Ya'll, life is hard.

Hello friends.... I never know who is exactly reading this, so it’s always hard for me to say Hi. But after I post I am always so surprised/encouraged and...blessed...by the people that stumbled on this who I haven't spoken to in years who decide to drop me a line. So whoever you are- Hi Friend! I have to start this post like most of my previous by saying, it’s been a long time since I've done this. I guess that's the only perk of working 70-80hours/week is getting to blame things like this on your job. So I will use that as my excuse today. Also, I think God needs to really work things into my heart before I can make sense of it and then write anything with any meaning to it. Not that what I say is wrought with insight and meaning, but hopefully it at least makes sense?

Today is not just a post about me, but a post about...everyone I guess. It’s been about a year, give or take, since I started opening up more about our difficulty conceiving and our journey. And what has surprised me in that time is how many people have shared their hard stories with me. Some of them are similar to mine, and some are TOTALLY different, but in the end, even if it’s the opposite struggle it has almost been amusing to see how similar the lessons of the heart are. And so, that's why I say that this post is about everyone. Because we are all going through something hard. That is what I have decided. This life is hard. This life, sometimes sucks, and this life is not fair. I was listening to a Matt Chandler sermon the other day and he said something like "In this life God will teach us through pain and joy and laughter and tears and suffering, but in the next life we won't have to have the pain in order to digest His truth." (I paraphrased) How true that is and I long for a life when his lessons would just come without the heart ache. Because the truth is that my heart aches, and I am betting that yours does too (over something). I am struggling with infertility, but when I was thinking about this post I started to think of all of the stories I have been told: women struggling with sickness, struggling with finding a job, struggling with depression, struggling -hard- with envy, struggling with bulimia so bad that they knew before they took a bite of a sand which that they were going to through it up. Women who were heartbroken by the wrong doings of a husband, or a father. I think that my whole life I have had this "can do" attitude inside me. And the truth is, that until now, there hasn't really been anything that I wanted bad enough that I couldn't do. And here we are now, in a situation that no amount of positive thinking, or good communication, or perspective can change. And that is hard.

I am just thankful that this life won’t have to be my life forever. But this post isn't meant to be depressing, it’s meant to say what God has been saying to me. And that is a message of hope. That even though we didn't want or ask for this, that even though we didn't see this coming, and even though we may be in situations TOTALLY OUT OF OUR CONTOL, our Maker is not surprised. No, the creator of heaven and earth was not caught off guard by whatever we are dealing with. I don't believe that God causes bad things to happen to us, but I believe that he sees them coming and intends to use them.

Psalm 139:13-18
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.  How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them!  Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand— when I awake, I am still with you.

We were fearfully and wonderfully made and ALL of our days were written in His book. We are not here by a divine accident, and our suffering is not without purpose! Whatever I am going through – God can use it! And I pray that He does, the only thing worse than years of this heartache, would be looking back and not seeing His purpose or His joy through it.  I am fearfully and wonderfully made, my body, though yet incapable of bearing a child, was made especially the way it is by the creator of the heavens.  He is teaching me dependence on Him, teaching me that his grace is sufficient. He is revealing to me the selfishness of my heart, and the envy that so easily lives there. And that is what I find encouraging, that He is using this hard time. And I hope that resonates with you and whatever hard thing you have had to live through. That He will use it to refine us, to make us more like Him. The place that I am in, and that we are in, is intentional. Our God knew this day would come – he knew that our bodies, or minds, or hearts would bring us here, and I pray that on the other side of this hard time I would look less like me and more like Him.

So that’s it, it is not new information. It’s not particularly insightful, but the power of these words in this hard time, has made this truth new in my life. He is sovereign, He is God, He is working this into something bigger, and He is working me into someone new. Praise Him.

1 Peter 1: 3-7

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Our Story

Hello sweet friends, Thank you for all of your prayers and all of the encouragement I have received from everyone following our story! This post is a long time coming because I’m going to talk about things that I wasn’t sure I wanted to share, and truth be told if I had known from the beginning that this was going to be part of our story I might not have started blogging about it. But in October God called me to open up, and even though I didn’t fully know what that would mean at the time, He did. And He still called me to write it.


