a tisket a tasket

Today I went to a "tea". Now before going to Harvest Community Church, I had never heard of a "tea" but what an amazing time! Gayla was kind enough to invite all those ladies who helped plan the Women's retreat at our church to a lovely tea at her home. We ate from china and real silver! It was a fabulous time to get together and fellowship with some of my favorite ladies! We had a chance to discuss next year's retreat and have already thought of a theme! How exciting!I thought it was particularly amusing that I drove my bike to the tea. Should one drive a motorcycle to a tea? Someone in England is going to spit on me for that one! Well, we all thought it was kinda funny so Gayla insisted I have my photo taken on the bike with a dainty little teacup.

had a bad day...

Did you ever have one of those days? I know that tortures a cliche' but man, was today one of those days. To start it was Monday morning {which always takes a measure of grace to get going} and I woke up and got my period. Well, that's really no big deal to most, but when you are trying so desperately to get pregnant, that means another disappointing month and another month of trying. So, that started things off just right. I left my house a 6:05am and it generally takes me 25-30 minutes to get to work, but today since PennDot just embarked on a new fix the road adventure {closing ten miles of road to do one mile of work} , I got to work at 7:15am...late. I got to work to find that I had an enormous workload today because I am covering for a friend while on vacation. So, yeah I spent the day treading water trying to figure out exactly what I need to do for my co-worker while she is off. It all got topped of by getting caught in a rain storm on my motorcycle. So yeah, I was pretty grumpy today. And, I am so glad that Monday is over because Tuesday can only get better. I spent the day seconds away from tears or from eating the face off of everyone that came within three feet of me, but now as I sit in the silence of the evening, it doesn't seem so bad. Everyone has bad days. Thankfully, mine are few and far between. And, thankfully, just because I have a bad day doesn't mean that God loves me any less. And, I think that it helps you to appreciate the good days too. So, here's to having a bad day.So, what am I going to do now? Well, pie and icecream and a warm foot bath with lots of bubbles....that always make things better.....

This is my mom and I with my motorcycle!

Isn't it fabulous?

Mama Motorcycle

Have you ever felt like you were given a reality check? One month ago, I had a major reality check. I was eating dinner at a restaurant in downtown Pittsburgh and my cell phone rang. It was my dad and he called to tell me that my mom was in a car accident. I was horrified and my husband and I got in the car and made the three hour trip home to be with her in the hospital. She had fallen asleep at the wheel on her way home from work and totaled the car. If you could see the car, you would be amazed that anyone survived the wreck. She escaped the crash with a compression fracture of the spine which was surgically repaired one week after the accident. The Lord had His mighty hand on my mom that day. And, even though we were thankful that she was alive and with us, my dad was afraid that he was going to have to sell their motorcycle because she wouldn't be able to ride with her back injury. Well, let me tell you, my mom is an amazing strong woman. She is able to ride and this weekend she and my dad drove down here to the Days of Thunder Motorcycle rally. What a blessing! The Lord not only saved her life but allowed her to continue to ride which she loves so much. Here is the picture of my mom and dad when they arrived at my house on their Harley!

Praise the Lord

Sometimes I have a hard time being thankful. I don't know why, but it seems like society conditions us to be unthankful and dissatisfied with the things that have happened in our lives. Unfortunately sometimes I fall into the rut of comparing myself and my life to others and I get caught having some ridiculous inner dialogue that goes something like this "...well if I had that I would be happy, or If I looked like her I would be satisfied, or why can they have a baby and we can't?" So, I have been working on that. I have been trying to really spend time praising the Lord and just being thankful for all of the blessing that he has graciously given me. I have been reading this book entitled "31 days of Praise" by Ruth Meyers. It's just a little book filled with devotions that just help you to really be thankful and praise the Lord. I wanted to share a little piece of it with you.

"Thank you my gracious and sovereign God, that You have been with me and carried me from the day of my birth until today...that you have known my whole life, from beginning to end, since before I was born...and that you wrote in Your book all of the days that You ordained for me before one of them came to be.

Thank You that in Your gracious plan to bless me and use me, You've allowed me to go through hard times, through trials that many people go through in this fallen world. How Glad I am that You are so good at reaching down and making something beautiful out of even the worst situations!

I praise you that the things that happened in my past, both enjoyable and painful, are raw materials for blessings, both in my life and the lives of others."

