Thank you!

I felt a little vulnerable after clicking "publish post" on the last update, but I'm so glad I didn't delete it, as I had thought of doing. It felt good to really just sit down and think through all my thoughts, and try to make sense of the range of emotions. But I wondered what was going to happen with all those thoughts going out into "cyberspace"...

I am so appreciative of the women in my life! It was wonderful to read your responses or talk to you on the phone and be encouraged and affirmed by you. Thank you for lifting me up with your words to me and I'm sure with some prayers too.

Over the last week I have felt a change in the anticipation. Nervousness is subsiding and I'm becoming increasingly excited to meet this little person who has been sharing my body! I'm eager to discover if it is a boy or a girl and begin to get to know him or her. Sometimes my mind jumps ahead to months down the road or even years and the thoughts of life with a toddler (or teenager) scare me. Then I remember to focus on each day as it comes.

That was something that dawned on me last week after I had written the last post. I was allowing fear of the (distant) future, which at this point is incomprehensible to me, to rob some of the joy of the present and more near experiences. Rather than worrying about what life will be like when this baby starts walking...or talking back to us...I need to take one day at a time. I know it probably sounds really simple, but it came to me like a huge revelation one night!

I think pregnancy is another one of those journeys that God has given me to help me learn to rest in Him and rely on him for strength and comfort. For example, we pray for the health of our baby each day and yet we won't be totally assured until he or she is born. It is so easy to worry but much better to leave it in God's hands...since he's got the full control anyway. I guess motherhood will be another journey like this, learning these truths more and more fully...over and over again.