Kelly is at 8cm, won’t be much longer now. She is doing great!
She won’t let me post a picture. ;o) lol…
~Kathy
(Envision very pregnant lady doing happy dance…well, in theory.)
After 19 days of being “overdue” by the doctor’s timetable…we are thrilled that the Lord has been pleased to begin to bring forth our baby in His time just hours before we were supposed to call the hospital to schedule an induction. “Thank you, Lord, for your sustaining grace and love.”
Updates will follow.
I did play this joke on my church family, but I couldn’t bring myself to really try to pull it off as real for you guys 😉 But to keep from crying, well it didn’t really work, but to have some fun, this is what I sent:
After a loooooong awaited labor…
16 lbs. 8 oz.
April Fools.
If we don’t laugh, we’ll cry.
Is there a prize for the world’s record for longest pregnancy?
Pray, my warrior family, pray!
Since it doesn’t look like there’s a baby in my very near future and I’m largely restricted (no pun intended) to the couch these days, I thought I might as well bring up a controversial discussion 😉 Maybe it will make me go into labor.
I received this email from my inbox last week and it pierced my heart…
“Dear Kelly,
I wanted to write to encourage you to keep speaking on the hard topics–I wish someone had told me.
I went the typical routine–high school–“what are you going do now”–college–then pursuing my “good job” because that’s what you do and besides, you need to be able to take care of yourself.
I get married in my early twenties, we made good money and we spent it well: nice house, new furniture, two new cars, vacations, etc.
When my first baby came along, I was blown away by my love for her. And not once had I thought about (or been told) that given the lifestyle we had acquired, I would be forced to go back to work when she was just a few months old. It floored me.
But surprisingly, no one else seemed to think it odd that I was struggling. It’s what everyone did. Of course we were obligated to find best day care and that would make all the difference, and then I could carry on, guilt-free, fulfilling my duty as a wife who made half the income. But when I handed my tiny baby over into the hands of someone I barely new, I might as well have given her my heart too.
Here’s the one thing I can’t get past: if feminism is so “liberating”, why did I feel so enslaved, without a choice, (emphasis mine) bound to a decision I didn’t want to make? The choice was being a mother who could take care of and nurture this beautiful gift God had given me, or handing her over to a complete stranger and go back to my “liberating job”, because I’m a woman and I can do what I want to do.
What kind of choice is that? “You can have it all?” No you can’t. And it’s cruel to even suggest it.
I know not all women will feel this way, and from my experience, it’s because the whole movement itself was intended to callous a mother’s heart toward her children and family so she would be more aggressive in the man’s world. They knew unless she was brainwashed to think that motherhood was just a side job and anyone else could do as good as she could, women would never “roar and conquer” in the man’s world.
And I’ll go ahead and add that I think the whole idea was Satan’s in the first place…what a clever way to destroy families than to get Mom out of the home?
But some of us kept our tender love in tact and have lived to regret that not one woman cared enough to tell me that the pursuit of motherhood was worthy of my entire devotion.”
Heart-broken,
Leah
I’m only waiting for the blessed joy of holding a little one…the waiting is so hard, the questions and concerns of my mind so great…and yet, it’s such a small thing to wait for a joyous end that is sure to come.
Many of you wait in much deeper pain, with greater agony, with larger questions. Perhaps this poem I found comforting will bring comfort to you too.
Desperately, helplessly, longingly, I cried.
Quietly, patiently, lovingly God replied.
I pled and I wept for a clue to my fate,
And the Master so gently said, “Child, you must wait!”
“Wait?’, you say, wait!” my indignant relpy.
“Lord, I need answers, I need to know why!
Is your hand shortened? Or have you not heard?
By FAITH I have asked, and am claiming your word.”
“My future and all to which I can relate
Hangs in the balance, and you tell me to WAIT?
I’m needing a ‘yes,’ a go-ahead sign,
Or even a ‘no’ to which I can resign.”
“And Lord, you promised that if we believe
Weneed but to ask, and we shall receive.
And Lord, I’ve been asking, and this is my cry:
I’m weary of asking! I need a reply!”
Then quietly, softly, I learned of my fate
As my Master replied once again, “You must wait.”
So, I slumped in my chair, defeated and taut
And grumbled to God, “So, I’m waiting. . . for what?”
