One Little Girl - Part 3: The loneliness & shame game

So, where was I? This story takes a lot of energy and time to write. But I feel good about getting it all out. I think working through the events of these difficult years has been helpful for me. Maybe some part of it will be helpful for you.

After we healed from the wreck, Tim and I moved into our little townhome in Lawrence together. I decided to take classes online (and as independent study) that semester, and Tim had classes on KU's campus, as well as 2 part time jobs and 1 volunteer opportunity. Because, y'know, adjusting to married life and a new baby wasn't really enough.

I'd like to address the concept of shame right now, because it is something I've worked through. The first random search engine I pulled up defines shame as, "A painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness, or disgrace." Have you ever felt shame before? Shame is not something I really experienced during the first 20 or so years of my life, but the last five or six years of my life have been laced with it. Luckily for me, I am recovering from it. I'll get to that part of the story eventually. 

Anyhow, when I first discovered I was unwed and pregnant, I felt all of those synonyms listed above- guilt, embarrassment, and disgrace, especially. Part of it was probably due to my Catholic upbringing (Catholics aren't supposed to...do it...until are married) and a very big part of it probably had to do with the extremely high expectations (and prideful nature) that I had for myself. My parents have always had high expectations for me too, but I don't think they would ever say they were embarrassed by me, or felt that I had disgraced the family. Most of my shame was self imposed. So anyway, I felt ashamed that I was pregnant. I could not stand the idea of walking around with a pregnant belly and no ring on my finger. I would have felt disgraced. I worried way too much about what others thought of me and I could not handle the idea of people judging me. My skin was too thin. So I felt very relieved that by the time I actually looked pregnant, I was married. I still worried about what others thought of me. That's why I decided to take my classes online that semester that Lexi was born. And why there are not very many pictures of me during that pregnancy. I was not comfortable in my own skin. I worried that people would ask how long we'd been married and how old Lexi was, do the math, and then judge me. 

How sad is that? How pathetic. I was worried way too much about others' opinions of me- total strangers included- and just wanted to hide myself. Even after the baby was born, I didn't put any pictures of her on Facebook for a while because I didn't want people to know about her. About what had happened to goody two shoes, straight laced little me. I am happy to say that I have found healing in Jesus by acknowledging these feelings and hurts and giving them over to him. Yep, sure sounds corny. Sure doesn't sound like anything I would have said five years ago. But I am now in a place where I am not afraid to say it. Jesus has healed many hurt parts of my past and I am living in freedom from shame today. w00t!

But it has taken a while. And the pathway to get where I am today wasn't an easy one. It will take me a while to share it, to explain it all.

I finished my two online courses in October, decided to drop one of my independent study classes, and slowly trudged through the other while waiting for Lexi to be born. I read as many parenting books and magazines as I could get my hands on and spent hours "researching" anything baby related online. It was an informative but isolating experience. We were living in Lawrence, a college town, as a married couple of soon to be parents, a definite minority. Some of our friends lived nearby but they didn't know what we were going through- they'd never been through it before. I spent a lot of time alone, and I was lonely. Tim, as I mentioned, was working at the Lied center of KU, as a Suite Ambassador for KU Football, and was volunteering for Headquarters Counseling Center, a suicide hotline where he took calls. And he was taking a full course load. I don't think I really understood the magnitude of all he was juggling at the time, but I am looking back now and feeling extremely grateful at how dedicated he was and how hard he worked to support our little family. We were blessed to have support from our parents as well.

On the last day of his training at Headquarters, 6 days past my due date, contractions started. Tim came home, we packed our bags, left our key with a friend so she could care for our cat, and headed to the hospital to begin...the waiting game. That part is kind of boring so let's just skip to the good part where the cute baby arrives. 

Alexa Rose was born in the afternoon (I forgot the exact minutes, not gonna lie) on November 17th, 2008. And boy did she change our lives. God had a plan.

I was proud of this beautiful new baby, but motherhood left me feeling pretty insecure and overwhelmed too. She was a great baby and it wasn't long before she was sleeping at night, thank goodness. I returned to a full load of courses in January, and that's about the time that the loneliness, insecurity and shame spiked. 

