Wednesday, February 1, 2012

God's Plan


Dear Friends and Family,
We have officially made it public... we are expecting our first child! We are absolutely thrilled to share this news with you and invite you to join us on this beautiful journey as we blog our way through the next 7 months.

It starts at the beginning...
Truth is that Matt and I said we would wait until we were married 5 years to start building our family. This May we will be married 4 years, close but not exactly 5. So why the change of mind? A few things. #1 I caught the bug. I have always wanted kids and just a little over a year ago I was really feeling ready. #2 Some of you might have done the math and made the connection of me catching the bug to our nephew Caleb's entrance into the world. Thank you, Amanda and Eddy, for helping us see that "sometime in the future"/"when we grow up" has turned into TODAY.

Lots of business meetings
Matt and I frequently have serious conversations about life. This started early in our relationship. We quickly titled these talks as our "business meetings". It's a time for both of us to share what's on our minds about where we are and where we are heading in life. October 2010 marked the start to a long series of baby business meetings. We wrestled through all the typical topics that are effected by babies: finances, marriage, housing, jobs, family, etc. And after our first few times talking about all things baby we decided to table the conversation to see where God was really leading our hearts in the matter.

Enter Caleb
November 27, 2010 our awesome nephew entered the world. I definitely didn't need warming up to the idea of a baby, however, Matt has had little experience with babies. I was really banking on Caleb to show Matt the ropes. And sure enough Matt started to melt. You can't help but love our precious nephew. As the weeks and months passed Matt and I took a turn in our baby business meetings; we were seriously considering starting our own family in the near future.

Summer and Maternity Coverage
One very important piece of the baby puzzle that had to be sorted out before taking this big step was making sure we had maternity coverage. Since starting our own business Matt and I have been paying for our own insurance, which won't give you maternity coverage until 365 days after your first day of coverage. Yikes! Fortunately we like to plan ahead and elected for the coverage in June 2010. And wouldn't you know it, we decided to start trying to give ourselves an excuse to use this coverage in June 2011.

A house and 7 months later
I wasn't sure what to expect when we starting trying. I starting asking myself a host of questions that I am sure goes through every hopeful couple. Do we get pregnancy right away? Will this take a while? Will we be able to get pregnant ever? And as the months and negative tests passed I was beginning to really wonder. But I knew to be patient, we were wanting to try for 1 year before we started to ask serious questions. Then one day Matt came home and told me we should go looking at houses to buy. I was thrilled but questioned if he was being serious. I tried to keep my head level. But before I could blink we found a great house for an amazing price and God basically handed it to us in 45 days. November 15, 2011 (my birthday) was our signing and a few days later we moved in. For the holidays we found ourselves in a pretty big empty house with no sign of a baby. But God clearly wanted us to have this home and we were putting our trust in His provision for all things. And POOF we were pregnant the next month!

God's Sovereignty
I am in no way saying that buying a home was the formula for getting pregnant. And I definitely don't think you need to have a spare room in order to bring a child into the world. Remember, we started trying to build our family while renting a 2nd floor condo and were happy to host our family there for as long as God would desire. But what I am saying is that God knows the plans He has for our lives. I believe all our efforts were failing because He, for some reason, needed us to be in this home first. NO IDEA WHY! But I hope that in all life's confusion I will always submit to His ways because they are far better and sweeter than my imagination could ever dream. And now I can say with my whole heart that my plans failed but God's plans were perfect in bringing us the good news of a coming baby.

Thanks for reading the story God wrote for us. Hope you enjoy the next months of updates on how our little "bun" is doing.

Blessings


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