Always, Alli

For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. 12 As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness.
Ezekiel 34:11-12

God has been coming to me in music lately. Yesterday I was driving around town listening to Claire Holley sing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” when I was struck by the lines:

O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
all because we do not carry
everything to God in prayer.

It was like I was hearing the words for the first time. And it was really a wake up call for how I have been acting in these early weeks of pregnancy.

Any online pregnancy calendar, usually the daily ones, will say things like “Many women feel an increase in anxiety about now.” It is something I can really relate to because my anxiety increases about 200 times what it is normally. I worry about miscarriage, baby loss, defects, finances, chores, Mommy guilt, that one episode of ER I saw that one time (pick any of them that deal with pregnant women and babies), and who knows what else. Sometimes I feel like I am holding my breath until the next time I hear the baby’s heartbeat or see him/her on the ultrasound.

It is difficult to find a smile on my face in the first trimester.

When I heard those words being sung… peace… forfeit… needless pain… it was kind of like a slap in the face. How much needless pain had I been bringing on myself with my heightened anxiety? How come I was forfeiting peace by not offering up my concerns in prayer?

I keep it pretty much bottled up. And yet my anxiety bothers me more than morning sickness. I have a pill I can take for nausea. Why can’t I just sit quietly and pray about my concerns?

After my come to Jesus moment in the car yesterday, I immediately felt a peace. Today was much better, more productive than me sitting on the couch in terror of something going wrong.

Are you forfeiting peace? Take it to the Lord in prayer.

Technorati Tags: pregnancy, anxiety

Did you see the story about the 9 and 7 year old protesting the price of gas? It turns out their cable was the victim of family budget cutbacks due to the needed funds for the gas tank.

And while I admire the girls for their actions and realizing the severity of gas prices, I want to applaud the Vance family for taking more action than just using their car less.

The gas prices of today give me heart palpitations and sometimes, after I fill up the car, I don’t drive for an entire day thinking it will help keep some money in our wallet for a while longer. We take the bus more, drive in a more efficient manner, and try to pile all our errands into one big trip so we can lessen our car use. But what do you do once you have done everything you can?

Unfortunately it means taking a look at your family spending and seeing where you can cut back so you can still pay for the necessary things like shelter, food, and clothing. If that means cutting the cable, then so be it. In my mind, television is a luxury item.

Sure we use it and use it often (it is on right now), we enjoy the luxury of television. But if it comes to paying the cable bill and paying the grocery bill, I think cable is going to go. How many people think of it like that? How many people will ditch the Tivo, Netflix, or even the (gasp!) internet in order to rearrange their financial priorities to fill their gas tanks and pay the bills?

We used to swap luxuries in our house. During football season we had cable and used dial up for our internet. After football season was over, we went back to high speed internet and dropped the cable to extreme basic.

Let me know, do you think the internet is a luxury or a necessity? I am still on the luxury side of the fence. I haven’t utilized it to the potential of earning a paycheck from it and there is enough free wi-fi within walking distance that I could check my email every day if I wanted to. While I enjoy having answers at the tips of my fingers (thank you IMDB and Ask.com) I think my life would not suffer for lack of internet access.

Sure, our family would be sad to have to wait for updates and pictures, but I think (I hope) our families would respect our desire to pay the mortgage versus having access to 24 hour a day HGTV and YouTube.

So tell me: is the internet a luxury or a necessity?

I’ve been having fun taking pictures at VBS this week. Tomorrow though, I don’t have to be there, so I plan on dropping Fuller off and then taking off.

I’m a bit giddy about the time and how to spend it. The floor is open, please tell me what I should do with two hours by myself.

I have a rare quiet morning to myself, I almost don’t know exactly where to go from here. I could sit and fold laundry. I could quietly watch TV and sip my coffee. I could empty the dishwasher and put the chicken in the marinade.

Instead I find myself praying, being still, and contemplating the upcoming morning. Our church has VBS this week and while I was there yesterday taking pictures, today I participate by helping by leading a craft.

I have to admit I was harboring selfish thoughts of dropping my son off all week and leaving for five glorious mornings of “me time.” But volunteers were few, kids were plenty, and I said, “Ok, I’ll do the boat craft one morning.” Except I figured, if I’m going to do one, why not two, so I will be doing it today and Thursday.