Tim and I were blessed that we were able to flip flop our class schedules so that one of us was home with Lexi at all time- we didn't need daycare for the first year of her life. I threw myself into my classes and continued "researching" my new baby via books and websites. That's just kind of what I do. When I'm interested in something, I read everything I can about it. I remember bringing home stacks of books about rabbits from the library as a child when I wanted to get a pet bunny. I think for me, it was a way to get as much info as I could about a subject so I could be informed, knowledgeable and prepared.

Well, as all you parents out there know, books alone cannot prepare you for the emotions of parenthood. I sure knew a lot about the logistics of nursing, extended rear-facing car seats, and the importance of talking to babies, but no book or magazine article could make me into the perfect mom. Which, I think, is what I wanted to be. Because even thought I hadn't planned on being a mom at that point in my life, I was, and I wanted to do a really great job at it. 

And you know what? I did. I was a good mom. I am a good mom. I can look back and say that.

It was hard though. Several people said things like, "Don't you just LOVE motherhood? Isn't it just amazing?" And I felt guilty because I didn't feel like a natural at it. I loved my baby very much, but man, in those first few months, it was all take, take, take.  Mothering was really, really hard. Why didn't anyone say anything about that part? I remember looking on blogs or on forums and seeing people say, "I am a stay at home mom and I love EVERY minute of it!" and I totally could not relate. You mean you love being sleep deprived? You love not being able to go anywhere without packing a bag and your car full of armloads of junk? You love discovering spit up on the back of your pants at the end of the day? You love listening to your baby cry and having no idea what she needs? I loved my baby but I did not love those particular moments. But I felt guilty for not loving them like I was "supposed" to. What was wrong with me? I loved bed time. Totally looked forward to it. I loved the chance to run to Target alone and just wander around the aisles looking at random household objects. I enjoyed taking breaks. And I felt unworthy of this precious baby whom I apparently did not appreciate spending every second with like I was "supposed" to.

When the doctors said that Lexi wasn't gaining enough weight and I glimpsed the diagnosis of "failure to thrive" on a scrap of paper when she was a few months old, I took it personally. Failure to mother, more like it. Why wasn't my baby growing? What was I doing wrong? Was she going to be okay? People would say things like, "Oh, she's so tiny!" and I would hear, "WHY IS SHE SO TINY?? WHAT ARE YOU DOING WRONG?!" and feel defensive and like I was failing. I still felt awkward and ashamed about being such a young mom, and felt that people probably thought my baby was starving because I had no clue what I was doing. I often took (and still take) my wedding ring off around the house because I am allergic to something in it and it gives me a rash. But I made sure to always wear my wedding ring when I went out with the baby, lest someone judge me. Part of me felt a little resentment toward my baby because I did not know what to do. I didn't know how to fix her weight issue or how to love every second of motherhood. I felt like a failure for feeling that way.

 On top of feeling like a failure to mother, I also felt extremely isolated at school and home. I was thrown into my classes with a group of students who had spent the past year getting to know each other and form bonds and as nice as they tried to be, I was the odd man out. My other school friends were graduating and moving on, and I was left feeling lonely, and overwhelmed by everything on my plate. I didn't have any friends nearby who had kids. No one to talk to about issues and no one to listen to my feelings or let me know that the way I was feeling was normal. Between the pressure of school and my struggle to be a good mom, I felt like I was barely keeping my head above water.

A very memorable low point came sometime in the fall of 2009. I was in one of my classes with the group of girls who were all friends, and we were working on a project. I was stressed because we'd been referred to a special clinic to help figure out why Lexi wasn't gaining much weight. And it was my turn for the laptop, or the stapler, or some special piece of equipment I needed for my project. But it got passed on to someone else, then another person. And despite the fact that I was not being passed over intentionally, I took it that way, and I had an epic meltdown in my COLLEGE classroom. Complete with bawling my eyes out, and raising my voice, and my professor telling me to look at her and pretend that it was just the two of us in the room. I remember yelling something about how my baby was sick and no one understood and I couldn't do it. Yeah, I threw a tantrum in front of 25 people in a college classroom. Twenty five people that I still had class with for the next few months. Yep. Talk about shame and embarrassment.

