THIS is what I have for you...

Tomorrow, I'm starting my 4th year in BSF.  It's also Bryleigh's fourth and Will's second.  I'm starting it this year as a class member and not a leader.  I pray (pray, pray, pray, pray) that God calls me back into leadership with BSF in the future because I absolutely loved my time last year, shepherding women through the study of John and praying with them over various areas and situations of their lives.

Last spring, when it came time to sign our commitment cards for leadership in Romans, I just could NOT sign my card.  At one point, the morning it was due, I even tried to just grab the pen and sign it real quick, and I almost threw up...like literally.  So I put it down and walked away.  And that's when I heard Him clearly, "Carrie, this is not what I have for you."

My heart was racing, and tears poured from my eyes.  I was SO confused.  WHY in the world would THIS not be what God has for me.  Why would serving Him, leading ladies, and bible study NOT be what He has for me?  Honestly, it scared me...if THIS wasn't what He had...then what was?!

I've heard Him say that a few more times over the summer, including as recently as two weeks ago when I came about one phone call away from a full-time, work-from-home job.  Once again, "Carrie, this is not what I have for you."  Once again, I had a difficult conversation that caused my pulse to quicken and my stomach to feel queasy, just like it had last spring when I almost signed that paper.

I spent most of my time since that day searching my little corner of the world for a specific answer as to just WHAT God has for me.  With each time I've heard Him say, "Not this one," I've seen a little bit more of what he DOES have for me illuminated.

And as I sit here on the eve of the first day of BSF, I get it.  I know what it is He has for me: MOTHERHOOD.  He's given me the task of raising, caring for, and enjoying life with two beautiful babes who are absolutely perfectly made in His image.  There are long days, but they are fun days.  There are hard days, but they are good days.  And I will soak in every hour, minute, and second He has given me to just be Momma to these babes, knowing just how fast it goes and how fast they grow.  (In case you're wondering...we're TEN weeks from Thanksgiving, because we're TEN weeks from having a ONE YEAR OLD! I can't.)

Update on the Babes

Bryleigh is doing GREAT.  We watch her like a hawk.  We work SUPER hard to make sure that she is only eating foods that fall on her "approved list," and we stick to her treatment with supplements and vitamins, along with the weekly visits to the chiropractor.  We still find her having some trouble, and we fight off flare ups from time to time, but we feel SO grateful for where she is right now.  And we will do everything we can in our power to fight to keep her there or getting better!

William is also starting to do really well himself!  We've worked with the chiropractor and his GI doctor at Cooks to make sure things keep "moving" for him. He's on a less involved treatment plan of supplements and vitamins than B, and we are currently on two prescriptions from the GI doctor that have really helped improve things for him.  Right now, when we take away those prescriptions, things go right back to where they were...so we'll keep working to find answers and things that help him.

On top of finally seeing (and hearing) what it is He has for me, I have been able to see some other things that God knew way in advance about our schedules this year.  Up until about two weeks ago, I still had time in my schedule to be a momma AND a BSF Leader, although the time committed to leadership is no small amount.

But Will's 9 month well visit didn't quite go as we expected.  Our pediatrician had some concerns about some things she was seeing in Will and answers I was giving to some questions she was asking, which led to an appointment last week with Cook's and an upcoming brain MRI under sedation as a precaution to rule out some things that have really long names attached to them.

His appointment on Friday led to recommended therapy for him for the next 6 months, weekly.  And there it was.  In a matter of seconds, I knew.  I knew that God had been caring for my heart AND my time to prepare us for what He DOES has for us this year.  With all that we've done over the last three years to care for Bryleigh, I just never imagined it would really get any more time consuming than it already was.  And then it did.

We don't really understand all that's gone on over the last few years, nor do we really understand why, but we do know that God is in control, that He is fighting for us, and that His plans for us are for our good and His glory.  We are so grateful for the babes that He has entrusted to us and the lives He has designed for both of them.  We look forward to all that God will do in and through them!

Our precious small group leaders, Derrick and Julee Duke, shared this beautiful song with us on Sunday morning and I have listened to it on repeat since that day.  I just wanted to share a piece of what encourages me in this journey He has us on. I pray it encourages you, too.

Grace Upon Grace

There's always that one question every lesson that leaves me with my thoughts for days, and Lesson 1 for this BSF year was no different - "Can you share with your group a way you have experienced Jesus' grace in your life?"

