The End... for now

Our infertility journey has come to a bit of a halt and so much has happened in the last few months.

{1} We have stopped the foster/adoption process.

The licensing company we were going through told us that in order to go further with the process we both would need to become Michigan residents. Now, active duty are exempt from this rule and protected by federal law that says we get to keep our home state of residency for everything. All we'd have to do is call up Coast Guard legal and fight this thing and we could win. But who wants to go through a legal battle? Not I. After much discussion, Crockett & I decided to just postpone all this until we move to the next state. We are only here for another year to year and a half and by the time we got through all the red tape we would not have very long here.

{2} We have also stopped all fertility treatments.

This one is easy to sum up: the doctors in this small, remote town are INSANE. After getting so many conflicting and confusing feedback from the OB here I decided that if I did become pregnant I did NOT want this man to deliver my baby. He is a fool. He told me I did not need to get tested while taking Clomid to see if it was working and that we could just trust it would. He told me based on my one blood test that I was in fact ovulating and he did not feel we needed to investigate that further. Then, nine months later, he tells me we should have been testing during Clomid the whole time and upon looking at the one blood test that he had already seen, he said my levels were low and perhaps I wasn't ovulating after all. He wasted 9 months of my time. He also is the one who freaked me out saying I could die if I got pregnant and then sent me to a specialist who laughed and said there wasn't a chance of that happening.

{3} I've stopped tracking ovulation.

Basically I'm done. I've handed over this whole motherhood thing to God and said, "When it happens, it happens." He doesn't need doctors, medicine, procedures, or tracking ovulation to create life. If he wants life in me, he'll make it happen. When we move (approx. Jan 2015) I'll start over with a new fertility specialist and we'll go from there, but for now I'm taking a well deserved break. I gotta say, it is so nice not to stress each cycle. I just expect to not be pregnant and my hopes are never up or crushed. There's no pressure and I'm lovin it.

{4} We are loving life in Michigan.

I know that sounds weird. But Crockett got moved into a new section at work over the summer and at first we were kinda sad because we liked the people he worked with before. [The way the schedules are set, the crew he works with is also the crew who is off when he is. Therefore, the only people he even has the option of hanging out with outside of work are the people in his section who he works with.] Well, in this new crew are 3 other married couples who we've gotten to know a lot better and had a blast with. We've gone camping, had tons of bonfires, and overall great times with them. The station also got a LOT of new people this summer and 3 of the ladies and I started a small group Bible study which has been great. I truly feel like we now have a community. :) God is so good!

Summer in Michigan was awesome. Lots of beach time, camping, & spending time outside in the non-humid, 70 degree gorgeousness.

{5} I got a job!

As of September I am a Health Educator for District Health Department #2. I love it! I teach an abstinence program to 7th graders across the district as a guest speaker during their health class for a span of 10 lessons. I'm working full time, but making enough money to get ahead of debt & go home once a month. This is the answer to prayer I was looking for.

{6} We found a church!

It's in Saginaw which is an hour and a half away, but after a complete spiritual melt down we decided it was worth it. So now every Sunday we make the drive (with some awesome friends) and enjoy some good worship, gospel teaching, & great fellowship.

Winter is well on it's way again here in north Michigan. We've already had a few flurries & the brutal cold winds are here to stay. A couple weekends ago we got all stocked up for our {hopefully} last northern winter! The Christmas tree went up on Nov. 12 & we're looking forward to Thanksgiving. Crockett has to work, but the new cook at the station is outstanding and he's preparing Thanksgiving lunch for all the families to come in and share. Then a few of us wives are headed to a friend's house to have a great time together. These women truly have become my second family. I'm so thankful & so blessed.

Walking Through Fire

Sometimes God allows me to walk through fire and although I know that my situation will bring glory to God in the end it has become a huge lesson in endurance. Things have been so difficult lately that there have been days that I have just called out to God asking for him to return. It has become aware to me that this should be my heart always, not just in struggles. Even on the very best day here I should still recognize that heaven will be better. I should never lose sight of that, never get caught up in this life without constant hope for Christ's return.

As I walk through this season of tears and struggle I am clinging deeply to my Father and the joy I have in Christ. Otherwise, I would suggest someone have me committed. ;)

Thanks to Michigan and it's lack of sun I have developed a vitamin D deficiency making me exhausted all day and also giving me the "winter blues." I'm depressed and that's really hard for me to admit because I have been there before 5 years ago and I really was hoping not to be back again. The good news is that I've begun a vitamin regiment that will hopefully correct this VERY soon. The better news is that no matter what situation I'm in God is sovereign.

