our dear sweet adam is home...

our sweet adam...my precious friend of 27 years...has gone home this morning. after a BRAVE and very long fight with Cystic Fibrosis.

i have planned in my head for this since i was five. my mom told me that my new friend adam had an illness. she let me know he might not live past his 13th birthday....and yet he kicked 32 birthdays in a row with humor and bravery and strength and laughter. while he fought most of his battle privately, publicly we all knew what he was up against.

i spent several of his birthday's in a hospital room with our friends and him while he was there for his 2 week treatments growing up. i watched him leaving rooms, excusing himself when his coughing got uncomfortable or painful. missing him at school when he would be out for weeks, sick. watching him struggle with his weight...

he dealt with his illness with his classic humor and light spirit. he used his gift of humor in young life to show others God's love and brought many of us to tears, repeatedly with his insane dances and jokes and beautiful smile.

while i have planned for this in my head for 27 years, the reality is a lot harder to deal with. to tell my heart about. i am most thankful that my friend had a relationship with Christ....this i know and this alone comforts me to know that because of that, our precious friend passed from this life with struggled breath into eternal life with our Lord, breathing the freshest heaven air he has ever tasted. adam struggles no more, he fights no more. no more bottles and bottles of meds, no more oxygen tanks, no more late night emergency trips with a scared wife in the ambulance, no more long hospital stays...no more coughing, no more seizures.

my friend is free. he is free of pain but he is also eternally free. what we live for, those of us who call Christ our Savior, what we believe and set our lives and hearts for, adam is already living.

i have many many memories of a life shared with adam...he was my first crush in 2nd grade, he was my first boyfriend in 6th grade...he took me took a movie when we were 12 wearing his bright green irish pants and we held hands while his mom sat in the back of the theater..he was my catillion partner in 6th grade, while i towered 3 feet over him in height, we laughed and played silly the whole time.....he was there for me in high school and was my first homecoming date...again, our pictures were awesome with the height difference, we had so much fun! we shared young life together...he and my friend anne were the only two friends i had when i moved back home after dropping out of college after a very debilitating fight with depression...they took me to bennigans for my 21st birthday and we drank gross cheap beer and laughed together....he always made me laugh....he always made me think, if he can laugh like that, with his illness than i need to step it up and enjoy life too, be thankful and live bravely like he does...i was blessed to be at his wedding to his beautiful bride, jen. a God-send in my opinion. i was so happy and blessed to get to witness them coming together and getting to meet his sweet jen. i loved her immediately because she loved him. she took such great care of him and adovocated for him like crazy with all his medical issues and hospital visits. she was and is a brave warrior for being by his side and loving him courageously, knowing she would have to let him go one day.....i look up to her more than she could know...his sweet family, his mom and dad and brothers....i love them deeply as well. watching them take care of him since i was 5 and celebrate who he was to them!

while i have many hilarious memories from the last 27 years, the most treasured and most beautiful memory i carry with me about our friendship took place two weeks after we lost sydney. i sat in adam's house with jen and some dear friends...we sat at the kitchen table over coffee and talked....and adam looked up at me and asked me to tell them about our daughter. he wanted to hear about our sydney. i spoke through broken words, tears..many tears and tried my best, two weeks out, to tell of our beautiful sydney grace. as i was speaking, adam rose from the table and met me at my chair...i stood up and he grabbed me in really hard embrace and he just held me. that tiny thin thing of a man held me tightly and cried in my ear...he just kept saying he was sorry, so sorry for my heart hurting...he didn't know what to say but he loved me and he was sorry....if you knew anything about this man of laughter and joking, you knew this was a VERY personal moment that he didn't just do all the time...especially not with me, who he loved teasing for most of his life..i was a good target! we stood there in his dining room for what seemed to be hours and he let me go and just looked at me...."we love you guys," he said....something in his eyes, something in his painful grin and tears let me know i had had my most beautiful moment with my friend.....we went back to talking and telling stories and laughing....but i held close to my heart that jewel i was given that night.....i went home knowing i had been blessed....

