Great Christian Diaries

2004-02-16 - 2.18pm  previous entry  next entry

Thank you Meg and Deborah (yay!) for your guestbook messages!

I meant to update again yesterday but I got sleepy and there wasn't time. So here I am today instead! I have sooooo much to write about!! Well maybe not that much when it actually comes to it, but it feels like there's loads at the moment! Be warned that this could be a super-long entry!

Okay I talked about Cameron last entry, and what was the other main thing?? Um, there's church (which I'll write about in a minute) but what else?

My border outside the front of the house is all full of crocuses :) They came up again after last year, which I knew they would but it was still a huge surprise when I saw them, all the same! I have daffodils now. They came out yesterday. Yay, spring is coming!!! It still feels a way off because it's sooooo cold, but yay, spring. I remember last year when the first signs of spring appeared, I was soooo excited because I had felt like the winter would NEVER end, waiting for the summer to come so we could start trying for a baby. So it's slightly bitter-sweet that I am seeing the whole cycle come round again and I still am not pregnant. But oh well. I like spring anyway :) I am so ready for winter to be over already! I want to see some leaves on the trees.

I have a ton of handwashing to do. HAND washing. Bleugh. That always gives me such backache with all the rubbing and scrubbing over the sink. But it needs doing. And I am blessed to be alive in the age of the washing machine, that's all I can say!!

We are going to France on Thursday for 9 days, to stay with my parents, and it is my birthday on Saturday. Wow, that has crept up on me from nowhere! One minute it's Christmas and the next second it's about to be my birthday! I will be 28. My mummy was 28 when I was born. I want to be a mummy. I can't BELIEVE I am going to be 28, it's just too weird. I am beginning to feel "mature", you know? Not as in, sensible, hehe! But you know, I'm definitely a woman aren't I. Not a girl anymore. So weird.

On Valentine's Day Neil and I went on another date!!! Woohoo! We are getting out more and that's so nice. We didn't get cards for each other or presents this year. I am reading American journals and am completely gobsmacked by how blown-out-of-proportion this day has become out there!!! Does everyone give their entire family a Valentine's gift?!!! That's CRAZY!! I am absolutely amazed that people are giving their kids things and worse still, buying presents that are just normal presents like at Christmas. Hello?! Valentine's Day is a ROMANTIC holiday - it's supposed to be for couples in love ONLY!! Somehow it seems to have got way out of hand over there. Gifts are kind of optional surely, and anyway, if you get someone a gift for Valentine's Day it absolutely should be a romantic gift, not another extension of Christmas.

I mean no offense, and of course it's nice to tell people you love them, especially your children. But Valentine's Day has absolutely NOTHING to do with your children!! There are other ways to tell kids you love them, and Valentine's Day is losing it's specialness by just becoming another over-commercialised gotta-make-sure-everybody-I-know-feels-the-love day. It annoys me. But oh well, I should just chill out and be happy that we are still sane about the day in England! It's about romantic love over here, and that is nice and how it should be. Once when I was a little girl my daddy sent me a Valentine's card in the post. It was anonymous and it just had a big heart on the front and a kiss on the inside, but I knew it was from him :) It was an unusual one-off, because everybody knew kids did not get Valentine's things. It was very much seen as a grown-ups thing, and you could look forward to maybe getting a card from a boy in your class that you liked when you got to be about 11 or something, but that's it.

Anyway, aaargh this wasn't meant to turn into a rant!!! Sorry! What I meant to talk about was that we didn't do cards and presents this year. We both realised we hadn't done anything on the evening of the 13th, so we mutually agreed not to bother! :) However, we did want to mark the day in some way, so we planned to go out on a date. Unfortunately that's what the entire world did, so we couldn't get in ANYWHERE to eat a meal. The nice place we went to had a 90 minute waiting time for a table!!!! So we went to a chicken place where everything is chicken (really?!!) and sat reading the menus. I got nervous because there were all these references to chilli and I am allergic to chilli, it makes me sick, so I did not want to eat a THING in that place! We made our excuses to the waitress and left! Oh well, I am glad because otherwise I would have stressed and not enjoyed my meal. And it could have made me sick.

In the end we went to Pizza Hut, waited maybe 15 minutes for a table, and had the BEST meal out!! It was so nice, much nicer than I'd expected. The place was full of Americans for some reason. Did you know that if you are sitting in a restaurant with predominantly American-accented customers, the general buzz of conversation has a noticable twang to it? If you have never been surrounded by a large number of English people then let me tell you that the sound is much flatter and mumblier than a room full of American accents! English accents are really flat in comparison. So the room was on full twang! I like American accents so much, so that was nice :) The couple at the table next to us were missionaries. They were in deep conversation about their work the whole time, and it was so interesting! Of course, I wasn't actually eavesdropping, it's just that the place was packed so full that the tables were only a foot away from each other. A bit close for comfort for me, but it was nice all the same.

