"O" is still for Overalls

It's been two years since I wrote that sweet little "'O' is for Overalls" post about Gemma.  Two very fast, full years!

Today, Ruth was wearing the same outfit (and she's just about the same age!), so I brought the camera along with me while I was hanging clothes on the line to take a few fall shots.  

The mums are the same, and my rosemary and thyme are much bigger!  Two years ago, I had some basil which was just about done.  I haven't had any since, and I miss it!  But I do have some tomatoes in--just recently resprouted some and replanted them.  The new plants seem happy; we'll see how they do!  

So much less hair . . . and still uses a pacifier.  I'd forgotten that Gemma gave hers up by this time (sort of accidentally--we lost it, and then she wouldn't take one anymore).

She's such a little darling, though!  She's just starting to crawl up on her knees, and pulling up a bit, too.  She loves to stand.  :)  She blows raspberries and babbles a lot.

Big sister, reminiscent of the struggles we had with naps at 10 months, is not napping anymore.  But she IS singing nursery rhymes, as much as she sings!  She loves pretending--she'll nurse a wad of pine straw or her toothbrush to sleep and have her markers go potty.  She finally named one of her babies Cinthia Baby!  And she thinks that "Winnie the Pooh" is "Winnie OF the Pooh."  :)

It's good for me to pause and reflect on these precious moments, because we do find discipline and potty-training very draining much of the time.  Ruth mostly sleeps better than Gemma did at this age, and I think part of it is because we've learned more since then, both through experience and reading.  Hopefully it will be the same the second time around with the disciplining and pottying.  I read a quotation by Elisabeth Elliot today which was very encouraging in this respect.  She said, "Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering.... The love of God did not protect His own Son.... He will not necessarily protect us - not from anything it takes to make us like His Son. A lot of hammering and chiseling and purifying by fire will have to go into the process." 

It's easy to pinpoint the most painful episodes of suffering in our experience--a breakup, loss of a baby, bike accident and burglary were some of the hardest things I've been through.  I think others can relate to the nagging question "What is God going to test me with next?"  I've been thinking lately that maybe this isn't the best approach to have toward suffering.  Yes, more tough times will probably come, but that doesn't mean that I should pull up my bootstraps and toughen my heart so that I won't ever hurt like that again.  The suffering we Christians go through is to make us more like Jesus.

I've also been thinking about how the sanctifying work of "suffering" doesn't always present itself in the form of a painful episode.  Sometimes it's just about persevering through another semester with a tough professor, another year with a challenging class of students, another sleepless night with sick children, yet another accident on the rug.  We pray and hopefully learn our lessons along the way, instead of just reflecting back upon them after the trouble is over.  While parenting really isn't suffering (it's mostly joy!), it is sanctifying.  We cannot demand that God make it easy for us just because He loves us, since He is teaching us through the struggles.  He is with us in our storms, and He is also with us when it's just cloudy and depressing for weeks.

I digress.

Happy Fall.  :)

A time for every purpose under heaven

I was just going to share my 24 week pregnancy photo with you all today, and tell you how well things are going (praise the Lord!).

 

 

Then, John got the call from his dad this morning that Maw had crossed the dark river . . .

 

Hopefully, now, her soul is with Grandpa Smith, and Uncle Steve, and John's other Grandmother, and with our friend Dan, and hopefully, hopefully, with our first little baby.

 

That is, we have hopes that she is now with Jesus.

 

They tell us that she went peacefully in her sleep.

 

 



"Abraham breathed his last and died in a ripe old age, an old man and satisfied with life; and he was gathered to his people."
(Genesis 25:8)


Now I further saw, that betwixt them and the gate was a river; but there was no bridge to go over, and the river was very deep. At the sight, therefore, of this river the pilgrims were much stunned; but the men that went with them said, You must go through, or you cannot come at the gate.

The pilgrims then began to inquire if there was no other way to the gate. To which they answered, Yes; but there hath not any, save two, to wit, Enoch and Elijah, been permitted to tread that path since the foundation of the world, nor shall until the last trumpet shall sound. The pilgrims then, especially Christian, began to despond in their mind, and looked this way and that, but no way could be found by them by which they might escape the river. Then they asked the men if the waters were all of a depth. They said, No; yet they could not help them in that case; for, said they, you shall find it deeper or shallower as you believe in the King of the place.

Then they addressed themselves to the water, and entering, Christian began to sink, and crying out to his good friend Hopeful, he said, I sink in deep waters; the billows go over my head; all his waves go over me. Selah.

Then said the other, Be of good cheer, my brother: I feel the bottom, and it is good.
(John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress)


" . . . a time to be born and a time to die . . . "
(Ecclesiastes 3:2)

A Tree of Great Sentiment

Last week during Gemma's birthday party, John went out to the garden bed and chopped down our Christmas tree.  :)

It was the neighbor to the tree we chopped down two years ago. At that time, it was only waist-high.  Now, it stands probably close to eight feet high in our living room!  I can only imagine how it would have looked if we'd left it growing.  (It does seem odd to plant such a tree in a raised bed amid small bushes!)

So, once again, we have a happily real (and free!) Christmas tree in our living room.  With Gemma's birth last year, I didn't decorate at all.  The church sent poinsettias which I lovingly gazed upon while nursing my newborn, and we traveled to New York for Christmas itself.  