I was hurting on the inside for many reasons. I was hurting because my baby was supposedly not growing and I was scared of what would happen to her. I was hurting because I was the outcast in a group of close knit friends. I was hurting because I was overwhelmed by school. Hurting because I was in a whole new world of marriage and parenthood and none of my friends understood. Hurting because I pushed them away because they didn't understand.  Hurting because I was still ashamed of my circumstances. Hurting because my family was 45 minutes away and I missed them. Hurting because I felt like I was letting them down whenever I complained about motherhood. Hurting because I didn't feel like I was good at being a mom. Hurting because it wasn't coming naturally and I didn't know why. Hurting because I had no one to talk to about it. Hurting because I felt like I had lost control of my life. Hurting because I was lonely. Because I was bored spending my days alone in my apartment. Hurting because part of me was rejecting this new life and longing for the days that made sense to me. Hurting because I wasn't sure if I believed in God any more, because I felt like he abandoned me and left me in a painful, difficult place. 

I didn't know it at the time, but through my hurts, God had a plan. Through my perceived failures, my loneliness, my isolation, he was working in me and putting the pieces in place. I felt that I had no control, and in some ways, I did not. I fought it tooth and nail. I fought for control because I didn't know that God was in control. That he had my back, had his master plan, and while I was hurting at the time, I was growing. I was feeling a lot of hard feelings, but for a reason that would eventually unfold. I didn't know it at the time, but God was gently and slowly leading me back to Him. It would take a while though.

Those months of wondering, worrying, and struggling, seemed to last forever. I wondered if Lexi would be okay. I wondered if I would ever finish all the projects and assignments placed in front of me. I wondered if I would ever stop feeling so lonely. Would we ever finish school? Where would we go after that? Would I ever figure out this mothering thing? Would this chapter of our lives ever end? What would the next chapter hold for us?

 Somehow, even after my epic college-level meltdown, even after Lexi's failure to thrive diagnosis, I made it through. I finished my undergraduate degree. Tim finished his as well. Turns out Lexi was just (and is still) a skinny kid. Totally healthy, just thin. Took some testing and such to figure it out, but eventually I was put at ease. It was not my fault. It is just the way she is.

So we graduated and got the hell outta Dodge. 

Tim and I moved in with his parents, who graciously let us and our toddler live with them while we figured out what was next. As anyone who has let their adult children live with them, or been the adult child living at home can understand, it had its ups and downs. It was hard to go from living on our own for a few years to being back in the home of our parents (and I am sure was equally hard for them to let us) but it was an opportunity for growth. Tim went back to work for Budweiser and searched for a new job. Lexi went to daycare at our old high school a few days per week while I took a few graduate level courses, subbed, and started up what would be a short-lived Avon business. Life was hard in a new way, but we kept at it.

For four months we lived this situation. It was tough. Tim often worked long days, and I worried about him out in the heat. I had a hard time figuring out my place in the home. I was still lonely. I had managed to make one friend who had a kid about Lexi's age, but she lived pretty far away and our personalities didn't mesh well. I still felt out of control. Where would we end up? How long would we live with Tim's parents? Would Tim be able to find a better job? Would we be able to get a house? I was set to student teach the following fall and I was nervous about leaving Lexi all day long. Nervous about balancing an unpaid job and being a good mom. There were just so many question marks. I really wanted to know what would happen next. 

Finally, a promising job interview. With Farmers Insurance, the company my Dad was an agent for. Pay would be about $10,000 more per year, if he got the job. They said they would let us know. More waiting. And we'd started looking at houses. Looked at many and then...found one. The day it went on the market, we were the first people to see it. It was just what we were looking for, and so we made an offer on a Friday night. My stomach was nervous all weekend long waiting to see if our offer was accepted. It was in a great location, a great little starter home. I hoped and prayed about it. Please, let Tim get the job.  Please, let us get the house. Let there be some knowns in all of the unknowns we'd been experiencing for the past few years. I was tired of moving (from my parents' house to my apartment to our townhome to my in-laws' home) and tired of wondering (how could we make it financially? logistically, what would we do? what would each day look like?) and tired of waiting for everything. For the plan that I didn't even know about to fall into place.