Sometimes these "heart" questions cause me to walk away for a little bit and really think, but this one came easy.  I LOOK at my grace in the face every day.  I pick her up in the mornings from her bed.  I take care of her needs throughout the day, and I absolutely melt when she reaches out for me to give me a "huggie" and a "kissie."  It's my daughter.  (And now I can add FEELING my grace every single day with every turn, hiccup, and karate chop to the ribs that Will does.)

You see, being someone that starved their self day in and day out for the better part of three years, I did major damage to my body - but God's grace covered me that entire time.  I suffered my share of health related issues during that time, but in no way did I ever suffer as I deserved based on the amount of nutrients I restricted from my body.  God's grace also covered me on the day I finally saw the words "Pregnant" on that "Clear Blue Test."  My body isn't one that should have ever made a baby - because of how I was created AND because of how I treated what God created...yet THREE times, my body has made a baby.  That's God's grace.

John 1:16 says, "Out of His fullness we have all received GRACE in place of GRACE already given."  He was nailed on the cross to wipe every sin in my life completely clean.  He is the spotless lamb that was sacrificed because I would never be able to atone for my sins personally.  Wow, what grace!

As I drove home from taking Bryleigh to school, song after song played on the radio that continued to speak to my heart and where we are in life right now, as well as all that God has done in our lives to get us to this point.  But none spoke so loudly this morning as "You Never Let Go."  It was weird to hear at first because it was that song, sung by Matt Redman (on repeat) that carried me through days... (weeks...months...years) of infertility, and again through the heartbreak of miscarriage.  Needless to say, every time I hear him sing it (or we sing it at church), I can not help but praise Him for Bryleigh Renee, and now William Bradley.

But today, it was even different - Jeremy Camp was the one singing it.  To hear his voice singing any song takes me back to a very specific time in my life - my days at Baylor University.  I had a VERY basic (but super cute) mp3 player that held ABOUT 12 songs on it (that we had downloaded from Napster, of course).  It was during that time that I first heard Jeremy Camp, and I would walk MILES all over that campus and study HOURS in those libraries listening to his songs on repeat.

Baylor was some of my greatest times in my life, but it was always some of my very lowest, where the depression I lived with was so severe, yet SO unknown.  As I listened to Jeremey Camp sing "You Never Let Go," this morning, I couldn't help but think about the countless times God's grace covered me on that campus.  I made countless mistakes and bad decisions, but through God's grace, He protected me daily and carried me through each day, until He sat me down perfectly on my parents 2-seater sofa on Austin Acre Road and I told them, "I just can't go back."  (And then He carried me every step of the way after, but that's a whole other blog!)

"Oh no, you never let go, through the calm and through the storm.  Oh no, you never let go, in every high and every low.  Oh no, you never let go, Lord you never let go of me."  

Thank you Lord, for never letting go of me!

When God says "Get Up!"

After our day at Cook's Children's Hospital in Fort Worth and following so many sweet families back home whose little one's are battling cancer, my heart was OVERWHELMED!  Add to that the uncertainty of what is going on with Bryleigh, and all I found myself doing yesterday was praying.  I prayed for those families and their children, for healing and for peace.  I prayed for the lives of the faces we saw during our time at Cook's, that they would know the love of Jesus and that they would feel comforted.  I prayed and let God know that in it all, I trust him, just as I did 3 months ago during our miscarriage.  I prayed and let Him know that I was not fearful about what is coming and asked Him to continue to give me peace so that I wouldn't fear anything.

It was one of those day where I just wrestled with it all.  I was overwhelmingly thankful for Bryleigh's life and each and every day we've had with her, the good and the hard.  I was exhausted...and so was she, so I was thankful when she went down easy {and early} thinking I would follow her shortly.  But I had so much trouble going to sleep, so I just kept praying as I had done all day long.

I had been asleep about 30 minutes when Bryleigh cried out for the first time around 1:30 am.  It was different than she normally does, so I wasn't sure what was going on, but I continued to watch her on the monitor, and before long I could tell she wasn't going back down on her own, so I went in and got her.

As soon as I opened the door, I knew why she was awake.  She had a bad diaper.  I got her all fixed back up and brought her to lay down with me for a little while as we normally do when she wakes up during the night.

Once she dozed off, I took her back to her bed and then crawled back under the covers.  But my mind was racing again, thoughts all over the place, and all I could do was pray.  I turned on some of my current favorite worship tunes and just listened to the words.

At some point, I started to hear God say, "Get up."  Of course I went through all the arguments, "It's just me I'm hearing," "That's not really Him," "I'll wait until the end of this song..."  But at the end of the song, I heard it again.  So I did.  I got up.   I got my Bible Study stuff out and I sat down to spend some time in his word at 3:00 in the morning.

