Life More Abundantly

I have found a great deal of encouragement from other bloggers as I walk this weird path of “later in life” pregnancy. The longer I face this, the more I realize that while Jonathan and I would have never said it out loud, we had come to a place where we didn’t expect to get pregnant. Isn’t that how God works? He waits until he’s the only possible answer, and then he shows up, just so no one can blame it on someone else. But we humans always find a way to do it anyway.

Anyway, I have really enjoyed reading Coastal’s candid struggles through months of unsuccessful attempts at nursing. And her latest two posts that are so filled with maternal love, despite the infant fussing that is the subject of the posts. I am reminded that she is almost exactly a year ahead of me on this journey, and I am seeing hope for myself, as I read her hope while in the midst of this stage of child rearing.

Then I read this fantastic post by Shannon over at Rocks in My Dryer. She is several years ahead of Coastal and me, and she includes this paragraph of hope for people like us:

It gets easier, I’d whisper to my bleary-eyed self. They sleep and they reason and they take charge of their own bodily fluids. They make you laugh and they feed the dog and they remember where you put the car keys. They become functioning, delightful little people who can read the notes you leave them. It gets easier. It really does.

And after offering her readers that hope, she includes this post and this post about her sons, that emphasize her point. It makes me think that with God’s grace I can do this thing called parenting. It gives me hope that all of the joys I expect from parenting are really waiting, even when I can’t see them through the veil of sore gum induced tears.

So the reason I blog this today, is that Shannon just posted that she’s always got the blahs in February, and even though I have this puny little blog with my 30 visitors a day, I wanted her to know that the Lord has used her to chase away my own hormone induced “fears for the future” blahs. Another reminder that God is at work in your life, for the building up of the Body of Christ, even when you feel like the toilet in the temple of God.