Prayer Request

My dear sweet friend, Adair, and her precious babies are heavy on my heart. Adair is one of the most beautiful people I've ever met, inside and out. She and her husband Cal have been on a long journey over the last 2 years to bring them to this place. They have been through so much to even GET these babies, and now they are facing more trials.

I'm asking for prayers for this sweet family. As I write this, Adair has been admitted to the hospital indefinitely for pre-term labor. Today she is 26 weeks and 4 days pregnant with their twins, Jack and Lucy. These babies need to get to 28 weeks to be out of the "scary" part of the woods. Would you please pray for my friends and their babies, that they will stay safe in her womb for as long as possible?

UPDATE

God is truly taking care of Adair and her sweet babies. After weeks of "off and on" contractions, there is absolutely NO CHANGE in her cervix (I think it must be made of steel or something). She got to go home for a while, but is back in the hospital. Her faith and attitude through all of this is amazing. As of LAST Wednesday (8/25), she was 29 weeks and the babies are weighing 3lbs 7 oz (Lucy) and 3lbs (Jack). Adair will be 30 weeks in 2 days, PRAISE GOD!!!! We are just praying those babies stay in there as long as they can, and giving HIM all the glory for these miracles so far! Thanks for your continued prayers for my dear friend.

THE CALL

SO, yesterday I got "the call." No, not from God to enter the ministry. I received the phone call that I've been waiting on for a long time. Remember when I took that long break last month because I had a lot on my mind that I felt like I couldn't talk about? Or an opportunity that I had been waiting on for a while that might not be worth it? Or do you remember me feeling really trampled on?

Well, all my prayers have been answered. My heart is at peace. I have no worry or fear, only joy and anticipation!! I am starting a NEW JOB on August 31st!!! My concerns about time are at ease. Yes I will lose some evenings and a few Saturdays with Matt, but I will also have more time at home while he is at work to do things I don't want to do when he is there!! So the time we do have together will be less guilt-ridden and much higher quality. :)

I even did a little happy dance in my cubicle (that I WILL NOT miss working in!) to celebrate!! SEE?


Well you can't REALLY see the essence of the dance, but it's a self portrait - very difficult!

SO, thanks to everyone who has walked with me through the "dark valley" and prayed for me. I appreciate all of you. For those who didn't know what was going on, just be happy for me ok?!?!?!!!!

Lara's baby shower

Our women's small group (Bible study group) has been excited for a very long time to help Lara and Bryan welcome a baby into their family. We just had no idea (nor did they) that God would work in their lives the way He has. We are all truly amazed by the great blessing He has given to them.

Lara and Bryan are our friends who had just finished filling out their adoption paperwork when she found out she was pregnant, that I mentioned here. They have decided to adopt after little Hayden is born! They may have TWO BABIES by Christmas!! She is so amazing and dedicated to healthy living and treading lightly on this great Earth that she is going to cloth diaper both babies!

Well, it was finally time for us to plan Lara's baby shower. Since Lara has her very own organic garden, and her nursery is garden themed, we thought it the logical theme for her baby shower. So we got to work on the plans, and OF COURSE I called Lamm to design the invitations!!

Of course, last names, addresses and phone numbers have been removed.

Aren't they ADORABLE??? I was quite proud of coming up with the rhyme!! We wanted to make sure and acknowledge that Lara and Bryan are awaiting the arrival of their birth daughter, Hayden and an adopted sibling.

Anywho, this was the best shower I've ever co-hosted! We just did "everyone bring a dish" so no one person was overwhelmed (except maybe Merrell, she had to clean her house!). I signed up to bring the dessert, sugar cookies. My MIL gave me her/Grandy's coveted recipe and all the fun stuff to make them for Christmas and I've been DYING to try it out!

Well, I grossly underestimated the time it would take to roll out, cut, bake, ice and decorate 24 large cookies. But all the effort was worth it. They turned out so CUTE! I even found a cookie cutter at my favorite craft store that was a large flower with a small cookie bumble bee to stack on top, perfectly matching the invitations! SEE?!?!?!

Note to self: do not stack bees onto flowers until you've arrived at the destination (carry separately), some poor little bee faces got smushed :(

Here are all the ladies from small group (except Meghan who had a little trouble finding Merrell's house) that attended the shower.

Note to self: do not wear this outfit again until you have lost 10 lbs.

And here is Lara with her sister-in-law, neice, nana and mom.



Lara got tons of cool stuff for both babies. Her mom made a little sweater and booties (so cute); her nana made a blanket, and Meghan embroidered some onsies, a blanket and some bloomers.

Yep, Lara is cracking up because the onsie says "organically grown"

I think Lara's favorite gift was a few items of clothes worn by Bryan's favorite cousin that they are so close to. They were very special!