And he did. We did. Within a few days of each other, Tim got the job and we got the house. The previous years of chaos and upheaval we slowly settling into some certainties.  Could it be that the days of uncertainty, the shame, the loneliness, might be drawing to a close? Could we just start fresh in a new town, a new home, a new job? Things seemed to be wrapping up quite neatly. For now. And as they did, as we moved into our home and Tim began his new job, I began to feel a new feeling. A sense of longing. But for what?

One Little Girl - Part 2: You can't get rid of me that easily AKA The scariest thing that's ever happened to me

"You can't get rid of me that easily!" is a phrase that Tim has said to me many times over the course of our relationship, usually when I am lamenting something irritating I've done that could potentially drive him away. I have heard it in response to serving dinosaur chicken nuggets for dinner, and for crying about, well, nothing. "You're stuck with me!" is commonly said along with it.

This weekend while celebrating our 5th anniversary, I got the chance to use this phrase on Tim. We were talking about the ups and downs of the seven years that we've been together, and began discussing the car accident we were in a mere 3 weeks after we were married. I was asking Tim what he remembered from the wreck and he said he remembered coming to and looking out the window. He saw me lying on the ground and thought that I was dead. To this I responded, "You can't get rid of me that easily!" I thought it was clever.

When Tim wrecks a car, he WRECKS a car. Here's some pictures from the accident:

Yeah, a bit more than a fender bender, huh? But, you can't get rid of me that easily. Here's what happened.

So, like I mentioned in the previous post, Tim and I decided that we wanted to get married and keep our little girl, start a family a bit earlier than we had originally planned. We were married on June 28th, 2008. After the wedding, Tim lived with his parents in Overland Park and I moved into our new place in Lawrence, a 2 bedroom townhome. I was working for a summer camp in Lawrence and Tim was working in Overland Park so the plan was that he would live with his parents during the week and then come and live with me on the weekends. Fun way to start a marriage, huh? :)

So that's what we did. One evening I decided to drive out to Overland Park to meet Tim for dinner at Mi Ranchito. It was a very hot, Kansas July day. Tim was working at Budweiser at the time, and had spent the day unloading booze from trucks in the heat. I dropped my car off at my in laws' house and Tim drove us to the restaurant. We ate, got caught up and got into his car to head back to his parents house.

My heart is pounding just thinking about what happened next.

I don't really remember what we were talking about, but we were heading south on Quivira and were almost back to the house when Tim said, "I don't feel good." I was looking out my window when he said this, and responded with, "Well, do you think we should pull over?" He didn't respond and so I turned to look at him, and he was completely unconscious in the driver's seat, his foot heavy on the accelerator.

I began screaming at him to wake up. We were coming up to a stop light, with a red light, and cars were lined up in front of us. I didn't know what to do. His Mustang was a manual and I had no idea where the emergency brake was or how to engage it. I continued screaming and tried to pry his leg off the gas pedal. The cars parked at the stop light were rapidly approaching. We were running out of time. I was panicking. I grabbed the wheel, and sharply turned to the right.

And that's the last thing I remember.

We hit a tree and then hit a giant stone pillar. The details of exactly what happened with the car are a little fuzzy,  but the passenger side door was torn off, and despite wearing my seat belt, I was thrown from the car and landed on a patch of grass between the sidewalk and the street.

When Tim came to, the first thing he saw was my unconscious body laying there in the grass. Like I mentioned earlier, he thought I was dead. He thought that he killed his brand new wife and unborn child. His door was jammed shut and he was stuck in the car, screaming and trying to get to me. People began to flood the scene and quickly rushed over to him, telling him not to move or he might hurt himself. He shouted to the bystanders that I was pregnant. They turned me off of my stomach and told him that I was alive. Someone called his parents and they quickly arrived on the scene, and called my parents as well. My dad remembers asking my mother-in-law if we were okay, and her telling him that there was a lot of blood. An ambulance came and Kathy rode with me to the hospital. Another came and took Tim.