adam gave liam a ball that night...a spiderman ball. he told me to tell him it was from mr. adam. liam adored mr. funny adam after meeting him and getting to see him several times when we would go home to dallas....and liam loved his spiderman ball...it is his FAVORITE to this day....liam, for the past 2 years has made drawings and cards to send to jen and adam to help him "feel better"..and he would pray for him and ask about him a lot...he knew mr. adam was sick and would join his sydney and Jesus in heaven one day, but he still prayed for his funny adam and always told me that "God would save him"...i love that i got to share a part of my funny adam with my son...

i had prayed for adam's miraculous healing all my life...since i was little and prayers were rehearsed to growing up and trying to find the right words....to that very blessed night at his house, afterwards going home and begging God on my knees in my old room at home to heal him...to make a miracle happen...to heal his body and make him whole....BUT i wanted it on my terms. i wanted to see it happen. i wanted to receive the blessing of that miracle by getting to live out our lives together as friends here on earth....i was two weeks out from sydney's death, so you can imagine my prayers as not so sweet but yelling more at my God to save my friend....i was hurting and i was mad.

through the next several months, i struggled very deeply with our daughter's death and how i viewed this life and how my faith worked itself out here....as my heart began to let go of the anger and bitterness over losing sydney it was then God started showing me more about adam.....one day, i told ian, i am ok. i will be ok when i hear about adam....not before, but i am now...here is why:

i prayed forever for adam's healing....on this earth. here and now....selfishly, my prayers for his healing included me getting to see him live here....happy and healthy and whole...

but if i were to pray for God's will, i would see that God's answered prayer might also look like healing on the other side of heaven. and for adam, that meant fresh breaths and no more suffering or struggling...and if i loved my friend that way i said i did, then i would choose healing NO MATTER what it looked like, because it was not up to me and adam deserved God's best.

we all deserve hell. the wages of sin are death. but because of the Cross and what Christ did for us while we were still sinners, we were given a second chance. we were given the MIRACLE of healing...that one day, we would pass this crazy suffering life, into a world of peace and a LIFE with a sweet good God that saved us while we were still stupid frail human beings long ago who wanted to be our own god....the miracle is that adam DOES get to be healed....it is not a question. it is fact. my dear friend is forever healed and forever restored to a perfect life, the one God created for him.....and that is reason for me to celebrate and know that my prayers my whole life, that stinging crying prayer back in dec of 07, that they were answered. today. today my prayer for adam's healing was answered.

i don't get to see him whole and healed. not yet. but God does, His son does....even our precious daughter does.

but i will. oh I WILL. thank you Jesus, for your life that was able to heal my sick friend. a life that makes heaven my home, not here. an eternal home that i will share with You..and my friend one day.

thank you, for the beautiful life that was Adam Lokey....thank you for letting us have him here with us for 32 years...for letting his LIGHT shine here for others to be moved and changed and forever touched....

thank you that while my heart grieves and my soul hurts today....that the next time i see my sweet friend, he will be whole, healthy and perfect!



i pray for his sweet wife who has walked this really hard journey with him..who has taken care of him and adovcated for him and loved him as she had to watch him suffer, especially so much this last year...please be near her, please comfort her like no one else can...whisper to her all day long, that you will take care of her and that you are never far from her call...please help her now say goodbye....please be with his parents and two brothers as they face the reality they have known was coming since march 29, 1977...please comfort them in their sadness but remind them of your PROMISE. help them say goodbye to their precious son and return him back to You.....thank you that you chose that sweet family for adam and adam for them...

thank you that you will sustain us as we miss him and that you will be our peace when we have nothing here to hold on to...

thank you, that because you ROSE again.....my sweet silly adam is there with you now.

coffee cans + needles = trust?

well, i have successfully filled my first folgers coffee can chalk full of lovenox shots. the first of many. ian looked inside the make shift sharps container yesterday and was amazed at how full it had gotten so quickly. he was overwhelmed at the mere sight of so many needles laying upon so many needles. he looked at it and simply said, " wow, if that isn't perspective?"

i have been doing my daily injections for 12 weeks now and my belly shows the bruises and scars as a result. with sydney, i found out i had factor five at around 4 months pregnant. i was given a few weeks to decide if i wanted to do the injections, back then, my case wasn't strong enough to know then that i needed them stat...it was more, a decision we could make on our own, not a doctor mandated choice...so we weighed the pros and cons for weeks and went back and forth...there are some crazy odds of nasty side effects and long term effects in some people and we had to think of all the options ..sadly, we did not know of the time we wasted with that decision making. we finally decided on the shots, we wanted to make sure we did everything possible, no regrets.."if something were to happen or go wrong down the road, you might kick yourself for not choosing the shots, " we were told by our doctor....

