Points to ponder:

Organ donation
Does homeschooling need to be regulated?

My Life

I feel like my life is a soap opera.

A bad soap opera. And not particularly interesting. I don't expect reality shows to come knocking.

Maranatha

I wasn't supposed to get pregnant this month.

I didn't think that I was. I could have gotten a test, even, but it would have been on the same day that I became unpregnant if I was pregnant. It is not the first time I have had symptoms of miscarriage when I shouldn't have been pregnant. That is part of why I had believed my doctor when she had claimed that I hadn't been pregnant. Enoch was the first baby who died under that woman's care.

And I guess it would make some sense that my cycle would not be normal right after a miscarriage. But Enoch wasn't conceived right after a miscarriage. But then, this is the first time it would have been two in a row.

At any rate, I had some very real near-suicidal depression on Friday. And church was difficult this Sunday. Looking at this sweet little girl who is always volunteering to pray, and thinking how I won't know what my children look like until heaven. Listening to the fifth-grader who always thinks first of how people need the gospel, and commenting on his heart for missions, and then realizing that I won't know that about my own children--where there special giftings and callings are--in this lifetime.

And all I could think was how I wanted Jesus to come back, or call me home.
I sure have that "treasure in heaven" business down, at least.
Maranatha, Lord.
And that's her name. I don't know why or how, but I feel like God gave me that name for her.
That has not happened before with any of my other pregnancies.

Maranatha, Jesus. Until then, take good care of my babies, however many of them there are.

live journal

So today, for the first time in 8 months or so, I posted something in my livejournal. Feel free to read if you like, but please don't link here from there or refer to me by my blog name. The essay I wrote there mentions why I decided to move to blogland instead of staying in LJland where everybody knew my name. I also talk about abortifacients and Christians' right to know when they are prescribed a drug which may have effects to which they have moral objections. And since I was writing in LJ (okay, since I'm having a bad day and I am a bad Christian who is bad at "getting rid of all bitterness and anger") I made sure to be a little angsty.

If you have been praying for me--thank you. I am doing better now.

At the moment I think I will probably get through this week alive.

Please pray for me today

Something random I wrote today

So, a couple people who read my blog have recently claimed that I am a good writer.

This is something I wrote today.

Have fun.
(For anyone who is curious, I had to post this in IE instead of my normal browser, Opera.)



Sarah Saved had no children, and it seemed like everything reminded her of it. When the children went up to the front for the children’s sermon, when they flooded back through the sanctuary (not much of a sanctuary from thoughts of infertility!) on their way to children’s church, when she had to walk by the nursery on her way to Sunday school... and in the middle of all of it was Brenda Breeder. She herded all the children downstairs to children’s church, carrying her toddler with her instead of putting him in the nursery, as if no one else were good enough to look after him, even though she was teaching a craft her own three older boys and thirty-odd others besides. To top it off, Brenda was very pregnant with yet another child—five! Just seeing the Breeder brood was enough to make Sarah livid—at herself, at God, but especially at Brenda. Brenda was forever counting off her kids: “Josiah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Levi... and little Elijah,” Brenda would say, resting a hand on her bulging abdomen with the last.
She can barely keep track of her kids, she has so many, Sarah thought with disgust. After going through the grueling adoption progress, she was sure she would love her firstborn child more than Brenda could ever love Josiah. Before Sarah and her husband had started the adoption process, she had even fantasized about stealing one of Brenda’s little blond-haired, blue-eyed boys. Surely she could give the child more attention than he would get in a family of six, and Brenda would probably not even notice that he went missing. Now, though, Sarah was waiting to get a baby of her own, and the Breeder boys were just a reminder that she was still waiting. Brenda knew that she was adopting, too, but she just didn’t keep her big pregnant belly out of the way.
A gentle nudge from her husband informed Sarah that the sermon was over and it was time for Sunday School. Great. Big old pregnant Brenda would probably sit next to her again.
Brenda ambushed her in the hallway before she had even entered the classroom. Handing off the toddler to her husband, Brenda accosted Sarah with The Question: “Heard any good news yet? I keep praying your little one will come soon! He could be Elijah’s playmate!”
“No,” Sarah replied. Why did she keep rubbing it in that she had a baby coming soon, sure and for certain?
Brenda squeezed her shoulder. “Just keep trusting in the Lord.” What did Brenda know about trusting in the Lord? It seemed like she had a baby every two years like clockwork. What did she know about being given a body that didn’t work? About having to wait on someone else’s approval to get a baby? About having a heart that raced with every phone call only to break a little bit more when she saw it was not the social worker calling? About being surrounded by pregnant ladies who couldn’t help but remind her every Sunday that her arms were empty?
Sarah stayed in the hallway a moment after Brenda went in, and then sat across the room from her. Brenda came over to sit next to her with a big, happy, pregnant smile. It must be easy to be happy when everything you want falls into your lap. Sarah had thought that a class on Psalms would be uplifting. But Brenda made it miserable. She would always talk about being blessed. But God didn’t bless Sarah.
“Oh, Sarah, I love this psalm!” said Brenda, pointing out one of the psalms they would be studying. Wonderful—more stuff to remind her that she didn’t have kids. Children were olive plants. Whatever that meant.
“And just how many olive plants do you have again, Brenda?” Sarah asked, feeling more than a little snippy—which she thought was justifiable.
A palpable silence fell over the room as everyone turned to look at her. She hadn’t sounded that snippy, had she?
Brenda took a moment to reply.
“I have ten children. The first five are waiting for me to meet them in Heaven. Then we adopted Josiah. And then God blessed me with four more boys. And all it would have taken to save my other babies was aspirin—but then I wouldn’t have Josiah.”
Brenda fled the room.
Sarah was left to remember that Josiah looked a bit less like a clone of his father than his little brothers did. She recalled how her husband had urged her to be a little more charitable to Brenda—“She’s just trying to be friendly.” In shame, she thought how sure she had been that Brenda had no sorrow in her life—in fact, that no sorrow could compare with hers. And she remembered that each time she had asked for prayer about the adoption, it had been Brenda who offered the prayer. And then Sarah Saved prayed for forgiveness, and went to make amends to her sister in Christ.