He seemed then to kneel and His eyes wept with mine,
And he tenderly said, “I could give you a sign.
I could shake the heavens, and darken the sun.
I could raise the dead, and cause mountians to run.
All you seek, I could give, and pleased you would be.
You would have what you want . . but, you wouldn’t know ME.”
“You’d not know the depth of my love for each saint;
You’d not know the power that I give to the faint;
You’d not learn to see through the clouds of despair;
You’d not learn to trust just by knowing I’m there;
You’d not know the joy of resting in me
When darkness and silence were all you could see.
“You’d never experience that fulness of love
As the peace of my Spirit descendslike a dove;
You’d know that I give and I save . . . (for a start),
But you’d not know the depth of the beat of my heart.”
“The glow of my comfort late into the night.
The faith that I give when you walk without sight,
The depth that’s beyond getting just what you asked
Of an infinite God, who makes what you have LAST.”
“You’d never know, should your pain quickly flee,
What it means that ‘My grace is sufficient for thee.’
Yes, your dreams for your loves ones overnight would come true,
But, oh, the loss! If I lost what I’m doing in you!”
“So, be silent, my child, and in time you will see
THAT THE GREATEST OF GIFTS IS TO GET TO KNOW ME,
And though oft may my answers is still but to WAIT.”
“And though oft’ My answers seem terribly late,
My most precious answer of all is still, “Wait.”
~Russell Kelfer~
The following is an excerpt from the book Mother, by Kathleen Norris, one of the sweetest and most profound books about motherhood I’ve ever read.
Here is Margaret’s epiphany of her mother’s life-work–positively beautiful…Margaret, who had traveled abroad, found employment and witnessed a more “dainty life” than that of her mother who daily toiled, though joyfully, under the “burden and stress” of raising seven children, of which Margaret was one, finally realized what true living was:
“How happy we all were!” Margaret said; “and how she worked for us!” And suddenly theories and speculation ended, and she knew. She knew that faithful, self-forgetting service, and the love that spends itself over and over, only to be renewed again and again, are the secret of happiness. For another world, perhaps, leisure and beauty and luxury–but in this one, “Who loses his life shall gain it.” Margaret knew now that her mother was not only the truest, the finest, the most generous woman she had ever known, but the happiest as well…
All her old castles in the air seemed cheap and tinselled to-night, beside these tender dreams that had their roots in the real truths of life. Travel and position, gowns and motor-cars, yachts and country houses, these things were to be bought in all their perfection by the highest bidder, and always would be. But love and character and service, home and the wonderful charge of little lives,–the “pure religion breathing household laws” that guided and perfected the whole,–these were not to be bought, they were only to be prayed for, worked for, bravely won.
“God has been very good to me,” Margaret said to herself…From now on, she thought, with a fervor…she would be a very different woman. If joy came, she would share it as far as she could; if sorrow, she would show her mother that her daughter was not all unworthy of her….
Margaret had a sudden tender memory of the days when Theodore and Duncan and Rob were all babies in turn. Her mother would gather the little daily supply of fresh clothes from bureau and chest every morning, and carry the little bath-tub into the sunny nursery window, and sit there with only a bobbing downy head and waving pink angers visible from the great warm bundle of bath apron….
And she had sometimes wished, or half formed the wish, that she and Bruce bad been the only ones–! Yes, came the sudden thought, but it wouldn’t have been Bruce and Margaret, after all, it would have been Bruce and Charlie.
Good God! That was what women did, then, when they denied the right of life to the distant, unwanted, possible little person! Calmly, constantly, in all placid philosophy and self-justification, they kept from the world–not only the troublesome new baby, with his tears and his illnesses, his merciless exactions, his endless claim on mind and body and spirit–but perhaps the glowing beauty of a Rebecca, the buoyant indomitable spirit of a Ted, the sturdy charm of a small Robert, whose grip on life, whose energy and ambition were as strong as Margaret’s own!
Margaret stirred uneasily, frowned in the dark. It seemed perfectly incredible, it seemed perfectly impossible that if Mother had had only the two–and how many thousands of women didn’t have that!–she, Margaret, a pronounced and separate entity, travelled, ambitious, and to be the wife of one of the world’s great men, might not have been lying here in the summer night, rich in love and youth and beauty and her dreams!
