When God answers your prayers, you might want to jack someone up.

Some friends and I are just finishing up a bible study by Beth Moore called "Stepping Up". It's a study on the Psalms of Ascent. Specifically they are Psalms 120-134 and they are the words that the Hebrews sang as they made their way to Jerusalem to worship at the Temple. As a group, these Psalms are about becoming closer to God (as the pilgrims got closer to the Temple). Psalm 120 starts in a place of darkness, of "woe is me". And Psalm 134 ends in a place of praise and looking toward heaven.

In the study, at the conclusion of each Psalm, Beth (we're on a first name basis, she and I) encourages the reader to pull out the one most meaningful part of the Psalm and rewrite it in a personal way. About 10 weeks ago as I began the study, I rewrote part of Psalm 120 as a personal prayer. I asked God to deliver me from solitude.

This may seem like an odd prayer because I am married (to the most social human being on the planet), I spend my days caring for my MSC (many small children), and I have some great friends. I mean, I am almost NEVER alone. So deliverance from solitude seems like a peculiar thing to pray for but here's what I meant: I have two things working hard against me when it comes to relationships -

1) I am by nature (or nurture?) a non-communicator
and
2) I am exceptionally adept at the art of self-preservation

These things do not lend themselves to the ease of interpersonal relationships. I don't make friends terribly easily. I don't maintain them easily. It takes a lot of work and intentionality for me to feel like I've contributed a normal amount to someone.  And once I have gotten to the point that I feel close with a person, I will usually spend the rest of my days wondering when that person will finally run for the hills because of something I've said or done wrong. I feel like I'm constantly on the defense and guarding my heart juuuust enough so that I am not totally broken when the moment finally comes that someone I care about will inevitably give up on me. Let's not go into all the twisted reasons that I think like this...I pay someone top dollar to sit in a room with me and hash that crap out. POINT BEING...I feel that I am often in solitude because I'm rarely totally involved or totally vulnerable to others, so I feel kind of alone a good chunk of the time.

And the beauty of that sad situation is that I serve a God who is not scared of my heavy. He hates that I preserve myself because he's the author and empower-er of vulnerability. He created us to need him and to need one another. So I know that when I ask him to deliver me from solitude, I can EXPECT him to come through on that. He is happy to oblige. And he is strong enough to pull me up out of it. He is absolutely bringing me victory. I expected him to...I just didn't know it would have to involve so much more heavy.

I don't really have a ton of friends. I have a handful of girls that I am absolutely head over heels for and I am honored to call them my besties. Ok, I never actually say the word "besties", but I am honored that they ever choose to spend time with me. And lately it seems like almost every one of them is going through something SO heavy and so heart-wrenching and so life-changing. Ya know those people who say "don't sweat the small stuff"? And that it's really all just "small stuff"? I'm in a season of life where I am ready to jack those idiots up.

I have a friend who has fought with everything she has in her for SO long now just to save her father's life and to hopefully have him show her love the way a father should. No little girl should ever have to fight for her daddy to love her. Or ever have to fail.

I have a friend who has had a deep desire to be a mama for her whole life and she just had to look at her fourteenth negative pregnancy test.

I have a friend who remembers her youngest child by looking at two tiny ink footprints on a piece of paper that the hospital gave to her.

I have a friend who just brought home two sweet children from Ethiopia to be part of their family. Those kids are showing signs of so much hurt and brokenness in the deepest parts of their souls and there are no quick answers on how to help heal them.

It's not all small stuff.

Sometimes it's huge. Sometimes it's heavy. And sometimes it happens to all the people you love all at the same time.

These are certainly not my stories to tell. It's not happening to me and it's not my  heavy. But oh my word, I cannot believe how heavy it feels. I've spent most of this afternoon in tears over all the things that are having to be endured by the people I love. There is no separation happening here. Is this what vulnerability feels like? Is this the byproduct of a lack of preservation? It's hard. I get why I haven't really done it for almost 30 years. But I get that the Lord is teaching me something. If one is going to come out of solitude, one will have to bear their wounds and be willing to help suture the wounds of others.

I feel so so blessed in my life for the friends that I have. I am awful at expressing that to them, but I'm pretty convinced that I have stumbled onto the best group of girls on the planet. They are each a specific answer to prayer for me. And Jesus is teaching me how to love them. He's showing me a tiny fraction of what it feels like to carry the burdens of others. It's painful. It's messy. It begs my tears and robs my sleep. But what a lesson to learn from the One who carried the heavy for all of us. He literally wrote the book on it.

