so excited

well, here is some good news for my little heart.  shawn and i have been a bit stressed about our vacation this year. in shawn's words "i want a happy wife and i want to avoid spending a lot of money". i want that too. but i have to say that "staycations" are just not my thing.  you don't really relax. at all.  i have prayed for a solution. and then....today! a friend here in edmonton was telling us about this little rustic cabin they built near here, and they were saying that they had a heart to loan it out out to friends or people in ministry. then, while we were talking we figured out that we could house swap - they could enjoy our area of the world and its closeness to alot of fun things - and we could enjoy some camping in a little cabin out in the middle of nowhere. yes, just what we need! it is just a little way away from sylvan lake and other cute little towns that we can go and explore on days that we feel like going for a little day trip.

oh, i am so excited to tell my husband that we get to have a vacation!! he is going to be so happy!

the difference a year makes

mothers day is next week. for the past few years, mothers day has been the hardest day of the year for me. it is kind of like valentines day for the single. singles awareness day. i find that days to celebrate a certain demographic of people tends to also highlight those who are not in that group. of course, i never struggle on fathers day - i will never be one. but, mothers day...it used haunt me and mock me. then, every year there was that moment in church when all of the moms stand up to be celebrated. they deserve to be celebrated, but i wanted to be one of them and at that moment is was so, so obvious that i wasn't.

it didn't help that a few years ago we thought that we were going to be parents on that very weekend through adoption and then the birthmom changed her mind. i do not hold anything against her for doing this, it just made an already hard weekend harder. it's kind of "barrenness awareness day".

so, needless to say Mother's Day has not been my fav-o-rite day for quite sometime. and it is coming next weekend.

but this year it is different. so different. so wonderfully, dressed in pink and pretty bows kind of different.

this year, i am a mom. a full-fledge, bonafide M-O-M. I get to stand with all of the other ladies who have passed into the status of motherhood.

i wear my title with great thankfulness and honor - i have had the sleepless nights, the endless poopy diapers, the tears that come with each little milestone, the stretching of my heart in ways i never thought i would experience.

i sat in church last weekend with tears streaming down my face because we were singing the part of a song that says "nothing is impossible for you, you hold my world in your hands". and i was holding emma, my little miracle - saying with all my heart - nothing is impossible for you. You knew the whole time she would be ours, and now she is not just the evidence of things hoped for - she is the substance of our faith, we touch her, kiss her, love her. she is real. she is ours.

so i anticipate next weekend, i won't run from it. but i will never forget the ones who may be sitting there with no little bundle, no one to celebrate their contribution. they will be there, quietly hurting, waiting for the day to pass and smiling when all of the other women stand. i want them to feel seen, understood, appreciated.

so, Lord, help me to see them...more importantly, let them know that you see them, and that you have not forgotten about them - whisper in their hearts "nothing is impossible for Me".  we believe Lord, even when we can't see.

now faith is

i have been troubled. i have been troubled for awhile by a debate in my head about God's sovereignty. there are times, like now, that i am asking God to bend the normal laws for me. I am older - not old - but older than most seeking to have a baby. by the laws of nature, it should be improbable. and at times i think, is it possible? isn't it just a matter of His laws being played out in my body?

this debate started when my mom was sick. can we bring about our own premature death, by eating wrong, living wrong? can we, who love Jesus exercise that kind of power? do we say the day we die? or does he? i cannot, knowing what i know, say that i make that decision. but is it a free ticket to do whatever we want because it is all pre-destined anyway?

it is, i think, like the balance of grace. Paul said "what then, shall we continue in sin so that grace may increase? may it never be!" but do we need grace? yes. does that mean we don't love God? no. emphatically, no. it means that i love Him and i do my best to serve Him, to honor Him. and, He is mindful of my frame. He knows that at best, I will fail and even my most righteous acts must be washed in the blood of the lamb. but does that give me the excuse to live as i please and then throw out my prayer for forgiveness? no, i would not love Him if i lived like that.

i need to care about the things He cares about, but when i fail, and in my humanity I am neglectful of things i ought to really tend, He loves me and came to give me a way back to Him.

i must believe that He is sovereign.

and what is a miracle but the bending of the laws He created to make a way for man?

can't He make a way for me?

