Sovereign God

Timing is a funny thing.  There is not one thing that has taught me about the sovereignty of God more than timing.  I first learned this lesson during my junior year in college.  I wanted to date this guy...convinced that he was the guy that I had been "waiting" for. (as if I had been really "waiting" for much in my few short years in Aggieland...)  The deal was, though, we were serving in ministry together and the rule was that we could not date until after we were done leading/serving together.  We didn't make the best decisions that semester and we certainly felt like we were being cheated...I mean how could we possibly wait for 4 months for our ministry to be completed??? That was outrageous.  However, I quickly learned that the timing of the whole thing was purposeful.  And side-stepping "timing" lead us down a path that we both have wished we had done differently.  Really, side-stepping timing or forcing timing in any way will only hurt you and others in the long run.  

I think I questioned God and His timing when Ross came into my life and I knew our first date I was going to marry him...but through many difficult things, I then waited all summer to actually date him...and then marry him. What I thought would be this gorgeous winter wedding with poinsettias turned into a Texas August wedding.  Not what I had timed out...  Or when we decided we wanted to buy a house and made an offer that was quickly rejected only to have them call us and ask us if we still wanted it 3 months later.  I mean there have been so many things that you would have thought would have taught me that God is sovereign over timing but clearly I've needed more work...

So... Fast forward 11 years. (holy cow, I'm old.)  In the process of adoption (classes and paperwork), we find out we are pregnant.  Okay God... How does this work?  I have just bought a whole new smaller wardrobe only to then need a bigger one and these classes that we've spent hours in need to be put on hold???

So then, I'm 34 weeks pregnant, roll over in bed and my water breaks.  In case you are unfamiliar with water breakage...this means that no matter what, you are going to have a baby and probably in the next 24 hours.  My husband double checks that it's not just incontinence...thanks hun.  No, definitely not.  We quickly pack our bags and call my mom and head to the hospital.  (Shout out to my parents who had to be subject to God's timing too and missed a big and relaxing trip to Ruidoso to love on our big girls and let their lives be wrecked too.) Still in shock, the only thing I really say on the way to the hospital is "Well, I guess we are really not in control of a darn thing, are we?"  

I'm certain 34 is not what I had planned and hoped for.  I had a shower scheduled, a date night that was a surprise (ended up being to see Garth Brooks and we had to sell the tickets), and multiple nesting tasks to accomplish.  I also had a slew of things planned at work...including my yearly review and a class that I needed to take. (I should add that it was Emi's first day of school and two days later was Ave's first day EVER of preschool and then the first day of dance was on Friday...ahh...) Everything was nicely on the calendar and I had even allowed 3 weeks of nothing just in case she came when Emi came at 37.5 weeks.  No, 34 weeks was not my thought.  

From the moment we walked into the hospital, I heard the acronym "NICU".  I really wanted to be convinced that there was no way that we would be in the NICU...she was going to be strong.  But even in observation I verbalized that I wanted her in the Cook NICU and I was going to sign the paperwork to have her transferred.  

Sovereignly enough, I had just walked through NICU experiences with my best friend who had her 3rd baby at 29 weeks...These girls are going to rock our worlds people!  

Havi at the beginning of her journey

I knew that induction was necessary.  I wasn't having any major contractions.  But I was so grateful that she wasn't breech as we previously thought.  So induction seemed like a huge blessing.  All of Tuesday was set aside to prepare my body for labor.  LOTS of pitocin. LOT of antibiotics.  Lots of discomfort I could have easily handled at home. 

Then I realized my doula, who is also my photographer for birth, was at a conference and wouldn't be there...not only to get me through it, be there for Ross but also to take pictures.  So, I did all I knew to do.  I picked a close-like-family friend that knows her way around a camera.  She literally didn't miss a beat.  She was up at the hospital within hours with childcare set up for her kids and spending the night with me, my mom and Ross.  Bless bless community.  There's nothing like it, people!