My last post in mid-October was the first time that I had publicly talked about our difficulties conceiving. Before that family and some friends knew, but most people in my life were unaware of the difficulties we had been experiencing. So, when just a few short weeks after my post, I found out I was pregnant I felt kinda like a blog phoney! Sure we had been trying to conceiving for 14 months when it happened, but most of our friends just recently heard of our difficulties. I wasn’t sure how I was going to talk to people about it, but unfortunately things never got that far. My first prenatal appointment was at 6wks gestation and everything looked fine, unfortunately concerning signs developed at 7wks. We went back to the doctor, and at that time we were still able to see a heartbeat, but out baby had not grown and was still measuring like a 6wk baby. At that time we were told that it was a good possibility that I would go on to lose the pregnancy soon, which I did just after Thanksgiving.

It has been a difficult time for Travis and I, and the healing process is still on going. I waited to write this post because for the longest time I didn’t know what I was going to say – other than it happened. But, being the time of the year that it is, I have found something worth saying. The hardest part of everything to me was understanding why it happened, or more precisely, what was the point? My goal throughout this process has been to seek God’s glory in the midst of our fertility struggles, and I just couldn’t reconcile how the whole ordeal was at all going to serve his glory. During the week that we knew things weren’t quite “well” I continued to pray fervently KNOWING that my God was all-powerful. In our God breathed word we have so many examples of God raising the dead, parting seas, and healing the blind/sick. And I truly believed the same could happen for us. But it didn’t.

 And I just didn’t understand after 14months of infertility why he would give us a pregnancy and then not intervene on our behalf. But then I was reminded of another time that he didn’t intervene. Thousands of years ago, one evening a humble man prayed for intervention. He was 100% human, 100% God, and 100% perfect. And he prayed that the cup would be taken from Him, if it was God’s will. But it wasn’t.

 When he died on a cross no one understood why. But the truth was that God had a greater plan that anyone knew or could understand at the time. And if it hadn’t been for his death, we would all still be slaves to sin, unable to ever have the hope of grace and eternal life that we now enjoy so frivolously.

So, what was the point? I'm still not sure, but in 2 weeks we will all be reminded of how powerful he can be when he chooses not to intervene. So...

In 2 weeks I will praise the God of creation who is all powerful.

In 2 weeks I will praise the God who intervenes on our behalf.

In 2 weeks I will praise the God who does not intervene on our behalf.


Because sometimes the God of the Universe accomplishes his restoration story by not intervening; sometimes He is the God who, according to His perfect will, lets the heartache of this earthly life progress without interruption.

The truth is that I still don’t know why, but I now have come to know a peace that surpasses understanding. Because I will never understand, but I will always know that his will is for our restoration and sanctification, and HIS glorification.

Praise Him.

love

First off, I wanted to say thank you, a HUGE thank you for all of the emails/text messages/ facebook messages etc. I am still trying to respond to all of them, which is an incredibly good problem to have!

So, in my first post I mentioned why I decided to blog about our problems concieving, but I didn't write the whole story. I believe that God is going to do something mighty in our life, and I finally decided to blog about it because I wanted everyone to experience HIS glory. But that is what pushed me over the edge... that truth is what finally overcame my doubts and fears of being vulnerable and uncomfortable. The truth is, that he has been promting my heart to blog about this-- not just to let people know about our infertility, or to make this a forum to show what he is going to do ABOUT our infertility. But also to let everyone know what he is doing THROUGH our infertility. God is using this barren time in my life to teach me things that I would NEVER have been able to understand otherwise. He has redefined himself in my life and he has used this hard, hard time to give me a perspective on his love that has truly overwhelemed me. And why wouldn't I want to share that with ya'll? This is a difficult time in our life, but PRAISE GOD he has not been silent during it. He has not left us to go through this alone, he is using this fruitless time of my body to teach my soul. And while I'm not thankful for the difficulty, I am so thankful for the lessons he is teaching me, and I am thankful that this time is not being wasted.

A few months ago, I was driving to work and crying. I was crying because I didn't understand why we were having to go through this. More specifically, I was crying because it didn't make sense to me that God would plant a desire for kids in my heart, knowing full well that my body would have problems following through. And that seems like a reasonable thing to be upset about. If we couldn't have kids now -- then why make me want them? Why not save that desire for later -- when it could theoretically be possible? Or, if we can NEVER have kids, then why give me the desire to be pregnant, why not just put it on our hearts to adopt? And then I remembered, the pot has no right to demand a reason from the potter for his decisions, and it is even more prideful for me to expect the creator of the universe to be accountable of his actions to me. And so my mind went quiet, and I can still see the intersection when he told me something incredible.

