A Year in the Making

So, while Baby Mims happened to be an "unplanned surprise," as I said in the last post, I can see evidence all over the last year that the Lord was leading us towards parenthood!

First off, at this time a year ago, I was knee deep in preparing for a doctoral program that I'd applied to. I was almost desperate for a change in my life and thought going back to school was the answer. The program was 3 years long, cost a ton of money and would eventually award me both a Masters of Science in Nursing and a Doctorate of Nursing Practice/Family nurse practitioner. Given the time commitment and the huge financial toll it would take on our family, I prayed fervently that if the timing wasn't right, that the doors would close. In May, I got a letter saying I'd made the alternate list for the program. This confounded me, as it was really neither a "Yes" or a "No." This is turning into a really long story, so fast forward to never getting a call for an open spot and being at peace because my prayer had been answered. The door was closed.

Waiting to hear from MUSC about the program took me through the month of July. My next story started shortly after, in early fall when I'd started to feel like I was done with the whole taking birth control thing. I didn't like the way it made me feel and frankly didn't really find it to be all that imperative anymore that I be on medication. Jordan wasn't an easy sell on this idea. He was not interested in having kids, and at the time I wasn't either. After several long conversations, we decided that going off birth control was an acceptable idea. Mind you, at the time I still couldn't even fathom the idea of having children. I was never one of those people who wrote in "Mom" as an answer to the "What do you want to be when you grow up?" question. There's nothing wrong with that - but it was never me.

Funny story comes up in October or early November when I'm frustrated and griping at Jordan about my holiday schedule. Bad thing about floor nursing? A hospital never closes. So working holidays when you're a flight/16hr drive away from family is really depressing. We haven't been home (to Augusta) for Christmas in 5 years. In my anger, I made the comment, "Jordan! We just need to get pregnant in January, have a baby in October and I'll be out through the entire holiday season on maternity leave! Then I won't have to work a single holiday next year!!! UGH!"

If that wasn't timing enough for you, this past December, in getting spiritually prepared for a mission trip to Kenya, I felt like it was necessary to weed out any wrongly placed desires. I didn't want to go to Kenya because "it's Africa and that's so neat." I really wanted to be in the Lord's will and timing, so I began to pray for myself and my choices for this trip. (I'm of the firm belief that the Lord has already told his children to GO. Thus, when an opportunity to serve arrives, I don't usually look to the Lord to say "yes," because His Word already gives us that answer.) I prayed and earnestly sought after the Lord and submitted to His will. I knew that I would follow Him to Kenya and prayed for preparation, and was so excited about going, that I literally prayed that the Lord would send a huge roadblock into my life if the timing wasn't right. The only huge trip-changing thing that I could think of...... was pregnancy. So that became my prayer: Lord, I will follow you. If this isn't right, bring about the one thing that would shut the doors on this trip, which in my mind is a baby.

January rolls around and I jumped into getting healthy, changing my eating habits, running and losing weight. We all know that in February, I started the Advocare 24DC and really cleaned out my body. Here's a confession: I never actually finished the 24 days, because I found out that we were indeed pregnant!

So!

I'm thankful that I did not get into graduate school, nor felt the desire to reapply.

I'm thankful that the Lord was gently changing my heart.

I think it's hilarious that we will indeed have a fall baby.

I'm thankful for answered prayers.

I'm thankful for a healthy body.

I'll be super thankful when this first trimester yuckiness will be a distant memory! But that's for another post!