Truth to Hold Onto

This song was on the radio tonight on my way home.

I think it was for me.

What If

Jadon Lavik

What if I climbed that mountain
What if I swam to that shore
What if every battle was victorious then would you love me more?
Would you love me more?

What if I were everybody’s first choice
What if I went farther than before
What if I stood high above the rest then would you love me more?
Would you love me more?

You say I belong to You apart from the things I do
You say I belong to You I’m in awe of why You do
Why You do, why You do
I’m in awe of You, ooh

What if I ignored the hand that fed me
What if I forgot to confess
What if I stumbled down that mountain then would you love me less?
Lord would You love me less

What if I were everyone’s last choice
What if I mixed in with the rest
What if I failed what I passed before
then would you love me less Lord would you
would you love me less, oh no oh no oh no

You say I belong to You apart from the things I do
You say I belong to You I’m in awe of why You do
Why You do, why You do
I’m in awe of You, ooh

What have I done to deserve Your son sent to die for me?
What can I give I want to live give me eyes to see
In a world that keeps changin’ there’s one thing that I know is true
Your love is stayin’ there’s nothing else I’ll hold onto

The way You love me, the way You do
The way You do, the way You love me, You love me, You love me
The way You do, the way You do, the way You love me
The way You love, You love, You love

Wedding Planner

I’m quite a fan of our wedding planning folder.

It has all our to-do lists, budget outlines, spending records, lot of pictur, ideas, etc.

I love making lists; writing out everything that needs to be done, knowing it’s all down on paper so I can’t forget, the satisfaction of crossing things off when they are completed.

Anytime I have moments of panic about the wedding, I have a flip through the folder and reassure myself that everything is on track.

But I wonder if I am getting a little too caught up in all this.

Have I been neglecting my relationship with Blake to make room for all this planning?

It feels like every time I see him now, I have something “wedding-y” to tell him. Some detail that needs confirming. Some question that needs to be discussed.

It’s not all we talk about, but it does enter every conversation.

I need to be this committed and serious about planning our marriage and, particularly, what it will mean for me to become a wife.

Wouldn’t it be a great investment if I had a folder for “marriage planning”; I could make lists of my personal growth areas, lists of steps I’m going to take to grow, a list of helpful Bible references, ways I can be helpful to Blake in a day-to-day sense.

That would be something which holds value beyond the wedding day.

Pondering Infertility, Part 2

I realise it has been a long time since my last post (2 months, I think!). So, if there’s anyone still interested, I’m going to continue where I left off before…

At the present time, I am mostly unaware of my endo. Aside from a few scars on my tummy and the odd friend checking that everything has been fine since the hospital visit, I don’t think about it much. Blake and I still talk about our future family as if it’s a sure thing. Sometimes one of us will throw in the comment, “If we can have kids…”

Blake has been so incredibly supportive through the whole thing. We weren’t even engaged when I was diagnosed, so he had every reason to break up with me. He has always assured me that it didn’t change anything between us. And, most importantly, he has always encouraged me to trust God in this.

Facing the prospect of infertility really drives home that it is God who is in control of my reproductive system, not me. When you’re planning your marriage and your family, it’s easy to talk as if these things will happen because we say they will. I’m reminded of this passage:

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

James 4:13-15

It’s total arrogance to think that we can decide when we will have children and how many we will have when we don’t know what the future holds (to clarify: I don’t think it’s arrogant to discuss these things and make plans. In fact, I think it’s wise to do so! What I’m getting at is expecting that we can say in certainty when these things will happen) . Similarly, it’s foolish to wallow in despair about possibilities of childlessness when it is God who plans out lives before they begin!

However, I think another result of facing possible infertility is that hearing about abortion cuts me more deeply. I have become so much more aware of the preciousness of human life. It hurts me that some are so willing to throw away what I am yearning for, and may not be able to have. Don’t they realise what a miracle it is when a child is created?

Having this condition has most certainly affected the way we plan to enter marriage. We have plans to wait for a few years before trying to have children. However, we are willing to be surprised And we think it would be best to start our family by the time I am 25 in order to increase our medical chances of falling pregnant. In the meantime, I hope that this causes us to trust in God more and more as we learn to rest in his sovereignty.

