daylight savings...

I have not blogged in a long time, likely due to the fact that most of the time i spend at the computer typing has to do with history papers. But I have found a little time today to sqeeze in a new post so here goes.

It is november already. Two months down. Feels like eons to go. The workload has been doable but now i find myself moving into a portion of the semester where things start getting a little more intense. More papers, more reading, midterm exams, tests, and two BIG research papers. The added pressure is that I will not very well accept lower than an A on most these things and so i am pretty hard on myself. Unfortunately, i do not like studying or homework so that becomes a problem. It has been hard to balance the fulltime student with the fulltime wife. I feel like I am living two seperate lives right now. One is an hour away at school with my school people and school life and the other is here. Here is the life I like the best...mind you, I love being in school, but I just wish it integrated into my life a little better. I am starting to freak out a little about next year, knowing that I have to apply for Education before February 1st. That whole process in and of itself scares me...but I am forcing myself to push forward and look towards my goal. Still I am conflicted.

The conflict comes in relation to the fact that even though I am in school and planning this new course for my life, my other desire (motherhood) has not fallen away. Instead, it is those times where schoolwork is so intense that I find myself thinkign that I should not be going to school anyways, I should be at home having babies. Just yesterday I ran into an old friend. Her daughter who is in her early 20's had commented, "Amy should be at home having babies"...this not knowing that that was not an option. I explained. That is the hardest part. It is like asking a young teenager about her boyfriend not knowing taht her boyfriend dumped her last night. As for our adoption plans, we are still waiting, waiting, waiting. The situation is entirely out of our control. There are no fertility treatment options available to us in our case and so we are left to the waiting list.

On a more positive note, Christmas is coming and I am looking forward to putting up Christmas decorations. I have picked out a great spot in our living room for the tree and I am excited for it. Right now it is only 5:30 and almost completely dark outside. A sure sign of the turning of the season. I guess summer is officially over now. lol. I always hold on as long as possible to summer. I suppose I should stop rambling and find something for supper. Until next time....

step by step

Lately I have really been realizing that every day is just like a step. If you try to jump too many at once you miss it's not always very fun. The other day I went back to Psalm 37:4...Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you your heart's desires." I have been avoiding that verse for over a year. Partly because I don't know if I believe that it is true for me and the other part because I felt like I need to start claiming that it can be true for me. I just wish that the author would have added this tag line: "in His time." That verse is so misleading.

All I have ever wanted is to be a mom...and my frustration with our infertility journey comes in waves. I can forget it for a while and pretend that it does not exist (easy to do during the week when I am at Prov because everyone there is like 21 and unmarried) but then comes the part of my life that is my life here in Morden. Small group, church, baby showers, babies born, pregnancy announcements, "Family" Fun Night, play group,...and it all comes crashing back. And that freaking verse about delighting in the Lord...His promise to give me my heart's desires...have I not been delighting enough? The Bible also talks about how children are a reward from God and "blessed is he whose quiver is full" (just talked about that in my Child Development class last week). Am I not deserving of this reward? Am I not blessed? Does God not want to bless me? Have I done something for him to think that I would not make a good parent and so he has decided to withold blessing? Or maybe my marriage is not strong enough or we don't have enough money, or our house is not big enough...Of couse I don't believe these last things, but I think about them.

I feel like my life is these two seperate worlds right now. Like I don't quite fit completely in either world. It's hard enough as it is being in the minority of those who can't have kids, but now? Now it is like I am a square trying to fit into a round hole. Nothing makes sense. I just want to be normal. Is that too much to ask?

On the bright side of things, the part of me that still feels whole, I am enjoying every moment of being in school. Even math went ok this week. I love learning and it has been good to have something that is mine. I am looking forward to being a teacher one day. But there I go again. Jumping ahead. It is so hard to be content in the place that I am and on the step that I am on when i just want to be at the top already!!

new

i think i am taking the plunge. not sure how i am going to pay for yet...unless the student loan comes through in time, but i decided to go back to school. So it is off to Prov this fall to finish my BA in Interdisciplinary Studies and then I hope to apply and get into Education at U of M for the fall of 2010. So three years of full time school, commuting, and homework. I am crazy. but really, what else am I going to do with my life? plan A failed, so here is plan B. Deep inside, I still wish plan A would work out...but, plan B is ok, and for now i am excited to have a goal and purpose in my life. So summer is pretty near over, although today i spent a great day in altona at the pool with friends. that was fun. and it was nice out. But it is September and for me September has always felt like a time for new beginnings. So here is my new beginning. This semester will consist of 6 classes (yes, I am crazy), 5 days a week of commuting, 4 of those days being for 830am classes (so excited about that *sarcasm*), hopefully selling enough Pampered Chef to put food on the table and hopefully still being a good wife and not neglecting Warren too much. He still comes first. I am anxious and excited at the same time. All of me is this flurry of emotion right now and I am not sure what to think. I feel like i am at this crossroad in my life. I feel too old to go back to school. I feel like this will take me one step further away from my peers. I feel like this will make me be even more left out of certain things, because now I am not only not a mother, but I am a student. Certainly not anywhere in the same lifeboat as 95% of the people in my life. So that is also frustrating. Here, in my desperate desire to be included, to fit in, to have something in common, the only thing attainable is that which pushes me further away. In the end it will be good, but right now, it is daunting. If only I could just skip the next 20 years of my life and move to where the rest of our friends will be in the empty nest stage. At least then we would fit in again.