I wasn't sure what I was UP for, but I knew He had said to do it, so I did.  And then almost at the end of today's blog post for She Read's Truth, I saw it:

"Sister, as we read and receive this Truth, may I repeat Peter’s words to you today?  Get up.  Get up, because the Good News is alive in you, pumping through your veins, awakening each breath, and calling you to sit up in the sovereign Hands of Truth."

I mean WOW.  That is NO coincidence.  The Creator of the Universe took His precious time to let me, a complete mess of a sinner, feel His presence and know that He cares about me by simply asking me to "Get Up," and then challenging me with those very words during my {very early} quiet time with Him.  What an encouragement that was...enough to get me through an extremely short night considering Bryleigh woke up again with a second bad diaper at 5:00 in the morning and she never went back to sleep.

He always gives us exactly what we need for the very moment we are in, even if that is encouragement at 3:00 in the morning.  I am thankful for a Heavenly Father that pursues me in such a way.

You Look Like Your Daddy

From the very moment my little girl was placed in my arms, there was not one single doubt about who she looked like.  She is the spitting image of her daddy, a little “Mini He,” as I like to refer to the prettiest part of the dynamic duo.

And over the first few hours, days, and weeks that followed that moment, I realized it was more than just looks that the two of them shared.  During one of our nights in the hospital, I had been watching Bryleigh as she slept so peacefully in my arms, and was completely caught off guard when I looked over at her daddy laying in the hospital windowsill-turned-daybed sleeping in EXACTLY the same way. (I wasn’t quite used to all the similarities at this point!)

They look the same, they sleep the same, they even breathe the same.  Three weeks in to being home with Brad and Little Brad, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.  Bryleigh was doing some tummy time on our chaise and I saw a mole on the outside bridge of her left foot.  Noting it was NOT de ja vu, I immediately knew I had seen this very same mole before, and it didn’t take too long to remember exactly where I had seen it…on the outside bridge of her daddy’s left foot!  They have the exact same mole on the exact same spot of their bodies. CRAZY.

Some people have apologized to me that she doesn’t look anything like me, others have laughed with me at just how much she favors her daddy, and the few that are bad at the whole “Who do you look like?” game have told me they’re just not really sure who she looks like. 

As Bryleigh continues to grow, she’s definitely starting to change.  One of my favorite changes is that her hair is getting lighter.  She was born with LOTS of dark hair, a head full of it!  But over the past eight months (8?!? How did that happen???), her hair has started to lighten up, and when the light hits it in certain ways, you can see the copper, auburn highlights that I’VE come to be known for.

I had a moment of pride recently when I was talking with Brad’s Grandma and she noticed this feature.  She said something along the lines of, “Well it looks like she’s getting her momma’s hair!”

So mark one up for the “Like Momma” traits.  And while you’re there, you can go ahead and check off the “sleep” category as well.  We are ALL thankful that she got her love for sleep from her momma.  That baby girl could sleep through the night at the early age of SEVEN weeks, and she‘s been known to choose naptime over mealtime!

I know that over time, her features will change and various parts of her will favor one of us over the other.  I also know that as her personality develops and other traits that aren’t necessarily physical come to light, she’ll take a little bit of each of us.

As people come up and talk to Bryleigh, it‘s very common for me to hear, “You sure do look like your daddy!”  Even perfect strangers have commented on how Miss B seems to favor one of us over the other.

As Christians, isn’t that what we want.  How incredible would it be for those we know, or even better, a perfect stranger to walk up to us and say, “That, whatever that was I just saw, I know I’ve seen that before.  YOU must be a child of God.”

Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”  Wow.  Did you catch that?  We were created in HIS image…that means we have His attributes within us.

Beloved, YOU were created, as a child of God, with all the loving, kindness, gentleness (and the list goes on and on) that make up our one perfect Savior.  We were created in HIS image, so we are created with those same qualities within us.

Not every sweet new babe is born into the world looking and acting just like one parent or another.  Sometimes it takes a little bit of time, and as they grow, those likenesses tend to come out more and more.  (And sometimes it’s even day-to-day.  One day, I might have humor that stems from my mom, and the next day it might come from my dad.)

I’ve got brown eyes like my daddy, and I’m left handed like my mommy.  Those are physical traits that could be seen from a very young age, but there are other traits that we couldn’t see until I was a little older.  I get my “math brain” from my algebra teaching father AND my 5^th grade math teaching mother.  And as far as personality goes, there are plenty of things that I get from each of them to make the perfect blend of ME! (Although, I’m sure my brother would take credit from some of my “good stuff”!)