It was all puzzling, all too big for her to understand. But she could do what Mother did, just take the nearest duty and fulfil it, and sleep well, and rise joyfully to fresh effort.”
My official “due date” was last Wednesday, the 16th. I am still pregnant, though 😉
In all honesty, this has been one of my greatest struggles with a pregnancy yet. Part of me knows that the truth is a “due date” is only an average between 4 weeks of what is considered normal delivery time. So technically, I’m not overdue yet, though I feel that way.
I am physically pretty miserable but it’s much harder emotionally waking up *still pregnant* day after day. (I guess in the back of my mind I’m always hopeful that after this many children I’ll actually go a few days before my due date.) I periodically just break down sobbing, then pull myself together and start again. I went “over” two weeks with my first two, but this is the longest past my due date I’ve gone since those.
In addition, Ellia has the stomach virus. This is her “love the baby” position. She raised my top and fell asleep on my belly after a rough night for both of us. (I hope this picture isn’t offensive; if it is, tell me, and I’ll remove it. It seemed so sweet to me.)
I am learning that I am certainly not in control and that all one can do is be at peace with God’s time table. Easy to say, harder to live.
It feels like life has been on hold for weeks.
But despite the irrational notion that sweeps over me periodically where I fear I might be pregnant indefinitely, I know little one will come soon.
Also, God has revealed Himself in such a mighty way through all the comforting words, prayers and flood of love and care through friends from the blog world down to my closest ones.
In addition to friends who have already brought meals to us, a very special young lady begged us to come and stay until the baby is born so she could help out. She has been here over a week already, (she’s staying until we return from the hospital). She LOVES to cook (I call her a “food artist”) and delights in the meal preparations each day, entertains the children so I can rest, does what needs to be done, and just generally brings joy and a huge helping hand.
Bria works alongside her, of course…I can’t fail to give her due credit. Bria has been such a constant encouragement to me, full of joy and tenderness and service. But Olivia’s presence here takes so much of the load off and makes it more fun for Bria. (They are like a well-oiled machine together, and then they retreat in the afternoons, giggling with their cups of tea and favorite book or movie, to a quiet place to refresh.)
What a blessing to see the vision these two have! To be happiest when they are serving! (I can’t even *make* Olivia go home for a break.) And what a beautiful thing as I watch them, along with my children, playing, laughing and eagerly serving our family, finding absolute joy in it, where so many would scoff that “it’s unfair”, or that a mother of many shouldn’t *have* to have help.
Beloved, this is what the body of Christ looks like in motion.
Until you’ve seen it, it’s hard to understand. They’ve had more fun these few weeks, making special meals, baking cupcakes, having mud fights and sunny picnics and “soapy trampoline” time, anticipating with all the energy of children, the arrival of their baby brother. It’s not the heavy drudgery some might imagine.
I just have to say “Kudos” to all my children and husband (please don’t think me bragging…I am just so humbly grateful) for their patience, their eagerness to do whatever they can to make me more comfortable, their hearts of gratitude, their infectious joy and smiles and all the wonder they bring to my life. I feel ashamed, when I reflect on these blessings, to complain for one minute about this anxiety I’m feeling.
God has been so good to us!
By the way, unless something unforeseen happens, I will likely have time to post an “I’m in labor!” for you 😉
“We are childless by choice”, an old acquaintance–a believer–told me. “We just love our lives. We travel a lot and enjoy going out and we’ve never really wanted children”.
I replayed the conversation. I’m not supposed to even think anything of it. Children are now in the category of “option without stigma”. That is, it is politically incorrect to even suggest that parents *should* want children. After all, we all have the choice. Choice is King.
But something nags me…
And I realized what it was.
Before the socially acceptable option of choosing life, children were in a category of “spiritual, supernatural, miraculous”.
And rightly so. The Bible calls them a “heritage from the Lord”. A heritage is an immaterial, intangible gift passed down. It’s an inheritance the GIVER chooses and over which the GIVER has control.
But now that we are in control of this once supernatural gift, children have moved to a category of “possession”–things that can be acquired or not. And not just that, but possessions often seen as liabilities.
A possession is altogether different from a heritage.