august

Is it really truely August? This month marks that we have been home for as long as we were at camp. 8 months. Yet here the time has flown by. Was it not just January a little while ago? I am amazed at time. It flies past so fast...and when I look back I have to wonder, "what did I actually accomplish?" 2009: Moved home, got a job, bought a house, renovated said house,...i think that pretty much covers anything significant for this year so far. Doesn't seem too impressive. But I am really hoping to go back to school this fall. Not sure how it is all going to work, but I have decided that if i can't have kids anyways, I guess I need a career or something. Unfortunately I am nowhere near retirement, and I don't want to work for 10 dollars an hour at a whatever job for the rest of my life. Really, I hate working and would much rather stay home and be a wife and that's it, however that just stresses Warren out so i try not to say that around him too much. Plus, we are much more financially stable with two incomes right now. Maybe once that last student loan is gone. Anyways, I really like being an EA, but I think my personality is such that I am too quick to want to take over the classroom. I hold back, because it's not "my" classroom, and I truely respect the teacher, but being an EA has made me think that maybe I can do it. If I am going to spend the bulk of my day being in a classroom, why not make decent money for it and be able to take more ownership in my job? But it is a scary thought and the paperwork part of going back to school is the part where i might not make it in time for the fall semester. But suddenly I am anxious. I want to learn again...and i was good at school and I just want to be good at something again. VBS was just this taste of what it was like when i was good at something, and I crave it. For two weeks I felt so confident in myself, like I had a purpose for being. But now, back to the real world, where I don't know what is going to happen and I have no control over anything. *big sigh*

maybe never

i hate feeling inside like i am such a jerk. i just don't belong in my age group anymore. everytime i find out that yet again someone in my life is expecting their first baby it is not congrats that i feel for them. It is a physical pain in my chest and an inclination to burst into tears. it is anger and frustration and like i have slidden one rung lower on the ladder of fitting in with my peer group. and the worst part is that i am not happy for them. i dread the passing of each year knowing that "well, that couple has been married for so and so long now, so anytime it will be their turn to join the parenting club" and then, as i have known would happen, it happens. And I am left feeling this devastated because i KNOW i will never be able to share that news for myself. AH!!!! I just want to scream and usually I am not so publically angry that i would blog my real feelings without being sarcastic or making some joke (as if it isn't a big deal, being infertile) but tonight it is late and i do dumber things when it's late and i just don't care anymore. Everytime I start feeling like I am over the feelings of pain over this HUGE issue in my life something like this (a pregnancy announcement) comes my way and I just fall and get so sad and cry...and I am so mad at God for letting this be the way it is. It's like part of me is still holding on to the smallest bit of hope, deep down so far inside that usually i don't think it's there but it is! and I hate that hope because it is that hope that then reminds me of all the crap later on and...i don't know how to deal with this by myself. I don't know how to recover from the pain of longing. And only so few actually really understand this. But that is the thing, I don't want to sit with someone and just talk about it and not move on. I want to move on, but I don't think I can. I think that this curse of infertility will plague me for the rest of my life. All i ever wanted was to be a mom...to have my own kids and play with them, and love them, and do the whole nurturing, mothering things. It is soooo a part of me, so ingrained in my very being. Mothering comes to naturally to me and so WHY would God let this be the way it is? I say "let this be the way it is" instead of "let this happen to me" because i don't think that he let this happen. To say that he let this happen would be to say that he did not plan it and i have been trained to believe that God plans all things. So how can he be so sad with me in this but yet he planned it? I don't even want to understand. I just want to be sad right now. But I am so tired of grieving alone. Because that is how this always works. Me, by myself, crying in one of the rooms of our house, silently because warren doesn't like to talk about it. when will birth announcement and pregnancy announcements stop making me sad? When will they stop triggering this deep emotion that i wish was not there? maybe never.