we filled out all the necessary paperwork and submitted the prescriptions and waited. and waited. only to hear back from blue cross blue shield that they would not cover such injections and that i would be on my own to cover the cost....the shots are over $1,000.00 a box for a month's supply. that was not possible, unless i highjacked a bank with my big belly and a bunch of tears for sympathy....we were then directed to try and apply for pregnancy medicaid. filled out the necessary paperwork and turned it in. and waited. and waited.....several months had gone by since my factor five diagnosis....months of time wasted and a baby girl going unprotected from the evils of my body and it's evil condition...

finally, medicaid came through. we were given the green light for the shots and we were so blessed to not have to pay for them, to not have to worry about having to make such a decision, money over the well being of our daughter.....so i began the shots, i filled my coffee can. but so much time had been wasted, that my coffee can was nearly half full before we made that devastating trip to the hospital that dark november day.....i had only been on the shots for a month, maybe two....what ever clots had built up in my body in the months prior we did not see. how ever much medicine was in my blood, was not nearly enough to keep my body from going to emergency levels of clotting and abrupting......

i went through many months afterwards of wanting to call blue cross and yell at them with all i had in me. the many bills and calls i had to make to them regarding the hospital stay were always covered with tears and bitterness and sarcasm and pain. i was so livid that so much time had been wasted......i wasn't at the place of understanding yet, that God is truly sovereign over ALL things...even stupid insurance companies that said no, over me and ian with our fearful contemplating such treatmeant for those weeks following my diagnosis, over the ordained destiny of that little girl that rested in my belly....HE was in control of ALL of it....but in those first months following her death, i kept remembering my doctor's words..."if you decide against these injections and something happens, God forbid, you might struggle with kicking yourself for not doing it..." what an understatement.

so a year and a half later, i sit here with my belly full of new baby, blood laced with lovenox blood thinner, my first coffee can full of needles and a tummy full of bruises....i have the rest of this pregnancy and 6 weeks following delivery to fill more coffee cans, that's a lot of needles to come, that's a lot of folgers cans....i sit here and can only HOPE and PRAY that our efforts will be fruitful this time, that our choices and our (MY) daily stabbing my stomach in pain will in fact not be in vain...but by the end of this pregnancy, i will have four full coffee cans of needles and a baby in my arms.....but i can't trust in a coffee can full of used needles. i can't use that as my proof that all will be ok this time. i cannot trust in any other thing than my Lord, as often as i want to convince myself that all my hard "work" will pay off, my faith is not in needles or medicine or even in my body's ability to overcome my condition....my faith must alone rest in God and His plan for me.

it's hard to do my shots each morning and not think of her....to feel sad or even guilty somedays, that she didn't get the "extra advantage" that her baby brother is getting now....i look at her face on my wall and think, "if only...." my heart begins to sink with the what if's and the enemy whispers in my ear that i failed her. that we failed our baby girl....

then i am reminded with GONG resounding truth in my ear from my Lord, that He is Sovereign over ALL things...and He reminds me that His plan for sydney was not thwarted by two human parent's medical choices or red tape from a stupid insurance company like i make it in my mind so easily at times....that HE in fact, was and is the designer of our baby girl's story back then and her journey was mapped out long before she was even conceived and i have to rest in that....and i promise you with ALL that is in me, it is not of my own will that i can do that. it is only and i mean ONLY by God's sheer divine Grace that i am able to not revisit that guilt place in my mind each morning....i know i did the best i could with what i had..for her at that time....it still hurts, but i know i can't change it. and His peace covers me then. nothing of my own accord or from my own trying...His peace, and only His peace covers me and points my heart and my tears and my eyes towards Heaven. where our baby girl lives now....with her Jesus.

so, with all that said, i know that no matter how many coffee cans i may fill for this little guy, that his story is also already written as well....i can sit in pain each morning and pray for fruitful blessings at the end of this. i can sit there in stinging pain on the edge of my bed everyday and think sarcastically that this better be worth it, that all this pain and worry and effort of my body AND heart better do the trick this time......but then, the gonging sound rings again, like a familiar song in my ear....

yes, i know. TRUST......i am WHOLEheartedly trying, i promise. it is a DAILY thing. to die to myself and ALL my fears and trust the Lord with my heart. with our baby. with it ALL.......


