Letting Go and Letting God

The ladies in our church put me in charge of doing a devotional for a baby shower they were hosting.  I reluctantly agreed, because the word 'devotional' just doesn't make me feel comfortable.  Personally, I don't feel I have enough spiritual advice to even begin to consider my words or thoughts devotional material.  But, I agreed anyway and figured out a loop hole in my favor.

Stories are my specialty.  So, I figured possibly, just maybe, if I wrote a story and threw in some bible verses, it just might pass for a devotional.

Hot dog, I'm on to something!  (Yes, I know, I haven't even reached pre-school in my spiritual walk.)

Good news is, I think I fooled all 25 ladies that were there.  They thought it was a devotional the whole time, he he.

Behold, my story-with-some-bible-verses-added-in-turned-into-a-devotional:

Letting Go and Letting God

Congratulations, C on your soon to arrive precious baby.  The Psalms declare, “Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from Him.”  You are about to embark on an adventure that many have experienced, few have wished they hadn’t experienced and none have mastered.  Parenthood.  Motherhood.  Loss of control-hood.

I aptly titled this devotion Letting Go and Letting God because in my experience, all 6 full years of raising children, that one of the REALLY big lessons I was intended to learn was how NOT to be in control.  Now, I wouldn’t consider myself an overtly control-hungry person (my husband and brother might disagree).  Throughout high school, college and my early professional years, I was driven, goal-oriented and meticulous.  But, I didn’t lose sleep over not making the All-A Honor Roll, or keeping a 3-point whatever-ever GPA, or even finishing a lengthy, expensive college career in less time a Med-student would put in.  So, I never considered myself a “control freak.”

Then, I got pregnant.  My control-freak tendencies started to surface but not in the typical fashion you would expect.  Finances were a big worry.  Which vitamins should I take?  How should I wear my seat belt safely?  Will I go back to work?  Who will watch my precious if I do?  Which car seat is the safest?  They were all very typical questions for a first-time pregnant mom, but they were bringing to the surface a deep darkness I was blissfully unaware of.

You see, babies have a way of stripping you to your core and bringing you face to face with your Maker whether you want to go there or not.  I must admit, after reading this through numerous times, I started to fixate on the word “strip” and considered changing it to a less-ferocious adjective to explain the breaking down process.  But, I chose to leave it because for the first time in my life, when that newborn entered our home, it was the closest I had ever been to being permanently void of wearing clothes.  Our house was easily PG-13 and there weren’t too many people complaining about it.  So stripping it is.

This breaking down process starts with the mental-stripping of longing for a baby. Whether time is on your side or not, quite a bit of soul-searching and relationship breaking and building occurs while you’re just waiting.  Then, the pregnancy.  Ohhhhh, the pregnancy begins the physical-stripping portion of the process.  Who would have ever thought “those people” were serious when they spoke of strange food cravings.  Jim was sure he was going to have to make a special trip to Sam’s Club to buy me a 5 gallon jar of pickles for the first baby, or stop by a fruit stand every day to buy me a watermelon for the second baby.  And pains.  Back pains, belly pains, swelling pains, head pains, foot pains, leg pains, ear pains (those were Jim’s ears aching), etc. etc. etc.  Pain is your body’s way of telling you something is wrong.  Pain is God’s way of lightly tapping you on the shoulder to get your attention.  Then, the bundle of joy arrives and the stripping is kicked into high gear.  Contractions, labor and delivery (I won’t even begin to discuss the “literal” and “metaphorical” magnitude of stripping that happens during that whole process), hospital gowns, doctors for your baby, doctors for you, family dynamics, hormones, breastfeeding, feelings of confidence being swallowed by insecurities and doubt and the end-all be-all à the complete, null and void, absence of sleep.

There’s a reason why sleep deprivation is used in torture camps.  Sleep deprivation is serious stuff.  It’s enough to cause you to not want to brush your teeth in the morning, unknowingly put your underwear on inside out or rationalize why it’s okay to go longer than 2 days without bathing.  It causes you to make drastic decisions.  I remember at one point, about 2 weeks into severe sleep deprivation, I found myself having to place post-it notes on the changing table to remind myself to change her diaper in the middle of the night.  One late night incident about that time, Jim confidently proclaimed through his sleep-deprived frontal lobe of rationale “That baby is trying to kill us!” and I burst into a wet-slobbery-sobbing fit of denial.