I have also been suffering at the hand of the terrible Michigan economy. I have applied to well over a dozen places from Rite Aid, Kmart, Family Video, Dollar General, secretary positions at various medical clinics, teaching positions at every elementary school within 50 miles & the one daycare in the area. I am technically employed by the substitute agency, but I have not received one call or job offer. My loans are officially in full repayment so as each month passes our savings is drained more and more and now we are in a state of urgency. I know God has a plan and he promises to provide for our needs. I'm deeply looking forward to witnessing the miracle he pulls to get us out of this. (I've recently contacted my loan companies and I've been able to significantly reduce my monthly payments. Praise Jesus! However, the gas and electric companies really don't care that I'm unemployed.)

The third situation going on that makes me cry a lot would be all this trouble trying to conceive (TTC). If you're one who doesn't want to hear about conception and ovulation just skip this paragraph and know it's not a fun pool to swim in. So you'd think after 16 months of trying without success I'd be used to disappointment right? Well you're wrong. On December 12 I began my first round with the fertility drug Clomid and I was CONVINCED it was going to work. I had eagerly calculated every possible due date and was preparing my body for pregnancy with prenatal vitamins (I've actually been on these since the beginning of TTC), folic acid, baby aspirin (I take this because of a blood disorder to encourage my body not to clot a baby), plenty of water and sleep, no alcohol or caffeine, etc. I had decided how I was going to announce my pregnancy to everyone from my husband to my mom & sis to facebook. I used a home ovulation prediction kit (OPK) and tested every day to see when my body was ovulating. I finally got a positive on Jan. 1 and was so excited as we had thought there was a chance that my body wasn't ovulating at all. But here I am not pregnant. (Some of you more experienced gals will probably say it's too early to tell, but...) I do not feel pregnant at all. I've already had a few negative tests and I have no symptoms of early pregnancy. In fact I have a few symptoms of normal PMS. (Like being emotional, but I told you I'm depressed so it's hard to know what's related and what isn't.) And the strongest reason I'm convinced I'm not pregnant is a gut feeling or "mother's intuition." This disappointment is so much greater than I expected. My first reaction was, "I want to stop trying." I never wanted to feel this way again. (Again, the depression isn't helping me sort through any of this...) I even told Crockett I was so discouraged and felt sure that I would never be pregnant. I told him we should stop trying because it's never going to happen and it's just going to break my heart each cycle when I'm not. (I've been a REAL joy to live with these past few weeks. Can you tell?) I had given up. But then there are days when I'm hopeful that it will happen one day and that God is just watching out for me. I've heard his constant reassurance in my quiet time and in Bible study, church, and Sunday school. Over and over the message has been this: God is sovereign and he knows what he's doing. I know nothing about my life and what's best for it. God knows what's coming and he prepares me for it the best way possible. I need to trust in his timing and be at peace with his plan.

While this is something I know in my heart, it hasn't been easy putting it to application every day. I've had to constantly drown myself in worship and the word to feel relief from my sadness. I am so incredibly thankful that I have this joy and hope. If I didn't have the Lord through this I seriously don't know how I'd be sane. How do people who don't trust God with their future deal with this? Where is their comfort? I cannot fathom it.

And the most painful thing I've experienced so far during this season of fire... my sister's divorce. How can someone else's divorce have an effect on me you ask? Well, she is my little sister and when she is hurting I either need to fix the problem or comfort her. In this situation I can do neither. And the second part to this pain I feel is outrage which is coming from blatant disregard for God and his commands. The sin that is happening is making me want to pull my hair out! My sister is walking through the most difficult thing she has ever faced and I'm 30 hrs away. The amount of disgusting sin that is playing out during this whole process makes me want to act and I can't, nor would it help. I want to grab these people in my sister's life and shake them until they repent. I want to yell at them with explicit vocabulary until they see the truth. I want to forcefully move them out of the country. I have even dreamed about how much easier it would be if some of them just somehow died. I know!! That's terrible! But now you know the extent of my anger. I'm not just annoyed or bothered, I actually feel murderous. (I have repented of this and am begging the Spirit on a DAILY basis to give me grace to deal with these people. I'm also living in a constant state of reminding myself, "But by grace go I." I did nothing to avoid ending up like these people. The fact that I am saved and see my sin and strive not to live in rebellion has NOTHING to do with me and my awesomness. Every ounce of grace I have I received from Christ. He saved me. He continually reveals my sin. He has forgiven me and He alone gets the glory.)

