My favorite Bible verse

I originally started to post about being a substitute teacher (which has been quite interesting), but as soon as I began to type about this change in my life, I started to think about how lucky and blessed I have been to NOT be subbing (or doing any other "real" job) for the past 7 years while my kids were at home.

Being a stay-at-home mom has been (or I guess was, at this point) one of the absolute biggest blessings in my life.  As we spent 5 years trying to conceive, I prayed and prayed that God would someday reveal the reason that we had to wait SO long to have a baby (or babies, in our case).  Along our journey, friends would tell me that they were pregnant.  I would be happy for them, but also VERY sad for myself.  I could see absolutely no reason why God would make us wait to have a baby while so many others around us were having babies...some of them great parents, some of them not so great.  I could never come up with a even a remote possibility as to why God was making us wait.  But I was wrong!

After the joyful Christmas morning (at 3am...but that's another story) when I peed on the umpteenth stick of my life, but FINALLY saw TWO lines and not one, the hurt and pain that I had experienced during our infertility trial disappeared in an instant, but some of the questions remained.  I was so happy to be pregnant, but still didn't understand why we had to go through the trial of trying and waiting.  Then, after our 3 little bundles of (crazy) joy were born, God answered my prayer to reveal why we had to wait.  And He didn't reveal just one small reason.  He revealed several major reasons!

If you personally know my husband and I, then you know that we are both first borns, both leaders, both know-it-alls.  We love each other like crazy, but we also butt heads like crazy.  God had, in His good plan for us, THREE babies...all at once.  If we had been given them right away, like I had wanted (and had seen no reason as to why we shouldn't have) I can 99.9% guarantee that our marriage would have crumbled under the stress of parenting 3 babies (and maybe even one).  We had no idea what we were in store for.  Although it was ridiculously stressful...and we still fought a lot...we had grown together over 7 years and were more prepared for the challenge of raising children than we were when we first started trying to get pregnant.

When I got pregnant, there was an "extenuating circumstance" that you could chalk up to coincidence, but I chalk it up to God having a good plan for our life.  We had tried one round of fertility meds, which we paid for ourselves, without success.  Realizing that the cost of fertility treatments would quickly go beyond what we could afford at the time, we decided to look into adoption.  Adopting a newborn is also quite expensive, but adopting a slightly older child (as a "foster to adopt") is not.  In fact, they pay you to foster in many instances.  This sounded like the answer to our troubles.  We'd get the child we wanted, while also giving a home to a child who needed one.  However, after going through the required classes, we were starting to feel that the cons outweighed the pros.  The poor children in the foster system have been exposed to SO many terrible things.  We felt so ill-prepared and were pretty much scared to death.  My hat goes off to any and all who offer a home to these precious children!

After going over that huge hill on the emotional roller coaster, we decided that giving fertility treatments one more try might be the way to go before committing to adopting an older child.  Because I was nervous that our insurance might clue into the fact that we were doing fertility treatments and therefore screw us over (like only insurance and taxes can) I was planning on paying for any and all fertility treatments directly to the doctor without even turing them into our insurance company.  If you're still reading, here comes the "oh wow!" part.  We were talking with our friends about our plans to do fertility treatments again and how we weren't turing them into our insurance company.  Our friend just so happened to be a personal trainer.  The owner of the company where my husband worked at the time just so happened to be one of his clients.  The 2 of them just to happened to be making conversation about us one day when our infertility issues came up.  The owner says to our friend, "I wonder if they know that they have $5,000 fertility coverage with our insurance policy?"  (Apparently he and his wife had spent years and lots of money trying to get pregnant without success and he had added the fertility coverage for his employees due to this.  FYI, fertility insurance is pretty much unheard of.)  We did not know about this coverage that we'd had all along!  I still remember hanging out in our pool when this conversation took place.  A little spark of hope started to grow inside me.  We used the coverage, and the rest, as they say, is history!

One of the other big reasons that God has revealed to me that we had to wait to have children is where this post first started.  When I was younger and thought about having children, I always thought it would be so nice to be able to stay home with our children, but it was always more of a dream than something that I thought could ever be a reality.  At the time that I go pregnant I was making at least half of our income (which, by the way, I had insurance and so did Greg, so we were doubly covered when we had the babies and never paid on red cent in medical bills - those were the happy insurance days - lol).  Even as we were trying to get pregnant, I figured I would have to do like all the other moms that I worked with - leave my precious little 8 week old baby with someone else while I tried to care about a stupid job**.  I never did price exactly what a babysitter or daycare for 3 newborns would have cost because without getting the actual figures, we knew that it would be really close to my entire paycheck every 2 weeks.  We didn't know how it was going to work, but we knew that God had finally given us our hope and that He would somehow make it work.  He SO did!  My husband had to make some changes...some of them quite bold, which had me scared to death.  But we have never suffered financially.  In less than a year after the kids were born my husband was making more by himself than we had been making together when I was still working.  Did I mention that I had short-term disability insurance at my job that covered my 6 months of bedrest as well as 12 weeks of maternity leave?  I got paid to lay around and grow my babies...what a gig!

