When God Calls Us To Be Uncomfortable

Sometimes God calls us out of our comfort zone. We all know that, but do we answer that call? Or do we curl up in our comfy little shells and hunker down? Either way, it's easier said than done. 

I've been in my hermit shell for quite a while. I was completely unaware of my mental state until my husband sat me down, looked me in the eye, and with all of the love in the world told me that I was spiraling down in clinical depression and he wanted to help me do whatever I needed to go be the person he fell in love with again. I'm ready to answer His call. 

I'm in a season of uncertainty and extreme uncomfortableness. We are still walking through the journey of infertility. Month 30 of trying, to be exact. There are family issues, personal issues, ministry development, future planning, possible career path advancement and then just everyday stuff. It's been really overwhelming for me. 

After spending some time in prayer, in the Word and in counseling, I can see what's going on now. God is calling me to be uncomfortable to get me to grow. Being stagnant isn't something we were meant to be and it hinders our relationship with our creator. 

I am learning how to set healthy boundaries in all areas of my life. It's a really hard thing for me to do, being someone who doesn't like to hurt or offend anyone, but I've come to a point where my mental health and well-being is taking precedence over others. 

I am learning how to let go of my own will and plan for my life. I've had a lot of dreams dashed - dreams I have had my entire life, but the sun still shines, the world still turns and I'm still blessed beyond measure. His plan is so much bigger for me than mine is, but keeping that in mind 100% of the time is easier said than done. Sure, it was about 10 years after I thought it would happen, but He brought me the most amazing husband in the entire world, someone He made perfectly for me. He was faithful in that, He will be faithful in giving us a child and healing my depression. 

I am learning how much what I say and do and my countenance effects those around me. God has given me a place of influence and a voice that is heard by more than I realize most of the time. Leaning in to Him for what He would have me say and do is something I am not fighting anymore. This life isn't about me, my needs or wants at all, it's about bringing Him glory. 

I'm opening up my heart to the fact that uncertainty can be exciting. Jeremiah 29:11 says, "For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope."" What does the future hold for hubs' career? Will it keep us in Yakima? When will Baby Kingman join us? Will we church plant? Will it be where we have seen it happening? Will family relationships be restored? We don't know the answer to any of those questions, yet. And that's OK.

Bloggie Buddies!

YAY for Bloggie Buddies! I know it always motivated me to post when I knew people were reading and when I was reading things on blogs written by like-minded people.

That, my dear reader(s?), is what brings me to this evening's post. My friend Chelsea and I realized at Church at the Park this morning that we both have blogs! She updates much more frequently than I do, but maybe why I've been so lax about posting is because I didn't have a "team" anymore. Back in the LiveJournal and early MoaRR & HLOG days, it was almost all I could do to not post at every moment of the day (I can't even imagine if I would've had an iPhone back then...eesh).

Some might say that blogging is a bit passé, but (here comes another reason why I know this bloggie buddy relationship thing is important) one day, while Chelsea and I were hanging out in Sue's office at the church, a woman came in and was talking about the journals she keeps and how important it was for us to be journaling, not only for ourselves, but for our relationship with God and for future generations. Hard to argue with that, hey?

I’ll wrap this post up with a couple of “God things” that happened today. The first was being a part of the baptism team at Church at the Park. I can’t even begin to express how much God was in that lake at the end of the service. My favorite moment was right after I spotted our friend Shawn waiting to get into the water. He couldn’t hear me over everything that was going on, but he did hear Corey. We got to baptize him. I bawled like I had SPF 70 in my eyes (OK, so I did, but I was real-crying, too!). Like his wife said afterward, “It couldn’t have been scripted any better!”