My dad met me at the hospital. I was beginning to come to. I distinctly remember looking down on my body from somewhere above and wondering where I was. I felt like I was waking from a dream. Bits and pieces of what had happened came back to me, but I felt detached and everything seemed fuzzy. I remember first asking my dad where my mom was. It turns out he couldn't get a hold of her. She was out somewhere and not picking up her cell. He continued calling and left messages on their home phone for her to call right away. The next question I asked my dad was if Tim was dead. I recall asking it in a matter-of-fact way, devoid of emotion, the way someone would ask if it was supposed to rain today.

What happened next was a blur. Tests were ran to see if Tim and I were okay- and to see why he passed out at the wheel. The answer to that question would not come for a while and would not be clear cut. He had no external injuries. I too, came away mostly unscathed. I had a concussion that would leave me with headaches and nausea for a few weeks, and many cuts on the right side of my body that would eventually scar. No broken bones, miraculously.  I remember my friend Kayla combing grass and sticks out of my hair. A few weeks after the accident, I found a piece of glass embedded in my scalp, and picked it out with my fingernail. They did several sonograms after the wreck and through the duration of my pregnancy and were convinced that the baby was fine too. I think we were all a little nervous about her until we were able to see for ourselves, when she was born, that she was okay.

A few days later, we were released from the hospital. Tim and I spent the rest of the summer moving back and forth between our parents' homes, resting and recuperating. The summer Olympics were going on, so that provided some entertainment. Tim was not supposed to drive until they figured out what made him pass out, and I was supposed to take a month off to heal from the concussion. Tim went back to working at Budweiser, in the warehouse, after a couple of weeks. I celebrated my 22nd birthday at my mom's house, with a pinata hanging in their tree. Some way to begin a marriage, huh? In August, we moved back to Lawrence and for the first time, lived together as a married couple. We couldn't wait to get out on our own again, to get back to school, something that we knew and understood. We had about three months to go before our little girl would arrive.

For a while after the wreck, I was apprehensive about driving. I occasionally had flash backs. I was especially nervous the first time I got into the car with Tim behind the wheel again. They said that he had neurocardiogenic syncope and for a while, he was on medication. The doctor felt that it was better for him not to be on it long term, so he eventually came off of it and was told that  eating lots of salt and drinking lots of water would help. Basically, blood would pool in his legs and leave him light headed. We've figured out more about his "condition" now, but that's a story for another day.

My right arm has some scars that I think will stay with me forever. I've got a nice one across my left foot. It was a few days before I saw that particular injury because they kept socks on me in the hospital. I remember seeing it for the first time and thinking it looked kind of bad ass. It may sound crazy, but I am thankful for them. I see the scars on my skin as a reminder of what could have happened. I could have lost my life, my baby's life, or both. All three of us could have easily died that day. Take one more look at the pictures of the car. Three people walked out of that situation virtually unharmed.

When they see the pictures, people usually tell us how lucky we are. But simple dumb luck could not save us from something like that. Just look at the picture and tell me how a pregnant woman could be thrown from that car and walk away unharmed. The car was going 45 miles per hour. Surviving that kind of this is beyond luck. Luck is coming home from the casino with more money than you took with you, or finding a $5 bill on the street. What happened to us was way more powerful and significant than that.

I really believe that God saved us from that accident for a reason. Why did the accident even have to happen? I don't know. Maybe so I would wake up and realize how precious life is, yet how delicate it is. The value of what it means to breath in and out for one more day. I don't know what is going to happen to me through the course of my life, I don't know how many more years or days I have left. But I just know and feel in my heart that God has a plan for me, for us, and that is the only reason that we are still here. I am here to do something great with the time I have left. My life was spared because I am not finished yet. No. My heart is still beating. Blood is pumping. I am alive.

You can't get rid of me that easily.

One little girl - Part 1: My life is over

It is amazing the impact that one little girl can have on the world. A little over five years ago, one little girl rocked my world and turned it completely upside down. One little girl ruined my old life, and in the ruins, planted a tiny little seed that would grow into a completely new, ultra meaningful, challenging, yet amazing new life.

Meet Lexi, the little girl I speak of:

Tim and I often joke that Lexi wished herself into existence. It's true, she is what some people call a surprise, others call an accident or problem, others an oopsie baby. However you like to put it, Lexi was not planned, at least not by Tim and I. God totally had her planned for a reason though, and I think that, despite my reaction when I first discovered her existence, she was one of His very best ideas.