So, to my favorite verse, if you haven't guessed it.  Jeremiah 29:11 - "For I know the plans I have for you," declared the Lord.  "Plans to prosper you and not to harm you.  Plans to give you a hope and a future."

I remember receiving this verse, printed on cardstock, at church camp during my senior year of high school. It was tear stained because I had spent time holding it while I prayed, trying to figure out what my major should be.  Talk about perspective - something that was so consuming at the time could now matter so little to me.  I mean, I'm glad that I have a degree...and do occasionally use it now...but if adult Heather could go back in time and talk to 18 year old Heather, she would tell her to figure out what paid the most for the least amount of work but that she didn't hate.  LOL  Don't worry - I will pass this insight on to my children. :)

Being raised in a christian home and very involved in church, I had heard this verse so many times throughout my life.  If someone would have asked me, "Does God have a good plan for your life?" my automatic response would have been "yes".  But although I could spit out the proper words, I don't know that I ever fully had the assurance DEEP, DEEP down in my soul until after going through 5 years of infertility, where I questioned if God even cared about me, much less loved me and had a good plan for me.  Then, after that long trial, being utterly blessed with 3 beautiful, healthy babies.  Although being a mom to 3 at once was possibly even tougher than not being able to be a mom at all, both things gave me the complete assurance that God DOES have a good plan for my life.  It may not come packaged the way that I want.  I may not understand the pain that I have to go through to get to His plan.  But I know that no matter what happens to me, God has a plan to prosper and not to harm me.  A plan to bring me a hope and a future.

Good news folks, the Bible wasn't written just for me.  It was written for ALL of us!  He has a good plan for your life too.  It's a promise!  How awesome is that?!  Work every day to follow that plan.  Ask Him to reveal it to you in His time.  Pray for patience and understanding when His plan doesn't make sense to you.  Spend less time trying to tell God what you want His plan to be for you.  Spend more time giving God "permission" to let His plan lose in your life.  These are words that I'm writing to you, but also to myself.  Because even after my life changing experience there are still times when life hits me in the face and I start out by thinking "why me?"  It may take a while, but eventually, I let God bring me back around to the point where I realize that whatever I'm going through is mostly trivial and that God will make ALL things good in HIS time (another verse there, but IDK the reference).

Thank you God for blessing me with 5 years of infertility where you grew me into the mother that you wanted me to be, the father that you wanted my husband to be, both of us into the couple that you needed us to be in order to raise 3 children and blessing us financially so that I have been able to spend the last 7 years being driven crazy 24/7 by my lovely children.  Please knock me upside the head with the reminder that Your Plan is the Only Plan and that's no problem because is is a wonderfully good plan.

**Please note that I am not knocking on working moms!  Every family has to do what is right for them.  For some that is working.  For me it was definitely being home with my children.  I do feel, very strongly, that our society is missing the boat when it comes to women, working and children.  When we women are preparing for life, no one ever whispers in our ears (much less shouts from the rooftops, like I think they should), "Spend some time thinking about a career, but keep in mind that some day you're probably going to want to have babies.  And you're more-than-probably going to want to stay home with those babies.  So work that into your plan, if you can."  We're told, "You can be anything you want to be!", but we're never told that what we'll probably want, deep in our hearts, is to be "just a mom" to our kids.  No one tells you what a wonderful blessing that is.  Well, here I am to say it.  If anyone reads this as they are thinking about their future and having children, know this...while not all women feel the need to be home, many (and I'd go as far as to say most) do.  No one can raise your children like you do.  If you can fit working into your life, great.  But nothing you do will count as much as raising your children.  Rocket scientist, brain surgeon, Mother Theresa...OK, well, maybe not her...but nothing else is as important as raising your children into the people that they are going to be.  Your children will drive you nuts.  You will long for the days when you could pee by yourself, eat without interruption, have a belly that doesn't have a roadmap of stretch marks.  But the day will come for you, like it has for me, when your children are in school and you miss being driven nuts.  When it feels strange to pee by yourself, not have to share bites of your food...and you'll buy some spanks...unfortunately the stretch marks are there to stay!  LOL
Again, although I am VERY pro-stay-at-home mom, please don't let my words guilt you (unless you feel that God is the one pushing that guilt).  It is not my intent to make any mother feel bad about doing what they feel is right for their family.  I am not that narrow minded that I think there is only one right way.  I just want to say something that I don't think gets said often enough.