Happy 2nd Bday Henry!

Two years ago we welcomed this sweet bundle of joy into the world. There is something so surreal this year when I think of where we are now. After Henry we were not planning on having any other children, and today I am pregnant while also receiving chemo. The week with this little man was not long enough but was all that was intended. Similar to the journey we’re currently on... though the circumstances don’t make sense, we aren’t walking it alone. The battle isn’t ours, never was..so as the fears of now come and go, much like the grief of losing sweet Henry, God knows the ending. 

Praise God for that! 

Happy 2nd birthday in Heaven sweet boy! 

Surrender the stuffy

Sadie sleeps with her arms over her head, always has, but she doesn’t start that way. During the dreadful nighttime routine she chooses lots of positions before finally surrendering to the arms over the head. The most common is the stuffy cling. She grabs a stuffy and clinches her eyes closed quite literally willing herself to sleep. I know this will not work and when I finally see an arm go up, I know we’re almost there. And then my mama brain quietly says hallelujah and spends like 30 minutes trolling the Facebook...how many mamas get me??

I was thinking about this tonight and how it relates so well to our spiritual lives. 

Literally speaking, think about a time in worship when you were clinching the back of the pew and you finally surrender, hands over your head shouting praises to the Lord. Now, I’m a good southern baptist, so it’s a rarity in our regular worship services...But put some of us Jesus jumpers in a conference center at a women’s event and hands are flying..😂 Seriously though, that moment of surrender to all outside thoughts and fully worshipping God. It’s beautiful. There’s peace. 

Metaphorically speaking, what does full surrender look like? When we throw up our hands in worldly defeat, after we have tried our best to do it ourselves, hands in the air, please God help me with this mess, surrender. Until we get there, because we are all a little stubborn, what is our stuffy? What are we clinging to with our eyes clinched that keeps us from experiencing Gods fullness? Is our stuffy fear, anxiety, insecurity, sin, relationships, comfort, desire for perfection, guilt, anger, control? I can claim lots of those as I’m sure most of us can. 

I went through a phase in middle school where each day I would grade myself on how perfect I had been. I literally had categories and wrote down a grading system. I wanted to be perfect at every single aspect I was approached with each day. My desire to be perfect, my “grading system”, only left me with big insecurities that I wrestle with even today. Insecurities that if I had given them to God, would have had a far lesser impact on my decisions. There was a time in high school that I made the statement to an older member of our church, after making a few consistent bad choices,  “if I can’t be a perfect Christian, why try”. My fear of disappointing God was causing me to miss the fullness of His grace. 

Each situation in my life has presented its own stuffy, some reoccurring. In my adult life, through grief and disappointment, and more recently cancer and pregnancy, fear and anxiety have outweighed faith some days. I don’t walk in fear, because I know I don’t walk alone, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t occasionally grab that stuffy back.  But y’all, when I drop the stuffy and that full surrender happens, perspectives shift and peace becomes so rich. When God changes your perspective from “I’m so afraid of what’s in front of me” to “I am grateful that I’m on this journey with God”, it’s a game changer. We can never see what is coming around the corner, but we can be sure God sees it and we can be sure God knows what stuffy we are going to grab! 

#dropthestuffy #surrender 

He sustains me

So y’all, I listened to a podcast today that brought my circumstances to life. It’s a portion of the Bible that I feel like I skip so often because I’ve heard it so many times...but I’ve never heard this perspective....

She was talking about Hagar. She recounted the story in Genesis 16 when Hagar has fled, running away from her mistress Sarai that had stripped her of her dignity by forcing Abram on her to bear THEM a child. Once Hagar was pregnant, Sarai began to regret her decisions and mistreated Hagar. While Sarai had once been someone she felt like she could trust, she suddenly felt used and betrayed and decided to flee. While Hagar was in the desert, an angel of the Lord found her and instead of rushing in to fix her circumstances, He told her to go back and submit to Sarai. While that may seem cruel, especially in her time of hurt, anger, and confusion, we have to remember that God is good even when our circumstances aren’t. The goodness of God doesn’t dwell in the goodness of our circumstances but instead in the sureness of His promises. He left her with a promises of descendants “too many to count”. It was this promise that sustained her and she followed in obedience. But do you know what she said?

“You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭16:13‬ ‭

Y’all, she said “He sees me”. Can you even? Although the obedience didn’t seem logical in our sense of the word, or painless on this earth, He gave her promises to sustain her through the hard part of obedience. Because let’s face it, obedience isn’t always easy...and that’s where our current circumstances hit me in the face. 

When we found out I was pregnant we were faced with the option, quite honestly the suggestion, to terminate our pregnancy. That “option” would have allowed me to start chemo immediately, it would have slowed the massive amounts of hormones entering my body that could cause a reoccurring cancer, and also protect us from the potential of yet another devastating loss.  While for us, that wasn’t an “option”, it was still a moment of choosing to be obedient. While cancer isn’t easy by itself, pregnancy does add another layer of health risk....but God. I don’t say that to toot my own horn for being obedient, it’s far from that. You see, although obedience as a “big picture” wasn’t a hard decision for us, keeping Satan from playing with my mind is a daily battle. Although we chose to continue the pregnancy, there have been nights I’ve cried myself to sleep in serious doubt of my decision and potential risks. There have been nights I stare at Sadie and want to crumble thinking of the added exhaustion that pregnancy has layered on top of fighting cancer, and what that means for her. But it’s been in those moments that I have felt held. It’s in those moments He has seen me.

There has not been a single moment that He has not seen me and met my need. I mean going back as far as changing careers last fall, He has seen each need knowing this battle was ahead and He has met them. Just like Hagar, my situation is requiring some hard obedience, but y’all, He sees me. He sustains me. He is how I fight. 

Chemo around 1

Here we go...Treatment ONE. 

#beatingBC #preg&chemo #Godsplan #1of16

The news...bigger news

Have you ever felt so overwhelmed with a few words that it quite literally knocked the breath out of you?

That is how it felt. I was alone in a hospital and the words I’d just been told, which for some bring incredible joy, brought me sheer terror. 

It was the day of my port procedure, March 26. The virus had just started to shut things down so I was forced to be alone for this procedure. Chemo was to start the very next day and I had psyched myself up to start the battle to defeat breast cancer. The anesthesiologist came in to give me the run down so I knew it was getting close to time. I text David to let him know it was getting close to surgery time and then walked back in the anesthesiologist. 

“Hi, ummm ma’am....did you know you are pregnant?”

....................

Silence filled the room with the two of us. He had to ask me again because I literally could not catch my breath. I asked him to run the test again to confirm. My mind was spinning, my heart was bubbling up with past emotions and future fears...

A few moments later my nurse pracs from the Breast Center and my surgeon came in and I was indeed pregnant. 

Halt.all.breathing. 

I made the call to David that he could come pick me up from the hospital. I really don’t think we spoke for a few hours as we both processed this news. We had no idea what would happen next...

The Port procedure was obviously put on hold and by the end of the day I had an ultrasound and 2 follow up appointments scheduled for the next few days. Being extremely high risk for losing another child and also needing chemotherapy we had some very grueling doctor visits and conversations that I never want to revisit, but thankfully I am in good hands from both a cancer and baby perspective. 

I am now in my second trimester, I got my port this past Thursday, and will begin chemo Monday. There are a bazillion unknowns that somedays take over my mind to the point of crippling me, while there are somedays I am overwhelmed with Gods mercy and grace. 

We appreciate the continued prayers as we have some big obstacles ahead, but we serve a BIGGER God, so here.we.go. 

#GodisgoodatbeingGod #unplannedGodplanned