I'm so thankful for this lesson. Although I ache so badly for the ache in the hearts of others. I know my God does too. I don't know why he allows these things to happen. But I know that he is good in the face of it all. My prayer is that this season of "woe is me" will give way to a season of praise. It may be a long journey but I have faith that God will hold our hands up those steps if we're brave enough to put one foot in front of the other.

"Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." -Psalm 30:5

That's a promise, friends. Joy cometh.

Mama's got a brand new bag

I gained 75 lbs. when I was pregnant with the twins.

Let me repeat that.

SEVENTY FIVE POUNDS! That is a TEENAGER. I could have strapped a teenage girl to my person and walked around for months. It probably would have been much more attractive than what was actually going on anyway.

So this pregnancy was a little easier on me, I only gained 50 lbs. Moderate. And now I have 30 left of those to lose. I know this information is really nobody's business but I'm about to lose it...the weight, not my mind. And I figure that if I throw it out there to blogger who-knows-how-many-people-may-be-reading-this land, then I'll have a little extra accountability because I'll be mortified if I say I'm going to lose it and then I don't. I had to wait for two things in order for the weight loss to commence. The first was that I had to stop, uh, how shall I say this?...the continuing effects of giving birth. And the second was that we had to be back in the place where I was making all of our meals. There were so many wonderful, generous people bringing us meals after Levi was born and I appreciated it so much, but if my thighs had endure one more pot pie, things were gonna get ugly. So both of those things have, in fact, come to an end and I am now ready to roll.

So I officially signed up for Weight Watchers again today. I was so completely irritated inspired by Jennifer Hudson strutting her skinny swag all over the walls of the place. She looked so happy to have lost her teenage girl. So I'm on board. Great. Say goodbye to a lot of money per month and and say hello to so much brussel sprouts.

The other thing I'm doing is a "Couch to 5K" running program. This is totally miserable for me. It's great exercise and it's like running for dummies but I'll tell you what...for a person who HATES running with the passion of a thousand fiery demons, this ain't easy.  I mean, my newborn is not really on a nap schedule yet and the twins only nap once a day for an hour and half. So in order for all three of my kids to be sleeping at the same time, all the cosmos and the stars need to align and God himself must bestow his favor upon my day. And when that happens, I have one gojillion things to do that I can choose from like, oh I don't know:
throw in a load of laundry
shower
catch up on Glee or Idol or DWTS
clean up after breakfast/lunch/dinner from the night before
read a book
So why, why, WHY would I throw all of those options aside and instead VOLUNTARILY enter into CARDIAC ARREST?? I mean really I'm not being modest when I say that I'm not a good runner. But so help me, if I have to listen to this song on repeat in my ear buds until I reach my goal I WILL do it. I'm going to run a lovely 5k at Sodus Point in July. There, I said it. Now hold me to it. I'm begging you to ridicule me if I don't do it. Unless I go into actual cardiac arrest. Then please just shut up and send flowers. Thanks.

So there it is, my own little mommy makeover. Now with my spirits rising, let's hope my weight shall be plummeting and all shall be well again. Wish me luck and cheer me from the sidelines.

But not like this.

I am clearly a bad ass punk

Let me tell you a little story.

About three years ago, Lara and a few other girls invited me to go to Buffalo with them for a little weekend away. Not sure why Buffalo was the destination but it didn't matter because I didn't have any kids or any reason not to take a weekend for shopping and eating out and putzing around and doing whatever we felt like. So we did that for a day and then we got a little bored and decided we should all get tattoos as a great way to pass the time. We talked about what we wanted, made decisions, searched the yellow pages for a tattoo parlor in Buffalo, and went on our way. We pulled into the parking lot and there stood a group of guys with probably thousands of tattoos and piercings between them, with their tight pants sagging, chains hanging, using curse words and smoking probably thousands of cigarettes. It was a petrifying sight to my suburban eyes. So like a spring-loaded knee-jerk reaction, I threw my body down onto the back seat of the car so as not to be seen by the hoodlums and shouted "Oh my God there's bad ass punks!". I was serious. Lara laughed a lot at me for that and hasn't stopped for 3 years.