For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Matthew 7:2 (New International Version)

Blogger will not let me type in the text box to make posts. Don't you hate being forced to update to a buggy product?

Things come together: doctors, ancestral land, adoption

I saw the doctor and it went very well. He is everything that we were looking for: compassionate, knowledgeable, and willing to explain medical concepts without condescencion. He was very clear about the testing regimen he would use and why each test was necessary. He never assumed that I would not understand something.

Also, it looks like we have paid all the medical costs we are going to pay this year; insurance will be covering the rest of the tests.

I have been meaning to do a post for some time about how I feel about the land I live on. Our lot was given to us by my husband's parents. Despite the fact that it has been less than two years that we have lived in this town, and less than that we have lived in our house, I feel very strong roots here. My husband lived his whole life next door to our house. This is ancestral land, like the land alotted to the Israelites in the Bible. God willing, the children of the children of my children will one day live in this house. One day when I walk through the woods I will be followed by a gaggle of enthusiastic little ones. Sometimes I imagine that my little ones are following me--Joseph, Isaiah, Elisha, Enoch, Simon Hosea and Ruby. I know I could never have had them all, but I imagine their faces and I imagine holding them close and if I work in the nursery and a small multitude of under-twos surrounds me as I read a book to them, I think to myself, this is what should have been...

At any rate, I feel ties here like I have never felt before, even though I am bound to this family by marriage and not by birth. And it saddened me that my father-in-law was selling much of his land to finance his retirement, even though it would be in state hands and not built on. If we could have bought it, we would have, but it just was not feasible.

The state was not offering what he wanted, though, and then after the appraisal came back with a price less than half of what he had been willing to settle for, I asked my husband again if we could afford it. And it had become feasible. So we talked it over with my in-laws. They had not wanted to settle for so little. But they very much liked the idea of selling it in the family. If one day a profit was made on it, we would be making it. Because we were buying it at "market value," it would not be a difference between my husband and his brother. We can consider it an investment. And it would mean that we could do for our children what my father-in-law did for us. All four of us consider all of these to be advantages.

My husband has looked into the funding of this, because we really aren't wealthy--not for Americans at any rate. Basically, if we refinanced our two-year-old mortgage we could get the money for the property, consolidate it with the existing property to reduce the tax rate, and get the money not just to buy it, but also to continue retirement investments and to fund our adoption. I wouldn't even have to be more frugal at all. (Not that being more frugal would be bad, but our lifestyle is not exactly profligate as things stand). In fact, this would actually help us with our adoption. And my father-in-law mentioned to my husband that maybe the way things went with the state happened that way so that we could buy the land. And maybe it did. I certainly can see God's hand at work here.

God willing, here is what I would like to happen: the land deal finishes, we use the money to finance an adoption, and the process goes quickly. My problem is diagnosed and fixed (or I simply get pregnant and stay pregnant with the help of progesterone and/or aspirin and no clear diagnosis) and continue to have many children. I know God's plans aren't my plans--but that is what I am hoping for.

God bless y'all.