Her story might take a while to tell, but here goes...

Tim and I were students at KU at the beginning of her story, and we had been dating for about two years. We actually met our junior year of high school, on a field trip to the Truman Library (of all places) and became good friends our senior year. I had a major crush on him, but told know one. I mean just look at this face...and hair. How could you not love hair like this?

And this?

So to make a long story short, we both finished high school dating other people. I became single, but he was dating a friend of mine, so I figured there was no way he would ever be mine. Well, it turns out I was wrong. It didn't work out with her (for either of us, to tell the truth), and Tim and I began dating the summer after our freshman year of college. I lived with my parents and went to JCCC and he lived in an apartment in Lawrence. Every weekend, I would make the drive to visit and we would hang out, visit Pet World to look at the snakes, eat Reese's Puffs and ramen noodles, and act like young people in love. I could hardly wait to rush out of work on Friday nights to begin the 40 minute drive to Lawrence, to my super hot boyfriend and his apartment, a kinda gross place he shared with three other guys. In the fall of 2007, I moved to Lawrence, entered the School of Education, and moved into my own apartment with a friend.

Fast forward to spring 2008. I was taking 20 hours that semester (because I was crazy) and working part time at an elementary school, a job that I LOVED. I was in the midst of midterms when I realized my period was late. I was a little worried, but not too worried, because I was pretty stressed out between midterms and my job. Spring break came and Tim and his family took a trip to Jamaica, while my mom and I went to Florida together. My period still didn't come and I was beginning to get nervous. My mom and I went to Epcot and my stomach was hurting. I chalked it up to the weird French food I had, but I think deep down I already knew. I remember boarding a ride that said "Not recommended for pregnant women" and noticing that sign...and feeling weird about it. I remember having a drink poolside and wondering what kind of a choice that was. In general, I wasn't feeling great on the trip and my mom noticed and asked what was up. I spilled the beans the morning we went to Sea World. Some of you may not have moms that you can talk to about potential crises, but luckily, I did and still do.

I told her the situation, told her I was...late...and she assured me that it was probably just stress and nothing to worry about, but that I should take a test if my period didn't still come in a few days. For peace of mind. After all, I had missed a period once before due to stress. That's probably what was going on.

So, we finished our trip and I returned to Lawrence. A few days later, Tim got back from his trip too. He found out that his grandma was in the hospital and not doing well. It was a stressful time. But I told him about my problem. I wanted to take a test. He too thought it was probably time. I don't remember the details of getting the test, but a test was purchased and all I needed to do was pee on it. I asked him if he thought I was pregnant and his (oh-so encouraging) response was "Probably." Geez.

If you've never done it before, taking a pregnancy test when you really, really don't want to be pregnant is really, really nerve wracking. My legs were shaking and I was totally terrified. He was right there with me, ready to wait. And there in the bathroom of his apartment, a plus sign showed up faster than I ever thought possible. We didn't even have to wait the two minutes. There it was, clear as day. Holy. Shit. I was pregnant.

I was a 21-year-old straight A college student who had just moved out of my parents' house a mere seven months earlier, and I was pregnant. At the time, I felt like my worst nightmare had come true. I cried for days. I would almost fall asleep and then a little voice inside me would remember and whisper, "you're pregnant" and I would wake up crying again. I felt like my life was over. That nothing would ever be the same, nothing would ever, could ever, be good, ever again. I had failed. I was so stupid and I made the biggest mistake and now I was going to pay. I could not believe that something like this could happen to someone like me. I was a goody two shoes all through high school, a real nerd who did craft kits from Walmart, played Karaoke Revolution in my basement, and never drank or did drugs or cut class. I was a member of NHS and I worked at a retirement home (and loved it) and then at an elementary school. I was a nice girl. A good girl. How could this happen? What was I going to do?

In reality, just like I thought, my old life was over. I didn't know it at the time, but a brand new life, more amazing than I could ever imagine, was just about to begin.

What was I going to do? I kept asking myself. Tim and I talked and talked about it. How could we fix this and get things back to normal? How could we ever make things right? What were we going to do? How could we tell our parents? Oh, God, our parents! How on earth could I look my parents, let alone Tim's parents, in the eye and tell them that I was pregnant? The thought of it made me want to run screaming (or puking) in the other direction.

