An Unexpected Journey

She has arrived!  Eliana Bree (aka "Ella Bree") made her grand entrance on Monday, July 21st at 7:55 am!  She weighed 7lbs 1oz... my biggest baby yet.  We are thrilled to be holding our dark haired little princess!  Number five has stolen our hearts already! This is the scripture that was in my mom's devotional journal for Ella Bree's  birthday... Jeremiah 31:25  "For I have satisfied the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul." Meet my little "my God has answered with strength" baby! Look at that pout!

We first heard the name on the Tuesday before Makiah died on Friday.  We met a youth pastor and his wife, and when they told us what their daughter's name meant we both looked at each other.   I was pregnant with twin girls, and I think we were both pretty sure we would name one of them with the name- Eliana.  It is Hebrew for "my God has answered." We had waited four years for our second pregnancy and had been through numerous infertility treatments.  My prayer had been that the Lord would "zachar" me.  It is the Hebrew word used in the Old Testament on several occasions to indicate that God "remembered" someone and acted on their behalf.   It's not that He ever forgot them, but that He acted on behalf of those on His mind.   For example, when barren Hannah cried out to the Lord in 1 Samuel 1,  He remembered or "zachared" her and opened her womb to birth Samuel.  It seemed to us as though God had finally answered, and I was 16 weeks pr...

The wind whipped through the girl’s hair and the sound of waves lapping on the beach filled her ears.  She held tightly to the red, shiny coke can in her hand.   In a moment her foot stumbled and the bright aluminum slipped from her grip.  The can rolled on the beach and all the sweet contents poured out into the sand.   A dark puddle in the midst of all the bright white.  Feeling frantic now, the girl bent down and tried desperately to push the brown soaked sand back into the coke can.  Her fingers shook.  Her efforts were futile.  The coke was gone and the can was empty. Then I woke up.  The girl was me. I had a certain life of joy and sweetness.  Completely untouched by pain or death.  And then in a split second it slipped from my hands and everything that filled my heart and life was gone.  Poured out and soaked up by the thirsty, unforgiving ground.  And my life was empty after that.  For a tim...

Today is Mother's Day and the sun is just creeping up when I sneak out on the porch.  Whispy white vapors blanket the neighborhood so thickly I can barely see the trees across the street. It is foggy. And I think it should be. Exactly eight years ago at this very time, I was checking into the hospital and filling out paper work for labor and delivery. Eight hours later Makiah would make her grand entrance and I would become a mommy. And there are so many things I don't understand. So many things that are shrouded by a foggy veil. Alena asked at lunch today where Makiah's birthday present was. A few short weeks ago I was tucking her in for a nap on the afternoon of Easter. I told her to sleep good so we could hunt eggs when she woke up. Then she exclaimed with such excitement "And Makiah will be here!" I asked why she thought Makiah would be here, and she replied "Because we have her Easter basket." Of course, what child would leave...

Sometimes its the little things that let us know God loves us. Early on the morning before Easter I managed to sneak out on my porch for a little coffee and a quiet time. The words I read began with, "I have called you out of darkness into my marvelous light..." Oh how true that has been for me! Not just out of spiritual darkness through a relationship with Jesus, but out of the darkness of pain and grief. He has pulled me out a pit of despair whose dark, slippery walls were at one time strangling me with the lie that I would never experience light in this life again. "I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For He has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels." Isaiah 61:10 This was the second verse at the end of the reading. It took my breath away that it would be this verse. And suddenly I was ...

So I took a road trip with just my girls for spring break to visit their grandparents and family in Alabama.   It's  barely lunch time and already the adventures have begun!  It only took Abby about twenty minutes to get her hand stuck in a mouse trap at her great grandmothers house today.  Thank goodness it was only the kind the mouse sticks to and not the metal one that breaks fingers! So it took us a lot of hand washing to get all the sticky poison off those little fingers and especially that thumb she still likes to suck...  Never mind that I am a speech therapist and I can tell this thumb sucking is doing bad things to her mouth! But the one that takes the cake was when mom and I were dressing the twins this morning and Maddie Grace, who had only left the room for a minute, comes walking back in with her face stuck down in the bottom side of a plunger!!  Ughhh!  Oh the things I will have to tell them when they are teens!  You should have se...

"Mommy I'm poopy. Change me." I sigh and start to change my now three year old's diaper. We just can't seem to conquer this potty training thing. We are trying everything... sticker charts, m&m's, wearing panties for days, setting a timer to keep our potty times regular, watching potty time Elmo dvd's over and over. At a friend's suggestion, I have even tried making the twins wash out their own poopy panties in the toilet! They were grossed out, but obviously not enough to bring change. So when I open this kid's pull-up, I am surprised. It is clean and empty except for a small Winnie the Pooh toy. I pull it out and say, "Baby, you aren't dirty, this is just a toy in your pants." To which she responds with uproarious laughter, "But Mommy, I pooped a "Pooh!" Oh. My. Surely if you are old enough to be this witty, you are old enough to use a potty!!! I admit I did get a good laugh though... If ...