It works!

You know that doppler I have been wanting to use?  Well, the time came to give it a try and I had the hardest time finding anything.  I started at 10 weeks and found nothing.  11 weeks, nothing.  12 weeks, nothing.  I got determined.  I looked up online exactly where I was supposed to be placing the thing, followed the directions exactly and, voila, baby heartbeat!  I im'd my husband and told him I had found it.  He was jealous so I found it again for him.  Now, every time I start to get worried about the baby I just listen for a little bit and I feel better.  This has been such a stressful week that I have used it three times.  I get so convinced that stress will cause the baby to die that I have to check.  This may seem crazy, but according to what I have read, I would be abnormal if I didn't worry after what happened last time.  My new obsession, now that I can check the heartbeat any time I want, is my weight.  I am diabetic.  I lost a lot of weight after we lost Nathan and I am now down to a healthy weight.  It is extremely hard, if you are following the diet, to gain weight if you are diabetic.  Try being pregnant and diabetic.  I had my checkup at the ob on Monday and did an inner cheer when I saw that my weight was the same as the time before.  I was down only 4 pounds from the start of the pregnancy.  I cannot say the same anymore.  The things that I have heard, the things that I have found out this week have made stress rear it's ugly head again.  Stress=less eating=weight loss.  2 and a half more pounds gone.  I am dangerously close to being underweight when this baby is born.  I am not likely to gain.  So I obsess about whether I will be able to nurse or not.  I picture myself wasting away to nothing while trying to feed my baby.  If I can't gain weight while pregnant, I definitely won't while nursing.  I'll need even more calories then.  I really want to nurse this baby and I am worried that it's not going to happen.  Stop!  God is in control.  He knows exactly what is going to happen and no amount of worrying on my part will change a thing.  This day really does have enough troubles of it's own.  Why add more to it?  Lord, help me to trust that you know best.  Help calm my fears and anxieties.  And please, Lord, if I start worrying again, smack me upside the head and tell me to knock it off.

Farewell

Farewell, Redeeming Grace, we will miss you.  You were so good to us when we lost Nathan and we can never repay you for that.  But, it is time to move on.  Time to start somewhere new.  Time to leave behind the only church we have known since we moved here almost 4 years ago.  It is heartbreaking.  This is not what we wanted.  This is not what we asked for.  But this is God's answer.  Do I feel like I have the energy to start over somewhere new?  No.  Do I feel like surrounding myself with people who don't even know about Nathan?  No.  Do I feel like uprooting my kids from all of their friends and forcing them to make new ones?  No.  Do I feel like taking the time to make new friends?  No.  But these are all things that God is asking me to do.  What choice do I have?  So I will move on.  I will go somewhere new.  I will find the energy to do what God is asking me to do.

Depending on God

I am done with people.  Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe that God can speak through others but what happened to the love that all Christians are supposed to have?  It seems this is stressed quite a bit in Jesus' teachings and I find it sad that it is so lacking in today's Christian circles.  When someone does something wrong it's suddenly time to attack them.  The Jesus I see in scripture wouldn't let the person get away with the bad behavior but would gently show her what she did wrong.  What happened to "love the sinner, hate the sin?"  It seems that nowadays it's "hate the sinner and the sin."  Ever since Nathan died God has been teaching me to rely more and more on Him and less and less on people.  I hear people say He is their All in All.  Really?  You don't go to anyone else for support at all?  You never talk to anyone about what is going on in your life?  You never rely on your own strength to get you through?  Sure, God should be the One you go to first with everything.  What do you do if your answer to prayer is to speak to someone?  Are you still relying on God?  I think so.  People claim that they rely solely on God for everything but we are not exactly designed that way.  God designed us to need others to help us through this cruel world.  No man is an island.  People are flawed.  Not a single person alive today is perfect.  That has become very clear to me over the past month or so.  People are turning out to be not at all like I thought they were.  I have been let down more times than I can count.  But there are those rare people who do love me despite my faults.  People who gently point out to me where I am wrong.  People who want me to be the best I can be here on this earth.  Maybe I'm not done with people after all, just most of them.