"Don't be afraid. Just stand still and watch the Lord rescue you today. The Lord Himself will fight for you. Just stay calm."
Exodus 14: 13-14

snips and snails...

a little boy showed his stuff today in our ultrasound....we found out liam will be having a baby brother....good ultrasound, great heartbeat. we start going every week to our appointments with our specialist for testing and monitoring at 28 weeks, or sooner should any concerns present themselves...so for now, at 16 weeks, all looks good and i am told to exhale and breathe. working on that...really i am.

"trying" to fear no evil....

we go tomorrow for our next ultrasound. we are 16 weeks today, half way for me, since they are wanting to try and take the baby at 32 weeks at the soonest.....

i am filled with nerves and fear mixed with a peace that i know God has already set this child's story in motion from it's very conception, just like He did with Sydney's story..and yes, even our Liam...and i can't do a darn thing to change that story that is developing within me right now, resting right beneath my ribs and heart...He is the Author and knows best. yet, i sit here so many days wondering and pondering, wanting to skip ahead a couple chapters to see how the story plays out. but i can't. and i know i am not supposed to. human nature i suppose, to want to KNOW all we can like God, to be our own god and control the axis of our world and the things within it....

if this little one cooperates, we could even see "parts" tomorrow and get an early look at what we are having...that is one of the perks that comes with monthly ultrasounds i guess...we'll see. ian and i are honestly blessed with whatever we find out, girl or boy. but it is another reminder to me that God already knows right now about the gender...He has known since He created this little person what it was to become....He knows and i do not...not yet. and that is how it works. with everything about this little one's future...even all of life really. i have to just keep walking and have faith that the story He is crafting for this little one, is one that i will embrace and give Him glory for no matter what....

i hate living by fear and in fear. when i go to His word and read His promises and meditate on His character and His love for me, it helps me to combat that fear. when i live by fear, i let the world overwhelm me. i literally become overcome by the world. but when i put His words in my head and press them into my heart, i am reminded that He has already overcome the world. it was finished at the cross. and that is something to exhale deeply on. that if God is for me and with me, than whom shall i fear? i must put the right things, the pure and noble things of Him into my head each day...when i fail to do so, the world's lies and distorted truth seeps into my mind and tricks me into thinking i am nothing, i have failed already and will feel despair forever and i am afraid of everything...from ian driving to work to liam crossing the street to wondering if a friend still loves me to being afraid that our daughter's life had no meaning to questioning if this new child will live at all or join it's sister and other sibling in heaven.....and i am once again enslaved to this world's grasp on my heart.....it brings out the worst in me...fear brings out the worst in all of us, doesn't it? we react certain ways when we are afraid, we treat people unfairly most often when we are afraid...because we are in defense mode and we don't think clearly. if you have kids, you will notice they do the same. often times, i see a child getting yelled at for being weak or doing something wrong out in public, when i can tell as the sky is blue, that the child is afraid...i am guilty of doing this with liam many times and i forget. because i am inconvenienced or not getting my way with what i expect or want...i overlook the heart issue and miss the "fear factor" playing out before me. most times, i can't fix the issue for liam but my job is to speak truth to him and reassure him that i am there for him, to make him feel safe and tell him God is on his side....

isn't that what God does for us to? we impatiently expect him to fix everything right away, when He is simply sitting alongside us, every time, telling us..."I can't fix this for you right now, for my own reasons you cannot see now, but I can assure you that I am here for you, here with you, I will speak my Truth over you and not leave you alone, you are safe in Me and I am on your side...."

i am constantly blessed as i humbly do my best to parent our son alongside my husband..to see how God uses that parent/child relationship with liam to work on my own relationship with God...how the issues correlate so many times to ones i am needing to work on with Him as well....how the fears i discuss with liam and try to teach him about trusting God with, might look different from the ones i struggle with, but all fall into the same line of not trusting my God with ALL of it....how the whining and complaining i call liam on a LOT is not that much different than the whining and complaining i do in my own day about life...and it ALL translates to telling God that what He has given us is not enough and we want more, we are not satisfied and we think we deserve more...pride. that is what it is.

