My First Mother's Day

My day started out with Joshua and John bringing me breakfast in bed. The memory of Joshua carrying the plate in with his sweet smile will be one I never forget. Truth be told, I didn't actually eat breakfast in bed, but I certainly enjoyed having it brought to me.

And for the first time in a number of years I went to church on Mother's Day. Our church held a parenting presentation (their version of a baby dedication) and so we took part to commit ourselves to raising Joshua to know and love the Lord with all his heart, mind, body, and soul. I jokingly said this was the Lord's way of finally getting me to church on Mother's Day. :-)  Though I have every reason to celebrate this day, and I absolutely celebrate it, my heart is still very much with those who are hurting on Mother's Day. All morning long I couldn't help but think of how painful that service would have been for anyone dealing with infertility. I also think of those mothers who have lost their children, those who are estranged from their children, and those children who have lost their mothers, so many people are hurting on this day.

Almost all the other children being presented were babies, keeping a 2 year old still/entertained is a little more challenging. Fist bumps helped at one point. :-)

I don't remember what Joshua did just before this, but it was obviously funny/embarrassing.

My favorite one, us joined together in prayer as our Pastor prayed. Prayer is very important to me, so I love seeing that Joshua already has an interest in praying. He insists that we hold hands to pray at dinner time. Joshua does not say many words, but when we say "amen" he will often echo us with "men" - it is so cute.

After church, John made lunch and then I took a nap during Joshua's nap time. The rest of the day we just relaxed, talked to our families, and then John made dinner.

When we were in Korea, we bought a Celadon vase for occasions like Mother's Day when we want to remember and honor Joshua's birth mom. John bought two bouquets of flowers, one for me and one for his birth mom. I plan to take a picture of Joshua every year with the vase.These pictures were taken on my new iPhone, my Mother's Day present - I love it!!!

It is still hard to believe that I am actually a part of Mother's Day now. I feel so very blessed to be your mom Joshua JoonSeo.

"We should pray and not lose heart"

Just a quick update. We had a good time in Richmond - stayed at a very nice hotel, had a wonderful dinner, saw a very funny play (based on a Mark Twain story), and toured the capitol and a few sites in downtown Richmond. However, I will have to say that we will do a little more research in the future about the city we are visiting next time. I don't won't to offend anyone by saying this, but parts of Richmond are scary. It's nice, and then a block over kinda scary. It definitely added some tension to the trip :(

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day. I know there were several of my blogging friends who were celebrating their very first Mother's Day and I hope you all had wonderful days.

The fact that Sunday would have been my first Mother's Day was a thought I had been trying to avoid. But it came crashing in on me after reading another blog of someone who also would have been celebrating their first. I had a good cry, but I refused to allow myself to dwell in that place for long, thinking about what could have been. It isn't going to change anything.

John is on a short break from school, so I probably won't be posting much over this next week. We only have a week and a half until he starts his summer term.

I want to leave you with a quote about prayer from an article in my Perspectives class (my last class was last week). The article is "Prayer: Rebelling Against the Status Quo" by David Wells. This quote has stuck with me since I first read it and it has really encouraged me to pray. While I believe God works infertility for good as He has promised (Rom 8:28), I don't believe it is "normal" or as God originally established things.

"What is the nature of petitionary prayer? It is, in essence, rebellion —rebellion against the world in its fallenness, the absolute and undying refusal to accept as normal what is pervasively abnormal. It is, in this its negative aspect, the refusal of every agenda, every scheme, every interpretation that is at odds with the norm as originally established by God."

So I hope you will be encouraged to "pray and not lose heart" (Luke 18:1) about infertility or whatever issue you are struggling with right now.

"Waiting Time" not "Wasted Time"

Since getting the unexpected news that we will be waiting longer to adopt from Korea than we originally expected, I have been thinking a lot about how I want to use this time. I knew almost immediately after getting the news that I had to use this time in a positive way. I could choose to sit around and wallow in my sorrows or I could do some things I have always wanted to do. I don't want this "waiting time" to be "wasted time." I have to live the life I have, not put my life on hold until I have the life I want. And so I began to think about some things I would like to do.

The first thing on my list is to take an official and very long overdue honeymoon with my husband. He was in school when we got married, taking one of the prerequisites for his nursing degree, so we only got to have a long weekend away. After he was done with nursing school, he joined the Air Force, and then we were geographically separated for 15 months, and then infertility. We have had lots of weekends away by ourselves and other trips to visit family, but we have never gone on a week long trip with just the two of us. I feel like this is our last shot to take a real honeymoon. I should have enough leave saved up by December so the plan is take a trip over John's Christmas break. Location to be decided. I am definitely open for suggestions.

The second thing on my list is visiting my friend Wendi in Turkey. Her husband is a physician in the clinic where John was a nurse when we were stationed at Eglin. We initially bonded over our shared struggle with infertility, but she quickly became one of my closest friends. She has been such an amazing friend to me, always giving support and encouragement just when I need it. She and her husband, along with their two little miracles, are being assigned to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey this summer. Even before getting the news about the adoption delay, we had talked about having a "kill the time until the little one comes party" in Turkey. But I was wondering how it would work out time wise because "the call" to travel to Korea could have come when I was there. Now that won't be an issue. I am planning on leaving my job 2-3 months before we move to our next assignment, which will be next spring. So the plan is to go at that time. I can't wait! I have actually never traveled outside of the U.S.