Anyway we had a salad bowl between us and some seriously delicious pizza. I always forget how much I LOVE Pizza Hut pizza. It's definitely my favourite. We were going to order dessert but we were just too stuffed. We had bought tickets to see a movie before we went to eat, because we got worried that everything would get sold out on Valentine's Day. I'm so glad we did, because every single movie was sold out by the time we headed in to see ours! Yay! We went to the late showing of "Something's Got To Give". Or is it, "Something's Gotta Give"? Well anyway, we had noooo idea what it would be like or if we'd enjoy it, but it was great! We had a great time. Afterwards we had to fill in this questionnaire about the movie, which I've never done before. I don't know what it was for but everyone was given a questionnaire. We had to rate loads of things and also write what our three favourite scenes were and why.

Anyway that was nice. I need more "going out" clothes. And shoes.

I am still doing my exercise up and down the stairs, which is probably the longest I've stuck to anything, heh! I think it is helping, either that or the glyconutrients I'm taking are, because I keep feeling like I have soooo much energy. I am still tired and lethargic a lot, but I really need to fix my sleep-time. I am not getting to sleep for a couple of hours after I get in bed, so that cuts my sleep up a bit too. Anyway, the other day I felt so energized that if I needed something upstairs I would run up them with a spring in my step instead of trudging up! And I climbed on the bed to open the curtains (it's easier that way, our bed is right in front of the windows), and before I knew what I was doing, I was jumping up and down on the bed!!! I mean, real jumping, like a child, pumping arms and everything!! Hehe! I bounced for a while and then I went all 27-years-old and calmly opened the curtains and got down to do some housework. I just had too much energy. That is a nice thing to feel.

Oh I must get onto church yesterday, otherwise this entry will get way too long.

Neil did not go with me in the end, but I think that was right. I felt less likely to use him as a distraction if I got uncomfortable at church. I felt really nervous about going and facing people and being there after so long. Particularly about seeing Gordon and Katie. After I phoned them I wrote them a letter. It's just a real spill-your-guts letter, being totally open about how difficult I'm finding it to have a problem conceiving, and how jealous I have been of them. It made me so ashamed to see it all written there. But you probably know by now (!!) that I am one for writing out all the bad things about me and having them all "out there" for people to see. It's wonderfully therapeutic. And things can't fester if they're out in the open. Things fester if you hide them inside you. Consider opening up to someone. It's horribly uncomfortable but worth it for the cleaning process!

Anyway, so I was nervous. I was also late! That's because I wrote a diary entry instead of getting ready for church. Tsk! But I wasn't that late. I was maybe 5 minutes late and they had only just started singing. I will tell you all that happened (long-entry warning!).

When I got there, Steve was on the door, and he had sent me an email in January asking how I was doing. I didn't reply because I didn't know what to say and I hardly know Steve. Which is why it was soooo nice of him to email me. Anyway I thanked him for the email and he made me feel welcome :) Nice start. Then I got two steps in the door and found a father exasperated with his four-year-old who always disrupts the service so they tend to spend a lot of time out in the corridors. He said, "Would you like a little boy? He comes free with chocolate!" I said not right now thanks :) And carried on. But yay, two nice contacts and I wasn't even at the hall yet! Then as I got to the hall, this lady said the church was full (wow!) but there was a spare seat a few rows from the front next to Barbara. That was so nice of her to tell me that without me even asking.

So I went down to the seat, and Sue was right behind me. She was singing but when she saw me she stopped and grinned at me and mouthed, "Hi!" That was nice :) And Barbara stopped singing too and whispered that she was just thinking the other day that it's been a while since she saw me, and asked if I was okay. I said yes, and she said I look very well.

Oh I forgot to say, when we went to the cinema I had a Haagen-Daaz (sp?!) ice cream (yum) and we bumped into a couple from church who were getting ready to see Cold Mountain. Carolyn said to me, "How amazing that we bumped into you! I have been thinking of you a lot this week. A LOT! I don't know why." I didn't have the chance to tell her that evening, because they were in a rush, but that really encourages me because this week is where God has really worked on me to help me surrender to his will about having a baby, and to help me to make peace with my pregnant friends. It's been a big week, spiritually. Carolyn is one of these ladies who is really really sensitive to God and hears from him a lot. I am so encouraged that she had me on her mind a lot this last week, because I know God will have been the one putting me there.