This tree is unabashedly wild.  :)  Somewhat bare and scrawny, it is nevertheless no longer the first Christmas tree of a couple of newlyweds.  Then, we merely stuck our tree in a flower pot of dirt and dangled it with decorated cookies, but this year I actually bought a tree stand at Target.  It is so scrawny that only the innermost branches are strong enough to hold our growing collection of ornaments!  So many people love us . . . Gemma has at least three ornaments of her own already, and we have about as many couple/family ornaments joining the gorgeous Lenox and Wedgewood pieces my Mom-in-law has divded up among her daughters-in-law.

 This one will always be one of my favorites, though, because John gave it to me at that first Christmas.  The person in the mall who sold it even put our intials on the snowman and woman's mittens.  :)

And there are a few of those cookie ornaments which I coated with nail polish and saved. The most precious is this little heart, on which I piped "Our Baby," only a couple of days after we learned that our first baby was lost.

There's the upstairs tree, too.  It's a little tree I bought at a garage sale during my college years.  It has traveled through life with me from dorm room to teacher's desk to the sewing machine in the window of our first home, and it makes me happy.

So, these are our trees this year . . . both capitalizing on sentiment, like sentimental me.  :)

Gretchen Waxes Controversial, part 2

As our wedding date approached and my frustration with finding an ethical form of birth control abounded, I submitted a question to ylcf.org.  I had a feeling that some of the contributors there would be like-minded, and I asked specifically if they knew of any hormonal birth control options which only prevented ovulation.

One of the girls, who is also a newlywed, sent me a very long personal e-mail in reply!  She didn't know of any ethical hormonal options, either, but she told me some more about NFP and another method I'd never heard of called the Fertility Awareness Method (FAM). 

From that info session back in college, I knew the basic premise of NFP.  A healthy woman ovulates once a month, so she is only fertile for a limited number of days.  A married couple seeking to avoid pregnancy would simply abstain from intimacy during those days.  But I wasn't sure if this was the best idea.  1 Corinthians 7 talks about a husband and wife giving to each other freely.  Would my husband really go for that much abstinence?  And what if our honeymoon was a fertile time?  I'd also dismissed NFP in my mind because I assumed that it was the same as the "rhythm method," about which I'd always heard "it doesn't work." 

FAM, I learned, is sort of a hybrid between NFP and using a barrier to prevent pregnancy.  I don't know why I'd hardly heard of our thought of barriers before.  True, they are not as convenient as a pill and have somewhat statistically lower success rates in preventing pregnancy.  But it seems like barriers are under-rated.  There are several options out there, and with FAM, you don't even need to use them all the time.  You just use them during your fertile times. 

In that revelationary and revolutionary e-mail, I learned about a book called Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler.  I got my own copy almost for free on paperbackswap.com.  While the rhythm method assumes that all women have perfect 28-day cycles, Weschler discusses in detail how to use NFP or FAM effectively by charting your own fertility signs.  Her book definitely isn't written from a Christian perspective, but it's an indispensible guide to either method.  Her book also discusses in depth how to use charting to help achieve pregnancy. 

I believe that recent studies have shown links between the use of hormonal birth control and increased health risks to women.  I haven't researched these studies very much, but because of them I'm especially thankful to have learned about FAM.  Ylcf.org now has a more detailed explanation of the two methods on its "married" blog.  And if anyone is interested in learning about some good online charting sites or other resources, I'd be happy to share them with you personally.  

Many of you know that John and I decided mid-October that we would like to have a baby if the Lord blessed us with one.  And He did, right away, but then He saw fit to allow us to lose that baby in mid-December.  I still miss that little one a lot, and I bring him up again to let you know that we didn't get pregnant because FAM failed.  In fact, I now know of women who have used FAM or NFP to successfully avoid pregnancy for a number of years, and then achieved a pregnancy shortly thereafter.  We know that God hasn't failed us, either, and we're learning to love Him and trust Him more, I hope, every day.

Comforting Little Thoughts

"And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; And a little boy will lead them. Also the cow and the bear will graze, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child will put his hand on the viper's den. They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea."  Isaiah 11:6-9


"For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; And the former things will not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create; For behold, I create Jerusalem for rejoicing and her people for gladness. I will also rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in My people; And there will no longer be heard in her the voice of weeping and the sound of crying. No longer will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his days; For the youth will die at the age of one hundred and the one who does not reach the age of one hundred will be thought accursed."  Isaiah 65:17-20

I don't know when these things will be or exactly what implications they have for me, but I know that they are true and wonderful.

"Because Isaiah's words about the Messiah's first coming [ch. 52-53] were so meticulously fulfilled, down to specific physical details, shouldn't we assume that His prophecies in subsequent chapters concerning life on the New Earth will likewise be literally and specifically fulfilled?"  Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p. 96

"We learn, in the fourth place, that children are never too young to receive the grace of God.  Zacharias is informed that his son "shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb."  There is no greater mistake than to suppose that infants, by reason of their tender age, are incapable of being operated upon by the Holy Spirit.  The manner of His work upon a little child's heart, is undoubtedly mysterious and incomprehensible.  But so also are all His works upon the sons of men.  Let us beware of limiting God's power and compassion.  He is a merciful God.  With Him nothing is impossible."  J.C. Ryle, Expository thoughts on Luke, Vol. 1, p. 15 (emphasis in original)