My Ebenezer

When I go through a significant trial, I usually can't trust myself to write about it right away.  The feelings are too raw, my flesh is too strong, and I fear I will say something I will regret.  But I think I am ready now.  God has reminded me of late that He is in complete control, and that "no purpose of [His] can be thwarted." Job 42:2  These are vital things to know when you go through trials inexplicable. Over the last five months, God has allowed Josh and me to lose four babies.  Four babies in five months.  In May and again in July, we lost two miracle pregnancies almost as quickly as we discovered them.  And now here in October, we have lost two more precious ones to a failed IVF cycle. I have done a lot of asking God, "Why?" which for the record always turns out to be an exercise in frustration and brings with it no peace, only more questions and prideful accusations.  Then I remembered Job, who in the middle of his trials (which we...

I had the option in college to major in Art Education, but at the time all the education classes steered me away from that option.  Little did I know.  And now, 12 years after graduation, I am teaching Art twice a month to our little homeschool group--which consists of Noah and his Jacksonville cousins.  We have had 2 classes so far, and it's going well.  It's a bit of a challenge because I have ages 2-7 in my "class", but we do manage to have ourselves some fun, even if I do often lose the four-year-old to the greener pastures of the toy trucks. Today we did fingerprint art... Titus made "blocks" out of his fingerprints.  See him eyeing the trucks in the next room?  I get you, Titus! Libby had fun making lots of different colored fingerprints Brianne immediately decided to make flowers, and they turned out beautifully! (Hey, where's Titus?  Can you guess?) And Noah worked on a hand "tree" with fingerprint "leaves....

Lately I have been feeling like I'm being knocked around by life a bit.  My house is overwhelming in a continually disheveled, stuff-everywhere, does-that-laundry-basket-contain-clean-clothes-or-dirty? sort of way, there are projects piling up that I have no time for, my parenting abilities have clearly fallen on hard times, I feel like Josh and I have no time together, and I'm pretty sure (actually, very sure) that our most recent attempt with IVF has failed. "One at a time !" I want to bellow to my trials. "Take a num ber!" But life isn't like that, is it?  Trials don't come in neatly-wrapped bite-sized bundles, one at a time.  No, that's why we say, "when it rains, it pours." So. I thought I'd take a minute and just breathe for a second, and I find a lot of times I come here to breathe.  Or to write, which is similar.  Let me take a moment and focus on some positives for a few minutes: These guys.  I do love them.  ...

Yesterday I added progesterone shots to my daily medication routine (though I don't think I will ever get used to giving myself a shot, so "routine" seems like a misnomer!).  Lord-willing on Tuesday, Sept 23, we will have our Frozen Embryo Transfer, transferring our two embryos which were frozen when we did IVF the last time.  We are praying that the Lord would use this to grow our family if that would be His will.  I'll keep you posted how things go! I just went back and re-read all my posts from the other IVF attempts we've had.  There are definitely a lot more of those posts, including a lot more details about the process and my feelings, and I hope that doesn't make you think I don't care as much about this cycle as I have the others; I just have a lot less time to blog these days than I did then. I will say that the Lord has already shown Himself faithful on my behalf this cycle, and I'm trusting Him to continue.  Coveting your prayers as you ...

It's that time again!  Time to muster up the courage, more emotional energy than I can shake a stick at, and lots and lots of prayer as we pursue IVF once again to try to expand our family.  Prayer is really why I've decided to post about this at all; I need me some prayer warriors!  If you think of it, please do pray for us as we begin IVF for the fourth time.  This time, since we are doing a Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET for short), it will still involve plenty of medication and an extreme emotional rollercoaster ride, just not quite as many shots or doctor appointments (for which I am thankful!). We are ready to do this.  Noah is seven, Seth is almost two, and I'm not getting any younger either!  We would love to have one more baby, and we have committed to doing this "last" round of IVF, so here we go! Here's our tentative timeline: Now thru mid-Sept  Take first type of medication, gradually increasing the dosage. Mid-Sept  Have blood work...