Libby, everyday I hunger and desire for love. I created you out of a desire for relationship and love, but not just you -- I created your entire species for that exact purpose. I desire for love from you and from every other person on the planet. You feel like you know unrequited love, but I know unrequited love. I expereience it everyday on a magnitude that is beyond your understanding, and yet I continue to pursue each human, ferociously. This love for a child that you can't have, multiple that times 8 million and you will still not know the love that I have. I know you don't understand why you are going through this, but understand this: you understand one aspect of my love, better than you did before...because of this.

And it clicked. I've always known the love of God, but now I can empathize, just a little bit, with his unrequited love.  So, for those of you who haven't felt the pull of love for a life, who haven't dreamed of tiny hands to hold, or hearts to listen to, or eyes to loose yourself in. For those of you who don't feel the tug to create a life and then nurture and protect it...Or for those of you who haven't had to wait patiently on the object of your affection. Know this, God's heart tugs for you....all the time. He pursues you even when you don't feel him. And he's waiting for you, right now.

^"Then Jesus told them this parable:  ^'Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?  And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders  and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’" Luke 15:3-6

Travis and I are here now, searching for our one lost sheep. But our father searches for his...he started the second we were born and he will not give up.
Praise him for his love Praise him for his constant pursuit.

TTC

Well, its been a long time since I have posted anything on this blog…to say the least. I guess in general I have become bored of the “same old thing/posts.” The other truth is for a few weeks now God has been putting something on my heart to post, but I’ve been resisting Him. I’ve been resisting vulnerability. I’ve been resisting making something public.  I think my reluctance has stemmed from not wanting people to be awkward or uncomfortable, and maybe because if I don’t tell too many people then I can pretend whats going on isn’t 100% happening.  

But all of that is only poor excuses to do what I want instead of what God is calling me to, and its selfish of me.  So I apologize to all of you for waiting and resisting, and I apologize for being unwilling to be vulnerable in front of you. God tells me that there is power in vulnerability, that in my weakness His strength is made perfect. So I am claiming that right now… I am ok being weak if that means His strength can be made perfect in my life.

So, for a paragraph I’ve been stalling, because I guess I don’t really know how to start. But I will just say it and go from there. For the past 1.5 years Travis and I have been trying to get pregnant. We started in May of 2011 and have thus far, not been successful. For those of you who don’t know, 85% of couples trying to conceive (TTC) will get pregnant in the first 12 months of trying. So we are now in the bottom 15%. And with that, comes tests and charting and doctors and….work. So now we are working to get pregnant. Which is not the fairy tale version you tell your kids about how they were made….  “mommy and daddy loved each other very much, so daddy got a semen analysis….” Just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

So, why is God calling me to write this VERY private stuff on a quite public blog? Well, that is what I struggled with for a long time….and that was the reason I gave God for not doing it. Whats the point of airing all of this information on the blog? What will it do… What will it change? And I think what it comes down to is that for a very long time I have been scared. I have been scared that getting pregnant would be hard. I have been scared that it might require interventions that I am not willing to make. And ultimately I have been scared that we might not be able to. So, if that is the case why would I want to put all of these very scary things out there, just for the whole world (ie the few that are actually reading this) to see my fears become true? And the other night, God hit me with it. This is what it comes down to. Do I believe that He will do mighty things in our life? Do I believe that He has a plan for us and that he will be faithful to that no matter what? Because if so, then I have nothing to fear.

So that is the point of this….today. Telling everyone that we are working, hard, to get pregnant. But that we are not doing it alone. That I am 100% confident that I serve a God who is bigger than my infertility (its me…Travis has been told that he is “extremely fertile...queue ego expansion”). I don’t know His plan. I don’t know his answer. But I know that He has one, and that His glory will be shown through this. And if I really do believe that, that this time in my life will be an example of his glory... Why would I want to hide that? Why would I want to keep those close to me from being able to see the wonderful thing God has in store for us? Why wouldn't I want anyone and everyone to witness what He will do? I want to make HIS glory as public as possible, and this is as public as I can get.

And, ofcourse, the other reason I’m writing today is to solicit your prayers. Pray that we would be blessed with a child, Pray that God would heal my body. Pray that the next time Travis so much as looks at me I will get pregnant J Pray that God would reign over me and the doctors and the tests, but most importantly…please pray that throughout everything God would be glorified.