so, i am confessing here and now, that i know my fear and worry translates to mistrust. it makes me sad and heartbroken that i don't trust my God more, i am pained by that sin....my wounds keep me stuck there a lot of the time. my human sin nature keeps me enslaved. but ohhhhhhhhh the beautiful grace that is there for me...when i go back to the cross and know i am free. free from the guilt and the sin that is my worry and mistrust. that why i may struggle with this till my last breath, He is there every morning and every single hour of every single day, calling me back to Him. to continue to work it all out, with fear and trembling and honest heart. that if i keep pursuing Him and running after Him, i will grow in wisdom and stature and faith..and the trusting part will get easier with each new trial...because perseverance and patience will have taken root in the meantime...and when i stumble or fall or stay down for a season, i simply adore and am humbled beyond words that i have a God who runs after me even when i am still.....He loves me that much.

please, please be in prayer for my sweet friend, kristy and her new baby girl and their family....

now, not yet

i felt the baby move last night. first time.

thought it was gas at first but i know for certain it was not. i was laying on my bed, trying to keep my dinner down and resting a bit....i had just had a sip of grape juice and i felt it.

it caught me off guard and i started to cry. i immediately thought of her.

i started to feel soooo homesick for that little girl that last kicked my insides like that last.

i vacillated back and forth from heartache and excitement, nostalgia and fear. joy and pain.

with each little flutter, i realized more than ever that this little one occupies the warm little space that our baby girl took up with her precious little life.

i remembered giggling with each little flutter i felt with her, grabbing ian's hand to feel the slightest movement, getting liam to do the same.....

oh, the ache returned. i looked at her picture on the wall as i lay in my bed, feeling this little one flutter around, barely, but there.....and i searched my girl's face in the picture and remembered her smell and the feel of her skin and the way it felt when she danced beneath my heart.

and i lost it.

i cried for her. i ached for her. i hadn't had a breakdown like this in many months.. they don't hurt any less when they come...but they don't seem to last as long and i am able to focus my heart back to heaven and love her with Joy and Peace, but ohhh the ache, the familiar ache and jeering pain was there....and it is ok. half of my heart resides in heaven now, i will always feel that ache until i am Home.

i cried for her but then my tears soon became overwhelmingly sought with fear....holding my tummy close and already loving this little one, beneath my heart....i soon found myself scared and crying for fear of losing this one too......so afraid of hurting like that again, so afraid of having to say goodbye, again. the first movement somehow made it more real for me, what we stand to lose...i can feel it now...

i trust my Lord with all things. i know He has a plan for me. for my family. i place my hope in the Cross, not the number of chairs at our dinner table each night.....i am telling you this because you can be scared and sad, but still be hopeful. it is a tight rope walk that other mother's who have buried their babies walk or other people who have lost their loved ones experience. for now, we have Hope because the battle has already been fought and He won, for you and me, at the Cross, at the empty tomb, victory is His, yet complete healing will come with Heaven, but it's not yet....so we wait.

to love so deeply and then lose it, it hurts. we were created by God to live forever, eternal life with Him. Sin and the fall happened and the wages of our sin was death. separation. separation from here and the ones we love and even Him, if we do not believe in the Cross and the Resurrection power of God. so while we have our Hope in Heaven and a redeemed earth to live forever with our God, we still sit here on this troubled fallen earth with the "now, not yet" mentality and it's hard.....the flesh wins out over and over and some days you just have to let yourself cry for a bit and let God cover your grief and hurting hurt like ONLY He can...and HE WILL. HE DOES. I PROMISE.

to feel that little life inside me was a reminder that i am blessed. i don't know if i will bring this baby home, but for now, this little precious life dances inside me and celebrates it's creator by just being and living and existing......and i am it's momma.

strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord....

it is a weird place to be. stuck in the middle of fear and peace.

sounds like an oxymoron. sounds like hypocrisy to some believers i am sure.

but it's where ian and i sit for the next 6 or so months.

it's where we reside each week as wait for the next ultrasound. every four weeks.

