Beautiful Growing Baby!

My beautiful little boy is growing perfectly! I am in the middle of week 20!  For those of you who don't know, that is the HALFWAY point!!!!! I can't believe we are halfway there!  And as I think of the crazy schedule between now and then with holidays and birthdays, I know the last half of this pregnancy is going to fly!  Before we know it, March will be here, and so will our little Brycen James!  <--did you catch that?!  That is the name we have chosen for our little one!  We will call him Bryce for short.  I love it!

Today I went shopping for our little guy!  I bought a few adorable little onesies on clearance at The Children's Place for next summer/fall.    Shopping for babies is very fun, I have to admit!  And since I don't expect any kind of shower, I will get to shop quite a bit this time around!  I am taking it as a personal challenge of mine to find infant gear and clothing at good prices.  We already purchased a set of matching Graco baby equipment on craigslist for an excellent price.  That was an answer to prayer!  Now we've got all the other little detail things... crib sheets, pacifiers, bottle nipples, burp cloths, clothing, etc to shop for.  Little by little, I will get it done. :-)  and I will enjoy ever minute of it!

Living off Love

I'm pretty sure that is what my husband is doing lately, because he surely isn't living off of sleep.  He is working an evening/night shift at work and recently had early morning work added to his route (he's a fuel truck driver).  So now he is getting home anywhere from 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. and then having to get up at 4:30 a.m. to go out and fuel up another work site. Once in a while he's able to get home 10:30 or 11:00 p.m. from his evening route, but that's not the norm. 

Oh, and did I mention that he's trying not to sleep too much during the day because he is redoing our roof all by himself?   And any extra time and energy he has is given to Camp Bayouca helping with their fall retreats.  Thankfully, at least, the last one of those is this weekend. 

I am proud of my husband for being such a hard worker, but I'll admit, I'm a bit concerned at the schedule he is trying to keep up.   I can see the exhaustion written all over his face. It has definitely been a matter of prayer for me lately.

Help When Needed

The last couple of weeks have been emotionally exhausting.  I have had some very specific struggles regarding our daughter Megan and her disorder, Dysgenesis of the Corpus Callosum.  I could write a book about the last couple of weeks but I'm not going to.  What I am going to write is that I was discouraged, and disheartened.  I felt like I was dealing with it alone.  I was tired of expressing my struggles only to have them be constantly minimalized and brushed off as insignificant with people saying things like "oh, that normal for 7 year olds", or "my kid does that too."  I spent a lot of time in tears crying out to God (and to my mom and husband--thanks guys for listening an being there for me!)

But you know what.  God came through!  (he always does!).  It was accidental on my part, but I do NOT think it was accidental to God! Just when I needed it most I stumbled upon a woman through an online forum, who is a fellow mother of a child with a disorder of the corpus callosum, and a wealth of information!  I no longer have to feel like the expert, but have someone who I can go to for help and encouragement AND understanding!  

Psalm 46:1-3
  God is our refuge and strength,
   an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
   and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
   and the mountains quake with their surging.
                         Selah

Psalm 61:1-4

 Hear my cry, O God; attend unto my prayer.
 From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee,
when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
 For thou hast been a shelter for me, and a strong tower from the enemy.
 I will abide in thy tabernacle for ever: I will trust in the covert of thy wings. Selah.

Thank you, God!

Children are a Gift!

My husband and I are unexpectedly, but with anticipation, pregnant with our fourth child due to arrive in March of 2012!  A little boy, according to my last ultrasound!  We are thrilled.  Maybe even more so than we were with our others, which is hard to believe since we have been thrilled with each of our babies!  But there is just something different about this baby.  It's a little bit of a miracle I guess... Considering that two and a half years ago I was sick to the point that we didn't know if I would live.  And yet, by the grace of God, here I am today, my health is completely restored AND I'm expecting new life!  Thank you, Lord!

So,  I was reading a newsletter from Focus on the Family today and in the letter was this on a recent conference that a representative of Focus on the Family attended: At one point, and American diplomat, Laurie Shestack Phipps, spoke.  She wondered how we could talk about family, but not be concerned about high birth rates in places like Africa.  Don't we understand, she asked, that so many children put a strain on opportunities for women, on public services and on job creation?  Why don't we address the need for family planning (meaning contraceptives) and reproductive health (code for abortion)?

Before I could say anything, another diplomat spoke up.  she was Sarah Flood Beaubron, a UN representative from the tiny nation of St. Lucia.  Here's what she said: "When I was growing up...(our nation) was asked and pressured to reduce our rates of fertility.  Over the last year years we have seen that we are now below replacement levels... We have a population of 165,000  people approximately, and our resource is our people.  We don't have gold, and we don't have oil, or anything like that.  We are in a predicament, because we were asked and pressured and cajoled to decrease our fertility... this is now a very urgent problem for our small country..."

So there it was.  The tired philosophy that children are a drain on resources, followed by the truth:  children ARE the resource.

Wow!  That is powerful!  Children ARE the resource!!!