Pondering Infertility, Part 1

I’m going to write about something that has been present now for a while, but I haven’t been sure how I would talk about it or even if I wanted to. Even now, my thoughts are not completely fleshed out, so this is me processing them, to some extent.

I may not be able to have my own children.

As people from my church will know, around March this year, I was in hospital for a short time.

I woke at 4am one Wednesday morning to discover a sharp and growing pain in my abdomen. After an hour of trying to get back to sleep with a hot water bottle, I got someone to take me to the emergency room at RPA.

I knew from the start what it was.

When I was 14, I had the exact same pain in my abdomen. I remember the night – it was cold and late. Mum called the doctor to come to our house after many hours and multiple painkillers had not even touched the agony I was in. By the time he got there, I was writhing around on the floor, clutching my stomach. He gave me a needle in the arm and the pain eased slightly.

I went through months of testing and going to see specialist doctors and having them speculate about a “niggling apendix”. Finally, my GP gave me a “maybe” conclusion about an ovarian cyst. He put me on the Pill and said if that fixed the pain, then that’s probably what it was.

Move forward five years – I’m 19, starting to think seriously about getting married and the baby-making that comes with it. I asked my GP if being on the Pill for a long time would create a greater risk of infertility. He said all tests have been inconclusive.

Well, that was enough to have me worried. He said I should try going off the Pill and wait for 2-3 cycles to see if the pain came back.

So when, in the middle of my 3rd cycle off the Pill, the doctors were talking about apedicitis and urinary tract infection, I wasn’t really taking it seriously. But I was kind of hoping it was something like that; something easy to fix.

I remember being asked if I was sexually active (“So you’ve never had sex? Are you sure?”). Being asked if I was sexually active after my friends were asked to leave. Being lectured about chlamydia.

I was a bit confused about what was going on during my time in hospital. On the first day, an ultrasound revealed some free fluid around my appendix, which is indicative of appendicitis, but it wasn’t at all swollen.

Then, when they discovered the cyst, I had different people tell me different things. Some said an easy operation would take care of the cyst once and for all while another doctor laughed at me when I asked if I would need surgery.

For most of the first day I was in there, I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything, because I was on morphine, which can make you quite nauseous. When they finally said I could eat something, my dear Blake walking into Newtown to get me pad thai, which I had been craving. But by the time he got back, the thought of it was making me sick. Even the smell of the food meant he couldn’t eat his there with me.

They decided to have me stay in hospital for another day, just to make sure the pain was getting less.

On the afternoon of the second day, when the pain was still making its prescence known, they rushed me into theater to “check that one of my ovaries wasn’t black and dead” and to remove the cyst while they were at it.

I was happy the cyst was going, but not so happy at the prospect one of my ovaries might have carked it.

I remember the doctor, a tall Russian woman, explaining to me that even if one of my ovaries had died, I still had good chances of conceiving. I remember signing a document to say that I understood the risks of surgery.

The whole concept was foreign to me at the time. It hadn’t crossed my mind that I might suffer some permanent damage from the whole schmozzle. They were supposed to fix me and send me home. So I was rushed into surgery in a bit of shock and not really having time to ponder the whole thing.

(As a side note: I really hate surgery. I hate having to take off all my clothes and put on that flimsy little gown, knowing that as soon as I’m knocked out, they’re going to whip it off. My stomach turned months later when I read in a procedural report on my operation, “feet in stirrups”…)

Some people from Flo had come to visit me right about the time I got out of surgery. Since I was rushed in, not many people knew about the operation until afterwards. These people didn’t.

I was still really groggy from the anesthetic. I recall saying something about whether they wanted to see my cuts, and then immediately realising how stupid I sounded.

I think it was later that afternoon, or perhaps the next day, that my doctor came and spoke to me about the operation.

I don’t remember much about what she said. I do remember her showing me pictures of my insides and of the cyst they had taken out. I was shocked at how it looked. A doctor had told me from the ultrasound that it was 5 centimetres in diameter. But in the photo it was a huge silver ball, lodged in the pink fleshiness of my abdomen.

My ovaries were fine. But there was something else. While they were removing the cyst they had found some endometriosis. There were more pictures. More fancy medical talk. Explanations and possibilities.