The second time I got the “God-bumps” was tonight after the Discipleship Focus Classes. I have come on board as the check-in/administrator lady, so I was running around the church doing little bits of this and that while Corey was finishing his last class in the series (Serve 301 – Spiritual gifting). I should preface what I’m about to tell you with the tidbit that on Friday, Corey said something about needing to check out Colorado Christian University, Life Pacific College and a few other colleges about online degree programs. We got into the car and my husband turns to me and says, “You know how Mark says that sometimes it’s hard to be around people with the prophetic gift?” I acknowledged remembering that conversation and he went on to tell me about a moment in the class where the other student asked a question, Corey felt compelled to answer and made a comparison to himself when the teacher (a prophetic leader in our church) stopped him and said, “While intercession is one of your giftings, that’s not the calling on your life. You are going to be a pastor.”
“And that’s when I decided not to talk anymore in that class.”

Now, I’ve known for quite a while that eventually, my big, bad State Trooper wanted to become a pastor, but that was (well, until now) far from public knowledge. Nothing like a little nudge from the Lord that He has placed the desires in your heart for a reason!

AND with that, I must away to my night chamber – filling in for the sweet Sue tomorrow a.m.

Premature Birth Plan

Let me start with the disclaimer that I am not pregnant. I am not in a place where I am desperate to be pregnant (anymore... that's an entirely different post that I should've written in December after the death of my father). We aren't planning to start actively trying to expand our family for a few months. Also, I believe that a woman's birth process is her very own choice and nothing I say here is meant to criticize what anyone and their partner has done or  will choose to do for their own body and own child.

I have been extremely interested in pregnancy and birth since I was in high school. I find pregnancy and child-bearing to be the ultimate DIY. I learned as much as I could, and veraciously, during my time working for and with my beloved Isagani Villanueva, MD, OB/GYN. That man was a WEALTH of knowledge, and while he didn't have a vagina or uterus, he sure as heck understood what they were made to do. I guess you'd learn that being in practice as long as he was - while I was working there, he was helping to deliver babies out of women he had once helped deliver. When I told him I was leaving the medical field to enter the corporate world ($$$ & paid insurance), he threw a holy fit. Ten years later, I look back at that moment where he yelled, "You have no future in answering phones! You have such a bright future ahead of you in medicine!" and think, you were absolutely right, Dr. V. I am into my practicums in my medical transcription course and know that I will be extremely happy with my career, my work, and my ability to stay home with our (future) children.

In the above-mentioned practicum, I just finished a group of transcriptions focused on OB/GYN. I have been watching some documentaries on birth in the United States (Pregnant In America & The Business of Being Born - both available on DVD and on Netflix Instant, both have things I agree with and others I am still thinking about and researching), and I have noticed that pregnant women are "following me" wherever I go (even Corey will point them out when he's with me). I have a friend who had a beautiful home birth four months ago, (her birth story is incredible) and is planning on becoming a doula when she's done having baies herself (Paula, I'm really sad you don't live closer to me!) and has a "birthy board" on Pinterest that I stalk daily.

With all of that said, it has me thinking about when we DO get pregnant. I know this is WAY more than most women in the U.S. think about even when they ARE pregnant, but it's one of my passions in life. I know I was created to be a mother and to take care of any children God blesses me with. Most people who know me know that I am a bit "crunchy" or "hippie" and me saying these things about my preferences wont really surprise them, but I need to get it out.

Epidural
Almost 29 years ago, my mother gave birth to me with no pain medication. I have long been terrified of this type of anesthesia.  My first concern is that ANY kind of pain medication makes me violently ill. Any time I've been in the Emergency Room, they give me a steady drip of anti-nausea medication simultaneously (making me groggy and sleepy), and as soon as they take that anti-nausea med away, I'm vomiting like a sorority girl at rush. I don't want my vomiting to be the first thing our baby hears, nor do I want to be passed out for the first few hours of our child's life (missing crutial bonding time and figuring out how to do the whole breastfeeding thing).

Not to mention the benefits of moving around for the best positioning of the baby in my body and the natural pain relief that provides. The lack of epidural also helps the mama's body to do what it was created to do - birth that child.

You can read about the benefits and some side effects here. For me,  my current research, and my gut feeling point to not having an epidural. The only time I will say allow one to be placed would be if there is a severe medical reason for me to have one, AFTER all other methods had failed.