So the next morning when nothing was headed in the right direction fast enough for me, the 3rd midwife! over my care suggests a balloon.  Sure!  I will do whatever a balloon is.  So with the help of the balloon and giant peanut ball (don't ask), real labor kicked in. I wasn't exhausted from long active labor, so this experience was different than the other two.  I was more present.  Which I had prayed for.  I wanted to be more present.  I was.  I knew transition was on it's way and hanging over the back of the bed, I wept.  I just beginning what would be a long grieving process. 

I went to the bathroom, gave myself what I like to call the "Ami Burr pep talk" (this is JUST HARD WORK) and went back out to the giant peanut ball.  Within moments, for the first time with any baby ever, I felt the urge to push.  Within moments and 2 pushes, Maelee Beth had arrived.  Active labor was around 4 or 5 hours. The room was filled with a large NICU team, but she was on my chest and screaming.  I really believed there was no need for all those crazy people to be there. But after a few minutes, she was given to them and within another few moments, they were helping her breath a bit.  And not long after she was in an incubator headed next door to Cook

Photo credit - Cassie Nickle - aka INCREDIBLE friend

...those blue roofs bring nothing but comfort to me. So I took most of the next week in stride.  But even now, as I write this, anxiety builds up and while Ive never been more thankful for that place, I know that things are not the way they ought to be...only partly.  The Kingdom is still COMING.  It's not fully here...

I had a phone call from the Dr. within minutes of her arrival at Cook.  Ross was with Maelee and the Dr, and we all talked on speaker phone.  He was amazing.  I went over there before ever going to my recovery room.  The Dr. was there again and had another long conversation with us.  I got to go back one more time that night to see her with Ross and his best friend. 

One of my closest friends visited me that night.  She told me I was on the ante-partum floor...I had wondered why there were monitors in my room.  They put me there cause I didn't have a baby with me and they didn't want me to hear all the other babies on the postpartum floor.  I was okay, then, but now it makes me cry.  I wanted her in my arms, studying her and getting to know her.  Instead of nursing all night during frenzy feeding, I was pumping all night.  Just not the same...

The next morning, I got up and got myself ready and looked GOOD so when the midwife got there she would definitely send me home/next door to be with my baby.  She did and I was there.  The first few nights I didn't spend the night.  What a weird and terrible feeling, but also peaceful to know she was in good hands.  So strange to leave your newborn...gut-wrenching and necessary.  

It's hard to write out all the details even though I wish I could... but those 8 days were hard.  I eventually started spending the night. At first so we could practice nursing and then to feed her exclusively because she was rocking nursing.  One day she was under bili lights and I didn't get to hold her...I cried all day.  You have incredible nurses for 12 hours and then they change...thankfully they were always followed by another great nurse...We were blessed.  Lots of feeding, pumping, temperature taking, convincing that she is getting lots of what she needs nutritionally.  It was just hard.  The Dr. had told me that over and over that I was allowed to be "grouchy" about our stay, but that she would go home when she was ready.  By the end I was grouchy.  And I was thankful for his continued permission.

It looked like every morning I would leave my two big girls.  I would help them get ready for the day and dress them and then leave them.  They would spend all day with Ross. Some days they would come eat lunch and dinner and sometimes just lunch or dinner.  The hardest part was that Emilynn was allowed back to see Maelee, but Averly was too young...you have to be 3.  At first she did awesome.  They both did.  But by day 4 and 5, Averly was a textbook sibling case and this child life specialist was having a rough time letting her be.  She completely melted down on day 7 with uncontrollable tears and crying.  She had still not even met her baby sister and she was having to say goodbye to me 3 or 4 times a day.  Ross and I were doing life completely separately hardly ever together. He was tired.  I was tired. Oh. My. Gosh.

Thank you, Jesus, for Cook Children's...for an indoor and outdoor playground, Build-a-Bear and yogurt shop and Tinkerbell projected on the wall at night.  THANK YOU!  We could not have done it without all the extras that we used.  And thank you for Starbucks and pumpkin spice lattes to make me feel normal.  At least Maelee Beth's hospital stay had a little bit of Disneyland mixed in.  

