Chicago Here I Come!

I'm really getting pumped for the bi-anual Vineyard Women's conference in Evanston, IL at the end of March this year. I just spoke with the hostess that I will be staying with (along with a couple of friends) and I'm so blessed and excited to be staying in a home rather than a hotel. The idea of experiencing a new community and spending a few days among new women that I might not otherwise connect with feels extremely life giving.

So we'll be staying in a diverse urban neighborhood. I couldn't resist mapping it on maps.yahoo.com - I can't wait to see what God has for us at this year's conference!

Adventure

Cam loves to take Adi out on "Adventures". They go hiking in the woods or out in search of something particular. The other day was a hunt for Bald Eagles. Adi is quite taken by birds of all kinds. Here is a photo of an eagle they found:

INFJ

I just re-took the Myers-Briggs personality test for giggles and verified that I am indeed an INFJ. Here's the uncanny description of my personality type:

The Portait of the Counselor (INFJ)

The Counselor Idealists are abstract in thought and speech, cooperative in reaching their goals, and enterprising and attentive in their interpersonal roles. Counselors focus on human potentials, think in terms of ethical values, and come easily to decisions. The small number of this type (little more than 2 percent) is regrettable, since Counselors have an unusually strong desire to contribute to the welfare of others and genuinely enjoy helping their companions. Although Counselor's tend to be private, sensitive people, and are not generally visible leaders, they nevertheless work quite intensely with those close to them, quietly exerting their influence behind the scenes with their families, friends, and colleagues. This type has great depth of personality; they are themselves complicated, and can understand and deal with complex issues and people.

Counselors can be hard to get to know. They have an unusually rich inner life, but they are reserved and tend not to share their reactions except with those they trust. With their loved ones, certainly, Counselors are not reluctant to express their feelings, their face lighting up with the positive emotions, but darkening like a thunderhead with the negative. Indeed, because of their strong ability to take into themselves the feelings of others, Counselors can be hurt rather easily by those around them, which, perhaps, is one reason why they tend to be private people, mutely withdrawing from human contact. At the same time, friends who have known a Counselor for years may find sides emerging which come as a surprise. Not that they are inconsistent; Counselors value their integrity a great deal, but they have intricately woven, mysterious personalities which sometimes puzzle even them.

Counselors have strong empathic abilities and can become aware of another's emotions or intentions -- good or evil -- even before that person is conscious of them. This "mind-reading" can take the form of feeling the hidden distress or illnesses of others to an extent which is difficult for other types to comprehend. Even Counselors can seldom tell how they came to penetrate others' feelings so keenly. Furthermore, the Counselor is most likely of all the types to demonstrate an ability to understand psychic phenomena and to have visions of human events, past, present, or future. What is known as ESP may well be exceptional intuitive ability-in both its forms, projection and introjection. Such supernormal intuition is found frequently in the Counselor, and can extend to people, things, and often events, taking the form of visions, episodes of foreknowledge, premonitions, auditory and visual images of things to come, as well as uncanny communications with certain individuals at a distance.

Weekend Project

Cam and I, being the crazy fools we are, took on a VERY BIG weekend project - laminate floors. Here are a few photos for evidence.

This is our bedroom before we started. Note the lavender walls and deep purple ceiling!


Oh, did I mention I painted our room too? Check out the almost finished product.



And here's an idea of what the living/dining room floor looks like:


We're loving our new floors, they were well worth all the sweat, stress and very hard work. Thank you, thank you, thank you to Cam's brother Keelan. We seriously could not have done all of this in a 3 day weekend without him!!

Winter Fun

Adi loves her tire swing in any season! Oh, how she loves the snow. The first thing she does when she walks outside is dance in the snow and she gets really upset if I don't let her!!

Whoa, What Was That?

I wrote this post last Thursday but held on to it before publishing because I felt like there was something much deeper going on than what I was seeing at the time. I really wanted to process a bit more before putting it out there:

Oh my GOSH! My co-worker just came in and was complaining about his ankle/foot or whatever. He mentioned Cortisone injections and I cringed because I know what overuse of the stuff can lead to... just more and more problems. He got pissed off at me and went off about how I shouldn't say anything at all if I didn't know what I was talking about, of course using a series of choice words in the process. He proceeded to attack my "natural cures" mentality and went on and on...


I didn't even have time to defend myself. I just started bawling. And then hyperventilating. I don't know if I've ever cried like that before. Certainly not at work. Between gasps for air I managed to tell my co-worker about my last 3 miscarriages - I've been wanting to do that for a while now. I had to go to the bathroom and get on my knees and pray, I wasn't sure what was going on or why I was so emotional. I seriously could not breathe!

So now looking back on all of that, I can see several things happening. I've been praying for my co-worker for a while now, he tends to be a bit grumpy and I pray for undeniable, inexplicable joy. I saw that I've been wishing him nothing but good things and when he attacked me personally it broke my heart. It reminds me of a time when I was looking to adopt a cat. I went to the animal shelter and took a kitty out of it's cage to play with her and for no reason at all she went nuts and bit me. I cried because I thought she was lovely and I wanted to give her a good home but she just attacked me. It broke my heart.

Then I considered the fact that he had directly attacked a core piece of who I am. For years and years now, I've believed in and researched natural cures for every ailment I've encountered. When the doctors told me that they can't "fix" me so I won't have any more miscarriages I was forced to believe that it was my responsibility to find out how I can prevent it from happening again through health and nutrition. So in a way my co-worker's attack went far deeper than he could have ever meant it to. He not only attacked me but he also attacked my hopes.