One more thing that hasn't been fun: a ridiculous sleep pattern. For some reason about a month ago I got into a bad habit/pattern of staying awake till 3-5am and sleeping till 2-4pm. No matter what I did I couldn't break it. I'd set my alarm to wake up early, stay awake all day hoping I'd be tired enough to fall asleep at a decent hour only to be wide awake until 3am. I'd force myself to get in bed at 10pm only to lay there tossing and turning for hours. But I can finally report that (I think) this problem has been solved. I have been praying before bed that God would grant me peaceful sleep, (When I was sleeping it was AWFUL. Waking every few hours and having bad dreams.) and the past week or so has been great. I have been asleep before midnight and awake before noon. :) One of the things helping (besides prayer) is turning our bedroom back into a normal room and not a cave. Ever since we got married Crockett has needed/wanted black-out curtains in our bedroom. Now that the sunlight (what little there is) reaches my room I am waking up!

During the peak of all this yuck in my life, husband was on a 14 day duty stretch which was AWFUL. If they gave out awards to the best military wives can I just tell you how many ways I would NOT get that award? I was beyond frustrated. Not at Crockett, but at the situation which manifested itself in the form of anger and resentment to the Coast Guard. The CG stationed us in stupid Michigan where there is no sun and no jobs. The CG put me 1500 miles away from my family when they need me and I need them. The CG made my husband work 14 days in a row (during ovulation when we're trying to conceive). Never mind that we volunteered for this, they give us excellent benefits, my husband makes twice as much money as he was making at his previous job, and he could be gone for months at a time, not just days. There was absolutely no silver lining during this time. I was determined to blame the CG and could not be reasoned with. I have seen the light and realize it isn't the CG's fault. This is just a season of my life that is difficult, but with every season I will give praise to the God of glory. I will walk with him who loves me through this storm and I know at the end of it I will be closer to my God and know him more intimately which makes all this yuck mercy in disguise.

So I have been jobless, depressed, barren, outraged, and alone. Pray for me would ya?

In the midst of this fire here is the truth that I'm standing on:
-God is good and faithful.
-My husband adores me.
-My sister is SAFE in her Father's hand.
-God will stand up for her when no one else does.
-God's vengeance will be greater than  mine. Justice WILL be served.
-Joy and hope are not found on this earth.
-My life and what becomes of it is not about me.
-Having a job and being a mother are not my purposes in life.
-No matter how long Crockett is gone he will come home eventually.
-This too shall pass.
-I'm NOT home yet.

This was a long one; congrats for making it through!

My Love Story

     When I was a little girl if you had asked me, "Who are you going to marry?" I would have said, "My best friend." It would have been a silly question. I had seen enough fairy tales and happily ever afters as a young girl to know that you were supposed to grow up and marry your best friend. As an adolescence, the answer to that question would have been the same. I was determined to have my own Disney princess story and I had already dubbed my only constant friend the role of prince charming.

     My best friend was someone who I had known all my life and had always been there for me. As a kid I liked him because he would play with me on the playground and sit by me in Sunday school. What else did I need from a friend? As a teenager he was my confidant because no matter what I was going through I always ran to him and he was there with a shoulder to cry on. He was an all American boy with an all American dream, to be in the Army. It's all he ever talked about and all he ever dreamed of. When he was finally able to pursue that dream I made my feelings on the matter crystal clear. "NO." It was all I ever said. Until the Army rejected him due to medical problems and my reply to the news was a resounding, "YES!" But that wasn't going to stop him. Shorty after realizing his Army dreams were a dead end he became a Marine. 

     I was devastated and scared to death for two reasons: 1. The obvious. It was 2006 and we were still sending troops to Iraq and I just knew he would be gone before I could even process what was happening. 2. I was going to have to find someone else to be my husband.

     He knew me well and before leaving for his first tour in Iraq he said to me, "Sweetheart, you're the kind of girl that needs to be held. You can't do this." At the time I protested, telling him I could do it and I would be brave. Deployment would be fine. But he was right and we both knew it. At that time in my life the very last thing I needed was more abandonment. I had enough issues to land me in counseling for years and I wouldn't have been able to throw deployed husband to the mix. It was bad enough I was facing a deployed best friend.