The next thing on my list (and I promise this is the last travel related one!) is to go on a short term mission trip. I am praying for God's leading on this one. My heart has been touched by God for East Asia, but I am open to whatever opportunity He presents.

I mentioned that I had an information meeting last night in my previous post. It was for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Team in Training. I am going to be training to run a half marathon! And of course also raising funds and supporting The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I have never said a lot about this before on my blog, but in early 2008, my family received the devastating news that my sister had Hodgkin's Lymphoma. I called her last night to tell her about this before telling anyone else. I could tell she was really excited about it and it meant a lot to her. She is now over 18 months cancer free, praise God! Training for a marathon has been something I have wanted to do for a very long time. So after last week, I said why not now. And why not do it and at the same time raise money for a disease that has touched my family and so many others. I am starting with a half marathon and hopefully I can work up to a marathon and a triathlon later. I am going the run the Rock 'n' Roll Virginia Beach half marathon (13.1 miles) on September 5th. The kick off event is next Saturday morning and then training starts after that. I am going to try and start pre-training this week. Believe me, I need it. I have been so sporadic in my exercising since starting back to work.

Other things on my list are to go horseback riding, which I haven't done since I was a child and take advantage of all Washington, DC has to offer as far as museums and shows. I really want to go see a show or concert at Wolftrap.

Tomorrow John and I are heading to Richmond for an overnight trip. This is partly to give us a chance to reconnect after his very difficult school semester and partly to celebrate our "family of two" (love this Stacey) instead of dwelling on what we don't have. We try to plan something fun to do together on Mother's Day because it is such a difficult time of year for me.

I hope you all have a great weekend! I am praying for you my friends. For those of you celebrating your first Mother's Day as a mom, I hope it is a joyous celebration for you!

House Hunting - Please Pray

I went to Walter Reed Army Medical Center today to get blood drawn. Now I just have to wait to get the official results.

Thank you to everyone who prayed for me yesterday. It ended up being a pretty good day. I think being honest about my feelings and posting them here really helped. I was able to have a good cry and then move on. In the morning, John and I tackled a couple projects around my cousin's house as a way of thanking her for letting us stay at her house. She is away on a business trip until Thursday. John fixed a toilet, shelf, and door and I planted a few flowers on her deck and got it cleaned up. After that we picked up lunch and headed to Sligo Creek Park for a picnic. We took our Bible and spent some time reading and praying about next steps. Then we went and explored a neighborhood where we saw a house we liked. After we got home we called our moms, lounged around, had dinner, and then I watched the Celebrity Apprentice finale.

Last Friday we started our house hunting. Let me just say it did not go well. I was so discouraged, almost to the point of despair (my hormones may have been partly to blame). I can not understand how people expect to rent some of the houses we saw in the condition they are in - some of them were just awful. We found one house we liked. It had every feature we had hoped for and it was in a good location, but it had one major problem. It stunk. And I mean really badly. Initially, we thought (I think we were basically feeling desperate at this point) that maybe they just needed to get the carpets cleaned so we went ahead and filled out the application for that house. But after we got home and talked about it, we decided that the carpet probably needed more than a cleaning to get the smell out. It was kind of like a really, really bad dog (urine) smell, but with something else as well. Let me just say I would not be surprised to hear that someone or something died in that house. So we decided to look at a slightly higher price range and see if that helps us find what we are looking for. Thankfully, we were able to call our real estate agent prior to her submitting the application on the smelly house and so I don't think we will even be out the application fee. At the higher price range we found a few houses we are interested in seeing and we are going to see them today. Please pray for God's provision of a house for us and for wisdom and guidance for John and I. We really need to be in a house by May 21st when John has to start school. Needing something that is available immediately certainly limits us, but nothing is impossible with God. Thank you for praying. I know God is faithful and has promised to meet all our needs.

"And my God will meet all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus." Phil 4:19

Today

Today is Mother's Day. I would like to tell you that all I care about is honoring my own mother and stepmother, both of whom I love dearly. But I can't. This day is just too painful for me. I find it hard to even acknowledge its existence. This year I didn't send my own mother a card because I couldn't bear to walk into that section of the card store. Today I will join the many women who stay home from church because it is just too painful. My dear friend Wendi wrote a beautiful post yesterday about Mother's Day. It expresses how I feel so well. You can read it here. Here are a couple of the things she said to which I really related:

"My own mother understood that while I tried to celebrate her, my own pain was so great, it was difficult to acknowledge that this day even existed. It was selfish of me. But it was something I couldn't escape from."

"They will probably feel guilty, as I did. Guilty that I was unable to even celebrate my own mother in the way she deserved to be celebrated on that day because my hurt was so great. That one day was a culmination of everything I wanted and everything I did not have."

To my Mom, Karen, and my 2 sisters who are mothers, I hope you can understand. Please know I love you all so much. I don't know how to cope with this day other than to try to ignore it. My heart is just so heavy with grief today - grief for the children I don't have and grief for the children I lost. Had we not lost Johannah, I would be almost 27 weeks pregnant. After 4 1/2 years of infertility and loss, I am finding it difficult to believe I will ever be a mother. I have not lost all hope though, I have hope in the Lord. I believe He has a plan and purpose for John and I. The Lord has taught me that His plan is better than my own. His plan will be revealed in His time. I must wait upon the Lord. It is the waiting that is just so hard.