Seventy times seven (times two)

Here's an update on that situation. The Bible study group met Thursday for lunch at one of the member's homes, and the "leader" is the friend I was talking about who keeps hurting me and she was there. (She told me I could still go to this lunch even though I'm not interested in being in that study group anymore.) The mood was really somber, even the grace before the meal mentioned asking God to help everyone stay friends, and it just felt like (to me) that everyone was trying to make me feel guilty for quitting. Several months ago I told my friend something that I was really self-conscious about and then last month I was crying to her that not many people at church talk to me, and out of nowhere she scolded/lectured me that more people would talk to me if I didn't have that problem! I said how DARE you bring that up! (Her idea of apologizing was telling me she was only trying to help!) I cut ties with her, but I'm realizing (with horror) that I've been through three Bible studies with her so she has a plethora of "dirt" on me because I shared my heart. She now tells me that since I'm not sharing anything with her, she's not going to share anything with me. Well, whoopie-doo, she has never shared anything with me, her heart has always been guarded so she looks like the "strong" one of the bunch. (She has also told me to my face that she enjoys watching me struggle with life because it makes her feel strong.) I'm really nervous that she's going to scold me for my other faults that she knows about, at another inappropriate time, and I will be hurt again. At any rate, I have been praying that God will help me forgive her and that he will comfort me from being totally turned off by her. But it really takes the cake that she's making me out to be the bad guy.

This weekend

Just a hodgepodge of things to say today. First, I'm really happy that my friend Shelley had a great ultrasound yesterday and her babies are healthy. Funny how even if you don't "know" someone in person that your heart just goes out to them and worry about them so much and end up praying for them all day long. She has lost two other children, and I'm just amazed how awesome God is to give her twins this time (and she has no family history of twins and wasn't on fertility drugs). WOW!!! Yay, God!

Last weekend I (hopefully temporarily) lost the hearing in my right ear. I thought it had something to do with the fact my ears didn't pop when we landed at home from our vacation coupled with holding my mouth open so long at the dentist last Friday. But now I'm feeling stuffed up in my head so I bet I have a sinus infection and will end up going to the doctor soon.

Lou and Boogie (my two parakeets) are fighting. From what I read, this is normal, but it really hurts me to watch them. My husband had gotten them some treats. It's like a stick with birdseed stuck all over it. They LOVE it and now I hardly see them eating their regular bird food. He put one in yesterday and the stick is totally bare this morning. Maybe it's like bird "crack" and they are coming off of their high. In that case, I would be crabby and fighting too.

Music and changes

I added a playlist today. Most are songs that remind me of Claudia. I wanted something to remember her with instead of just guilt all the time. I put "You're not alone" on it because I had mentioned that song in another post, "Voice of Truth" because it speaks to me about my self image and shame, "Cry Holy" just because it's a good song, and "Love Liberty Disco" because that song gets me in a good mood anytime, anywhere LOL. Oh yeah, and I changed my profile picture. It shows me studying the little workbook from Bible Studies By Mail where I volunteer. I figured I had better do the studies myself if I was going to be grading them for other students. EDIT: Unfortunately, the "Love Liberty Disco" track was actually a different song, so I replaced it with "Stay Strong" still by Newsboys (good message but not as upbeat as LLD).

Caring for Carleigh Reading (Chapter 1)

If you are married, what was your marriage like in the beginning?

This is my 3^rd marriage and (ashamed to say) for the first seven years of this one I had an addiction that took my focus off my family. I worked full time at first. My husband and my son (from previous marriage) got along like peas in a pod till I had our daughter.

When did you first decide you wanted to have children? Was it planned or unplanned?

I wanted the “atonement” baby so bad after high school, I just was very "easy" for the next five years, never got pregnant. Then I married my first husband, and I got pregnant on our honeymoon. (How is that for irony.) I didn’t have kids with my 2^nd husband. I had a uterine polyp removed about 6 months after I married the third time, and I guess it scared us so bad thinking I might not be able to get pregnant that we really wanted to try. Our daughter was a pistol when she was a baby. When she was nine months old, we came back from a cruise and I was still “seasick” and ended up finding out I was pregnant with my son (so he was unplanned but he was SUCH a good baby, he made up for his sister 100-fold).

What feelings did you have for your child when you first found out you were pregnant?

With my first, I was SO HAPPY because I had wanted a baby for so long after not being allowed to carry the pregnancy I had in high school. With my second, I was relieved the polyps didn’t damage anything but that pregnancy wasn’t fun at all because I was sick almost the entire time but I was excited to have a sibling for my son. With my third, I was very scared that the baby would turn out difficult like my daughter (in a really bad moment we even thought of terminating), but my parents retired and moved to my town so they could help with the baby and screaming toddler so I felt much better about it, and even my husband got excited about the baby when we found out it was a boy.