The energy of the kids yesterday was fun to be around. It was hot and I was looking through my viewfinder for most of it, so I didn’t really catch the thrill. I was just happy to be near it.

My heart bubbled over with joy though that Fuller remembered the story of Jesus saying, “Follow me!” so I sit here and pray for the kids this morning, for the teachers, and for myself. I pray our hearts will bubble over with joy to hear the story of Jesus and the early days of his ministry, knowing it was His gift that gives me such a wonderful life now and in eternity.

I got behind on posting my book reports for keeping up with my New Year’s Resolution of reading one book a month. But! I am happy to say I have been keeping the resolution, having read one book in March and two books in April.

My book for March was Home to Holly Springs by Jan Karon. My mom sent me this book. I have read most of the Mitford Series, which feature Father Tim and his supporting cast of parish crazies. Home to Holly Springs is about Father Tim and his journey back to his boyhood town and discovering/ remembering the way it really was when he was growing up. He meets old friends and learns some shocking family secrets which make him a stronger and better man.

I enjoyed the book and look forward to more by Jan Karon. I might go back and pick up the Mitford Series again. They are quick reads, so they might do well in for lakeside reading.

In April I managed to read two books. The first is Tao of Fertility, which I already reviewed and was well received. The second book was Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner.

Jennifer Weiner’s first book was Good in Bed. I read it and fell in love with her writing. I have read all of her other books, including The Guy Not Taken, a book of short stories.

I was excited to learn Certain Girls was the follow up to Good in Bed, picking up the story of Cannie Shapiro thirteen years later. Her daughter, Joy, is struggling with adolescence and is a second voice in the telling of their story.

The plot is a lot of teen angst, with some parallels from the first book. I found the dual voices to move the story along at a good pace. The ending was a real tear jerker, so if you decide to pick it up (and I think you might like it, even if you didn’t read Good in Bed) don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I have a book I am working on for May, so I might be able to get that review up sometime in June. But, I am up for suggestions on what else I should read in the future. My mom, sisters, and I usually read the same book during the summer and are currently looking for something. A Place Called Canterbury by Dudley Clendinen was at the front of the list when I last checked.

Anyone else have any suggestions?

Technorati Tags: book review, Jan Karon, Jennifer Weiner, Dudley Clendinen, summer reading

Your Slogan Should Be

Alli. What’s the Worst that Can Happen?

I found this slogan generator at New York Chica and thought I would try it out. My slogan: “What’s the Worst that Can Happen?”

I’ve been dealing with fear issues lately. At Mom’s Group when we journal and write out our prayer cards, one of my continual confessions is about fear. And yesterday I had a rather panicky afternoon after a phone call with my husband, where old fears were brought to the surface to plague me for a while.

Maybe I need to adopt this slogan to help me move away from areas where I am fearful. Because really, what is the worst that can happen?

Every morning I love checking my google reader and usually check out what the Shutter Sisters are up to. I find inspiration from the photos as well as the words.

Yesterday’s post was especially inspiring since we are leaving tomorrow to travel to The Lake for the weekend. If you check out my flickr, I have 14 sets in my Lake Martin collection (I made it this morning). And of course I will be adding more pictures to the collection in the coming months.

But, I want to make sure I get something different. I have been internally pouting over the fact that I will not have a coveted DSLR camera this summer and trying to keep the romance alive with my Canon Powershot S3. The Shutter Sisters blog post was a boost in the right direction. I need to find a different perspective with my picture taking, especially since I get a lot of the same Lake Martin shots every time we go.

But think of this as a challenge for you to do something different…a different perspective of a great memory that you can look back on and relish. The colors of the area, the locals, your children’s hands and feet constructing, or searching for that most perfect shell. The way the sunlight glowed at sunset in the face of your loved one, or, the first cup of coffee in the morning, wrapped in a blanket, watching the sunrise.

There are changes at The Lake since last summer- the kids are bigger and the water is higher. I’m sure I’ll be able to find the different perspective I’ll have to capture.

Technorati Tags: digital photography, Shutter Sisters, Canon Powershot S3, DSLR

Just a quick update:

Today has been the busiest day. I am thrilled that I have all day tomorrow to focus on my house and getting ready for Friday’s car trip to The Lake for the weekend.

