No more "It"

One of my least favorite parts of pregnancy (other than daily vomiting and hating all my favorite foods) has been calling the baby "it." I've tried to avoid it as much as possible by saying "the baby" or "Baby Beam" or "he or she" but that can get awkward. So yesterday was the long awaited day when we could finally find out which pronoun to use! I was incredibly nervous about the ultrasound since it's been 13 weeks since we've seen the baby. I had worries about missing limbs or malfunctioning organs and every other thing that could go wrong.

The tech started by taking pictures of the spine, heart, kidneys, limbs, etc., all of which were perfect! It took a while before she got the shot she needed to determine gender but fortunately it was a clear picture, leaving no doubt that we are having a.....

GIRL!!!

Needless to say, I had a few tears of joy at having all my worries of horrible birth defects relieved and at finding out that we had indeed gotten our wish for a baby girl. SHE still does not have a name as we are totally torn between two. Hopefully we'll be able to make that decision soon! For now, I'm excited about buying some adorable little girl outfits and bows and all of that fun stuff!

She kept putting her arm up to fend us off. She didn't like all the prodding.

Kind of strange how much of the bones this thing picks up...kind of looks like an alien face!

Five a.m. rambling thoughts...

This week has been a bit rough between pregnancy headaches and the sudden return of my morning sickness. I've pretty much just been hanging out. I did however, manage to read all three Hunger Games books in three days…. I was initially uninterested when I read the sleeve on the first one, but finally gave in to the unanimous endorsement of…well, everyone. And I have to agree, these are a great read! They are well written and keep you pulled in all the way through. The characters are well developed and realistically flawed. The books are a great blend of politics, enough futuristic technology to intrigue any sci-fi nerd, romance, and action. They had far more depth than I originally anticipated from the "teenage gladiator games" description I had read. If anybody has a Nook and wants to borrow them, let me know!

I ended up sleeping away most of Saturday because of my nausea meds…unfortunately, this meant that I was wide awake from midnight to 5am Saturday night. Annoying. Nathan was up for a while because he's a late nighter. We browsed through our baby name book again. I'm not supposed to have an ultrasound for another four weeks but I've been freaking out about some things so I'm going to request it at my 17 week appt. Tuesday….which means we could find out the gender in just two days!! I feel like once we know, we'll want to decide on a name right away. So that was fun. We definitely have some favorites but nothing we're totally set on yet. After expecting to have to wait til February, I can't believe we might know this week! And I have absolutely no idea… for the first part of the pregnancy, I totally thought of the baby as a girl but I think my mom's finally brainwashed me into expecting a boy. The good part of that is that I'm a little more adjusted and a little less terrified by the idea of raising a boy. It's not that I don't want one eventually, I just feel like I know what I'm doing with a girl. I can handle dress-up, playing house, even the whole teenage girl thing…after all I grew up in a house of estrogen. But boys? Messy, adventurous, "boys will be boys" boys? I'm clueless.

Then we got talking about church (at three in the morning)…

Moving and visiting churches has made us re-examine what we're looking for in a church. I feel like everyone has their "pet purpose." Church obviously serves multiple purposes, but everybody usually has one that is most important to them when they are searching. One of our friends is super relational (and theological) and the most important thing to him in a church and a pastor is the ability to build relationships and have community. I get that because true community is hard to find and oh so important. We're definitely not meant to do this life alone and I believe the local church should be our primary support group--other than family. Having people that aren't afraid to be real and struggle together is invaluable.

We had a challenging discussion recently with another couple who really want to find a church that is service oriented. We're clearly instructed to take care of the poor and the needy but a lot of churches assume this means supporting missions (part of the picture) and maybe having a deacon's fund for families in the church. This couple wants to do more, specifically getting involved with community outreach in a real way. And not just as a way to guilt people into giving you five minutes to rattle off the Romans Road of the gospel, but because the service itself is the gospel at work. It definitely pushed us to look at not just finding a church where we can learn and fellowship, but where we can serve as well or that is at least open to our ideas on serving.

For me, and I think for Nate, we're naturally drawn to churches with gifted teachers where we can learn. Especially at this point, where we are still trying to work out some of the major points of our theology and need some strong guidance. We've been really blessed in Huntington and in Lynchburg to have pastors who were gifted teachers and invested time in helping us work through some of this stuff. It was an added blessing to have community with our RUF pastor, Jason, and fellow RUFers in Huntington but not the reason we chose the church. Corporate worship is also one of the other functions of the church and this has been strong in both of our last two PCA churches. The administration of the sacraments is also one of the church's purposes and one that's important to us to be done right. While practice may vary on some of the finer points (Welch's v. Merlot, singing, liturgy, etc.), there are some things that shouldn't vary such as an attitude of reverence, a clear explanation of the sacrament, and a barring of the table.

The hard part is figuring out what's most important (and not just personal preference), what's Biblical, what can be compromised or found elsewhere, etc. For instance, is it necessary that solid teaching occur in a Sunday morning service or is one-on-one counseling sufficient? How much do the finer points of the Lord's supper reflect a matter of the heart and how much are they just personal preference? Do you have to have community with the whole body or just your community group? How involved should the church be in witnessing to and serving the community? What does that actually look like today? How important is it that the service reflect time and forethought in its selection of songs and liturgy? Should that really impact the worship?