The stripping process is painful and ugly while en route, BUT, because you know this isn’t only going to be about how hard newborns can be, the end of the journey is breathtakingly beautiful.  You see, as we’ve all heard before, God uses our hurt, pain, hollowness and sleep deprivation to draw us closer to Him.  Which, in newborn-land, is the divinely intelligent and perfect design God had for becoming a parent.  He knew that once we entered life as an adult and things became fairly easy to control, we would struggle with finding the desire to seek His will for our lives.  So enter in a baby.  Flesh of our own and helpless, inexplicably beautiful and mysterious, yet still manages to turn our world upside down.  Never, would the idea of giving up on this child enter our thoughts.  So at our lowest point, when pain, sleep, rationale, and even personal hygiene is at its worst, what else is there to do but give up control by letting go and letting God.

2 Corinthians 12:9 God said “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Now, for the other mothers in here with teenagers, they might disagree on my earlier reference to things being at their worst with a newborn.  I’ve heard that mothers of teenagers known why animals eat their young.  Regardless…  Remember this, whether it’s trying to weigh the pros and cons of a hand-me-down crib vs. buying a new one or the tough decision about returning back to work or feeling like your body is broken, always, ALWAYS, turn to Him.  He is in control.  Ultimately.  Completely.  Forever.  And he loves that baby more than you could ever fathom.

Psalms 139

13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

I’ll wrap this up with a quote I have grown to love.  I have no idea who Kevin DeYoung is, but apparently, he was important enough to have been included on the front of our church bulletin one Sunday and I’ve had his quote on the fridge for over 3 ½ years.  When seeds of doubt or anxiousness are creeping in and thoughts of “steering the wagon” on your own are inundating your psyche, remember this:

“We obsess about the future and we get anxious, because anxiety, after all, is simply living out the future before it gets here.  We must renounce our sinful desire to know the future and to be in control.  We are not gods.  We walk by faith, not by sight.  We risk because God does not risk.  We walk into the future in God-glorifying confidence, not because the future is known to us but because it is known to God.  And that’s all we need to know.  Worry about the future is not simply a character tic it is the sin of unbelief, an indication that our hearts are not resting in the promises of God.”

Great Bible Verses for strength, renewal and hope

²¹ A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. John 16

¹⁷ Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. James 1

¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29

⁵Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
⁶ in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3

⁶ Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. Phillippians 4

Care-free

Would it be sweet to not worry about if you were drooling or not?

Oh the care-free life of a baby.

...and then there were 5!

Brandon James Boyer decided to make his fast appearance into this world.

He was born May 5, 2011 at 1:25am and was 8 pounds 2 ounces and 20.5 inches.
The short version of his birth is this:
1. My water broke 10:50pm on Wednesday night
2. We called Mrs. P to come over and stay the night on our couch at 11:22pm
3. She was at our front door at 11:30
4. 11:50pm, we were in the car driving to the hospital
5. 12:01am, I texted to close friends and family members, "We're off to a Cinco de Mayo part @ the hospital! Will keep you posted."
6. Jim has video of me at 12:45am, looking like a beached whale, sitting in the hospital bed saying, "I wonder if he'll hold out until the clock starts with a 2? Our other two kids were born with the clock starting with a 2." Numbers, I can't get away from them.
7. Soon after I started questioning the nurse about an epidural.
8. I believe the contractions started to get serious around 1am, and for some unknown reason, the nurse kept diverting my attention away from an epidural. Didn't make sense at the time.
9. Brandon made his debut into this world at 1:25am.
10. Thanked the good Lord for a healthy baby and for living so close to the hospital.
There is one little girl who is in heaven around here.

Mom and baby are happy and healthy.

Blogging will be shortened and sporadic. I'm sure you understand.

Beware the crazy swollen foot lady

Those of you with young who are easily scared, BEWARE! Stay clear of the brick house with the swings out front.

There is a lady that lives there and is walking 'round town who is frightening young children.

But not on purpose. She's a mom herself.

Thank goodness, her own children are not scared of her, for that would be cause for alarm.

But it's possible she will frighten other children caught off guard and unaware of her "condition".

You see, she has one abnormally enlarged foot, because of the baby growing in her tummy (edema, pressure on the vena cava, and all those official medical terms, yada, yada, yada). Which in turn has caused her to resort to the only pair of shoes that fits: flip flops. Not a good combination for Easter attire.

The other foot is slightly larger, but not terribly noticeable. It's the same foot that has decided to show off every single pregnancy and has won the race all three times.

The good news is, this lady is harmless. Although, her looks from the cankles down may be scary, she really just wants to GET THE BABY OUT!

I'm still here

I have not fallen off the face of the earth.

I haven't given up on blogging. I have at least a dozen things I am dying to write about.

My fingers aren't broken.