Not long after we found out the news, Tim's grandma Mary passed away. It was a slow and sad ending to a beautiful life lived. Before she died, Tim whispered our secret to her. She was in and out (mostly out) of consciousness during those last few days, so we aren't sure if she actually heard it or not, but I like to think that she did and that she took it with her. Her funeral was really emotional. I remember crying a lot, and I am sure many people thought it was out of grief. I guess in a way it was, but maybe not for her. Maybe grief for the ending of my old life. At one point, her many grandchildren each placed a flower on her casket. I was struck by that moment. Mary and her husband Ron had 7 children. The woman was the matriarch of this big, beautiful family. I remember watching the grandkids return to their seats, hugging their moms and dads, her children, and thinking...this could be me some day. I could be the mother of a family like this. Was this the beginning?

Tim and I finally decided to break the news to my parents. We went to their house and had dinner and were hanging around afterward, hearts pounding and palms sweating. I went downstairs to their finished basement and was sitting at the computer alongside my mom when she casually said, "Oh, I've been meaning to ask you. Did you get your period?" It was just the two of us down there. I looked up at her and she instantly knew. "Oh my God, you are? We have to tell your Dad!" Of course that was the last thing I (and particularly, Tim) wanted to do. But she couldn't keep it from him, so the three of us went upstairs together and called my Dad into the room. I think my mom prefaced it with something like, "The kids have something to tell you..." and I blurted out, "I'm pregnant!" and immediately started crying.

Some people say the devil is in the details, but God was totally in the details of this part of the story. My dad didn't yell, he didn't cry, he didn't punch Tim in the face (hey, it could happen!). Instead, he said, "Hey, this is a good thing! Don't cry, it's going to be okay!" I cannot express in words how much his kind, gentle response that day meant to me. I was so terrified, so ashamed, but he responded with love and kindness and acceptance and that meant, and still means, the world to me. A little bit of hope bloomed in me and part of me started to believe that maybe things would be okay, somehow, someday.

Next, we told Tim's parents (which was probably even scarier than telling my parents) and again, we were met with nothing but love and support. Tim and I were so blessed (not lucky) that as unmarried 21-year-olds with an unplanned pregnancy on our hands, we were surrounded by love and support on all sides. I don't think most people in that sort of situation are able to say that.

With hard part step 1: tell the parents complete, it was time to address our growing problem. What were we going to do? Well, when someone gets pregnant, there are usually three options- have the baby and keep it, have the baby and give it up for adoption, or abort the baby. For a while, a big, terrified part of me wished the baby would just choose option 4: magically disappear on her own, but that was not the case, not God's plan. Tim and I were not comfortable with abortion, so that option was out. We were left to decide whether we should keep the baby or give the baby up for adoption.

You may not know this, but I myself am adopted. So when I first discovered my little problem, I was actually leaning heavily toward adoption. Maybe it was the right choice. How could two college students raise a baby? Was that even fair to the baby? Adoption was the selfless choice. The baby would get a home with a loving family and we could all move on with our lives. It made sense.

But the problem with that choice was that we couldn't. We couldn't just all move on with our lives. Tim and I talked a lot about this. Could we really just have a baby, give it up for adoption, and then go back to being college students like nothing had ever happened? I remember my brother telling me there was no way we could do that, no way I could give up a baby and just move on. Could Tim and I handle that? Would our relationship be able to withstand having a baby, giving it away, and staying together? So what, after that would we just keep living in our apartments? Go out to the movies like a normal young couple? Finish school and get married some day and then have babies...when we were ready? So what would we tell our future kids? Well, you have a sibling out there somewhere. We gave her away because we weren't ready for her. But we love you! We were ready for you!

Yeah, somehow, we knew that wasn't going to work. It would never be that easy. We knew that something as heavy as giving up a baby, our baby, would eat us alive, completely pull us apart. And we knew that we didn't want that. We loved each other. A lot. Even back in the high school days, I knew. I remember driving home from Tim's parents' house one night at 3am thinking, "I think I could marry Tim. I think we would be really good together." We loved each other enough that we weren't willing to give up on our relationship, on one another. So we decided to get married, and keep the baby.