And then I was left on my own to digest what I had been told. Endometriosis (endearingly known as “endo” by those who have the condition) is the growth of the endometrium (inner lining of the uterus) on areas outside the uterus. It grows during ovulation, stimulated by the hormones. In bad cases, in can cause miscarriages and infertility (it is the second leading cause of infertility in women) and in good cases, there is mild pain.

More thoughts to come…

Strength to Love

God’s been teaching me the importance of relying on him, for everything, in prayer.

I’ve seen this clearly in my relationship with Blake (a tool that God has consistently used to sharpen me!).

Let me admit something to you: it’s not always easy to love Blake. And I’m not just talking about feeling in love with him. I mean loving him in my attitude, actions and words.

Sometimes I get the impression (from resources on marriage) that all engaged couples see each other with rose-coloured glasses and are blind to one another’s flaws. Well, it hasn’t really ever been that way with Blake and I. From the start, Blake has been insistent about the idea that one of God’s purposes for our relationship is to grow each other as Christians (iron sharpens iron). So we’ve never really been all that “lovey-dovey”.

(Okay, maybe sometimes.

Love you more times infinity plus one…)

Since engagement, I’ve realised a few things about love: it’s not loving to grit my teeth and say the right things while harbouring bitterness, it’s not loving to put on a “mood” just because I’ve been hurt and my hurt feelings/self-esteem are not the best judge of whether an issue is worth raising.

Thus it has become a lot harder to love Blake sometimes.

But God is faithful and always waiting to give his grace and strength to those who need it.

That’s me! I need it!

There have been so many times lately when I’ve run to God in desperation asking for more patience, more kindness, more tenderness of heart; asking him to flush the sin out of my heart with his cleansing water once more; begging him to give me another chance to do the right thing; asking him for forgiveness.

As I look forward to a lifetime with Blake, it’s such a relief to know that God will always be there. Indeed, that my relationship with him is above all others. It gives me the strength to love Blake knowing that I am loved perfectly by my father in heaven.

Unimpressive preachers

We started looking at Titus (chapter 1) at God in the Loft today, which was somewhat about the qualities required in church leaders.

It got me thinking a bit about what I tend to look for in a church leader. I think we are all naturally drawn to the more charismatic types of leaders. They know how to speak well and they are easy to listen to.

I have heard people comment often that someone is unfit to be a pastor if they can’t speak in an engaging manner. I always agreed.

But today I was reflecting a bit more on some of my favourite preachers, who I almost discredited to begin with because they aren’t all that impressive in person. (I won’t name them because I don’t think anyone wants to be known as “unimpressive”, but just to clarify, I’m not talking about the preachers at my church.)

They weren’t charismatic and they didn’t have engaging voices.

However, over time I have come to respect and admire them because they teach the solid truth and their lives reflect Christ. These men are some of my favourite preachers now because, although they don’t wow me with their amazing public speaking skills, I can rely on them to preach the gospel and to live lives of integrity that demonstrate that gospel.

I am reminded that some people thought Paul was pretty unimpressive in person, and he himself acknowledged that he was not a good speaker by worldly standards. What made him such an effective minister of Christ was that everything he taught was based on the gospel.

So I’m wondering if sometimes we hold unrealistic expectations of our church leaders. I think we would do well to patiently listen to them and see if what they are teaching is the gospel, rather than putting so much weight on their preaching style.

A crazy dream

I had my first “wedding disaster” dream last night.

We were having the ceremony on some kind of ship, and the decorations weren’t done on time. Then it was raining and muddy (on a ship? hey, it’s a dream…).

My seamstress made the wrong dress, and I ended up wearing a black cocktail dress, and then when that ripped, a white sheet.

My sister applied bronzer to my arms and shoulders that made me look like I had small-pox.

My grandparents were late and I had to park their car while they got seats.

Ah, don’t you just love dreams!

The amazing thing is that I was pretty calm about it all. But I think I would like it if things go a bit better on the real day!

Great is Your faithfulness!

Blake asked me to marry him last night.

I’ve been looking forward to the time when I could do this post on my blog. Not so I can tell you all how excited I am (although I most certainly am!) but because now I get to share with you some of the ways God has been incredibly faithful to Blake and I on this whole journey.