A possession is temporal and usually measured by its immediate value. Decisions about acquiring possessions are mostly based on short-sighted variables and measured according to their benefit to the possessor.
A heritage can only be received, at the benevolence of the one giving. It is thought of in far-sighted terms. Long-term vision causes us to covet a heritage, even if we must share our resources to maintain it in the present.
Our children, though plenty valuable even in the present (if only we could see it through all our distractions), are gifts only properly understood with a far-sightedness–inheritances that gain value over time.
We have lost our long-term vision. And we have stopped seeing children as part of that vision.
I don’t think God ever meant for us to think of His heritage so flippantly, to refuse, altogether, the eternal gifts He would give in exchange for more vacations and a richer lifestyle.
He desires godly offspring. He longs to give us a full, rich inheritance. Let’s not allow our short-sighted ability to control rob us of our heritage.
The difference one word can make…
“…Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Galatians 3:6
Watch this….miss this one thing and we view the entire gospel with a skewed understanding…
It doesn’t say that Abraham’s belief in God is what gave him a righteous standing. It was because he BELIEVED GOD.”
The difference is colossal. Consider this:
“You believe that there is one God; you do well: the devils also believe, and tremble.” James 2:19
Belief Requires Action
Anyone can believe IN God. But believing God–having real faith–requires ACTION. (“Faith without works is dead.”) When Abraham believed God, it was proven by the way he lived his life. He acted on his belief of who God is and what God said.
“He went out, not knowing where he was going” —Hebrews 11:8
Do we act with that kind of obedience? Faith in God changes the way we live–it just does! It affects everything.
Believing When It’s Hard
And not just that, He believed the hard things. God commanded Abraham to do the hardest thing, hands down, that any human has ever been commanded–to take the life of his son. (And we complain about what God asks of us?) Abraham believed Him. No questions. No looking for anyone else’s opinion on the matter. Just raw obedience to what seemed grossly unfair.
There is a new gospel running rampant because we don’t like unfair. Incapable of holding a just God and a merciful God by the same hand, we change His Word. And this new poison-gospel is sweet to swallow.
Truth peppered with a few lies–Christians being deceived just like Adam and Eve were.
Remember? The serpent didn’t make up a ridiculous story, it would have been too obvious. He just asked questions mostly (Did God really say?), until their thinking was just slightly off track, a subtle deception, and then THE FALL.
We must believe GOD. We must believe what He says, who He is, what He has promised, and how He instructs us to live. Be so discerning about what you hear! We must be thinking Christians!
The grace of the gospel has been stripped of its power because we have stripped God of His character. We try to serve a mutually exclusive God and Jesus. “Jesus is only love and God is fierce, and doesn’t like sin, so we’ll just keep Him hidden in the dusty pages of the Old Testament because that makes me feel better”.
No! Jesus and God are the same and He can only be Love because He is Just! And I can only be accredited with righteousness by believing that. My sin is an affront to a Holy God. It’s written all through the pages of Scripture. If I believe anything else, I believe no gospel at all.
My guilty record has been wiped clean because of His shed blood. But that acquittal changes me. It changes everything.
I run out with new life and I shudder to remind him of the nails by my indifference to sin.
I obey Him because I love Him. I love others because I love Him.
May the reality of Who God is awaken my faith to action. To walk blindly if I’m asked, to risk ridicule if it means such. For in that kind of reckless abandon is the only safety to be found.
From The Screwtape Letters (probably one of my favorite book)
Dear Wormwood,
Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose….You are to use the word purely as an incantation…
Under the influence of this incantation those who are in any or every way inferior can labour more wholeheartedly and successfully than ever before to pull down everyone else to their own level….
To accept might make them Different, might offend against the Way of Life, take them out of Togetherness, impair their Integration with the Group. They might (horror of horrors!) become individuals.
All is summed up in the prayer which a young female human is said to have uttered recently: “O God, make me a normal twentieth century girl!” Thanks to our labours, this will mean increasingly: “Make me a minx, a moron, and a parasite.”
What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence – moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how “democracy” (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods?
You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them “tyrants” then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level.
The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals.Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, “democracy.” But now “democracy” can do the same work without any tyranny other than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks.”
Your Affectionate Uncle
Screwtape