Unfortunately we don't have a lot of answers. We have a lot of personal preferences. We know what we like and what we're comfortable with. But that's not the same as knowing for sure what's Biblical or what's simply a matter of preference in practice. Some things are obviously unbiblical, but those are usually easy to identify and avoid.  Needless to say, the culmination of our discussion was that we need to do some investigating, both of what's biblical and meeting with the leadership of the church we're attending to see what they really think on all of this stuff beyond what is apparent on Sunday mornings. Since we're here for the long haul though, we definitely need to do the work to figure all --well, at least a lot---of this stuff out before seeking membership. We also have six months to make a final decision on where we stand on infant baptism and get comfortable enough to explain that stance either way.

Miracle and Must Eats

So I wrote these when I knew that I wanted to create a blog but hadn't actually done it yet.

November 21, 2011 (10 weeks pregnant)

Miracle. This is the word that I've often heard used by mothers to describe pregnancy and childbirth. I never quite understood exactly what they meant and thought that perhaps they were exaggerating the experience. My skepticism didn't stop me from wanting to find out though. When we were going through fertility testing and finding out what difficulties we faced, people were  often quick to tell us that we could just adopt. While I understand that they meant well and that adoption is very special in its own way, my heart was set on getting to experience pregnancy, childbirth, and all that goes with it. After eleven disappointing months, I finally got a positive test! Then a negative…then another positive…then another negative…and a third positive. We found out later that I was a week ahead of where I thought I was which meant my HCG levels were so low that it was easy to get negatives. I had taken the test so early because I was experiencing extreme exhaustion and figured that I was either pregnant or having a mono recurrence. Obviously, it was the former.

It's amazing to me that my body experienced such changes so quickly, literally within a day or two after conception. At that point, the baby was only a tiny embryo but it set off a chain reaction immediately. Within two weeks, I was experiencing a full range of pregnancy symptoms from the continuing exhaustion to all day morning sickness, food aversions, an increased sense of smell which goes poorly with the nausea, abdominal cramps, and even odd ones like recurring hiccups.  Despite all the obvious signs of the baby, I doubted I was really pregnant. I've heard of women causing pregnancy symptoms because they want to be pregnant so badly and was afraid I could have done that. I was also terrified that every cramp was a sign of impending miscarriage. I was so anxious by my first doctor's visit that I asked for an ultrasound. Thankfully, the ultrasound showed one baby in the uterus right where it's supposed to be. And we got to hear and SEE the heart beating! It was awesome. At that point (six weeks, 5 days), the baby was so small it was literally just a small blob but we could still see the heart pumping away. Needless to say it was amazing! I had proof that I was indeed pregnant rather than crazy. :-)

Everyday it is incredible to me that such a vulnerable and small thing could actually survive inside of me and thrive and grow. It is truly a miracle that there is something LIVING inside my body. I can't feel it moving yet but I know it is. I can't wait until I feel the first flutters of this miracle that is sucking away all of my energy and waking me in the middle of the night to run to the bathroom. I thought my friend Rachel was being a bit harsh when she referred to her darling Hope as a "parasite" but it seems appropriate now. Despite the physical discomforts of the first trimester, pregnancy is truly a miracle. Knowing that a precious little baby that I will hold in my arms in seven months is being literally knit together in my womb is almost beyond my comprehension.

I still get anxious with every new pain and odd feeling. I have to remind myself daily that God blessed us with a baby at the most unlikely time when I had almost given up hope of natural conception. I should have more faith that if he has blessed us with an unlikely pregnancy, there is no reason not to believe that he can also cause this one inch miracle to grow into a healthy, full-grown baby. I'm finally getting to the point where I can plan ahead and start thinking about things like birthing plans, nursery designs, names, and whether this precious child will turn out to be as much of a nerd as his/her parents.

At ten weeks and 4 days, I have a little over a week left in the most dangerous period and three weeks left in my first trimester. I can't wait to wake up without nausea and enjoy my favorite foods again, but for now I'll accept these unpleasant symptoms as a sign that our baby is happily growing away!

December 2, 2011 (12 weeks pregnant)

When the most exciting parts of your diet for several weeks are CapriSuns and ginger snaps, you start to fantasize about some of your favorite foods…or even the foods that you normally just tolerate. The diet this last week has been particularly monotonous so I decided to make a list of foods that sound good. Hopefully by the second trimester, they will taste as good as they sound.

