Feeding my soul...

One of my favorite blogs Kelly's Korner always has the "Show Us Your Life" link up posts.  A lot of times I have nothing to offer to link up for, and sometimes I do, but I'm just too lazy to do it (did I mention I'm a lazy blogger?).  A while back she had "Show Us Your Life-Favorite Devotionals"...I wanted so bad to link up and talk about my favorite devotional, because I'm so in love with it and it feeds me so much, spiritually,  e.v.e.r.y.d.a.y!  So, after reading today's devotion, I really want to share it with you in hopes that it will give you hope and the reminder that the Lord knows our hearts desires, and that He will not be late. This is the book...

November 20th (actually I'm behind a day, it was yesterdays):

Waiting may seem like an easy thing to do, but it is a discipline that a Christian soldier does not learn without years of training.  Marching and drills are much easier for God's warriors than standing still.

There are times of indecision and confusion, when even the most willing person, who eagerly desires to serve the Lord, does not know what direction to take.  So what should you do when you find yourself in this situation?  Should you allow yourself to be overcome with despair?  Should you turn back in cowardice or in fear or rush ahead in ignorance?

No, you should simply wait-but wait in prayer.  Call upon God and plead your case before Him, telling Him of your difficulty and reminding Him of His promise to help.

Wait in faith.  Express your unwavering confidence in Him.  And believe that even if He keeps you waiting until midnight, He will come at the right time to fulfill His vision for you.

Wait in quiet patience. Never complain about what you believe to be the cause of your problems, as the children of Israel did against Moses.  Accept your situation exactly as it is and then simply place it with your whole heart into the hand of your covenant God.  And while removing any self-will, say to Him, "Lord, 'Not my will, but yours be done' (Luke 22:42).  I do not know what to do, and I am in great need.  But I will wait until You divide the flood before me or drive back my enemies.  I will wait even if You keep me here many days, for my heart is fixed on You alone, dear Lord.  And my spirit will wait for You with full confidence that You will still be my joy and my salvation, 'for You have been my refuge, and a strong tower against the foe' (Ps. 61:3)."

This and That

So much going on with us these days!  Lots of good things, but still giving me lots to pray about to keep my worries at bay.

Before it gets too late to post about, I got a little crafty (yes, me) for my husbands Halloween costume.  We did a little role reversal thing....I was just hoping he would go for it.  I thought it would be hilarious if my hubs was a cheerleader and I was a football player (well, hilarious on his part, I was shooting for comfort on my part!).  I only have a couple pics from my blackberry, some of the people at the party we went to took some great pics, but I haven't gotten those yet.  So here is a pic of the skirt I bedazzled...I got it at TJMaxx...it was a woman's plain white tennis skirt-perfection!!  At first we decided that we were going to match teams for our outfits, but my mother-in-law suggested that I make him an Angel's cheerleader...his men's baseball team that he plays for that he is OBsessed with (yes, I know baseball doesn't have cheerleaders).  I was a Florida Gators football player.  How awesome is this bedazzled skirt??

This is the only picture of me that I got.  We are terrible at taking pictures!  It was a fun night, good friends and good times :)

On to more serious stuff ;)

**I got a new job!!  I'm very excited about it!!  My current job makes me want to jump from very high places on most days.  There are several reasons why I needed to make a change.  I start next week, I'm nervous but excited.  My sister's best friend works in the office at my new job, so it helps that I know her and I love her.  It's a much smaller office in comparison to where I work now...and this is perfect, it's what I've wanted and needed for a while now. 


**We put an offer in on an acre of land and they ACCEPTED our offer...WOOHOO!!  We've gone back and forth on where we actually want to build.  My hubs dad has some land we thought about building on, but it's right beside his mom's house and she will soon be selling, so we sought out other options.  Our lot is in this neighborhood that only has about 5 houses in it right now, and several other lots for sale.  My husbands brother and sis-in-law just bought a gorgeous home in this same neighborhood AND, my husbands sister and bro-in-law got accepted on an offer for land right beside us!!  Did you follow that?  So, basically my sis-in-laws and bro-in-laws (all 6 of us) will be in the same neighborhood...we're tight like that ;)  We all love the idea of being very close.  It's not quite a done deal yet, we are still holding our breath waiting to see if this land passes the perk test.  It's rumored that a few plots of land in this neighborhood have failed perk tests...which means the land is unbuildable.  It is getting perked this week and we should know something soon.  My sis-in-law and her hubs are awaiting the same test!  It would suck if one perked and one didn't or they both didn't...but we are believing they will pass!!  So, I will keep ya'll posted :)

**My husband is up to some big changes too, but I won't go into detail until those happen.  Like I said before, all good changes, but things to pray about to ensure we are making the right decisions.  All these changes are happening at the same time and I'm just spent worrying about every detail of them.  I sometimes wish I could go back to my "younger" days when I didn't take things so seriously and over think e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g!  With that being said, though, I know exactly where to go when the worry starts to get to me...to the cross, lay it there.  The reassurance of God's promises keep me focused!