Pitocin
One thing I LOVED about Dr. V was that he was "old school". He knew that babies would come when they were good and ready. He very rarely scheduled vacations, always had his pager with him on the golf course and would often come into the office in the morning directly from the hospital across the street, where he had been up all night with a laboring mother. He was the first person to tell me that if there was no major medical issue with the mama or the baby, there was no reason to administer a synthetic hormone (Pitocin) instead of letting their body produce it (oxytoicn) naturally.

I recognize that there are times when Pitocin is necessary - when labor is stalled and Mom and her uterus are tired, when there is a uterine hemmorhage and the uterus needs to contract quickly to save the mother's life and uterus, and the list goes on. Personally, I am just anti-scheduled-induction. There are several side effects of the drug, the most terrifying to me would be the fact that it intensifies the uterine contractions to a point where most women find them unbearable and therefore cave to the pressure of pain meds and epidurals. You can read more about the side effects here. There are MANY more sites with great info on "Pit", but this one was an easy read and had good citations.

Cytotec (misoprostol)
Where in the world do I begin? Induction is very rarely needed. When it is, Pitocin is a great drug. Cytotec, however, is NOT. It has NOT been approved by the FDA for use in pregnant women and has been linked to MANY uterine ruptures, and maternal and fetal deaths. DO NOT LET A PRACTICIONER COME NEAR YOU AND YOUR CHILD WITH THIS DRUG! If your practitioner talks to you about using a pharmaceutical  product to ripen your cervix, please make sure it is not Cytotec or the generic name, Misoprostol.

Other things I will make sure Corey and my doula or birth coach know to help me be heard about:

• Episiotomy - don't come near my perineum with that scalpel. 
• Augmentation - I want to be allowed to labor as long as by body needs with augmentation only when emergently necessary. My body is not on your hospital's schedule.
• Hold my baby immediately following the birth and breastfeed as soon as possible, postponing procedures that aren't necessary.
• Vitamin K injection for baby - DO NOT inject that into my child. 
• Eye "drops" ointment in baby's eyes - No go. My husband and I don't have the clap, neither will the baby's eyes.
• Supplemental feeding - Not going to happen. 

My Daily Bread... and the night of the sanitized pantry

With the hubs on night shift and me "home making", I've been keeping his schedule. It makes it a lot easier to function as a newly-married couple when we're not on opposite schedules, only seeing each other for a few hours a day. Yesterday was a bit of a different story. I had a girlie day planned with my mom and my 11-week-old niece. Since dear mama lives about an hour and a half away from me and is on a daytime schedule, I kind-of tried to adjust mine to get down there by 9am. BACKFIRE! I ended up getting to sleep two hours early, but that still put my eyelids shutting at 2am and getting up at 7. Whoops! But I digress.

While passing the baby back and forth, talking about Pinterest (Mom got her invite recently), I asked if she still had her bread machine and if she ever used it. She knew what I was getting at - "Would you like to.... borrow it?" Such a smart lady, that mom of mine! Not only did she donate her hunk of Oster-carb-making wonder, but she also threw in a Bread Machine cookbook and 10 pounds each of King Arthur Whole Wheat and Bread Flours. SCORE! On my way out of town, I stopped at my favorite grocery store (Winco... I just sang that. It's that awesome - don't worry, I'll write a post solely about the wonders of Winco soon) and raided their bulk section for pantry items I was out of or running low on (also thanks to Pinterest). 

After throwing a quick pesto sauce together, tossing it with some chicken and whole wheat pasta to fuel the hubs and sending him out on his night of crime fighting, I started in on my kitchen. I set up the bread machine on the end of our breakfast bar and started my loaf of Honey Wheat (recipe below). Despite the startling noises at the begining of the different cycles making me pee a little, all was going wonderfully. 