Inner City Missions Trip..the one I wasn't going to go on

So here I am in Winnipeg. Sitting at a table with the team and we are discussing how we are going to keep the kids engaged today. Crazy. They are crazy. But good. This has been one of those times where it is so familiar because of camp and yet so not familiar because it is SOOOOO out of my comfort zone. Well, I just have a hard time connecting. Because I totally DO NOT have anything in common with this demographic and I am so sheltered and naive. Some people who live and grow up in a sheltered environment are good at working with people from an opposite demographic...it's like it is just part of them. Like God put it in there for them. But I feel like I am just way better at working with and teaching kids from my demographic. So this is good because I am being exposed to a new reality and yet it is affirming because it reminds me that being good at working with the xtian kids in morden has value as well. Both are good. ok...well I have to go. More thoughts on this later.

vbs is really for me

Do we forget that we are learners too? Are we so wrapped up in how good we are and how much we know that we forget all that we do not know? And...maybe it is what we already know that can teach us the most that we need right now. Except we are human and we get so full of ourselves that we only think that others need to know what we already know. Then in the end we really find ourselves in a mess because that simple thing that is wreaking havoc in our lives that we cannot fix is really just something that could be taken care of if we only apply what we already know.

For instance, this week I was involved with VBS at our church. And all these little Bible stories that I have known for so long suddenly came to life again. Did you know that God Does What He Says He Will Do? I have known that for a long time. But I forgot. Did you know that God gives us life? I knew that forever too, but I forgot. Did you know that God is powerful? Once again, for me, a well known fact that I forgot. And I found that in teaching all these principles to the kids who attended in the end, I believe that God wanted the kids to grasp those things, but really, they were for me. How often do we born and bred Christians (I am referring to those of us who have known about Jesus since we were in the womb ;)) find ourselves in the crazy funk that we can't get out of and we don't look to God...have we maybe expected that since He is just always there the funk would never happen in the first place? After all...doesn't He say that we will never let bad things happen to us? Oh, wait. He didn't say that. He just said he would take care of us when those things DO happen.

Take for example, the rebellious young adult with the supportive family who just can't get her act together. Everything is always wrong. Something bad is always happening. Life just isn't fair. Looking for love, looking for life, looking for meaning....LOOK AT JESUS!!!! He has been there the whole time and that tool kit to fix things is the Bible and it has been on the shelf getting dusty...just pick it up and I don't know...get humble or something.

Something to think about.

thankful

Just so thankful that I have Jesus today. The real thing. Some people just don't know.

I decided that it would be fun to put pictures of our houses on here. Except our camp house. Ironically, after our computer crashed back in spring, our Camp Arnes pictures are the only ones that seem to be missing. Weird. So looking back and reflecting, I think that each of our houses represent a different stage of Warren and my life together.

House #1: White 1 1/2 Storey. Our starter home. We lived there for over two years, and I have great memories of our first couple years being married in this house. Building the deck, Warren being obsessive over having a nice looking yard, our first Christmas, Camry somehow finding her way home from the farm by herself...and just walking into the house..., Warren falling down the deck stairs because he slipped on some ice, and our campfire on New Years Eve using the everlasting "Duralog".

House #2: The House We Built. We only lived here 5 months, but we had already been dreaming and planning this house for over year. And since we owned the place for over a year it did really feel like home. It was sooooo me. The colors, the decor, the kitchen, I loved everything about it. Except the mortgage payment, especially after we both ended up unemployed two months after moving in. Long story. Also many memories here. This house represents what we want in our life. We built this 3 bedroom home, hoping it would be a place where we could raise a family and settle. Our dreams were short lived however. It was while living in this house that we found out we were officially "infertile". We also realized really fast that we were just not ready to be new home owners. The cost of owning a new home, what with property taxes, road fees, etc. was just not where we were at financially. It was soon after this that we put the house up for sale and ran away to camp.

House #3: Our Fixer Upper. We bought the neighborhood drug house and have almost entirely flipped it. It does not look much like it did when we got possession a few short months ago. This house represents new beginnings. New jobs, new house, new paint, kitchen, flooring, new dreams and goals. This house is hope. This house is a messy outside and a pretty inside. It is renewal. It is new paint on cracked walls and weeding overgrown gardens. I hope that this house will be a place where we can find peace, hope, and healing. I want this house to be a place of sanctuary, welcome, and laughter. I look forward to friends and family and good times. I want to be content here. This house represents what Jesus can do for my messy me. He can take my cracked walls and leaky pipes and make them new again. He can heal my sad heart and help me find joy in a place where there was once much sorrow. There still is sometimes sorrow, but it is being renovated. Slowly.