And four months later, that is exactly what we did.

Shortly before the wedding, we found out we were having a girl. One little girl. We were 21, we were married, and we were going to be parents. I never would have, in my wildest dreams, ever thought that I would be the girl who got pregnant out of wedlock, and then got married crazy young. But, I was and I did.

Part 1 of God's big plan, commenced...

There's a plan.

Never lucky, always blessed. What does that mean? It means that I believe that all the things that have happened and will happen in my life are not just random chance, luck or lack thereof, rather, I believe that God has blessed and continues to bless my life.

Do I always understand what He is doing? Absolutely not. I have asked WHY about so many things that have happened in my life. Usually, I ask why while I'm in the thick of things. Usually, when I get a little distance (mainly time) from a situation, I can figure sort of figure out why it happened to me, or how something can make me a better person even if it seemed, well, crappy at the time.

Example: Why did Tim lose his job at Farmers? It seemed horrible at the time since he was the breadwinner. We both freaked out, it happened so fast. On Monday he came home and said they might be re-configuring his department, and on Friday, I heard the garage door opening a good 2 hours before he was due home, and there he was, with a box of his stuff. Just like that. No severance, no nothing. I was so mad at that stupid company for letting him go. Didn't they realize he had two little ones at home depending on him? He worked his ass off, didn't they notice? It really seemed like a shitty situation.What the heck were we going to do?

Now that I am on the other side of it, I can see the good, the growth that came out of it. Three days after he was laid off, I had a job offer from church in pretty much a dream position. It was part time, so it would pay about half of what Tim made, but that would at least slow down the rapid consumption of our savings while we waited for him to find something new. I worked a couple days per week and Tim hunted for jobs and took care of the kids while I was gone. I got a taste of what it would be like to be a working mom...and discovered that I didn't really like it. Too distracting, too much begging people to do their share. We got to spend a lot of time together during the three months that Tim was home. We enjoyed each other's company, the girls loved having Dad home. I loved the flexibility of having an extra set of hands around the house. And then he found a new job with a better company, and hours that allow us both to exercise like we want to, get up early, get moving and start our days off on the right foot. A hidden blessing.

The loss of his old job caused me to take a closer look at our finances, to put away our credit cards and form a budget, to stop spending more than we were making and begin saving for retirement and giving to church, a little at a time. Good ol' Dave Ramsey guided us to start making our money behave. Thank God we learned this now instead of 5 years from now. Would we even have made it 5 years? Would we have had any savings left at that point?

All the extra time gave me the chance to do some soul searching and discernment. I'd been begging God to reveal His plan to me, and I kind of meant that I wanted to know exactly what He had in store for me...y'know, for the next 20 years or so. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? I finally realized that. I realized that I am not going to know what the rest of my life is going to look like. To try and figure that out would really just drive me crazy, make me frustrated. What I did figure out is that I just need to know what I am being called to do today, right now. And once I narrowed the scope of my searching, I discovered that God is calling me home right now, with my kids and my family. Nothing super heroic, no official job title or money coming in, not working at church. Just home. With my girls. Teaching them to be good people, and conquering laundry and dishes in the process. It doesn't seem like much, but I take this calling seriously. Think about it. What if every parent did? What if every mother or father realized that they are raising a human (or multiple humans) and affecting the future of the world? I feel like they might be a little more careful with what they say and do. Might think things through a little more. What kind of an impact would that have on society? But that's a topic for a different day.

Our time with Tim home made us realize that we need to be more careful with our money, our time, and what we do. Our lives are precious. Anything can happen at any time. You can get a phone call one day that your Dad has cancer, or that your Grandma is breathing her final breaths. Tim losing his job gave us the gift of time, which made us realize how valuable time really is.

God had (and still has) a plan. Tim's back at his new job, and I am slowing things down. I'm cutting back on excess and enjoy the little moments with my little people before they become big people. If it weren't for Tim losing his job, we'd still all be on autopilot. Sometimes God has to shake things up, really mess them around, before we stop to think, take a closer look at our lives, and fully rely on Him. I am grateful for the opportunity.