On the last day of 1st grade, Noah came home with all sorts of freebies, one of which was a free family pass to the Cummer Museum of Art here in Jacksonville.  It expired August 31, so I wanted to be sure we took advantage of that.  Well, the summer just blew by and we were suddenly in the last week of August, and so we made some time to go.  No problem, we'll just do our school work early and go around 11am (I love homeschooling!).  Unexpectedly, Josh was also able to join us too!  P.S. Notice we were outside; Seth did not appreciate all the art inside.  He was much better outside.  While we were in the high-ceilinged galleries, he kept shrieking just for the pleasure of hearing his own voice echo.  The guard was not amused. :)

Last Monday was our first day of school.  Rather than making lunches, gathering supplies, finding lost shoes, and racing out the door by 8:15am, we first did some household chores and then went to school at 9:30am right in our very own home. :)  We began with prayer, some Bible verses, and a hymn, and we ended a mere 2 hours later, just before lunch.  Noah couldn't believe it was so short.  "I'm done already ? I love this!" he exclaimed. And so do I.  Homeschooling is nothing like I thought it would be. I thought I'd hate teaching; I love it.  I thought Seth would demand constant tending to and my undivided attention; but he was manageable as long as I kept him busy with us doing similar work.  I thought I could kiss my housework goodbye; instead I got more done this last week than I used to when we were on summer break!  We had a mercifully peaceful week, and I think it was a blessing from the Lord, a gentle affirmation that this was a g...

We were at Noah's soccer practice the other night and I was running out of Ways To Keep Seth Occupied.  We had already kicked his ball, played "chase," caught a tiny frog and let it go 86 times, gone through my purse, watched people, run off the field and into the parking lot (oops! That one wasn't supposed to happen!), and sung some songs ("The Wheels on the Bus" is great because there are like a thousand verses).  Are you tired yet? I sure was!  But we had 25 minutes to go, and so I went with a game I like to call, "Make 'em Laugh." The object of the game is to make him laugh so that I will keep from crying. It worked. :)

I was so thrilled this morning NOT to send Noah off for his first day of school.  The public schools in our area started today, but I thankfully did not have to pack up a lunch or start the hustle bustle routine of finding shoes and loading a backpack.  I also did not have to wake Seth up from his nap to go pick Noah up at 3:15pm (IS there a worse time to leave the house when you have a napping toddler?).  So far this is what I love best about homeschooling: that I get to decide when Second Grade starts (next Monday, for those of you wondering).  For now, we're enjoying one more week of summer vacation.

I blinked and this summer is almost over.  I can't remember a summer that was more jammed full of birthday parties, trips North, Vacation Bible School work, visitors, and so on.  We are staring down a week of family camp at The Wilds, and then I have one week (one. week.) to do my final preparations before I belly flop dive into homeschooling.  I'm white-knuckled on the edge of that diving board, with deep fingernail prints in the palms of my hands.  The board looks higher from up here.  Nervous?  Who, me? And so I'm praying lots of things: that I won't turn Noah off to the joys of learning, that I will not stink at teaching, that I will keep my cool, that I will be able to handle both teaching Noah and corralling Seth, that this will be fun and one of the best decisions we have made.  Those are tall orders, seeing them there in print.  I'm thankful tonight that my God specializes in tall orders. :)

No less than 5 minutes after he told me his tooth was "really wiggly," I was face-to-face with a gap-toothed Noah.  "Wow, that was fast," I said.  To which he declared, "Yeah, I really wanted the money that I get from the tooth fairy (which he knows is really us), so I just ripped it out."  Well, I guess that's one way to make fifty cents!

Sometimes I wonder at the Lord's ways. “For My thoughts are not  your thoughts, Nor are  your ways My ways,” declares the  Lord . 9  “For  as  the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts."  Isaiah 55:8-9 I find myself, less than eight weeks after my miracle pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage, miscarrying again .  Another miraculous pregnancy, another miscarriage, right on the heels of the last one.  I don't really have all that much to say about all this that I haven't already said  in my previous post ...   Except this.  I don't think it's a coincidence at all that the very day I began miscarrying this time, Seth said his first complete thought; a two-word sentence.  "Don't cry."  Clear as day, from the mouth of my little 19-month-old son, a precious reminder to my aching heart that God has this too under His sovereign control. Thank you, Lord...

