Hearing Intuition

This past Saturday was one of “those” days. I was kind of pissy with my husband, and had been for two days. He hadn’t really DONE anything, I was just feeling unloved and felt like it was ALL HIS FAULT! Unfortunately, or fortunately, we still have to converse and do things together on the weekends. 😉  

One of those things we did was take the kids to Goodwill to scope out Halloween outfits. I happen to know that my neighbor just spent $60 on outfits and I wasn’t willing to do that. Halloween isn’t even a day I particularly like, but my kids love friends and candy, so I pretty much indulge them… on my budget. 

When we got there, I directed the kids and the husband, who I was mad at, to the Halloween outfits and I bee-lined it for maternity. My 13 year old joined me shortly after, said two of the kids were fighting and she had just decided to wear something from home. I glanced over and saw my husband with the other kids and went back to perusing maternity.

When  my 7 year old joined me in maternity and said she didn’t know where daddy went, I took her back over to the Halloween outfits and helped her find a few things to try on. We tried those on and then I said “We have to find your dad, NOW”. 

I knew that something wasn’t right. Call it intuition, a sixth sense, something in the air… it was time to find him. 

The store was really busy. The two girls and I started looking up and down the aisles. Finally, a few aisles in, I saw him walking towards me. He was stumbling and looked seconds from passing out. I said “Omigosh. You are NOT okay”. I rummaged through my purse, thankful we had just been at Walgreens and I had asked him to pick up an orange juice for me. I was even more thankful that I had only taken a sip out of it and then stuck it in my purse. I handed him the OJ and said “drink this now”, but he was beyond comprehension. 

I remembered seeing chairs by the shoe department and my daughter dragged one over for him. He finally drank the OJ, but I could tell it wasn’t enough. I had my older daughter grab a juice out of the cooler in the front that I had just seen 5 minutes before finding him. 

He sat for a while, we got his blood sugar back to normal and then I thanked God that I had listened to my intuition. My intuition to find him, my intuition to have him purchase an orange juice that I didn’t drink. I shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn’t listened. 

In retrospect, he said the store was much less confusing when he didn’t have double vision, and I said that people probably thought he was just another drunk in Goodwill. 😉 

And that anger I harbored towards him? It went away with the low blood sugar. Suddenly, it didn’t matter anymore. 

Thank God. 

Sunday Morning Confession

I don’t have the time or energy to beat around the bush, so I will start with the confession:

I haven’t been to a church service in quite a while. 

I’ve been to CHURCH. I’ve read my bible. I’ve prayed to God. I’ve heard sermons on line. I give thanks every day and I try to live more and more like Jesus with every breath that I take. I just haven’t actually stepped foot into the sanctuary and heard the sermon from my pastor, at my church.

It started when my kids were sick and we obviously couldn’t go. Then my brother passed away and I couldn’t make myself go. The day I specifically remember, I was on the verge of a breakdown and wanted to break down here, with my family, not there with my extended family. Then we were out of town. Then when I came back, I just wanted to relax, in the comfort of my home, with my husband.

Now, here we are today, and I don’t really have a perfectly good reason NOT to go (well, unless you count being up too late, praying for a friend that is in Hawaii and was evacuated due to the tsunami warning… and then the heartburn that made me so sick), but honestly I am not sure we are going to. I don’t even know why. I am not disenchanted with the church, nothing happened to make me not want to go. I love my church and I love my church family. I love that the pastor preaches from the bible, but is able to open my eyes and makes everything make sense. I also love being surrounded by people who live, love and believe the way I do.

So, if I take another day off, is it bad? Hmmm, I know some of you who will say yes, and some of you who will say no. I also know some people who will say “If you have to ask the question, you already know the answer”. And, yah, I actually wholeheartedly agree. 🙂

Some people take time off of church for sports games, work and vacation. Is it really any different if I want to take time off of church for nothing?

Now that it’s out there, I hope you will pray for me about it, rather than tell me how horribly wrong I am. And now that it’s out there, chances are I’m going to end up showing up at church. It always seems to happen. Once I blog a “confession”, such as my I hate pregnancy post, I feel better about it. I have actually felt better about my pregnancy since I hit publish.