"you just have to faith, dear."

i was recently told that comment and i think i probably reacted inside rather smugly, not proud about it, but i just kind of looked at this person and wanted to say "you just don't get it. i have faith." i had faith. look what happened. if you truly believe God is in control, than you know anything can happen, even the bad stuff. it doesn't mean you didn't have faith, it doesn't mean you didn't trust enough or God doesn't love you...it just means God ways are not our ways...hard lesson. i wondered if this person had not learned that yet....

i have been to the darkest places of my faith. i have been refined by the ashes there. i see my Savior with new eyes and a humbled heart...

but i have seen and experienced things by a sovereign God that show me, "having faith" doesn't mean it will always be ok, at least while here on earth. we live in a fallen world where suffering abounds and will continue to do so until Jesus comes back to take us Home....to a place that is REstored and REdeemed...

having faith, it does means God will always be there no matter what the circumstance. it does mean God will never let me go, even in the pits of hell that is grief. it means because of my faith i have hope. that no matter what unfolds, God's will ultimately will prevail and my faith is in the cross...not circumstances turning out ok. not things going my way or according to my plan. if it were up to me, i would have never left that dark haired little girl at the hospital alone, so still. i would have brought her home and now, 1 1/2 yrs later, would love to be chasing after her now as she is learning to walk....no, our ways our not Gods ways.

so for me and ian. we DO trust in a sovereign God who can do ALL things and who is ABLE. we just know from the scars we wear proudly in our daughter's memory, that just because God is able doesn't mean your wish is His command. we know that we had faith during our pregnancy with sydney. we went to each ultrasound with ease and blissful ignorance. we prayed over our little girl and trusted God with her life. since we do the same with this little one, we know our prayers and our trust in our God can be fruitful but we also know God's plan for our life can take a different turn than we would like....no matter how many prayers we utter...

the last pregnancy in the fall was an echo of past hurt..."there is no heartbeat. i am sorry.." after getting back up from losing syd, to try again, only to get knocked back down again, it was another blow and a reminding lesson of God's will verses ours...some say we are brave for trying this again..i like to think we are blindly trusting what we think the Lord has told us to do....in the midst of crazy odds...sounds more like crazy than brave...

with statistics like ours, why wouldn't we be scared to keep reliving that news? why wouldn't we just expect to keep getting disappointed? i want to Hope in a God of miracles and possibility, a God that is bigger than statistics and that honors and blesses those who continue to trust and persevere in the face of trials and suffering....

so, each night before the next ultrasound, ian and i have found ourselves quite silent...until we speak to each other the words we know the other needs to hear...."we will be ok, no matter what we find tomorrow. God is still the same God. He is sovereign and His love for us in not measured in test results, it is measured at the cross....we will be ok, we will be ok..."...enter peace.

i walked slowly into this last ultrasound...yesterday. ian was to meet me there, he was running late. i told them i needed him there for support and asked if we could wait just a few more minutes for him. they obliged. they are so sweet there with us. they felt the loss of our sweet sydney with us. they were saddened with us over the last loss. they know what's on the line for us now. it's our last chance....ian walked in those doors, i took my place on the chair/table, i grabbed for his hand and it seemed so silent. we sat there listening to the typing of the keyboard by the tech as she entered my information and we stared at the big screen above us on the wall...we waited. we waited....i think we both waited to hear the bad news right away..we knew a lot can happen between 8 weeks and 12 weeks..not only have we experienced loss then, but we know many others who have had the same fate....yes, we believe. yes, we have hope and faith. but we were scared. we are still scared. we are broken and wounded, half waiting to be destroyed again with that single sentence.....enter fear.

we sat there, squeezing hands, holding our breath....and saw it. that tiny heartbeat. that tiny pulsing wonderful thing that has come to capture our held breath each time and throws us into gasps each time we see it. "can i exhale now?" i asked....i was told the heartbeat was great....the stats were great and our little one passed all the first trimester screening that was needed to be done....i sat there in amazement. waiting to hear bad news still as she looked and measured more but it didn't come. i felt myself relax a little bit until i looked at ian and he looked like he was about to throw up from the anxiety. "we are totally insane, aren't we?" i asked. "for going down this road again?".....

"maybe," he said to me as he was trying to compose himself. "i really feel like i am going to throw up and we have a lot more of these to go," he said...i looked at him sweetly and asked him the question that had been playing in my mind over and over the last 5 minutes..."are you as afraid as me to fall in love with this little one?" ......enter fear again.