**I'm still working on my 90 days of supplements from the Naturopathic doctor.  I'm almost done with it, unless he has other plans when I go back.  I haven't noticed many changes, but I suppose I wouldn't really notice until we start trying again.  Which, by the way, not TTC is way wierd at this point.  Actually avoiding around ovulation is strange...and wrong, just sayin ;)  And then, with my new job, I won't have insurance right away...so I must continue to avoid TTC??!!  The clock just ticks...I'm now half way to my 34th birthday :( 

Soo...that was a long post.  I will wrap up now...I'll be back with updates :)

The best four years...

I'm still amazed on a regular basis that I am so richly blessed to be married to such an incredible man.  We celebrated our four year anniversary last Thursday!  These last four years have been a journey that I never could foresee.  It's amazing how you try and "plan" your life out...and God just laughs.  Even though our "plans" haven't come to fruition as we would like, we have each other and our relationship with the Lord...and that's all we really need.  Jeromy has been the rock in our relationship, he is mostly a fearless and very strong man.  He's not very emotional, but has the biggest heart.  I give him credit for strengthening my journey with the Lord, and this is what I'm most thankful for.

When I think of the enormous love I have for him, I am reminded of what led me to him.  I am reminded that through pain and suffering, the Lord actually is working in your life to bring you to a better place...ultimately to bring Him greater glory.  Shortly before I started dating my husband, I was in a relationship that ended very badly.  I had been engaged to a guy for about a year.  Throughout our relationship I saw several red flags, I ultimately chose to ignore those.  Looking back, these red flags should have been deal breakers, but I suppose when you're planning a wedding all you can see is the big picture...which is your wedding day.  Without getting into too much detail (b/c I have a public blog, and I'm not that kinda girl), he came to me three weeks before our wedding and told me that he couldn't go through with it.  This was a Friday night, and the next day was a combo wedding shower and bachelorette party...talk about devastation.  All I could think about was the embarrassment I was about to face.  All I wanted to do was cry, cry and cry some more and never leave my house.  In hindsight, I think I was more devastated and embarrassed about having to call off our wedding than actually not marrying him.

Shortly after ending that relationship, I met my husband (well I knew him, we just never got to know each other).  I only tell this story, as a testimony to what our God can do in our lives when all we see is devastation or loss...but in His precise plan, He is working to mend our hearts and to bring us to a higher place.  When I was engaged to that guy I was a Christian, but he was not; I wanted children, but he did not.  It was a perfect mis-match, and because I was blinded by certain things, my Lord took care of business for me...even when I wasn't looking for Him to do so, I'm ashamed to say.

I couldn't imagine life without my husband, and clearly neither could the Lord, because He divinely placed him there...glory be to God!!  I couldn't imagine going through this journey with anyone else, I just wanna shout from the roof tops how much I love this man of mine and how incredibly thankful I am for him!!!!  Our life isn't perfect, but I think there is beauty in that.  The journey that led me to my husband reminds me of the journey that we are currently on to have a child.  It's shaky, it's devastating...but we will remain faithful knowing that our Lord, full of grace and mercy, will indeed bless us in His own way in His own timing...and indeed, we will be in a higher place giving God all the glory!!

Mean bloggers

I'm such a hit or miss blogger.  Sometimes I get on a roll, and other times I just abandon the blogging world all together for a while!  The problem with this is, I start to lose track of my bloggy friends and it takes some serious time to catch up.  This problem coupled with the fact that I still can't comment on people's blogs most of the time (crushing to me), is making me look like a terrible blogger/friend.  I have emails I need to respond to, but my email is jacked right now...and I'm pretty sure this email problem and the commenting problem go hand in hand.  I know I'm kind of a big deal, right (?), but on the other hand I know ya'll aren't checking your emails/blogs daily for my comments/response...but just know that I'm working on it.  I'm still thinking about all of you and praying for all of you!!

So I was just reading this blog that I follow.  This lady has done like 3 IUI's, 3 IVF's and finally got pregnant on her third...what a journey!!  Well, she's several months into her pregnancy and has been receiving nasty comments and emails about her being pregnant.  WTH??  I absolutely cannot wrap my mind around sitting down at my computer, choosing an "anon" identity and then just blasting a woman for finally getting her blessing that she WORKED HARD for!  And the commenters?  Infertile women.  After reading many comments, it is of my opinion that for some infertile women it has become some sort of contest as to who has suffered more or who has spent more money.  I just became so enraged reading some of the things these women have said on her blog.  Infertility is awful, it really is.  It arouses some truly ugly emotions...here are few, but not limited to...bitterness, jealousy, depression, anger, confusion, guilt.  But, it should not be in our power to be able to unleash these emotions on, what used to be, our fellow infertile in the TTC journey.  Infertility is not a reason to be mean or hateful or hurtful!!