Then, I found them. While sweeping the floor of my gloriously stocked pantry, I saw the Cosco-sized box of large dog biscuits was completely infested with weevils. I froke (froke - [frəːk] verb. Past-tense of freak. "She froke out when she saw the bugs in her pantry") so hard that when I jumped back, my broom handle broke one of the light bulbs in the light fixture (pictured below). Cue removing EVERYTHING from the floor of the pantry, cleaning furiously with my bottle of vinegar, and checking every grain/wheat product for any sign of those filthy little crap-heads. At least I now have an in depth knowledge of everything in our pantry, it's re-organized and it sparkles.

The dangling bulb after being hit with my swift ninja moves

When I was just about done cleaning the pantry, the Oster signaled it's carb delivery was ready to be removed. OH and she was lovely. After letting the loaf cool for a few minutes (and pulling out the stove to clean around and behind it) I cut into it and tasted my first bread machine win. Behold, the power of freshly baked yumminess. 

Honey Wheat Bread

Yeild: 1 Pound Loaf

Ingredients: 

1/2 c. milk (non-fat, lactose-free at this house)

1/4 c. water

2 tbsp. butter

2 tbsp. honey (excited to try it with local, raw honey this spring)

1 tbsp. sugar

3/4 tsp. salt

1 1/2 c. whole-wheat flour

1/2 c. bread flour

2 tsp. yeast

Directions: 

Place room-temp ingredients in the pan of your bread machine in the order suggested by the manufacturer's directions. Set for whole-wheat bread with a medium crust. 

Life without my Father

I always wondered how I would react to the news my birth father had passed away. I'm not sure if that is because I grew up around the funeral industry, because my father was a bit older than most other fathers I know or because we had such a roller coaster of a relationship. Any way you want to look at it, I really didn't think I'd have to face that reality at the age of 28.


The morning of Friday, November 18, 2011 is one I will never forget, no matter how hard I try. It was Corey's day off and we had stayed up late the night before watching TV or something, so we had planned on sleeping in. His cell phone rang around 7:20ish - it was his Sergeant who asked if we were home and said he needed to talk to him in private. We feared it was something about the job Corey was about to interview for or God Forbid; one of the other troopers had been killed the night before on duty. Corey went outside when he saw “Sarge” pull into the driveway.


I figured we were up for the day, so I decided to get the bath mat out of the dryer. I got it into the bathroom, stepped on it and realized it was still wet, so I hauled it back to the laundry room and started it tumbling again. I heard the door open and close and was surprised to see "Sarge" had come inside with Corey. My first thought was that Corey had lost his job, but the look on their faces said something was much worse than that. I looked at Corey - his eyes were a shade of sad I had never seen - "Oh no, did something happen to his parents? His sister and her family? Please, Dear God let our nephew be OK." It felt like an hour passed in the seconds it took Corey to say, "Merrick, your dad died last night."


I looked over to Jeff and back to Corey and swear to Buddha I asked the question, "Which one?" out loud, but I think my eyes must have just said it. I'm fairly sure it was Corey who said, "Rick." and that Jeff followed that with, "His fiancée found him on the bathroom floor this morning." That moment of realization hit fast and hard. I cried out for the only thing I knew could help or understand with the only words I could muster, "Oh, God! Oh, God!" Corey took me into his arms as my knees gave out. Eventually they moved me the few feet to the couch and Jeff let us know that if we needed anything, not to hesitate to ask, he again said how sorry he was, that he would be praying for us and he left. The rest of the day was a whirlwind. We talked to the Deputy who had been in charge of the scene, the funeral home who had his body, packed up the car and drove down to Portland to make the arrangements for the eye and tissue donation and cremation. We went to his house and got a few things of his that had been mine and the guitar my grandfather had given him over 40 years ago and spent the night with one of my best friends. We made the trip home the next day.


I wrote on his facebook wall in the wee small hours of that morning how much I missed him, how much I wished all of this was a nightmare and I'd wake up and could call him, but how selfish I knew that would be to rip him away from Jesus just as he'd heard the words, "Well done, good and faithful servant!" So, if he could, when I'm having bad days, just send a creepy bird through the sky to remind me that he's with me. (I think all birds are creepy, the bigger the bird, the creepier) We saw more hawks and falcons on that ride home than I'd ever seen in one road trip.


