"Embrace the Journey"... these are words I'm stealing from a good friend's blog. These words hit home with me as I'm not always embracing the journey I'm going through right now but typically just merely surviving it. The picture below sums up the past two months for us. I took this picture because to me it's complete chaos; messy house, sick kids, bottom half of tree lights not working, etc. It is very hard for me with my A-type personality to let things go. I want to keep everything in order, have a plan, and be productive and some days (most days), that just doesn't happen anymore.
I heard on the radio station KLOVE today (great radio station by the way) that instead of making a New Year's Resolution we should instead choose a word that sums up how we want to be or something we want to work towards throughout the next year. As I thought about that, the first word that came to mind was Surrender. There it is, that word "surrender" again. I wrote about it several months ago when it came to letting Anna ride the bus and the Lord has brought it to mind several times since. It's hard for me to surrender, to let go and let Him, but I can definitely see that He's trying to teach me a lesson. Too bad I'm a stubborn student who's not learning very quickly. =) As I adjust to life with 3 kiddos, I'm learning that I have to let go of many things even if I don't want to.
I've also been reminded several times that all three of our children are complete miracles. It brings me to tears when I think about how the Lord has blessed us with each one of them. This picture below is of the girls' pictures in their dedication dresses and Noah is in the bassinet. The next picture is of one of my favorite decorations. I hung it on the wall right beside the girls' pictures (and Noah's will go close by there too once we have his taken) because of the verse that's on it. It's from Matthew 9:26 - "With God all thing are possible". Our children are a testimony to that verse.
Move ahead two and a half years later and to our surprise we were pregnant again after the first try! Woohoo, we were on a roll. =) However, 8 weeks into the pregnancy I began bleeding and after having an ultrasound, they determined that I had a hemorrhage behind my uterus and that my chances of keeping the baby weren't good. I literally cried out to the Lord, "Jesus save my baby" and I believe He did. The bleeding went away in about a week and I delivered Audrey 9 months later.
Jump ahead two more years... I was beginning to have really rough cycles again and I knew the culprit - my Endometriosis was back. I wasn't sure that we'd be able to have another baby without having surgery again but after just two months of trying we found out we were expecting again. I was excited and scared... could we handle three kids? I began to have real fear once again when I started spotting at 6 weeks. An ultrasound showed that all was fine with the baby and the doctor said that it's not uncommon to have spotting in the first trimester. However, the first trimester spotting turned into second trimester bleeding and the doctor began to get concerned. After an exam, she told me that I was close to miscarrying and that I needed to be off my feet as much as possible with absolutely no lifting. Several weeks passed and after several exams, my doctor determined that I had a cervical polyp that was causing all of the trouble. At 17 weeks she felt that it was safe to remove the polyp and thankfully that took care of the bleeding. The part that still astounds me today is that the pathology report of the polyp showed that there was placenta with it and as my doctor said, "it's a miracle that you only passed part of the placenta and not all of it". 22 weeks after the polyp was removed, Noah was born.