Next. here is a quote from an email conversation I later had with this co-worker: "I guess I can make any day a bad day for others. Maybe at 60 11/12 I should work on that. " Looking at that now I realize, wow. Could God be in this in a bigger way than I anticipated?

Finally, at the close of service at church on Sunday, Adey shared that she had a sense of 5 people needing healing from something. I asked God if that was me, and I came to know that the answer was no. Somehow in those long moments of gut wrenching wails, desperate gasps for breath and deep seeded cries for mercy while on my knees in the bathroom floor changed me. I didn't feel different right away, just broken. But Jesus was there with me and in that devastatingly vulnerable space he healed my heart. Who is this king of glory? My Jesus! My friend, my savior, my healer, my redeemer. Holy holy!!

Who Am I Really Mad At?

So a series of recent events that I won't rehash has really gotten me thinking hard about the state of being angry at God. The number of times that I've been angry at God in the past 6 months spills far beyond counting on my fingers and toes.

I've often taken out my frustration in life on God, pleading with Him to change my circumstances or do something to help me and my expectations are high because He is a God who can do all things! But what if He did everything everyone asked Him to? I think the movie Bruce Almighty comically touches on that a bit and the truth is that the whole world would be way more messed up than it already is if God answered all of our prayers exactly as we desired.

That realization doesn't make it an easier to not get angry with God when life seems to take a turn for the worse. But this morning I was praying and asked myself, how often do I blame God for myself. How often am I angry at God when really, deep down, I'm angry at myself. For a failure, or a mistake, a loss, a circumstance. And I felt like God was saying that it was OK for me to be mad at Him sometimes, though even better to look deeper and realize when I'm really just mad at myself. That's where God is for me right now, that's where God wants to change me.

Who's Your Best Friend?

Last week my mom shared with me that Adi had told her she was her best friend. This, of course, made her feel like a million bucks! So the other night at bath time I decided to ask Adi if Nana was her best friend. She replied, "No, Nana is my buddy." "Oh," my wheels were turning as I wondered who had taken the number one spot.

She had been playing with kids from church, so I asked, "then who's your best friend?" I was fishing for maybe Caedon, Max, Jonas... or heck, maybe she even decided that I was worthy of being her best friend. The response I received was the best response imaginable, "Jesus is my best friend!" She said it with such excitement and joy that I believed her and I rejoiced along with her, "that's Right! Jesus is your best friend!" I couldn't have chosen a better best friend myself ;)

Yesterday when I got home from work I gave Adi a big hug and plopped her down on my lap while she watched the end of her PBS show. I just love to cuddle and be close after being gone all day. I was simply soaking in the moment when she suddenly turned to me and said, "Oh. I forgot - I love you mommy. I love you so much!" My heart was melted once again by my little Miss Adilyn Rose as she turned to give me a grand hug. Oh how I love being a mommy.

Gross - Thrush!

OK, I have to just take a second to express my horror at the fact that I was diagnosed with a yeast infection in my mouth yesterday - known as thrush. Thank God I went to the doc early before it got really nasty and started to hurt. It feels like I have powder in my mouth or something, it's a strange sensation.

So the stress of the season has allowed my immunity to sink low enough for a yeast overgrowth. Yuck. There are special diets and/or cleanses to get rid of candida yeast. I'll have to look it up. In the mean time, more diflucan and a nasty oral antibiotic mouth rinse. Some oral probiotics should help too. Ugh!

Another Street Light

God blessed me with a miracle last night, Adi went to bed at 8:30. Small miracle, I know, but for me it was heavenly. That meant I had time to pack my breakfast and lunch for today and do a few dishes, the basic stuff I don't get to do when Adi won't go to sleep until 10 or 11. I was filled with glee and thought to myself, "wow, just imagine how great it would be if this could be the routine every night." I realized just how much all of this bedtime stuff was taking its toll.

So I'm driving along feeling pretty good this morning because for the first time in a while I wasn't running late for work. Then it happened. Another stinkin street light went out just as I was passing. Now maybe other people notice this happening all the time too and just choose to ignore it, which is fine. I decided that I was going to ask God about it this morning and I felt like he said just listen.

I reached out to turn off the radio but something made me pull back and I left it on. I was listening to the end of a song and then the d.j. and then I drifted. A short conversation I had recently popped into my head:

friend: "so where are you on the fertility front these days"
me: "well, doc told us to wait until January to try again to be sure I'm clear of methotrexate"
friend: "so are you just counting days again"
me: "no, not really....(I proceed to tell her about this months cycle, blah blah blah).... I guess we've kinda felt like not really trying for a while. Just let whatever happens happen..."

I asked God if He disapproved of my response. I asked Him what He would have wanted me to say. It was the truth. I asked Him if He wanted conception in the foreground instead of the background. Then I cried. I told Him that it was too hard; that it took too much energy. That I wanted it to be fun, happy, exciting and lovely. Not scary, difficult, full of fear and doubt and littered by the past.

I realized I hadn't completely healed. So I asked Him to change me, change my heart, heal me and guide me. I can't do it on my own. I've been trying so hard to do so much on my own and push the hard stuff aside. Funny what God tells you when you just listen.