Summer...I Think

It is the middle of July already. And though I must say, I have a pretty great tan, it is COLD outside!!! Sunny and cold! I think it's gonna stay cool till the weekend too, so what to do this cool week? Stain the deck, (buy stain first), buy paint to start painting closet doors and whatnot...but it is so boring being home alone. What does everyone have to have kids? I feel like sometime I just wish it was still like Iw as single and young and my friends would just come over and we would hang out and do nothing all day. But no one does that anymore. It is a sign of getting old. But when you don't have kids, you don't fit in with what everyone else is doing. There is no naptime, no playdates, no invitations to someone's cabin or whatever so that your kids can play together. So I am trying to process through what my life is going to be like since we may never be able to have kids. One word. Lonely. I think about this every day. I am reminded of this wherever I go.

Our adoption file is officially approved now. So that is exciting because all the invasive questions and people checking out your house and whatnot is over. The fear of "what if we get rejected" is over...but even that makes me made because no one is checking the 14 year old pregnant drug addict's house. If I posted all the injustices I feel about infertility no one would read this anymore so I will stop now. So our adoption file is approved and now we wait. Could be weeks, could be years, could be never. Family Planning my butt.

JUNE! already! i totally forgot that i had a blog. haha! that is how not a blogger i am! but now that i am here, i may as well post a little something before i go make supper...i should be starting supper now but i am procrastinating. on hot days like today, i think i could really go without eating at all. it's too hot to eat. but some of us who live in this house don't agree.

So i only have a few more days of school until the summer break. i honestly don't know what i am going to do. it's going to be a long summer, but i think i am ok with that at this point. Life has been increasingly busy over the last couple of weeks...let me rephrase...MONTHS. since we moved to our own place that is. we are still in renovation mode, somewhat, but that has slowed down a bit. the basement is gutted and though we have great plans for it, unfortunately the money is just not there right now to start an expensive project like that. Step by step i guess.

anyways, so our house is great. i love just hanging out at home, in the yard, or whatever. my job is pretty good, although now it is almost done for the summer...so life in general is good. i still really long to be a mom, but that is entirely out of my hands. this one area, which most people "plan" for, is so completely out of my control. what a weird feeling. Family Planning....NOT. I am starting to feel like Family Planning is such a joke. So you wait 5 or whatever years and then decide to have a family...hmmm, for some people that works. And for the rest of us, it is a big joke when 3 1/2 years later there is still no family and never will be.

and that is my rant for today.

40 years of wandering has finally come to an end...

Ok, so that title is not exactly true. how could i possibly wander for 40 years when i have not even been alive that long? I feel as though finally finally we are starting to see straight again and there seems to be a little more order in this silly life. a little. there are still lives around me that are falling apart, the ground is still frozen and the landscape still seems more like the middle of winter than the beginning of spring, but for warren and i things seem like they are slowly working themselves out. There is still heartache in many areas of our life but i feel like I am starting to know how to give it to God a little more than i did before. i cannot say that i have arrived. In fact, i may never actually arrive and i think that is possibly why we call life a journey. It is series of hopes, dreams, happinesses, sadnesses, left turns, right turns, then barfing because we are dizzy...I'll just let that thought trail off.

Warren and I have finally both found jobs that we like. We left camp shortly after Christmas. It just wasn't what I thought it would be. I have changed too much. I am not that campy, naive, 20 year old anymore. And i think that is ok too. It is ok to change, as long as that change means growth. It was while we were out at camp, never quite sure about why we went there that we felt like we were wandering in the desert. (Like the Israelites!) All the while, we just wanted to be normal. Have a house, normal jobs, stability, family, friends, etc. Then we moved back and it seemed like once again things were just going nuts. I started occasionally subbing as an EA at teh schools in Morden, but it took Warren and I both 2 full monhts to find fulltime jobs. During this time, I think that our commitment resolve was being tested. Warren often looked at our life at camp, thinking of the good things and said we should never have left. I said that the Israelites felt that same way about going back to Egypt. Nevertheless, here we are, at the end of March. It is Spring Break for me. I have been working at the Miami Colony as an EA at the school. I love it. The kids are great. Warren is at Pembina Valley Dodge as the Service Advisor. We bought a house in town and are in the waiting process now. Waiting for posession day on May 1. 31 more days of living in my parents house. We are starting to get very restless.

Among these things, we are still looking and desiring to find quality friendships where we feel accepted as we are and confident in where we are at in life. We have a small few. How then is it that many of my days are still lonely? Take this Spring Break for example. What should I do all week long? It makes is harder that I am not even in my own house. It is hard to be motivated when you live at someone else's house. It is hard to be motivated when you have been living out of suitcases and boxes for the past 3 months with one month to go. Maybe i am just complaining. I don't know. Well, it's my blog and I can complain if I want to! This is just what i am thinking about today. feeling today. It is too quiet in this house. I supposed i could do what I never do and turn on the TV. What a bum am I.