Nobody in my house is tragically ill.

My marriage isn't falling apart.



BUT...



I am very tired. A lot. Crazy tired. The kind of tired where if I sit down for more than 5 seconds, I wake up to children eating fruit bars spread out on the living room floor. And they've been there for a while. Crumbs don't lie.

I am very busy with schooling, referring, co-coordinating, care-coordinating, cleaning, cooking (I use that term loosely) and normal mom-duty stuff.

And it's all because ...

Nathan is going to be a big brother!

Oh no! You thought I was blaming my precious, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, angel-baby of creating that much havoc in my life to cause me to experience narcoleptic tendencies? Please! I wouldn't do that in writing.


Katherine has had plenty of experience in the big sister department, so, true to her nature, she's been in full-time bossing mode. You know, for educational purposes. Nathan must learn these things for the little tyke following behind his footsteps. Although, something tells me the body-slamming method will be preferred over the bossing-everything-including-the-dog method.

It's pretty early to be lettin' the cat out of the bag, so to speak. I am only 8 weeks along and we've been diligent about waiting until that 1st trimester mark is over. But, we have two nieces who have been more excited than their little bodies can handle and they've started spreading the news for us. Our due date is May 8th.

I like the freedom of being able to talk about it earlier. There's so much going on right now, and I don't feel pregnant, so maybe others knowing will get me in the mindset of, "yep, this is really happening." Other than the clothes ALREADY starting to not fit, needing extra sleep and an occasional midnight snack that has been thwarted because of less-than-stellar stomach circumstances, nothing feels different.

We are very excited. Jim is crazy excited.

It's weird kind of, because I've always considered myself an even-number kinda gal. And there's no more man-on-man defense, it's moved to zone defense. We'll be officially outnumbered.

I already don't feel any pressure to get a room established and decorated. I'm asking questions to Jim late at night like, "Am I just being OCD about all this, or should this be picked up tonight?" In my mind, the car has been aged another 10 years by the time we'll pay it off (16 months). I've started realizing that all those things we worked so hard on in the house to get it "the way we wanted it", will soon be destroyed and we'll have to start over decorating and buying new furniture in about 15-20 years anyway.

But they're not bad thoughts and realizations. They don't make me anxious or sad or angry. They're just the precious reminder that those things are just that: things. My precious little babies are growing up.

We are creating a family! It's growing and forming right in front of our eyes.

What a gift! I couldn't be happier to have the honor of being given this task.

Thank-you Jesus for your subtle yet awesome revelations!

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you..." Jeremiah 1:5

Girly dialogue

I was preparing supper tonight and saw Katherine walking around with one of our old cell phones (we weren't using it anymore so we gave to her). She was holding baby Alive with both hands and the cell phone was propped between her ear and shoulder. Her dialogue was interesting:
"Hey, Kim. Hey, Kim. How are you doing?
(pause)
I'm good, I'm good.
(pause)
Hey Kim. Oh, hold on, I have a little one crying. Hold on. Let me check on he. Hold on. Hold on."

Found out later on that she was scheduling a haircut for baby Alive with Kim, the lady who really has cut Katherine's and Nathan's hair this summer. Her babies do a lot of things similar to Nathan. They fall asleep in the car, 'just like he', when they get sleepy. They bounce up and down when they're dancing to music, 'just like he'. They take naps, 'just like he' and she makes bottles to feed them, 'just like he', before their naps. They get squirmy when she's changing their diaper, 'just like he'. They crawl fast away from her, 'just like he' and her baby 'puts everything in she's mouth, just like brother, Mommy'.

I find it so interesting that she's modeling my behavior so much. We had one of our boy cousins ("A") come over today and play for a couple hours. I didn't really think Katherine was a big talker until he was here. She turned into a serious chatterbox that went on and on and on. He behaved like a 'typical man' (and I don't mean that to be derogatory) and didn't say hardly anything. She would repeat a question about ten times, he would ignore it and she'd finally move on to another question/comment. He calmly played in his own little world while she followed him around trying to tell him how she wanted to play. 'Would you be my prince?' (repeated 10 times), no response. 'Do you want to dance?' (repeated 10 times), no response. 'Do you want to read some books with me?' (repeated 10 times), no response. And when she'd finally say something he was interested in, he'd respond quickly, clearly and act on it. I really love watching these two interact because they're the same age difference as me and one of my boy cousins (A's uncle). From what I hear, Katherine and A are little replicas of us two (for now at least).

Things don't change much in 30 years between boys and girls, either. The questions just get more "important" and the silence is usually coupled with a TV remote in hand.