I like, I love, I want

I had a friend who did "I like, I love, I want" post and I decided to copy her! The deal is that I am tyring to post with more regularity and some times I just have posting lulls, ya know? Times when I even know that I have things that I want/should/could/ put up here, but for some reason I just .... don't. Why does that happen? I have posts from Christmas (awesome burlap stocking tutorial, Christmas wreath tutorial, KILLER IKEA hack) that for some reason I just can't get around to posting. But I think some regularity within my posts will help me be better. Help me help you. How does that sound?

So.....I like, I love, I want

I like: The Crank Book Series by Ellen Hopkins. Here is the truth about this book series. Its dark. And it wasn't something that I particularly wanted to read. But I think its a good, true, and important read. For anyone who has teenagers, knows teenagers, works with teenagers, is a teenager, or (like me, hopefully) will someday have a teenager. The story is loosely based on her own daughter, "Kristina." As a teenager she was a straight A student and seemingly perfect. However; she was exposed to meth on a court ordered visit to see her father... I don't want to give the point of the books away, but it is a powerful story about how quickly addiction can take hold, and what it means not only for the addicted, but for their friends and families. I think the visit was only 14 days, but at the end of the 14 days her life was completely turned upside down. There are 3 books in the series: the first two are told from Kristina's perspective and the third is told from the perspective of her 5 children she had while using meth. To make it more powerful, the entire book is written in verse. The words have a beautiful rhythm and the pages fly past you.

 I love: Our house. I love our house. and I'm feeling sentimental about our house because, its on the market. We will likely be leaving Lubbock sometime in the near future and so we decided it was time to let go of this house. In light of all of these things, you should maybe (?) start expecting some before and afters of our house, because I truly love our house. {have I mentioned I love our house?} It was the first house I ever purchased (I say 'I' instead of 'we' because I bought it before we got married). Its 930 sq feet of libby and travis. We have painted every wall (some 2 or 3 times) we have refinished wood floors and old couches, DIY'ed upholstered headboards, and just had a blast. The only few things that we weren't able to accomplish before putting the house on the market are in the extra room, but thats ok! If you know someone who is looking for a well maintained 2/1 with a detached 1 car garage in lubbock, you should show them our listing:
http://www.usamls.net/techterracewebsite//default.asp?content=expanded&search_content=results&this_format=1&mls_number=9985378&page=4&query_id=117693240&sortby=2

I want: Stella & Dot's Waverly Three Way Cross Body Bag. Its named that way because it can be worn three ways. A full or half cross body bag, and as a clutch. I think its beautiful and the Dove leather is truly gorgeous. Feels like butter.

http://www.stelladot.com/sites/elizabethahall





New Addition

Well, I have some long over due introductions to make. As some of you now we have a new addition to our family of three! Penelope Jane Hall was born August 16, 2011 and in December of 2011 she finally came to know her true home! We felt like Sydney has become independent enough that we were ok with taking on the extra responsibilites of another puppy, and that Sydney was still young enough to want to play with a puppy! 

The actual truth is that we just love our new little one! She is nothing but sweet and cute. Sometimes it feels like Sydney has done most of the work! Sydney plays tug of war, wrestling, and thanks to Sydney our little one is pretty much outside trained {with the occasional accident}. Well I could just go on and on about how much we love her, but I should just as you to please,

Meet our Penny Puppy!

this picture was taken just before we got her, shes already grown so much!

on the ride home

The interesting thing is that she is kinda Sydney's opposite in many ways. She doesn't like to curl up under the covers as much, she LOVES running outside even in the wind/rain/snow (Sydney is a baby when the weather is bad), and she HOOVERS all of her food when Sydney generally picks at it! They are SO different, it is amazing to watch them play and love each other. 

our cuddle bugs

What I really think

You know when you are facing a really big decision its instinct to think, alot. How do you do it? Do you make a pros and cons sheet? Do you have an excel spreadsheet where you weigh different aspects of each option and assign points? Do you drive around for hours and talk to someone, anyone, who will listen to you?

At some point or other in my life I had done all of these things, this time around I am determined to be different. Because the truth of the matter is...I'm not really gaining anything from these sessions. I already know all of the information. I'm not bringing anything new to the table, I'm not gaining perspective or deeper understanding. I'm spinning my wheels. And in some way, I believe that when we over analyze things we are telling God we aren't sure He really knows whats best.

Reason Number Two why I will not over analyze: It's not my job to think, It's my job to listen.

But the one who enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep recognize his voice and come to him. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. After he has gathered his own flock, he walks ahead of them, and they follow him because they know his voice. They won’t follow a stranger; they will run from him because they don’t know his voice.
John 10:2-5