His service was two weeks later in what he had considered his hometown, where my grandmother and uncle live. I held the Kermit the Frog he had bungeed to his motorcycle through the whole thing. It was wonderful to get to meet so many people who he helped through his work as a Chemical Dependency Counselor and through AA. The stories of him throwing his back out doing the splits as a college cheerleader and organizing a benefit concert starring the Beach Boys were cool to hear, too. His urn is buried about 500 feet from my grandfather's in a beautiful cremation garden.


At first, I had a lot of guilt for not missing him more when he was alive. I could always pick up the phone and call him, text him, leave a message, email, something. When those options were gone, I started to kick myself. Corey gently reminded me that my father and I did the best we could - he didn't know how to be the kind of dad he really wanted to be, and I never knew how to be the kind of daughter I really wanted to be, but our relationship worked for us. The past year had shown that much for sure. 


I hear his voice sometimes. I notice songs he loved when they come on in a store or a restaurant. I've taken to playing "The Rainbow Connection" (which we played at his service) on my piano and I've gotten quite good at it. It helps, especially since his guitar is hanging on the wall right next to me when I play. It gets a little easier to live a "normal" life every day, but I still have breakdowns here and there. I suppose I always will, but have been assured by a cousin who lost her father almost 10 years ago that it does get better. A few of my friends have a hard time understanding why, after fighting with him for so long, I'm still so torn up about this. I think the fact is, no matter who your "dad" is, there is a bond with DNA that can't be broken. He was my father. Was he ever "Father of the year"? No. Did he make some really bad choices in his life? Yes. But, did he love me? Absolutely and with his whole heart. And I loved him the same. 

It begins... Again?

Well, here it is - my foray back into blogging. This time, instead of writing about hockey and the single life (aka trying to find my husband), I'm hoping to publish posts of substance. Possibly even inspire a person or two... or at least leave them wondering how the clock got to 1:18am while following a trail of interesting articles.

I'll start with a small auto-biography. I am extremely blessed to live in Washington (no, not D.C. or Seattle, I live in the Central part of the state) with my WONDERFUL husband of 4 months and one day, two dogs (8 y/o boxer, Max and 18 month-old lab-shepherd mix, Minnie) and a cat (Edouard). I moved here from the Southeastern side of the state in October of 2010 after being ill to the point of having to quit my career of being a corporate/government Admin Assistant (that's a post in itself). Since moving, I have started a direct selling business and worked as a nanny for a few months. For the most part, I'm a home maker and feel very blessed to be one (though I'm hoping to complete a professional certificate program soon to have a work-at-home business).

We are part of three incredible families, our blood families, church family and the law enforcement family. The last of those three has been such an incredible addition to my life, especially having little to no knowledge of what I was stepping into, marrying and living with a police officer. He and I are both in leadership at our church in several ministries and he is the assistant coach of a local Christian High School Baseball team.

I was raised by a single mom until I was 13 and we were blessed with my step-dad and had a somewhat strained relationship with my birth father that thankfully had been on a great road to reconciliation until his untimely death just a month and a half ago.

Now that I'm at home and not bringing much income in at the moment, I've been trying to help us be as frugal as possible. We have both always been big Reduce-Reuse-Recyclers. And, since we've been praying about when to expand our family, I've also been trying to help us live more healthfully and cutting the unnecessary and toxic chemicals out of our life. Reading more and more on the toxicity of things that we are putting in and on our bodies daily is alarming. I have started the switch to glass food storage containers, I've been cutting all petroleum based products out of my life for the past 5 years, I'm slowly weaning myself from white flour products to whole wheat, I have all but cut beef out of my diet (I'm intolerant - so just a nibble here and there of quality red meat), and I have recently started cutting back on our sugar intake. I believe that officially makes me semi-crunchy.

Hope that gives you a little insight into me and our life. Welcome to the journey!