I let a lot of things go last month when I was down and out. And now it is catching up to me, in the form of dust bunnies, clutter, and piles of clothing I need to sort before swapping out the seasonal stuff.

I know “to do” lists are never finished, but they sure help me stay focused. Tomorrow’s list is about two pages long, so I better stay focused. And if I don’t, then I guess when we get back on Tuesday, I will have three pages of “to do” to complete.

The summer I was ten, my parents scheduled my sisters and I in several summer programs. Tennis was one of them, because it was my sport of choice and it was just a continuation of my lessons with some extra group activities thrown in. And then there was the photography class.

I liked the photography class because it was in an air conditioned building (as opposed to the sun scorched tennis courts). I honestly don’t remember much about the classes that would be of use to me today. I remember we had one camera on a tripod and everyone lined up to take pictures of one person, then we would switch out and a new person would sit in front of the camera and the rest of us would file by and press the shutter button. Did we learn about aperture or shutter speed? Did we learn about focus, depth of field, or ISO?

Got me! I don’t remember those technicalities. I think this class was simply on the magic of the darkroom, where the negatives were transformed into images on Kodak paper. I remember the smell of the chemicals, the giggling over the darkness (we were 10!) and trying to tell if we were doing it right.

Of the ten or so I still have, the picture above is my favorite. It reminds me of my goofiness, that everything doesn’t come out perfect, and we have choices in the direction our art takes us. Today I use Picnik and photoshop to “develop” my pictures and sometimes I still giggle, as if I was ten and in that darkroom again.

For more other best shots, visit Tracey’s blog and look over the comments.

Technorati Tags: kodak, best shot Monday

A few weeks ago I was given a list of books from HarperCollins to pick from and review on my blog. I could have passed on the list, but I saw the title Tao of Fertility and replied, “I would love to review this book, since fertility is a subject near and dear to my heart.” Or some such nonsense.

The book arrived and I started reading it with a kind of hard heart, not really wanting to open my heart to the subject matter at hand. With our background of infertility, I wasn’t ready to read a “to do list” of things I wasn’t really used to. And as is the formula for infertility books, I wasn’t really ready to read the happy success stories of infertile couples. Or maybe I was just hormotional.

Since I was just reading the book to review, not to make major life changes, I dug in.

Dr. Daoshing Ni (Dr. Dao) practices traditional Chinese medicine and has earned renown as an expert in fertility. He comes from generations of Taoists, the basis for his methods in traditional Chinese medicine. His approach to fertility isn’t just clinical, but also deals with the mind and soul.

The beginning of the book was enlightening just in the area of Chinese medicine, a topic I never really looked into. I knew what acupuncture was, but never had it really explained. I read about herbs, acupuncture, exercise, and just preparing your self for a journey into wellness. And it made me want to take the fifty steps out my back door to see the Chinese Medicine doctor in the building behind my house.

(Yes, there is a young man who practices Chinese Medicine in the building behind my house. I keep wondering if this book was pointing me toward something.)

Section two goes more in depth with discussing a plan for fertility; include diet changes and self acupressure. It was well laid out and I feel like I could take ownership of this direction for fertility. One of the biggest pluses for this book is the real idea that I could do something to take charge of my fertility. In section one, Dr. Dao mentions how in China, patients have their own medical records, and patients are partners with their doctors. I have never really felt like a partner with any of my doctors.

I was inspired by the third section. It discussed specific fertility problems and focused on case studies of women who had them. Dr. Dao explained his method of assistance, and the women added their voices to the experience. I was really impressed with how Dr. Dao’s Chinese Medicine worked hand in hand with the Western medicine.

When we were dealing with the emotional rollercoaster of trying to get pregnant, I had to throw all fertility books out. They were all driving me crazy, giving me the same information in different sentences and paragraphs, but never really helping me.

My heart was hard when I started reading the book, but my heart was softened by the last page. I really believe I read something different, and I could take a more active role in trying to achieve a healthy pregnancy. I would recommend this book to anyone trying to find more answers to fertility questions.

You can learn more about Dr. Dao and the Tao of Fertilty at the Tao of Wellness website.

Technorati Tags: Dr. Dao, Daoshing Ni, traditional Chinese medicine, fertility, Tao of Fertility