Maelee's Bear

And then we went home...  It was a long journey that people endure much longer than we had to.  And we really took it in stride...we did what we had to do.  And it wasn't the story we thought we would have.  And we still can't believe she is here.  But she is.  And God is so good.  And I don't know all the reasons yet for this story, but I know that it is part of the Glory Story God is writing.  

There have been lots of tears...tears of thanksgiving, tears of grieving, tears of life.  The timing isn't what I thought it would be.  The whole life of Maelee Beth has surprised us in the best possible ways.   Maybe this is the final lesson, but I doubt it.  

I can say this.  My hands have never been so open.  My heart has never been so undone and raw.  And I truly don't think He and I have ever been this intimate.  He is doing something in the undone that is making me.  I am wrecked and for the first time in my life I feel like I'm letting Him drive.  It's good. He's good.  

Surprises

So on February 12th my husband pulled off another incredible surprise.  If you know him, you know that he is incredible at surprises. And if you know me, even though I love that things are planned in life, I love, love a good surprise! Ross took me Downtown for an early Valentine's Day celebration. I thought that we were just eating at the Cheesecake Factory and heading home. We had a fabulous time eating fabulous food and cheesecake, drinking sangria and basking in the glory of an amazing date night.

And as we got in our car to leave Downtown, there was no plan.  I was so excited to spend the time with Ross and so giddy excited that I didn't care too much that there seemed to be no plan at all...until my husband quietly pulled into the valet line in front of the Ashton Hotel and pulled out a room key from the car console.  Wow. I was blown away!  I couldn't believe that he was serious.  He had not only planned this amazing surprise, he had prepared the room complete with music, candles (probably illegal), lingerie and all my overnight necessities.  It was amazing.  We shared an incredible evening, in an incredible room, enjoying each other fully.  We ordered room service, paid for an over priced movie, danced in the room, talked for hours...

It was almost a celebration as we moved into a new season.  We had a couple more adoption classes to go, and we were planning what that would really be like come fall to invite a kiddo into our lives.  I had recently lost over 20 lbs. and was really enjoying being healthier than I was the day I married Ross.  I had bought a slew of new clothes and Ross had told me that I could get a laser treatment done  on my glorious stretch marks that cover the majority of my tummy.  I was excited!  I haven't minded them, but after losing so much weight and wanting to wear a cute bikini again, it sounded fabulous!

It was just the best night ever!  It was a piece of Heaven on earth and it felt so amazing.  I got on the elevator the next morning in the same clothes I came in...felt a little scandalous.  I had been filled up and felt like a new woman.

On a more personal note, I was waiting on my cycle to arrive and was thankful that it had held off through our rendezvous. But it was Valentine's Day, and it still hadn't arrived.  I wasn't positive it was late, but I became a little sure that it had to be. So Sunday after church, I do what most women do, I went to the store for the routine "I need to be sure" pregnancy test.  So with the girls sleeping and Ross working on another house project, the next surprise of the week came.  We were going to have a baby. What!?!?  How was this possible?!? We had not been trying and doing all that we had ever done prevent it.  In our minds we were "done" with having biological children and moving into a new and different season of bringing new life into our home.

It wasn't a pretty picture for the next 24 hours.  There were tears, inappropriate comments, really, really hard moments.  Phone calls to best friends and mentors.  We were just a tad bit undone.  I immediately started grieving all the hard work and discipline that had given me a new body.  So did Ross. Straight up grief, y'all. What were going to do about adoption? People were going to ask..what was I going to say?  How long is it on hold? Was I ever going to lose the weight again after a 3rd pregnancy...I keep hearing it just gets harder. I am going to be sick again. I am going to be breast feeding for another year. My body wasn't only going to change, I was going to have to sacrifice it all over again...completely.