Anyway, Carolyn also said I looked incredibly well :) Yay!

So anyway, the song they were singing when I arrived was one I didn't know, but I picked it up, and soon realised the chorus had a couple of lines in it that were sooooo appropriate for me. I can't remember the words exactly, but it was something like, "Your grace has found me just as I am, with empty hands but safe in your arms." Or something like that. But it hit me like a sledge hammer as I read the words off the screen and sang them. That's me. With the empty hands. I have been feeling so "empty of baby" for months now, and I'm glad to be reminded that God finds me just as I am, and his grace is still there for me, and I am safe in his hands.

Anyway the next song was beautiful, I love this song - it's called, "You chose the cross" and for me it's a real love song from me to Jesus, but also it's like being reminded of how much he loves me too. I got pretty tearful singing the words, though I am not comfy with crying with loads of people around me so I gave myself an achy throat. I just felt like I had pain in all my body that was throbbing and aching, but I knew it was just emotional pain. I felt like I wanted to cry and cry before God. I could feel him, almost literally hear his voice, whispering words to me more tenderly than I have ever heard anyone speak to me. It was the tenderness that broke me. It was like he was saying, "There there little one. I know it hurts. Let me put this balm on you and soothe you and make it better." I can't explain why it makes me so emotional to be that loved, but it just does.

Then Debby who was sitting in front of me, had a picture that she told the church about. It was of a group of people climbing a mountain, and they were pilgrims. They had their sights set on a mountain just beyond the one they were climbing, and they longed to reach God who was at the top or something. It was an arduous climb. But they helped each other as a group. When they reached the top of the first mountain they saw that instead of going straight on up the next mountain, there was an enormous chasm of a deep valley inbetween the two mountains, and they had no idea how they could get to the other one. They knelt down on the mountain top and prayed, and God said not to be afraid, and he MOVED THE MOUNTAIN to them!!! Wow! But that is what my God is like. Seriously. He is a mountain-moving God. That picture really encouraged me because the part about the people working as a group spoke to me big time. I saw that as me going back to church and allowing my church family to help me and support me.

Then Sue had a word where she felt God was saying not to be afraid, and she saw in her mind's eye a frightened rabbit being mesmerised by headlights, only the headlights represented fears. That one was really appropriate for me, obviously! We sang some more beautiful songs, and then listened to the sermon, which was about God's grace. I got nervous and missed what the speaker was saying a lot, but every time I just remembered God's voice saying to me, "Don't be afraid" and that soothed me instantly. God is so good to me.

Before church I was praying that God would give me positive interactions with people and help me not to get negative about anything. He answered all my prayers, above and beyond what I expected.

After the service I lose count of all the people that came up to me to say hello. Normally I get fidgetty and uncomfy just sitting there on my own, I like to act like I'm mingling without actually making contact with anyone! I know, I know, but I'm just like that. Well I don't want to be like that anymore. So I sat in my chair, conspicuously, while everyone else was up and chatting and getting coffee and things. I made myself be uncomfortable and just wait, and people came to me.

Adam sat with me and talked. Carol came over and did the same. David came and hugged me and said how great it was that I came along (he's the one I prayed with on the phone this week). He introduced me to his fiancee who is soooo lovely!! I am looking forward to getting to know her better when she moves here after they get married. Sue wanted to pray with me, and we chatted for a while about how things are going for me. That was the only down side to the morning, because Sue can be so.... I don't know how to put it. She means well, but she seems to bring out the negatives without meaning to. It's in the tone of voice, and she is always on about the same things everytime we talk about me trying to get pregnant - I can't expect to cope with pregnancy and a baby if I am not getting out of the house more/being fitter/eating better/relaxing about it all. Aaaaaargh. Last time she said all these things I vowed that next time I would set her straight! But I haven't got the heart because it makes me so angry I feel like I'll say something wrong and anyway she is only trying to help. I tell her I'm doing great, I'm getting fitter, I'm eating fine ("You don't weigh enough", she says), I am ovulating just fine thank you very much! She is always negatively saying how a new baby will be very boring, and I will need to be used to going out and socialising if I'm going to be "up to" coping with it. It positively INFURIATES me. I don't know why it should, but it makes me so so so angry. I just try to smile and say I'm doing fine on that one thanks. Urgh. At least this time I was able to tell her my test results show I am ovulating great and my hormones are pretty perfect. So there. But I shouldn't be thinking "so there". It just makes me cross and I feel patronised for some reason.