Fun was had by all (except Bryan waiting back at home). Bryan promptly got some horrible flu while we were at the shower and is now in quarantine at his mother's house for a week. Bryan needs prayers of healing, Lara needs to not get sick, and baby Hayden needs to stay in Mommy's belly until Daddy is well enough to welcome her into this world!!

We can wait a week to meet you Hayden!! Stay in Mommy's belly!

Not ME! Monday returns - or so I thought

After a small hiatus from blogging, (ok I took almost a month off, SUE ME!) Not Me! Monday has returned!! Check out the totally cute new logo!!



So I started this post as a "Not Me! Monday" post, but when I went to MckMama's page to phish off this logo, I was shocked to see little Stellan in the hospital again. He's been doing so well and their life has been so "normal" for so long that I was very surprised. Her "tweet" in the side bar quotes Dr. B saying, "He's in bad shape." I just read her blog post seconds after I wrote this and their family is coming in to the hospital. This is as bad a shape as this baby has ever been in. Please pray for this sweet little boy and his family.

Overwhelmed

I'm a bad bad blogger. A lot of stuff that has been on my mind lately I don't feel comfortable blogging about just yet, so I've avoided my blog altogether.

Since I last blogged, Matt had his 27th birthday. He reminds me often that he turned the age I was when we met. Thanks hunny, I remember. I got ZERO pics of his birthday, bad wife. I did buy him an awesome ukulele for his birthday. It's an authentic ukulele from a maker in Hawaii. He loved it. I still don't have any pictures of him playing it, but hopefully when things calm down I can get some.

Matt has been working an insane amount of hours trying to get a job out on time. They were supposed to post July 15th, then the deadline was Friday, July 24th. Today they were told that it's been extended to Sunday night and they are expected to work this weekend. BTW, my 30th birthday is tomorrow (more on that later). So, he's wrestling with doing a good job, giving me time, properly celebrating my birthday, etc. We thought after they extended the deadline once that we would at least (FINALLY) get to sleep-in together, enjoy the day and have my birthday party in peace. Not so much. Oh well. I know he feels horrible about it, so I try not to complain and make it worse. At least we will have 5 or 6 hours on Saturday to celebrate.

Matt being gone so much lately is starting to really affect me. By the end of the day Sunday (the 19th) he had crammed 6 weeks worth of hours into 4 weeks at work. Monday and yesterday I think he worked about 21 hours in 2 days. My love languages are Physical Touch and Quality Time (I'm bilingual), so obviously I am affected by this.

Last night I lost it (again, this seems to be a regular cyclical occurrence). I feel so overwhelmed and I can't break out of it. I will have a good week or two, then a bad. I never can seem to time my counseling sessions with bad weeks, so we've yet to address it. UGH. Anyway, there are a lot of things that are important to me as a wife.

1. I love Jesus and want to have a close relationship with him, so I need and want to spend time studying the Word.
2. I love my husband, so I need and want to spend lots of quality time with him.
   
3. I want to be healthy and feel good about myself, so I need and want to exercise regularly.
   
4. I want us to eat healthy, nutritious foods, so I need and want to cook good meals often.
5. Clutter stresses me the heck out, so I need and want to keep up with housework.
6. I want to take care of myself, so I need and want to get to bed in time to get a good night's sleep.

These are all things that are of the absolute highest importance to me, and they are ALL things that are daily or nearly daily things that need taking care of. BTW, I work a full-time job too. I am stuck in this vicious cycle of setting goals for all of these things, FAILING MISERABLY, flipping the heck out about it, trying to do better, setting more goals, FAIL, flip out/ rant, and so on. This has been going on for 3 freakin' months now and I have NO IDEA how to do any better.

THEN I start to think if just keeping up with life is hard now, what happens when we are ready for kids??? ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!??!!

OH, and BTW I turn 30 tomorrow, chubby, childless, and totally overwhelmed. AWESOME.

Health, Love and Wealth...

And Time to Enjoy It. That's what the pewter plate reads that was given to us for our wedding by GP and Grandy (Matt's grandparents). It sits in a plate holder on top of our refrigerator. The same plate spent many years in GP and Grandy's kitchen, and it meant so much to us when we received it. And now, today, I realized how much more I treasure the gift and the blessing inscribed on it.

My friend Karson faces a very long battle ahead of her, that started this morning with the first of her INDEFINITE chemo treatments (that's right, indefinite, straight from her doctor's mouth). I noticed our plate this morning, and it rocked me to the core. It sits beside the bananas, and I get a banana for breakfast every morning, but today I really noticed it and read it for the first time in a while.

Life, love, family, friends, time are such precious gifts from God. Brian preached about it Sunday. The way we choose to spend our TIME each day, each task, are the most important decisions we make. No one is ever faced with their own mortality wishing that they spent more time at the office getting work done, or the gym trying to perfect our physical appearance, or in the yard trying to have the greenest lawn on the block. When faced with the big stuff, life or the end of it, we want more TIME with the ones we LOVE.

