The One Month Review

You might have thought I got a new book, med, or workout program to tell you about, but nope. I’m here to give my one-month review of marriage. Because GUYS, I’ve been married one month today. :0

Let me just start out by saying that marriage is literally the best. I love being a wife (and yes, we use husband and wife obnoxiously and don’t care.) But I also believe in full honesty and openness so I want to give you the good parts and the hard parts. I also like to end on a high note, so you get to read the hard stuff first.

I would say that over the last month, the more I grow to love marriage, the more I grow to hate divorce. I get to see firsthand the confusion and heartbreak that it brings to so many people. Our sin brings destruction and I despise it. And I’m oh so thankful for a God who restores, heals, and binds up his brokenhearted people. SO many times I have cried out, “Lord! I don’t have the grace for this! I don’t have the strength to do this task!” And yet every time he has been faithful to supply it. My reliance on the Lord has increased significantly because I absolutely cannot live out of my own strength.

On a practical level, the hardest thing for me so far has been the kids’ schedules. It is hard for me to keep track of when they are here and when they are at their Mom’s house. It’s very hard to let them leave and I actually didn’t expect that. Everyone told me, “Oh that will be so nice! You and Shawn will have time together by yourselves!” Don’t get me wrong- we are very intentional when the kids are away to pour into each other and our friends but we don’t look forward to them leaving. Every time they leave my heart breaks a little and I immediately want them back. It is much harder than I anticipated. So we pray. We pray for the protection of their hearts, souls, and minds. That what they learn here will be brought into their minds wherever they are.

Yet the good parts of marriage far outweigh the struggles. It is a true blessing to live life with your favorite person. We are better together than we could ever be apart. Somehow we glorify the Lord in a more complete way as ONE than we did separately.

It is a special joy to be at home every day when Shawn gets off work. That’s my favorite part of the day. When he walks in the door and says, “Hello, wife!” (Did I mention we love those words?) Shawn is a special kind of person who helps with everything. From cooking to dishes to laundry to cleaning the pellet stove- you name it and he will jump in. I love that he disregards all stereotypes and thoughtfully helps wherever needed.

It is a blessing to have children to take care of. For someone who currently can’t have children, this is a very precious thing. I know this sounds weird, but every time I fold the kid’s laundry, I cry. It is not a chore that has to be done, but a sign that I have someone to CARE for, little ones to love and show Christ to. It is a privilege to braid hair, pick out clothes, teach cooking and baking skills, have nerf wars, read Proverbs, pray together, and the list goes on and on.

Dear people, please don’t ever see your children as burdens. Dear readers, don’t see your husband as a problem. As the world looks at family in this way, I want to look at them in the way God sees it. HUGE BLESSINGS.

So there you have it. Married life is awesome and I love it. There are definitely hard parts but those things cause me to rely on Christ more and I’m thankful for that. Overall I would have to recommend it- 11 out of 10. 🙂

 

I had a Dream

This may be one of the most personal, open, and honest posts I have ever written and it was hard to write. But I was telling this story to someone last week and it really encouraged them so I thought I would share it here. I should be writing a medical update since I was at Cleveland Clinic on Friday but that will have to wait. 🙂

A while back I was on this medication that caused me to have nightmares. Now before this, I had really not had very many dreams. At all. I rarely ever dreamed, good or bad. But something about this medicine suddenly cause an influx in dreams. They were only bad dreams and they were very, very vivid. The kind that you wake up from in a panic or wake up crying. Sometimes they were so vivid I would wake up and had already jumped halfway out of bed before I realized what was happening. Every night I would climb into bed and pray that I would have no dreams that night.

One night, I had a dream. I dreamed that I was pregnant and gave birth to this tiny little baby. It was so small that I could hold it in my hands only. This is really hard for me to write and some of you are going to think I am crazy, but did you know you can love something in a dream? I don’t know how that’s possible, but I loved that tiny little human in my dream. Shortly after it was born, some soldiers broke into the hospital where I was which was a big room with a bunch of people in it. I was going to spare the details but I think I’m going to tell the complete story. One of the soldiers grabbed the baby from my hands and killed it by stomping on it with his boot. And I woke up crying.

These are the kinds of dreams I mean. I don’t read into dreams or try to interpret them; I just take them as dreams. For days after I would think of that dream and still cry because of the love I felt for that baby. How can you love something in a dream? That’s ridiculous, right? The months went by and the pain of that dream slowly faded until I didn’t think about it anymore. I came off of that medicine, the dreams stopped, and I praised the Lord!

Fast forward to two weeks ago. Suddenly, that dream came to my mind in the middle of the day. And not once, but 4 times that day. And the next day. And the next. And I found myself thinking about it a lot. I prayed and asked God why it was coming to my mind and that he would fill my thoughts with things that were pure and lovely. I would recite Phil. 4:8 every time it came into my head.

One day I was talking with Natalie, just exasperated that I couldn’t figure out why that dream kept coming to mind. She asked if I had been thinking about babies or pregnancy or anything like that. And it suddenly hit me. Like a light bulb moment. I had had one thought a week or so earlier that if I started to date someone, at sometime I was going to have to tell him that I can’t be pregnant.

You see, you can’t be pregnant while on seizure medicine because it almost always causes severe birth defects in the baby. It is still possible to have epilepsy and have babies, you just have to come off your medication and go through a process with your doctor. And while I wasn’t anticipating being pregnant anytime soon, I realized that I hadn’t fully given that desire over to the Lord yet.

It’s odd how God uses stuff in our lives sometimes. How a dream from months before was used to show me an area that I needed to pray about and be at peace with. And the dream has vanished. I haven’t thought about it once since that day. But I am thankful that God used it to bring me to the place where I am now. I don’t plan to be pregnant anytime soon but I am confident in God’s will in that area and will cross that bridge when it arrives and I wasn’t able to say that honestly before.