It works the same way with our Heavenly Father and being made in His image.  There are traits that can be seen very early on in our lives, but there are other things that tend to come out more over time, as we grow in our relationship with Him.  As our relationship matures with our Heavenly Father, so do those characteristics that look like Him.

I recently asked my friends the question, “What attribute of Christ’s do you want to embody?”

They each said different things, but it all stemmed from the same place, they want to LOVE like He loves.  Christ forgives us over and over, no matter how bad we’ve messed up, because of His love for us.  Through His love for us, He is faithful to us (which is related to the whole forgive and forgive again thing).  And His beautiful grace.  Oh His grace.  As a part of His love for us, He shows us grace in that He continually picks us back up and dusts us off each and every time we fall short.  And that's exactly how we are to love others as well, extending them the grace our Father gives us.

I want ALL of Him.  I want every good and perfect part of Him that He has to offer, but there are some pieces I’d prefer to have in IV form dripping right in to my blood stream, those areas that are SO hard for me to live out from day to day (and that love I was referring to up there ^...it definitely tops the list...as can be seen over the past 63 days of my prayer journal).  The patience with my husband or my child that doesn’t always come naturally.  The loving reaction to someone that has seriously hurt my feelings.  The humility needed when I feel I’ve done so much for someone, only to receive nothing in return.  (I could go on, but I think you get the picture.)  As one of the other ladies mentioned when I posed the question, she would like His peace.  An IV of His peace going straight to my heart?  Yeah, that would be wonderful.  (“I mean, was Jesus ever nervous? Nope!” – Michelle M.)

There are areas in my life that I prefer to refer to as “Work in Progress” areas, and it is these areas that I wish for audible, tangible proclamations from the Lord before I cross over the line…I’d be happy with a text message!  A nice little, “Hey Carrie…how about you take about 15 seconds to think over that response to your husband before you bark back that ‘command’ at him?”  Or a, “Um, Carrie.  Remember me?  The guy that died on the cross for every filthy sin you WOULD ever commit?  What’s wrong with forgiving your sister of that one little misstep?  Did you ever stop to think about what she might be going through that caused her to hurt your feelings in the first place?”

But as much as I would love an IV drip of His love or an instantaneous text message as I’m about to royally mess up, I have to remember that as a Child of God…I’ve already got it!!  Because I am His, I have His spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) and 1 Corinthians 2:16 even tells us that we have THE MIND of Christ!  As Beth Moore said, “Beloved, fathom the miracle of it.  We are finite beings of frail human flesh occupied by the Spirit of the supernatural, all-powerful, all-present, all-knowing Godhead.”

When I feel bitter, I have His joy.  When hatefulness seems to just fly out of my mouth (or build up in my heart), I have His kindness.  When I feel like giving up, I have His strength.  I was made in the image of God, and I hope that as I continue to grow in my relationship with Him, people will come up to me and say, “You sure do look like your Daddy.”

Greater is the One living inside me than he who is living in the world.

How do you hope to look more like your Daddy today?

Getting in the Christmas Spirit

Music is something that is simply magical to me and allows me to see the world in a different way. Some of my very favorite would be Christmas music, which is why I was SO excited when my new favorite artist, Francesca Battistelli, released a song for the 2009 Christmas season. All of the lyrics of songs are so beautiful, and this one is no different! 

The song is taken from Mary's perspective on the day Jesus was born. 

You're Here, Francesca Battistelli 

Hold on now, I gotta take a deep breath 
I don’t know what to say when I look in your eyes 
You made the world before I was born 
Here I am holding You in my arms tonight 

Noel, Noel 
Jesus our Emmanuel 

You’re here 
I’m holding You so near 
I’m staring into the face of my Savior 
King and Creator 
You could’ve left us on our own 
But You’re here 

Don’t know how long I’m gonna have You for 
But I’ll be watching when You change the world 
Look at Your hands, they’re still so small 
Someday You’re gonna stretch them out and save us all 

Noel, Noel, God with us Emmanuel 

You’re here, I’m holding You so near oooh oh 
I’m staring into the face of my Savior 
King and Creator 
You could’ve left us on our own 
But you’re here, you’re here 

Someday I’m gonna look back on this 
The night that God became a baby boy 
Someday You’re gonna go home again, 
But You leave your spirit and flood the world with joy 

You’ll be here, I’m holding You so near 
I’m staring into the face of my Savior, King and Creator 
You could’ve left me on my own, but you’re here… You’re here 
Hallelujah, You’re here 
Hallelujah, You’re here