From the start of our relationship, Blake has always been the committed one and a lot of the time it felt like his feelings for me were stronger than mine were for him. Over the December/January period my feelings changed a lot. I started to become a lot more attached to him. At about the same time, lots of people I knew were getting engaged or married and it made me long for that too (in an unhealthy way). In fact, I would say I was jealous of those people.

Blake and I had marriage as our goal, but we hadn’t talked about time frames and I was desperate for that security.

So I found ways to bring it up and eventually we did talk about it openly.

But it didn’t go well. We both ended up with hurt feelings: I felt like Blake didn’t want to be with me and Blake felt pressured by my demands that he work out a time frame for marriage. We agreed not to discuss it anymore, at least for a while.

I turned to God in prayer, asking for patience for myself, for guidance and wisdom for Blake and that I would be able to trust God’s leading through Blake. Blake was also praying that he would know when would be a good time for us to get married.

I settled down. I was still praying about it, but it was becoming easier to trust God.

A few months ago, on a walk, Blake told me that he was thinking that mid-2009 would be a good time for us to get married and that’s what he would like to work towards.

Needless to say I was overjoyed and extremely thankful to God for answering both of our prayers for help. In reflection, I think it is an example of what’s described in Proverbs 3:5-6:

Trust in the Lord with all you heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.

What can I do but praise him?

And that’s only the first part of what I wanted to tell you…

Once we knew the time frame for marriage that we were planning for, a problem arose as to where I would live for the first half of 09. I currently live in a place called Flo Harris Lodge, run by my church, Petersham Baptist Church. They generally don’t like people to stay for only 6 months because it’s so hard to find replacements mid-year. So that was only going to be a last resort. I wanted to move out, but I also didn’t think it would be fair to move out with a bunch of people from Flo at the end of the year, because they would also have the difficulty of finding a replacement for me 6 months in.

I was talking to my Mum about it last time I was home and she had a few suggestions. The first was that I live with my cousins in the Western Suburbs and commute to uni. But I didn’t like that idea because it would mean seeing Blake a lot less and probably leaving my church. Her other idea was to live with a young family from church and pay board. That idea seemed okay, but I’d never really considered it.

The other idea I had was to find an already established share house in the church that would have a vacancy next year.

While I was thinking and praying over this issue, I thought that I probably wouldn’t go about seeking options seriously until we were engaged, or it might seem a bit weird to be talking definitely about wedding plans.

However, I started to get a little anxious. The share houses I had my eyes on seemed to already have filled their vacancies or would be dissolving at the start of 09. I kept praying that God would provide a place for me to live next year and that he would help me to trust him.

I was liking the sound of living with a family more and more. I would be able to learn lots about how families (other than my own) function and I would be able to cook and clean and mind kids (all things I love to do!). But I was still keen not to formally start looking until it was official.

A couple of weeks ago Fiona (the book-keeper for Flo and a young mother from church) called me into the office and asked if I had found somewhere to live next year (I had asked her months before about whether I would get my bond back if I stayed at Flo for only 6 months). I said I hadn’t yet, but I was thinking of living with a young family from church.

She said, “Oh, that’s really strange. We’re going to be looking for someone next year and I was just going to ask you.”

So after a few more logistical conversations, it was decided that I will be living with Fiona and her family next year.

And all this before I’m even engaged!

To me it was an amazing example of how God had it all under control to begin with. And how he leads us to pray for certain things so that he is all the more glorified when he brings them into being.
As we plan for the marriage ahead of us I am hopeful that I will see (and share!) many more examples of God’s amazing faithfulness.

Boyish

A cheerful anecdote from my day which occurred whilst playing “Indiana Jones” with one of the kids I mind…

Me – “I’ve seen all the Indiana Jones movies.”

N – “Really?”

Me – “Yeah, I think they’re great.”

N – (pauses)

“Are you boyish?”

Me – (stifles laughter) “No, girls like Indiana Jones too…”

N – “Oh yeah. I think I saw a girl with a gun in one of them.”

Standing up for Jesus

…can be tough, especially at uni.

I think something I struggle with is having humility and grace in my conversations with non-Christians (in or out of class).

But I’ve realised that I need to be daily spending time with God, reading the Bible and praying, if I’m going to be humble and gracious. Without that continued relationship with God, everything I say becomes dry and intellectual (or hypocritical and arrogant).

I want those around me to see the effect that a relationship with the Living God has on my life.