When I find out a fellow IFer is pregnant, my heart leaps in pure joy, honestly.  Because I am human and I'm just being honest...it does tend to be a little difficult to continue to follow their blog for the whole nine months.  It just becomes too painful to watch the growing belly.  With that said, my unflattering feelings and emotions are reserved for women that have children but don't want them, women who took too many jello shots and met Mr. Right Now and BAM...you catch my drift.  My heart hurts for this woman that is being put on blast.  Have ya'll seen this going on on blogs where IF women get pregnant?  What do you think?

Arts & Crafts disaster...

We thought it would be fun to do an arts and crafts night, you know, to mix things up.  Riiight.  The pictures do my arts and crafts catastrophe no justice.  In true Amy A-D-D doesn't.have.a.crafty.bone.in.her.body fashion, I started the project, got frustrated, got up and walked away, went back to the project, got more frustrated, ate the delicious dinner my friend cooked for us, went back to project and then quickly reached DEFCON level 5 frustration...and then gave UP on it!  Right after dinner A started working on her wreath.  Perfection.  Seriously??  Just a blow to my creative ego, thank you very much. 

So, we went to Michaels to get everything we needed, and long story short, we ended up having to do a different wreath because we couldn't anything other than neutral burlap colors. We started out wanting this one:

 And ended up doing this one:

Loove this wreath, however it's a little more complicated (to me) than the other one. It required stitching, yikes, and then cinching...clearly way over my head. Here is my wreath before I gave up.

My friend put hers together in about, um, like ten minutes...like it was no thang!  Just to be clear, it called for two layers (front and back) of the ruffle wreath, but we only had time for one layer.

The finished product isn't really finished.  Because we had to change our wreath last minute, we went to a different store and didn't have the items needed to finish it.  Even though my project turned out awful, we had a back-up plan...alas, a third grade project I can do!!  A coozy, a Halloween coozy!!

Lots of hot glue, puffy paint, foam zombies...YES!  Suffice it to say, there probably won't be many more arts & crafts nights, unless it is on an elementary level ;)  But, we did have fun...and that's most important, right?  The arrow on my head reads "I'm with creepy" ;)





HELP!!!

Does anyone know why I can't leave comments on blogs??  Especially blogspot blogs!  I have so much to say, lol!  I post a comment and hit the comment button, and then it disappears :(  Help!!

Gettin' crafty!

So who is tired of me talking about infertility??   I can just see you guys jumping up and down saying "ME, ME!" Ha!  Yea, well, me too...believe it or not!  I, myself, can't believe how much I can talk about infertility...it just monopolizes everything, booo!  So, in the last few days I've been really trying to think of things I can do to get my mind off of it already.  I made a date with a girlfriend of mine...and here is how our conversation went:


 Let's do something Friday night...
A: Um, I know you, you'll be too tired after work.
Me: Nah, I promise, I'm good...
A: Ok, let's do something out of our comfort zone!
Me: Sounds great, let's do it!
A: How about laser tag?
Me: No, does not sound fun whatsoever...and I'm 33, not 23 like you! (Yes, we are 10 years apart and yes, I know 33 isn't old)
A: Alright old lady...
Me:  How about roller skating?  (purely for shock value)
A: I'm 23, not 13...
Me: I was kidding about roller skating.
A:  How about bowling?
Me: Is this what it's come down to?
A: How about we just go see a movie, dinner and drinks? (the usual)
Me: I guess we don't have a choice (b/c there is absolutely nothing else to do), sounds good.  (NOT out of comfort zone whatsoever)

So then I get this great idea...let's be realllly lame and do arts and crafts, while having some wine of course!  Soooo...I start to google DIY fall projects....OMGoodness, wow there is so much.  WOW, people are soo creative and then spend a ton crap of time to take pictures, give a blow by blow on how to make it AND then blog about it!  So then, the next day this was our convo:

Me: How about a fall arts and crafts project and some wine!
A: So we go from laser tag to arts and crafts?
Me: Absolutely!
A: Awesome, let's do it!
Me: Yay...we're so cool!

This is what I found for us to do...it was A's idea to do a wreath, so this is what we settled on.  Hot glue guns, watch out!!

  http://www.craftaholicsanonymous.net/2011/09/burlap-fall-wreath-tutorial.html  Don't ya'll LOVE it??

I'm NOT creative whatsoever, but I like to be crafty (and I'm usually terrible at it)!  This might be the beginning of something...we shall see :)  I'll post some pics from our old lady arts and crafts night!  This might have to be a regular thing...