So, perhaps, I will hit publish here, and you will see me back in church. 🙂

Pregnancy and Me

This is a horrible thing to say, I think, so I am going to just get it out of the way. 

I hate pregnancy. 

Don’t get me wrong. I love the end result. I (obviously) like what led to getting pregnant. I love the idea of new life and I love that I KNOW this was planned by God and not me. (I have stories. I just haven’t felt comfortable enough to share them)

I don’t love the way I feel. I don’t love the way I look. I hate the emotions and the hormones, the pain and the feeling that my body is not. my. own. 

Pregnancy is not glamorous, unless you are a Hollywood star. Somehow Hollywood stars always look fabulous. 

I feel like I already stick out like a sore thumb when I show up somewhere with three kids. Then when someone notices that I am sporting a belly, I get the “look”, or I get the “comments”. (“You know what causes that, right?”. “You have 3, and you are having another?” (no, actually I have 4 and I am having another, but she doesn’t like to go anywhere with us))

My husband has been amazing through this whole pregnancy. More amazing than he was through the other three pregnancies. (don’t hurt yourself trying to figure that out, my oldest was gained through marriage, but she’s mine, all mine. No one nags her like I do. Ask her.) Even with as amazing as he has been, I don’t feel attractive to him. He can tell me I am, and I feel like he is just being nice. I look at myself in the mirror and say “how can he be attracted to THIS?”. I want to believe what he says, but the mirror doesn’t lie. (my thoughts and emotions probably do though)

Pregnancy has brought a lot of changes to our lives. Add it in with my husband losing two jobs within 6 weeks, having a whole summer off, starting a new job, homeschooling my kids and my brother dying, we are in change overload. I want things to be the way they were before I got pregnant, after my husband lost his job and gained a new one and before my brother died, but sometimes when changes come, it’s impossible to go back to the way things were before. 

So a lot of mornings, I wake up hopeful. Hopeful that the day is going to end better than it did the night before. By bed time, I am exhausted, emotional, worn out, teary eyed. I just want to pull the covers up over my head and ignore the world, which isn’t good at all for the guilt feelings that hit me at 4am when I realize that I wasted time moping that could have been better spent with my husband. Then I blame him… and me being pregnant. Because if I wasn’t pregnant…. yeah, never mind. 

Pregnancy is not kind to me. I have accepted it. I look forward to welcoming a little life to the world. I would be absolutely lying if I said I enjoyed this though. I know that this life will bring blessings to our lives, but I have threatened another life if that v-word is not scheduled in January. 😉

Do YOU enjoy pregnancy? Do you feel like your relationship with your spouse suffers when pregnant? (I do and I hate it) 

Please tell me I am not alone in these feelings. 

 

Blah, blah, blah

In the past three weeks, I have sat down exactly once to write a blog post. I made it about three paragraphs and gave up. Almost every night, though, or in the wee hours of the morning, I write an entire blog post in my  head. I think “Yes, that’s great! I will write it down in the morning”, and then I don’t do it. 

Last night I was reading a blog post that a friend commented on. I don’t even remember the name of the blog, but her husband had “hacked” into her blog and left a really sweet video message as her blog post for the day. She had several comments stating how much her blog meant to her readers. I thought “my blog will never mean that much”. 

Gulp.

Yes, I did. No matter how many times Lisa Jo has told me that MY words matter, I still fall victim to not believing that they do.

My brother died, but everyone has dealt with death at some time. I am pregnant, but a lot of mothers have been. I have a difficult child, like a thousand other people. I love my husband to the moon and back just like so many other women that I know! Why would I write about any of that? It’s all been said before by bigger and better bloggers. 

It hasn’t been said by me though. It hasn’t been typed from my computer, felt with MY emotions, told with my voice or read by my audience. (and no matter how small the readership is, each and every person who reads here matters) In the sea of a thousand other bloggers, my perceptions and experiences DO matter, because they are MINE and no one else can tell it like I can. (Just like I can’t tell it like anyone else can) 

So I am going to try this again. I am going to write and tell my stories and stop saying “blah, blah, blah” in my head. 

Just promise you won’t think “blah, blah, blah” when you read it. 🙂