• Pepperoni pizza…from Mario's and Papa John's
• Sweet tea...I greatly miss this southern, sugary delight
• Spinach Lasagna
• Red Lobster's biscuits and chicken alfredo
• Grilled cheese with pepper jack
• Pinwheels
• Salads
• Mac & Cheese
• Asparagus, corn and carrots
• Fries
• Southwestern egg rolls
• Spinach and artichoke dip
• Peanut butter
• Brie pastry with raspberry jam
• Chicken chili
• Qdoba
• Saltines with cream cheese and red pepper jelly

January 3, 2012 (Today)
I was very helpful that my fourteenth week of pregnancy would bring a magical end to the morning sickness. No such luck. The worst is over but I still have good days and bad days. And it can sneak up totally unexpected. Acupuncture helps but it's expensive. The best I can do right now is try to keep something on my stomach and avoid greasy foods. Hopefully only a few more weeks of this! As an update to the Must Eats...unfortunately most of these foods are still on my bad list. I did manage to make and eat chicken chili and hope to make stuffed shells/lasagna this week. I can eat pizza but no pepperoni. Salads and peanut butter are mostly okay and mac and cheese is back on my favorites list. I'm making a concerted effort to eat healthier and get in lots of fruits and veggies but a few things are working against me. For one, it's winter and there aren't a lot of great fruits out there. Secondly, half of them still nauseate me. I'm also totally paranoid that they've gone bad like the day after I buy them for some reason. Oranges and tangerines, never a pre-pregnancy favorite, have become a daily staple and canned pears aren't too bad. I could live on grape juice.

Life on canvas

Pregnancy is exhausting. You spend the first 18ish weeks feeling like you'd like to take a nap as soon as you wake up. You would think that this means you sleep like a baby. Well, let me introduce you to a particularly sadistic hormone, progesterone, which floods your body as soon as you get pregnant. This is the hormone that causes much of your exhaustion. However, this hormone also causes you to have difficulty sleeping, waking you up throughout the night for no good reason. Twisted, right? Add to that a bladder that sits right under your ever growing uterus and you may have a lot of time to think when you'd rather be sleeping. All that to say, I've found myself with an excess of thoughts in the last couple of months and would like to get a few of them on paper...or at least on here.

So why the title, Life on Canvas?  I love to paint. I'm not particularly good at it but I thoroughly enjoy it. There's something about creating from nothing that puts me in a much happier state. Just another way we are created in God's image I suppose. There's more to the title than that though.

In the last several years, Nate and I have been working out our theology. I've come to believe very strongly in several truths. I believe that God is sovereign over all, ordaining some to salvation and some to eternal misery, offering salvation through grace alone by faith, not through works. I also believe that we are personally accountable for our actions, called to be sanctified daily and to grow in holiness, and that our actions have consequences both now and eternally. These two things are both clear in Scripture and on a purely theological, academic level I have come to see how they work together rather than contradict each other. These truths are a great comfort to me and a foundation for much of what I believe. Sometimes, however, it's hard to understand how they work out in real life, outside of theology books.

I have had a favorite saying since high school---Life's what you make it. I don't believe in excuses and I don't believe in being a passive victim to every circumstance in life. What you do counts. Yes, your dad spent more time yelling and criticizing than he did loving you. That is difficult but it's not a free ticket to fail with your own kids. Learn from it, forgive him, and love the heck out of your kids. We have our own choices to make and the decisions matter. You hate how you look and feel? Start eating healthy and go for a walk everyday. Hate your job? Figure out what you would like and what you have to do to get there and do it! Live in fear of lung cancer? Stop smoking! Life's what you make of it.

But why doesn't it always work like that? Why does the guy who works his butt off doing what he loves and doing it well end up losing his job to no fault of his own? Why do some people who haven't smoked a day in their life die of lung cancer? Why does a woman who eats right, exercises daily, and lives a healthy lifestyle get stuck with a debilitating, painful disease? What we do matters and life is what you make it....but sometimes it's doesn't and it's not. That's when my neat little theology gets difficult to understand. I get that we're a sinful people and all of humanity is paying the cost of that sin. Everyone of us deserves a life of misery and an eternity in hell. I know that. But if doing the right thing doesn't mean you actually get the corresponding reward, why bother? God's in control of it all and yet our lives so often spin out of control no matter what we do. He is sovereign yet he has ordained for evil to exist right alongside the good and often evil seems to win out over good. How can that be? I know in my head that it's about perspective and about remembering the other truth-God's sovereignty and his salvation by grace. I've got to look at the big picture and see that God is triumphing over evil, the victory is already ours, and one day we'll get to have a never-ending victory celebration. I know that Scripture tells me that he is using all of these horrible things for our good somehow and for his glory. I know that our reward isn't always on this earth, sometimes it is much delayed. The problem is that knowing all of these things in my head doesn't always help stop the pain or the anger. Even though I know that we all deserve every misery, every disappointment, every tragedy. But it doesn't stop me from looking at those suffering--people who have faith in God and seek him daily--and thinking, "It's not fair. It's not right. They don't deserve that much pain." I've spent a great deal of time in the last six years wrestling with theology and working it out on paper so that God's sovereignty and Man's responsibility both make sense together. I think that I will spend the rest of my life struggling with how these two truths look in my life and the lives around me. I always feel like the father in Mark 9 who said, "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!" Thank God for being patient with me!

That was a really long explanation but the point is that life is a blank canvas to us. We get to paint on it so many things. Love, marriage, families, houses, degrees, experiences, knowledge, etc. But it's only blank to us. God is sovereign over all of those hopes and dreams and accomplishments. It is only by his grace that we get to paint all of these beautiful things and it is by his grace that we get to see beauty in our suffering and hope in our trials.