These words are a reminder to me that my life is not horizontal. It's not about me and "them". It's not about me feeling like I am somehow short changed on certain issues. My life {and my husband's, of course} is VERTICAL! It's about He and I. He has a plan for Seth and I and even though I don't get His timing or what He is doing, he knows us and our desire to serve Him. So, today I praise the Lord because He has never left me.

The Journey

It has taken me some time to catch on to this "blog" thing. I have never been much for getting online much and I have never been disciplined enough to keep a diary or journal. I remember buying a pretty little leather bound book and vowing to begin to journal regularly so that I could share my past with my kids some day. That lasted about three days each entry shorter than the last and eventually resulted in my house being peppered with pretty little books all with some small blurb about my life. I have always thought that keeping a journal would be a nice way to look back on life, but apparently I do not feel too strongly about it since I can't seem to bring it to fruition! So, anyhow, I am trying to introduce something that if I did journal, I would journal about. My husband and I have been married for five beautiful years. I married young, only 20, but if you knew me you would know that I am not a patient person. I have always been one who is always chomping at the bit waiting for the next big thing to happen in my life. So, when my husband didn't want to have kids right away I was just heartbroken. Of course my emotions were in no facet connected to my common sense. My husband grounds me and helps me to think less with my emotions and a little more with my head. So, in seeing his perspective, I agreed that we should wait until the "right time". Fast forward to last year-finally Seth agreed that we could start trying! I was elated! I pitched the birth control pills and announced to everyone that we were going to start trying to have a baby. I was and still am surrounded by babies and pregnant people. My sister in law has FIVE girls and my other sister in law two girls and two boys. I know that we have never celebrated a holiday together without someone being pregnant in my family. So, they passed down all their maternity clothes to me and the bassinet and all the other things that they thought I could use. All the while my girl friends from church are all getting pregnant and some even for the second and third time. At one point I had NINE friends who were pregnant between church and work. It was nuts. So, yeah we have been trying now for what seems like seven years to a very impatient girl. A couple of months ago I went to my gynecologist and she decided that she wanted to start doing tests on me to see what was going on. She said that since I have endometriosis {a condition where your uterine lining grows outside the uterus in a web like pattern connecting to organs and causing scar tissue and sometimes infertility} getting pregnant could be a challenge. So she scheduled my for a hysterosalpingogram. That is a test where they inject dye into your fallopian tubes to make sure they are not occluded in any way. Let me tell you, that was the absolute most painful thing I have ever experienced in my life. I will spare you the details, but it was bad. So fast forward again to today, still not pregnant. She wants to do an endometrial biopsy now which mean pointy knives down there which I am not crazy about. Between the tests and doing the ovulation kits, it really takes the fun out of trying. It makes it awful. So, how do I feel about everything? It hurts and I am sad. I am at the point where I don't want to do a hundred different tests. I just want to rest and let the Lord have this. I am so impatient and sometimes I feel somehow that the Lord is obligated to give me the desires of my heart. And, that is a big mistake. The Lord doesn't owe me a thing. In fact, I have already been blessed far beyond what I deserve or could ever earn by my own merit. After all, He saved me and has given me ETERNAL life. If He was to never give me another blessing, I would still never be worthy of the gift He has already given me. So, here is what I have to say. Lord, it's yours! I give you my fears and the sadness. I give you my desire to start a family. I don't compare myself to others and justify why I feel that somehow I may be deserving. Instead I give myself wholly to you. After all, it says in Jeremiah 29:11 that you have a plan for me and that it's a plan for good and not for harm, for a hope and future. I believe that and entrust this to you.

The BIG debate

Many of you who read this blog do not know me. Also, many of you who read this blog are different from me too. After all, God made us all different. That being said, everyone out there is welcome to to read my blog, but there is no reason to be judgemental about the things that make us different or the things that I endorse in my life that you may not. When I started this blog I was naive about how nasty people can be. And frankly, I talked with my husband about taking this blog off the net all together. But He is an amazing man and encouraged me to stand firm in who I am and not be ashamed. Even with that being said, it is not necessary to use a blog as a mask to be judgemental and hurtful to others. While I like tattoos and use them as an opportunity to show the world who I am through Christ and what He has done for me, I am not forcing them on any of you. I love all people tattooed or not. It's a non issue. Maybe we should all show a little grace to one another because the Father has shown us all far more grace than we deserve.