I instructed Noah to pick up the phone books that had been delivered in our driveway, and deposit them directly into the recycle bin. "What is a phone book, anyway?" He asked. And just like that, I felt old.

Because everyone climbs into the sink when you leave them for "two seconds" while they're brushing their teeth, right?

I came across a quote by C.S.Lewis the other day:   “Friendship is born at that moment when one man says to another: "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . ."” I love moments like that!  I experience them often when reading, and actually in my opinion, that is what makes a good book...well, good .  We have been reading aloud in the afternoons, The Trumpet of the Swan , by E. B. White.  I can still remember my second grade teacher (Hi, Mrs. Bogert!) reading that book aloud to my class, and I can remember not wanting her to ever stop.  Now, reading it to Noah is bringing up all my old fondness for the book.   "To be all alone in a hotel room gives a person a cozy feeling and a feeling of importance." (p.134) When I came to that sentence, Noah tapped my arm and said, "Wait, wait, WAIT !  I know what he means!!  You do feel important in a hotel room!"  I would have to agree.  And there is something very satisfying when...

We got back a week ago from a trip to Connecticut, and I'm suffering withdrawals.  My life was beautiful there: get up when I wanted to, go for a leisurely walk with my husband, ride some four-wheeler, don't worry about planning supper (I did help, but it was nice that the planning wasn't on me), shop at consignment stores with my mother-and-sisters-in-law, go to Cape Cod for two nights without the kids... Great. Vacation!

Few things call my name quite as persistently as this blog does; not that you'd ever know it from my posting frequency!  The fact remains, that at this season of my life, there are More Important Things (or maybe just Louder Things) that vie for my attention.  My husband and kids.  My house.  The impending responsibility of homeschooling Noah (gulp) and all the preparation that goes into that. Et cetera. Even so, this blog is important to me, and I find that I can't ignore it indefinitely no matter how many more floors need to be scrubbed and loads of laundry need to be folded.  Documenting our lives is important too, and so I have finally sat down to write about it. I'll start with a cliche':  The boys are growing up so fast!  Everybody's kids grow up so fast, but these are ours, and I don't want to miss it! Noah still talks almost incessantly about anything and everything, and asks dozens (feels like millions) of questions each day.  He h...

One week ago, I found out I was pregnant.  Yes, you read that right.  And yes, this is still me we're talking about here.  The me who has been trying for more than 10 years, who so far has only been successful with the aid of intense medical help and God's tremendous grace.  The very same me who had been told by doctors that it would never happen.  Just woke up one day, miraculously pregnant. I had been feeling strange in the days leading up to it, had even told Josh, "If I didn't know any better, I'd think I was pregnant."  Just kind of queasy for no apparent reason.  On Tuesday at 10a.m., all I could think about was how heavenly a nap would be, and I took a long one that afternoon.  Unheard of.  Wednesday morning at 5a.m. I decided to take the test, just so I could go back to sleep and quit thinking, "what if?"  Only, I saw two beautiful pink lines and never went back to sleep anyway. Me , PREGNANT?!?! What a gift!  What ...

There comes a point after restraining the kids from playing in the almost constant mud puddle at the end of our driveway, that you just have to give in and Let Them.  And take pictures.  And enjoy the fun. :)

This was us attempting to take a family picture while being attacked by no-see-ums.  Fun times! :) A camper I am not.  Last weekend, we had the opportunity to go camping with our church family, and while we had a great time pitching the tent, cooking over the campfire, and getting all rustic, I have to be honest and say the sleeping was The Pits.  Our air mattress went flat around midnight, which was about the same time that the people who had rented the campsite adjoining us decided that midnight would be a perfect time to show up and loudly set up their campsite.  I kid you not.  Call us wimps, but we hightailed it home to our quiet and fluffy beds.  Out of the two times I have been camping, both times I have left the campsite in the middle of the night, seeking sleep in any form.  So.  I would have to chalk up camping as For The Birds, and resolve next year to be sensible and just leave the camping business for the stouter-hearted folks. ...