Well yesterday, we WERE the bad ass punks. I don't believe that I cursed at all (if you don't count all the times I said "bad ass") and I know I didn't smoke any cigarettes but for some reason we felt like total punks, like some little suburban girls should be really scared of us this time.

Listen, just let me exist in my fantasy world, would you?

Anyway, both of our tattoos are deeply meaningful to us in our lives right now and I will let Lara blog about her own story if she wants (which you could catch over here). But seriously, I mean what punks:

Having just come out of a fairly long season of depression in my life, I'm realizing now more than ever just how important it is to be thankful for exactly what God has given me, whether I enjoy it or not. I wrote this post about my journey being fully present, living in the moment, and having gratitude for whatever that moment brings. Although with small children it's nearly impossible to ENJOY the things that happen to me every single minute (as clearly depicted by this fabulous blog post, which you should find hilarious if you have any sort of decent sense of humor), I am trying very hard to not be the one who decides what is "good" and what is "bad"...it's just all God-given and it's all for a reason. And there were so many times during my pregnancy when I could not get through the cloud of "bad" that lived in my head. I couldn't get any dialogue going between God and I because I just didn't even have anything to say. Depression is like that, it just sucks all your energy away. No energy to be happy or playful or talkative or much of anything. And when I had no words to say to God, nothing to ask him for or talk with Him about, I often found that all I could say was "Thank you." It was the only prayer I could muster up. I didn't even say what I was thankful for because I probably had no idea. But I knew that "thank you" was worship and it was enough.

Yeah, it hurt. For only like 5 minutes though and not that bad because remember how I gave birth to a child 3 weeks ago? But please do still consider me bad-ass.

So I will continue to give thanks. I figure that if I have to be reminded of one thing every single day for the rest of my life it should be to live with gratitude and to continually thank the Giver of all good things. Because I very much believe that one cannot live without hope, and cannot thrive without gratitude. I'm going for more than just life. I'm going for life to the full. Isn't that why Jesus came in the first place? I think I'll take Him up on that :)

I'm just a little black rain cloud

I'm sorry that I've been a blogging failure for pretty much the past six months. My pregnancy was pretty rough, emotionally speaking, and I feel like my hormones have ruled and schooled me. I was no match for them. I didn't feel depressed during or after my pregnancy with the twins so this was new for me. I had a patient husband and supportive and forgiving friends, which were God's gifts to me and the things that got me through. I don't think I've ever been so grateful for grace and a long-suffering Savior who loves me relentlessly, even at my most unlovable times. Anyway, it's hard to be in the deep-dark. It's hard to to even speak, let alone write anything worth anybody's time to read when you're in the deep-dark. So I just didn't.

But alas, I have news.

I am back. Our baby boy was born two weeks ago and I'm happy to say that my dark cloud has been lifted. Since I wasn't exactly pumped about meeting him and having him upset the biorhythm of our family, I was very excited to find that in fact I do really REALLY love him. Oh, it's such a good feeling. When the twins were born it was like every cell in my body woke up to love them. And I was so afraid and almost convinced that I would not, could not feel that again. And when we got home with our new baby and I looked at the three of them, I thought it was probably a bad choice to have another child because surely my heart could NOT take it. I am sometimes afraid that I am actually going to burst from having so much love for them and I cannot believe that so much feeling can fit into my tiny frail heart. Truly, my cup runneth over. In such a good way.

After 24 hours of "early" labor and 14 hours of active labor, Levi Joseph was born via a safe and successful VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) on March 10th at 9:59pm. He was 7lbs. 3oz. and 19.5 inches long. My ultimate goal during his labor was to avoid another c-section, which I did accomplish. I did also set out to have a totally non-medicated labor but that part didn't happen. I caved to an epidural for a number of reasons and looking back, I don't regret that decision. All was well in the end.

So I am in love again. Brett and Ella made me a momma, Levi is making me a better one, and somehow Joe is still with me through all of it. And I am happy to be happy again. Those hormones were awful while they lasted and I shan't miss them, but I will say that they were worth whatever havoc they wreaked on my mind and body to bring me that sweet baby boy. And every time I look at him I know for sure that he was always intended to be here. Long before he was conceived by surprise to two human beings, he was conceived in the mind God who formed him and knew him fully and chose him for this time and for our family. He was intended for us and that is nothing short of a miracle. What could possibly be deep-dark about that??