Yet in the middle of it all was a still, small voice and feeling of a powerful, loving, incredible God who just wrecked all my plans.  He is a miracle worker and a powerful God that wants to show up and show off and He did.  A part of my heart had wanted to do all those things again...sacrifice my body, breast feed, labor and feel the glorious feeling of bringing life onto Earth.  I had just grieved a little over a year ago that were "done" and I wasn't ever going to feel that feeling again.  And here it was. The beauty of growing life and ushering a new life into this world.

Thus began the hard.  I need to say that there was a part of me that really believed that this pregnancy was going to be easy.  So much so that I thought about not even getting my hormone levels checked like previous pregnancies. I just thought this could be easy since it was so unexpected.  My hormone levels were low so progesterone was prescribed right off the bat.  Lots of early appointments and a "confirmation of pregnancy" sonogram.  That's always comforting. Then it was time for the sickness to kick into gear. But I've been hell-bent on doing this pregnancy different.  Eating as well as I could, exercising, etc.  We went on our mission trip and our children got so sick back here at home.  They got my mom sick.  It was a long, long week of seeing Jesus work in full-force but also feeling the deep need to be with our kids who were struggling.  Since that mission trip week, there has been sickness non-stop in our home.  We have had round 2 of the horrible stomach bug. We have had allergy and sinus issues.  And on top of all of that I started bleeding.  Not just a little...a ton.  I had a moment the night it started (in the middle of our 2nd stomach bug) where my conversation with Jesus was, "If this is what it seems, I will still trust you. I will still know and believe that you are good. No matter what, you are good." It was a resolution to the most known common sense answer.  And honestly, it was an invitation to suffering well that I didn't want to accept, but in that moment, I said I would. And I needed to have that moment.

Honestly, if you aren't a woman reading this, you have no idea of what it feels like to bleed when you shouldn't.  Yes, we bleed each month. But when it's not timely, it's the first indication that something is WRONG.  For one week I bled and it got worse and worse.  No exercise, pelvic rest, rest, rest rest. That is not what I had planned in doing this pregnancy differently. I had two sonograms all indicating that this baby was GREAT!!  I honestly couldn't believe it.  It surprised me each time to see a little moving baby on that screen.  I couldn't believe that this baby was alive despite the fact that my body felt like it was falling apart.  After over a week, I went in for another exam.  We had found the source.  It's called cervical ectropion, and I'll spare you all the details.  But it was the source and most likely after a little cauterization, it would be cured.  However, the bleeding didn't stop for another week.  Then it finally did.  Honestly, that was another surprise too.  I didn't believe it ever would. I had resolved that it would last my whole pregnancy (and it may come back). To say that has been tough is a huge understatement.  It was an emotional roller coaster.  I wasn't sure what was happening.  I had asked the Lord several times for His perspective.  What was He seeing in all this brokenness and craziness?

His answer came in a verse.

"There is a river who streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells." Psalm 46:4

I just remember thinking every time I looked at this baby, that it was totally peaceful and calm. This baby knows it's Maker and knows that all is good.  There is a knowledge of the Lord and a relationship with Him that this baby already has.  The Lord said, "this baby is the a river that makes me glad."  Almost immediately the song..."I've got a river of life flowing out of me, it makes the lame to walk and the blind to see, it opens prison doors and sets the captives free, I've got a river of life flowing out of me..." came to my mind.

It has been nothing but joy since then.  I have been surprised and undone in the most incredible ways over the last several months.  It's not all been easy, but I see God differently. I know Him more. I've learned to be thankful in the moment, accept the grace in the moment and believe He'll be there in the next moment.  We are all so excited to meet this little one. We can't wait!

We don't get to choose.  If we say we want to follow Jesus and be a part of His Kingdom coming, expect Him to mess up your plans. I thought for a long time that my plans were part of my sanctification process. As it turns out, His plans are.  We listen and obey.  There is freedom in the unknown here. Cause there is a God who always knows.  He sees. He will indeed bring His glory...always.

And I love surprises!