Anyway, but she prayed with me. I just started to say that if she thought that I needed to get fitter/go out more, etc, etc, that she'd better pray for me to achieve those things! I told her stress does NOT have an impact on getting pregnant. This is driving me crazy lately - see my pre-pregnancy diary. At least I now have proof. So I told her that. Hopefully she won't mention it again.

Anyway then Andrew talked to me and we had a lovely conversation about taking time out with God. Lovely. And then Gordon was hovering so Andrew said bye, and Gordon gave me this huuuuge hug!!! :) He kissed the top of my head (he's very tall!). He told me how much they appreciated my letter and how glad they were to see me because they had missed me, and I said I was ashamed, and he said I should never be ashamed because a) it was totally understandable, and b) it is dealt with before God and with them too! So yay!! Then Belinda came over and wanted to speak to me, but she said it was kind of personal so Gordon gave us some space. She said that her husband met Neil in town and asked how I was doing, and Neil told him that we were having trouble conceiving and I was not dealing too well with it. So Belinda came over to tell me that they also had trouble getting pregnant - they tried for over a year and then had four children absolutely to their planned timing - each one 18 months apart! That's so encouraging. I always thought their family was sooo perfect. Anyway Belinda told me how she wanted to just HIT pregnant women who had conceived without any effort, lol!! It was so funny the way she said it with such feeling! Okay, you probably had to be there! But anyway, she talked with me for ages about how it feels to be waiting, and about the idea of God's timing, and about other couples they know who have been through it too. Her husband came over and joined the conversation - I love this couple so much, I have known them the full 8 years that I've been a Christian. He said that there is a new couple who joined the church in the last couple of months. They have 2 children and a baby on the way. The husband is a fertility specialist!! Anyway, they tried for FIVE years before they conceived their first child, and then it took 8 months for the second, and their current pregnancy was from the first attempt!! So that's encouraging too.

Belinda asked if we were using ovulation predictor kits, because they had been trying at the wrong times of the month until they used an OPK. So I told her yes, we have been using those. Anyway the conversation was so lovely. I felt so supported and loved and wonderfully understood.

That should probably be in the other diary but oh well.

Then Gordon came back and said they had a book on diet and infertility and miscarriage, and they would lend it to me if I wanted. I said yes! :) I said I would go to housegroup this week, and Gordon was so thrilled. Ah it was so lovely.

But the biggest bullet to bite was seeing Katie. After I finished talking to Gordon I found Katie and gave her a hug and said I was sorry I had been silly. She waved that off and I asked her how she was feeling and how many weeks pregnant she was, etc. I felt slightly like I was forcing a smile and like it was an effort to ask about her pregnancy, but after the initial discomfort it was all fine. She is 19 weeks now, and feels tired a lot. We chatted just like normal, about pancake day at housegroup which I will miss next week :( And about last year's shenanigans, etc! So that was really nice.

I was the last person to leave church yesterday, and walked to my car with Katie, still chatting. When I got in the car with people waving to me through the window, my eyes just filled up with tears because I felt so wonderful, and God had blessed me so much with the whole morning. He answered my prayers so faithfully and so lovingly. My church family are so wonderful and supportive, if I just give them the opportunity to support me when I need it. I know they love me so much. I felt so CLEAN, I can't even explain. I felt like I had had a spiritual mudbath and sauna and massage and all that stuff, and my spiritual pores were squeaky clean. I wish I could express in writing just how wonderfully clean I felt inside. It felt amazing.

I started to just tell God how much I love him and to thank him for the morning, and as I drove off I started singing a song that popped into my head. It made me cry more because ohhhh it's so true. The words go like this:

Lord, I come before your throne of grace
I find rest in your presence and fullness of joy
In worship and wonder, I behold your face
Singing what a faithful God have I!

What a faithful God have I!
What a faithful God
What a faithful God have I!
Faithful in every way

Lord, all sovereign, granting peace from heaven
Let me comfort those who suffer with the comfort you have given
I will tell of your great love for as long as I live
Singing what a faithful God have I!

I made the second verse my prayer. I got such a longing to comfort people who suffer in the same ways I have, that it made me cry for them already. I want to bless people like God has blessed me. I want it more than I want to have a baby. Really and honestly. I can't believe I am writing that, but it's the truth right now. God is so wonderful to me.

Recent entries.....

Cameron's first anniversary - 2004-09-24
Update - 5th Anniversary and other stuff! - 2004-08-16
Church picnic and being happy and things :) - 2004-06-27
Barbeque at Cameron's house... - 2004-05-18
To Tara... - 2004-04-19