Reading Time

I have been taking time to read more lately.  After the loss of our sixth baby, I picked up Lisa Bevere's book Godmothers.  This book has been phenomenal and eye opening in different ways.  It has encouraged me to think deeper, to love more boldly, and to reevaluate some of the relationships I have or do not have in my life as of currently. 

God has used Lisa's words to minster to me.   I have taken a good look at who I am as a mother, a sister, a wife and a friend.  

I never envisioned myself as someone with influence.  I have not thought of myself as someone that others look to for motherly advice or wisdom.  But I am at a point in my life where I look around me and I see where others are looking to me and coming to me for advice.  

Some areas I do not feel adequate to offer advice in.  Other areas I feel like just because I have lived experience does not mean that others have much interest in hearing my thoughts on it.  I am being proved wrong in many areas.  Just this weekend alone I had friends asking me for baby registry advice, breastfeeding advice, ttc advice, as well as wedding planning advice.  

I am open to offering what I know and have learned, but so often I feel like a firehose of information.  And then there are times when I feel that I have offered as much as I can think to share and I am still asked to share more and I wish that others would put in some major leg work and do some digging to gain the knowledge, too! 

There is a fine line between offering what I know as a means to share information and also having a boundary so that I am not burned out by constantly giving and giving of myself. 

I would like to have a small goal this year of reading 12 books.  That is one book a month.  I would like to read a book of about 200-250 pages a month.  I am about to finish Lisa Bevere's book hopefully tonight.  I have been reading each night before bed for a few minutes.  Hopefully I can increase my reading time while decreasing my screen time.  This is only my first book of the year, but I do believe between now and the end of the year I can catch up as after this book I will have 10 months to read 11 books.  I may just read through all of the Bevere books I own as a jump start to reading.  I go through spurts of reading a lot and then dry spells. 

One of the most recent things I read in Godmothers was about being kind.  Just between last night and this morning I decided to implement kindness in a radical way - a way I felt I had not always been initiating kindness.  Well, morning one, and my family was on pins and needles.  There was so much unrest in my house this morning.  Things were rough.  Arguing was happening.  Nothing was going smoothly. 

I brought it before God during worship and I was so kindly told that it was because I was trying to be kind on my own, apart from God.  The cool thing about God is that He is such a gentle God.  He did not condemn me.  He did not chastise me.  He just clearly and simply put it that I was trying to do it on my own without Him as the center and that is why it was such a burden to carry.  In that moment immediately I invited Him into my day and my desire to be kinder.  I can be nothing without God.  I cannot accomplish to the fullest extent what I set out to do without God.  I need Him.  He is so readily available and wanting to be included and invited into my everyday.  

After that moment, conversations improved, connection improved, there was let "at each other's throats" and more quiet and peace within my house!  Oh what a joyous moment it is when God comes quickly and remedies my errors and selfish ways so quickly!   

Where are my Eyes?

Where are my eyes?  A question I ask my child multiple times a day.  As well as where are other parts of her body. 

What an end to 2020 and a start to 2021!  Only God.  Only God could have orchestrated the absolute beauty from the ashes that we have experienced. 

2020 ended with us finding out that another baby was onboard.  Pregnancy loss has been so prevalent in our lives.  I felt so much peace.  I felt that come this summer, we were going to be filled to the brim with baby diapers and teaching and raising babies.  We were so excited!  

Then mid January, I laid on the ultrasound table only to be told that baby's heart had recently stopped growing.  A second scan a week later confirmed this.  The miscarriage part was not awful, but postpartum has been absolutely incredibly difficult.  

We have been going to church where there has been a heavy focus on Philippians.  Reminders to forget the past and focus on the future - keeping our eyes on the prize of Christ Jesus!  Every Sunday, I wonder if I focus too much on our losses instead of our gains and what awaits us.  This last pregnancy, even if no one wanted to hear it, I shared that if we had this baby, it would be the longest stretch of time in our marriage without a loss (although we already were at that mark and made it 17 months with no losses!). 

I do not know for certain what the future holds.  I do know that I am going from glory to glory.  Even amidst the heartache and sorrow, God is here in my midst.  

Amazing things are in store for us.  God has shown up.  While I will forever carry my babies in my heart, I choose to keep my eyes ahead - on the prize of that which is Christ Jesus.