      I was angry with him for a while, but two years later I met a boy who had no intentions of joining the military. (I checked.) He had once wanted to be a pilot in the Air Force, but learned that he would never be able to due to his color blindness. I watched him become a man and within two years of knowing him, he was my husband.

     Then the strangest thing happened. Suddenly I found myself alone on my second wedding anniversary because my husband was in boot camp. Talk about a surprise twist in life! I was a military wife after all. The difference however was in the man I married.

     You see, for my best friend the military was his dream, but for my husband I am the dream. While my husband loves his job very much and does it extremely well, he ultimately sees it as a means to provide for his family. I know that when he is gone he'd rather be home. He is a dedicated servant of Christ and a fierce servant of one woman, me. Everything he does is with my best interest at heart. It is incredibly easy to submit to a man who I can trust. I trust that in every decision he makes he seeks the Lord's will and then makes the decision he feels will benefit our family the most. 

     I had always expected my best friend to become my husband, but what happened was just the opposite. My husband became my best friend. Fourteen days after briefly meeting at a football game we were in a committed relationship headed straight to marriage. For us it wasn't a slow realization that your friend was becoming to mean more. It was an instant recognition between two souls that were created by the God of the universe to go through this life as one. I didn't meet a boy, get to know him, become his friend, and then fall in love. I met my love, got to know him, and then became his friend.

     So in the end I did get my fairy tale. Christ is my prince who saved me from certain death, and my husband is my compliment who loves me unconditionally. What more could a girl want than a prince to save her life and a love to share that life with?

And just like that, you lose control

I am the girl who struggles deeply with patience, hates the unknown, has every detail of the next year planned as well as a pretty good broad life plan, and does not like change. So you can imagine my surprise when my husband tells me he wants to join the military. This was never part of our plan and I didn't even take him seriously. But after a week of hearing him talk about it I began to entertain the possibility and told him to explore his options. About a month later he's filling out the Air Force application, studying for the test, working out, talking to a recruiter, and meeting with advisers to rearrange his fall schedule. It looks like this is going to happen. But the most surprising thing throughout this entire process hasn't been Crockett's sudden new direction, it's been my reaction to it all. I have had such a peace and even excitement about all of it...

About 3 months or so ago I began to feel God putting missions on my heart. There was constant affirmation that this was his calling, from the book we studied in home group to countless sermons to the way it kept popping up in conversation, but most importantly that I couldn't shake the desire to get out there and do something for His name's sake. I talked to Crockett about it and he seemed interested, but didn't think there was an immediate plan concerning missions in our future. So I sat back with it and tucked it away, trusting God's timing would reveal it all. And then Crockett sprang the military on me. Once again, I feel a strong desire to go; to just drop everything and run with this. I feel like this is what God was preparing me for. The opportunity to travel with the military and move from base to base every 1-2 years could be completely terrifying if I thought about it from a "me" point of view. I won't be able to maintain friendships. I won't be able to settle in a career and climb the ladder. I won't be able to watch our children grow up in the same house and mark their heights each year on the door frame. I won't get to find a church home and grow there over the years. But the overwhelmingly great news is it isn't about me! There is so much I'm going to get to do to bring glory to God! I get to travel his beautiful creation and meet tons of people to share His gospel with. I get to be an example of God's everlasting faithfulness and provision through the trials and pressures that come with deployment and separation from my husband. I get to raise my children in a realm of uncertainty teaching them that our only hope is in Christ and he is our constant source of comfort and provision. I get to be an ambassador for Christ in a way I never dreamed of for myself. I am so excited about this because I know that God's plan is always the very best. He knows what will bring him glory and me joy and any time he wants to redirect my feet or step in and turn me in another direction he is more than welcome to take the lead. In the past I have struggled with this, no, battled with this. I have constantly wanted to tell God what is best for me and what will lead to my joy, but this time is different. The Holy Spirit has graciously lead my heart to trust. My soul is at peace. I know that Crockett is following Christ so I have no fear in following him. I am so blessed to be married to a man I can trust to follow the Spirit's leading. Our family is in for a wild ride we never saw coming, but I can honestly say I am so excited to see what God is going to do and how he is going to use me and allow me to be a part of his glorification. All praise is due to Him!