know of a really good daily devotional book or Bible study book for new Christians?  I'm reading through the Bible (I've made it to the middle of Deuteronomy so far) and I have several books (Stormie Omartian's Power of a Praying series) that I have bought to read and learn from along my journey, but I thought I would check with my friends and see what, if any, devotional and/or Bible study books you have tried out and liked (or not liked for that matter...any advice is great!).  Thanks in advance!!!

This and that...

Good morning fellow travelers! 

I hope everyone is having an enjoyable Superbowl Sunday so far.  Who are you rooting for? 

We're not football fans around here (ducking to avoid the projectiles being hurled at my head after that comment!)...actually we don't care for much in the way of sports except for watching the Olympics.  I guess we're weird that way.  Our Superbowl Sunday is being spent being totally and utterly lazy!  We tried to go to church this morning, but when we got there, we realized that they changed the time of the service.  It used to be at 9am.  We arrived about 8:37 to see a sign that they are now having two Sunday morning services, at 8am and 10:45 am.  So we headed back toward home, stopped for a bite to eat, and hubby started feeling really bad.  He's had the flu this week, and he had a few dizzy spells before we were supposed to leave for the 10:45 service.  So, I decided to stay home to monitor him instead of going to church.  I think God would understand! 

I have a turkey breast roasting in the oven for dinner, and aside from checking that once in a while, I'm 100% committed to doing little more today than camping out in the living room catching up on my shows that have DVR'd this week and knitting my little heart out!  I love love love lazy days!!! 

Did I hear someone ask what I'm knitting?  :)  Well, as a matter of fact, I'm working on my first "me" project of the year...my Booga Bag.  This is my first felted project.  Remember the hideously ugly yarn I bought a while back?  Go check the picture, I'll wait.  :)

Here's that yarn again, this time being worked into a Booga Bag.  I still think it's gloriously ugly, but the striping effect is nice.  I've nicknamed this my "Booger Bag"...because although you can't tell very well in the picture, parts of the yarn appear the beautifully appetizing color of snot.  Or baby poop.  But I didn't think Poopoo bag had the same flair as Booger Bag.  But, maybe that's just me. 

"Booger" Bag in progress: 



Yesterday I had to make a hasty trip to the yarn store in order to pick up another skein of said hideous yarn, because when I first bought it, I didn't know quite what I was going to use it for.  So, I bought three skeins.  I should have bought four, because once I got into knitting the bag, I realized it's quite chunky and I was afraid I was going to run out.  While I was there, I found another colorway of the same yarn, which since it was on SALE, I bought as well.  :)  Oddly enough, these two skeins shown are the same colorway, but because of the long color changes, they appear to be totally different.  I really liked these shades, and will probably do a second Booga with this.  Or maybe not.  It all depends on what strikes my fancy!

Nashua Handknits Wooly Stripes (pastels): 

In His grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well.  So if God has given you...ability...[use it] with as much faith as God has given you.  ~Romans 12:6 NLT

Better...more focused.

Thank you to everyone for your kind words the other day.  I don't know fully what was going on, but thankfully I'm feeling much better.  Part of it might have been hormonal.  I stopped the Pill in November, when Matt moved back in, and haven't had AF since then.  My body is probably freaking out and going back into full blown PCOS mode, which really depresses me.

I did take the suggestion made by a few of you to just make a list of what I was feeling overwhelmed with and decide which tasks could wait and which were the more pressing issues.  I usually have a few "to do" lists going at a time, and lists prioritizing which list comes first, and lists of which of the items on the first priority list gets done first.  Time to simplify maybe?  LOL 

Yesterday morning, while my sick husband slept off the most recent dose of Nyquil and antibiotics, I spent an hour in the quiet solitude of our home office reading my Bible, praying, and studying a few topics out of a Bible reading guide.  It was during that time that I felt a quiet calm wash over me.  I saw the fuzzy haze I felt I was looking through slowly shifting back into focus.  I believe now that my "off" feeling was God tapping me on the shoulder as if to say "Hey, remember me?  I'd like to spend some time with you." 

I spent the rest of the day catching up on the things that needed the most attention, and those that didn't get done I'm not stressing over.  I managed to get the "office" a little more organized, the mountainous pile of junk mail sorted, bills paid and filed, , and finished knitting the last of the baby gifts for Niki's twins.  I'm headed out later to ship them to her.  I can't wait for her to get them, I hope she likes them!   

It's a strange and new feeling for me to write about my faith and religion so openly.  I don't want to come across as a preachy Bible-thumping crazy woman, but I just can't deny the changes that have occurred in my life since I opened my heart to God again.  That's not to say that all my questions have been answered, or that my life is suddenly perfect rainbows and bluebirds.  The issues I struggle with are still there.  I have just learned that if I slow down for a moment, "let go and let God" if you will, that what seems so heavy and debilitating slowly becomes a little lighter and more manageable.  At least for me.  I'm trying to understand that He has a plan for me, and that if I ask...He will lead me in the direction I need to go.   

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path(s)."  Proverbs 3:5-6

Overwhelmed

I'm feeling a bit out of sorts today.  I'm overwhelmed at the amount of things that I'm behind on, yet can't seem to get the motivation to catch up.  My Google Reader has 127 posts waiting in it, and more keep getting added everyday.  I still haven't finished the baby gifts for my friend even though I'm knitting furiously on them what seems like every free second I have, and the boys were born over the weekend.  So much for getting those done before they came.  I've got a million thoughts going through my head for blog posts, yet can't seem to get them from brain to computer screen.  I haven't read my Bible or had any focused quiet prayer time for a few days. 

I feel like I'm meeting myself coming and going and I just can't get turned around to face forward for any significant period of time.  A lot of it has to do with the fact that I just went back on nightshift...the changeover is always hard on me and I feel like I lose days because of it.  I can tell that's not all that's going on though, but I can't put my finger on what the true problem is. 

Ugh...I just want to feel normal and get caught up!