"yes...i am so scared. i am scared to feel that hurt again..." he said softly. i knew what he meant. i didn't want to go back to that place either....but i told him later "but this baby deserves just as much love and excitement and joy as liam and syd got from us when we were expecting them..this baby deserves for us to be awaiting it's arrival into our family with so much anticipation and love..not fear. satan wants to steal our joy like that....no matter the outcome, this baby deserves two parents who are absolutely in love with it from the start, dreaming up names and nursery ideas....no matter what. we can't let fear of the past and what might be take that from us...God has given us a blessing and we need to Praise Him for it and be satisfied for now and grateful for this little life" .....enter peace once again.

much easier said than done. it is very easy to have faith that God will protect you and keep you safe. but once that faith has been tested...and on the other side, you find your faith still in tact and standing before a God who loves you immensely, you hopefully learn and realize that He protects you in His way, not yours. and His ways are really impossible to understand most times. so yes, i trust my God, but in a way now where i am grown up and know He knows what is best for me, the way a kid grows up and sees what his/her parent's fussing over them with rules and such was about all those years back...they knew best. you didn't. you were just a child.

so, i sit in honest confession right now and tell you that i struggle with the fear and peace place. often. i know i have a joy and a hope that awaits me with Heaven, the redeemed world and future that God has promised me and bought for me with His son...but life here- well, it is still a battle of the flesh. i pray with all my heart that my words and the meditations of my heart show my God that i trust Him in all things, but i know a lot of days i fail at that...i pray that He sees my trusting heart as i trust Him with yet another child that He in fact first entrusted me with, that's His to begin with. i hope and pray that my heart is resting in a place of peace that God grants me for times of fear and doubt. i know each month we are tested as we walk through the doctor's doors....we know God is able. we know this baby could be the miracle we pray for, born healthy, for God to bless us with another child to praise Him for...but we also know anything can happen and we MUST also praise Him for this child every single second NOW and praise Him even if the outcome is not what we want.....because if we can do that, THAT is where our peace will come from..even in the dark times, He will be that peace that we need.

as i was driving to our appointment yesterday, matt redman's "let my words be few" came on...a sweet song i love, one that i not heard in a while......

"You are God in Heaven...and here am i on earth...so i'll let my words be few..."

i took the last turn and drove down the familiar neighborhood road that i had driven over and over the last 3 years to go see my babies on a big screen...the road that was leading me to my scary unknown place, a place that might echo those same hurting words in the last two years..i am prepared, i know it's possible. i wanted to pray and beg and plead and reassure God i was ok no matter what but to tell him how much we wanted this baby....i wanted to tell Him all i was needing to say...and then i smiled as i heard the words of that song.....almost teasing me about my ability to forget so often..reminding me that my God is in Heaven, in total control...i am here on earth, walking blindly and stumbling sometimes, trying to control the things i can't and shouldn't......no matter what, He has it all under control...so i needed to rest in that...and instead of arranging fancy words and prayers...i needed to let my words be few......

man, i am constantly learning in all of this....i am constantly called back to a place of grace...there at the foot of the Cross...where He meets me each time, i come running back after i have retreated in fear and selfish doubt....

i am still scared. not that God will let me go. i know He will never let me go. i know He is still a good God no matter what. i am just scared of what i might have to let go of again...another child i might have to say goodbye to, that is when fear enters my heart once again....but when i think of the idea of meeting this little one, face to face, skin to skin, heartbeat to heartbeat, open eye to open eye....liam meeting his baby brother or sister for the first time..the idea of ian dancing and singing in the hallways of the hospital proudly with a live baby in hand and the hugest underdog grin on his face...well, i know and trust that God can deliver that too and He then blesses me with Peace.....

man, it's just the waiting. it's so dang hard. it seems so long and painful to wait in the unknown..BUT it's in the waiting, right?that we can grow in strength in Him? that He teaches us things that we would not have seen otherwise because we weren't on our faces like we are, we are listening so very closely to the Holy Spirit for every whisper and so aware of our weakness that we are humbled by His strength and how much we need it to survive in this worldly world?

STRENGTH WILL RISE AS WE WAIT UPON THE LORD..........