I am possibly facing an opportunity that may take more TIME from me than I am willing to give. Even though I've been waiting a while on an opportunity, this opportunity just may not be worth it. I can wait a little more, I guess. In the end, I will thank me for it. Right now, I have HEALTH (thank you Jesus); I have LOVE from an amazing man and so many family and friends; I have enough WEALTH to be comfortable. In light of all of that, I choose to spend the TIME I do have enjoying it!

Cancer Can Kiss My ASS!!

That about sums it up. Cancer can kiss my ass, it sucks. I love my friend and I don't want her to have cancer again, but she does. So I'm just going to ask for prayers. Karson and Jason need it, and so do we (their friends and family).

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/karsonbeaty

PRAYERS NEEDED

For all the 10 or so people who actually read my blog, here goes. There are PRAYERS NEEDED, so I'll just tell you about them.
First. Some of you know about my dear friend Karson, many of you don't. Karson and I went to graduate school together at UT Knoxville. We became friends through other friends really, but I am so glad we did!! Karson is one of those wonderfully infectious people that you just have to smile around, because she is always smiling! She has an equally dear amazing husband, Jason, whom I am also good friends with. The summer after we graduated, Karson went somewhere cool for like a month. We (her girlfriends from grad school) were in charge of entertaining and keeping Jason company while she was gone. Everywhere we went (out about 2 times a week or so), there were all the girls... and Jason. It was fabulous! Anywho, I say all that to say that Karson and Jason are BOTH very special friends of mine!

Karson and Jason

Karson was diagnosed with breast cancer in February 2007, she was 30 at the time. About half a year and a mastectomy of her left breast, a ton of chemo, sickness, joint pain and other side effects later, Karson was cancer-free. Many of you donated to Race for the Cure that year, many of you prayed for her, and I appreciate all of you.

Grad School Girls @ Race for the Cure 2007

Well, my sweet prayer warriors, it's time to hit our knees again to pray for this amazing woman and her equally awe inspiring husband. A couple of months ago they found a lump in her breast, which turned out to be nothing, but feared they may have punctured her implant during the biopsy. The CT of her implant was fine, but went down just far enough for them to catch a couple of nodes on her liver. This is very very bad. A closer CT has caused concern among her doctors and her oncologist has been pulled into the case. They are in the process of scheduling another CT and a liver biopsy (hopefully ASAP). Karson and Jason need our prayers of healing, strength, comfort and peace.

If you care to follow their journey, her website is below. If you sign her guestbook, you will automatically receive email updates when she posts a new journal entry. Or you can go and look at a few more pictures of my sweet friends whom I love dearly. They were both beautiful and amazing before cancer, and they are more so now - very raw and human, but positive and lovely. Please pray for my friends and all of us who love the Beatys so much. We need it very much right now.

Karson and me at our wedding last year

Tell everyone you love that you love them, right now.

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/karsonbeaty

Second. This part is going to be a little harder. I need prayers. I have come to realize that I am struggling with depression. I've made an appointment with a counselor. I kept telling myself that it's situational and that it will go away, but I didn't want to get out of bed this morning. That was the kicker that I need more help. I'm very blessed and happy in certain areas of my life, others that are bad/have been bad for a long time have become unbearable and are now affecting the good parts. I can't compartmentalize it and deal anymore. Something's got to give! I am trying to avoid medication. I try to live "naturally" in my body as much as possible, because I really react to medication in an extreme way (especially those dealing with hormones). But I don't know. I certainly DON'T think meds are bad, NOR do I think those that take them are any weaker than anyone else. I'm just stubborn about what I want for myself, but I won't resist it if a professional tells me it's necessary.

So there they are, my prayer requests.

^"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." James1:2-4

Praying for Stellan

Stellan had heart surgery today, please pray for him!

PRAYERS NEEDED

Hello all my blog followers, friends, lurkers, stalkers (eek). I just wanted to ask for some prayers for all you warriors out there! Matt's Walk to Emmaus is this weekend, please pray that God moves in his life according to His will. I was blessed beyond measure during my walk, and I pray the same blessing for Matt.

I also have several friends (who will remain nameless for their privacy) who are either searching for a job or worried about their job stability. Please pray for them in these uncertain times.

Lastly, I've become a bit of a blog lurker recently. I found this family through my friend Adair's blog. Their son, Stellan, is in the hospital fighting for his life. He was diagnosed in utero with SVT (extremely high heart rate) and they were told he would surely die. Miraculously, he was healed, born and has lived 4 healthy months. Now his SVT has returned and they have been unable to normalize his heartrate for nearly 3 days, it's often been over 300 bpm. They are a family of incredible faith, but they all need our prayers, including Stellan.

Prayers

I have a lot of friends who need prayers right now. I can't really discuss any of their situations in this public forum (or in private), but I figured I would ask. Even anonymous prayers help. God knows what His children need.