At what point in your life did you start searching for God? I accepted Christ when I was 9 but nothing ever really clicked for me. I went to church faithfully for years even when I wasn’t leading a Christian lifestyle. When I moved out here in ’97, as I said, I became an addict until August 2005 and went to church here maybe three times in 10 years. The point when I really started searching was after I turned 40 two years ago. During the year before that, I was white-knuckling because I didn’t know what to do with my time, we had moved twice in four months, I had emergency major surgery (hysterectomy) that triggered a lot of grief, and while I was in the hospital my favorite dog died, so I went into a huge depression. My husband took me to NYC for my 40^th birthday and on the way home on the plane I told him I wanted to just die. He didn’t know how else to get me out of my depression so he suggested I talk to someone. My first appointment was August 14, 2007. My counselor turned out to be THE BEST. I had never met him before (or him, me) yet I could feel that he cared about me, and I couldn’t put my finger on why. He had me watch a video a former client had made about her counseling experience, and she said the counselor “was like Jesus” to her, and all of a sudden everything made sense – I realized I could feel the counselor that first day caring about me because it was showing me Jesus cared about me! And then Bible verses, Bible stories, songs, hymns, everything I’d heard since I was 9, just totally made sense to me. I know this is already very long, but I just want to say that when people say Christians are the light of the world, it’s because Jesus shines through them. I know it for a fact, because as you can see, I’ve felt it.

Has there been a time in your life that God provided?

Yes. A couple months after I had been addiction-free, my family was getting increasingly hard on me about being such a slacker wife/mom, so I wanted to leave. I got on monster.com and search for a transcriptionist job anywhere, just so I could get out of here, and I half-heartedly hopelessly prayed I would find something, anything, because I was really bored and discouraged. A banner ad for a transcription company came up along with the results of my search. The company in the banner was a work from home thing. I emailed my application in, and within a couple days they called and wanted me to do some tests! So God DID hear me, he answered my prayers because I got my DREAM JOB (I love to type) and I had something to do, and I felt so much better about myself and my surroundings that staying here wasn’t such a horrible thought anymore. When people ask how I got this job, I say it’s a true miracle. I have referred a couple other people to that company, but God got me this job.

Forty-two

Thursday was my birthday. My husband was being a jerk the night before. See, I keep forgetting the world revolves around him. I keep forgetting he knows everything. And my ESP wasn't working and apparently he wanted me to do something that I didn't do, so he said I was the densest person he knew. I already know I'm not the brightest star in the sky so it hurt to hear him say that, so here's me actually praying that I wouldn't wake up on my birthday! But I did. I got a couple cute cards from the kids, some beautiful flowers and some chocolate, and then later after we went to my birthday dinner at Wendy's (my choice), my husband bought me two parakeets. I named the blue one "Lou" (after Lou Gramm, the lead singer of Foreigner, who released a Christian album last month that I just love). The green and yellow one my daughter named "Boogie" because it likes to move around a lot.

Also my oldest son got me a heart shaped necklace with a silhouette of a mother and baby inside, and it had four pink stones on the heart. He was joking with me that the stones represent my four children (my actual three children and my chihuahua Hershey). But to myself I'm joyfully thinking the fourth one could be for Claudia, my child in heaven. I was reading someone else's blog this morning and their post was mentioning someone told her that her baby chose them to be his parents even though his life was very brief. So why would Claudia choose me knowing she wouldn't be born at all. At any rate, I think this necklace is so cool and I do feel joyous having all four children represented!

Caring for Carleigh reading (Intro/Prologue)

In the intro to "In Faithfulness, He Afflicted Me," Lynnette said she's grateful for her journey, and it just blows me away because when I look at my journey, I just think "I wish that never happened," "I wish I hadn't done that," "I wish so-and-so was still here," etc. When she described losing Anna in the Prologue, my heart beat so fast. I felt like I was there and I cried and cried. Wow, and the book hasn't even started.

Have there been times in your life that God has shown you that He cares or that He is near?

Yes. I love music and God knows this. There have been times in the past couple years where I have been hurt by someone or just feel sad about other things, and every single time a song will either come on the car radio, Youtube, embedded in webpages I'm surfing or videos on TV that directly relate to how I feel at that moment. An example, last summer a bunch of us went to a friend's house way out in the desert and I was panicking and upset about trying to remember the way home. One of my friends said I could follow her till the street she needed to turn at and I was pretty sure I would know the way from that point. So we get to that street, her car turned off the road and all of a sudden I felt very alone and scared. So I prayed in my car (well, actually yelled in my car because I felt like I was going to panic again) and told God how scared I was and how alone I felt. I had the Christian station from Sirius satellite on, and the next song I heard after I prayed was by Meredith Andrews "You're Not Alone." It was the first time I ever heard that song, and I was crying AND laughing because it felt like God was talking right to me! Here are the lyrics to the chorus:

You're not alone
For I am here
let me wipe away your every tear
My love I've never left your side
I have seen you through the darkest nights
And I'm the one that's loved you all your life
All your life

Wisconsin

I'm back from Wisconsin (was there all last week). It was beautiful up there, perfect weather and everything was all green. My husband took the kids to a water park called Noah's Ark, we went to Wisconsin Deer Park and got to pet and feed a lot of deer, we stayed in my husband's late grandpa's house in the woods, we went on boat tours of the upper and lower dells, and we went to a huge 4th of July family picnic. My parents also came up from Illinois. Thank you, God, that I was able to have conversations with them (esp. my dad) so my last memory of them will be good if I never see them again. Also, God, thank you that my husband and my father were speaking to each other this time.