Abraham did not waver according to the promise - though his body was as good as dead.

from my devotional: Instead of growing weak, his faith grew stronger, exhibiting more power even as more difficulties became apparent. Abraham glorified God for His complete sufficiency and was "fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. He is the God of limitless resources - the only limit comes from us.

and in the end, it was this very faith that made abraham a friend of God.

and i pray, dear God, give me that kind of faith. that believes you when all the laws of probability are stacked against me. you are eternally able to do what you have promised.

now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

air quality

we went away on sunday night for a little anniversary celebration. emma stayed with grandma and grandpa. so nice. i don't think i have ever appreciated a clean bed and yummy smelling soaps so much in my life. i jumped right onto that beautiful bed and took a nap. a delicious nap. have you ever had one? when you are in the perfect temperature with no noise, no distractions and no set wake up time? ahhhh, it is the thought of it that still makes me sigh with bliss.

shawn doesn't nap. when he does he is sick. thankfully he wasn't sick so he wasn't napping. but i was. yes, i was.

the joy of going away is that you don't think as much about well - balanced meals with good veggies etc... it is time to splurge. yes. and we did. bbq for lunch (mediocre) and pasta for dinner. at ordering, both sounded good. now, in retrospect, i think maybe a few more veggies would have been a good idea. i guess the spinach in the spinach and artichoke dip doesn't count?  my tummy didn't seem to think so.

i was kind however and stayed away from the meal that the waiter explained as "if you like garlic, you will love this meal". I thought, "hmmmm, small room, long night of burping etc...better not" so imagine my surprise when Shawn says "sounds good to me".

and you guessed it - all night - wow, there is a gift there.

and today when we were driving home...still giving birth to that wind. he tried to do that discreetly, but we weren't in chilliwack and there were no fields to blame it on. when i looked over at him as if to say "was that rotten oder coming from your general direction?" all i got was a sheepish grin (maybe a diabolical grin was under the sheepy one) and such was my life for the remainder of the drive home.

window up....window down...oh my goodness! how much more do you have in there?

in fairness, i do have to say that shawn is nice to me with my issues. remember my little nap? i know for sure i was snoring, but he always says "just heavy breathing my love".

isn't marriage great?

in the middle of the night

who knew that there was a whole world of activity in the middle of the night? not me, i am a morning person. i am that person who falls asleep in any movie that carries on past 9 PM. for those of you who are night people, you know that a whole world exists after 10 PM, 12 AM, and even later. i still think all of you are crazy.

against my will i find myself awake at some of your crazy hours because emma is teething. last night, i found myself halfway down the hall before i woke up and realized emma was screaming. poor little girl. sadly i am so disoriented, most of the time, the best i can do is stand over her bed and stare at her while trying desperately to think of how to help her. thankfully shawn, a card carrying member of the night people's society, comes in with all his wherewithall and says something like "maybe we should give her some Motrin" "good idea" i mutter.

a few months ago some young guys were walking down our street around 2 in the morning yelling at each other at the top of their lungs. emma must have been crying as well because those two sounds joined together in my head and i started dreaming that those boys were abandoning a baby in the bushes in my front yard. the next thing i knew i was standing in our doorway yelling "WHERE IS THE BABY" at the loud boys on our street. i have a vague recollection of one of the boys saying "he is fine" meaning the other guy was fine, to which i yelled "I DON'T CARE ABOUT HIM, WHERE IS THE BABY?".

it was when i started yelling that shawn woke up. ah yes, the adventure of being married to Keri, anywhoo...within short order shawn is standing faithfully at my side saying "keri, there is no baby, leave the boys alone". by then the boys were long gone and i am pretty sure they will avoid this street and the crazy lady who lives on it in the future.

all of this to say that if you are a night person, you can have it. give me mornings and sunrises, a good cup of coffee and a full day stretching out in front of me.

and for the record, shawn is going to put a lock on the door that i can't reach in the middle of the night.

as if that will stop me.

funny man.

i am willing

Jesus was approached by a man with leprosy and the man simply says "Jesus, if you are willing, make me clean" Jesus says "I am willing". Matthew 8:1-3

it just struck me today. He is willing.

He is willing to reach out to my bruised emotions, to my unbelieving heart, to the places of my life that have been eroded by the leprosy of the world we live in.

He is willing.

isn't it a great question that the man asked? i wonder if he thought he was being polite. "if you don't mind, it is a bit uncomfortable to have my fingers falling off, it would be wonderful if you could find it in your heart to take a moment and shake some of your kingdom power on me. you are awesome, i know you can, but will you? will you for me?

for me, i suppose it is not so much a physical thing. it is more an internal job and i don't want to be a whiner, you know, someone who plays the victim. but yes, i struggle with unbelief, fear and anxiety. it may not be a disease in my flesh, but it is eating my heart alive. it kills the faith i want to have and reduced my desperation into a polite little request from one who has forgotten in the midst of it that He is for me. 

I can see Him. smiling, reaching, a light in His eyes. "Yes, I am willing. and i will cure more than your body. I will remind you that I care about you - and I haven't forgotten about you" There is no rebuke, not with this one.

thanks Lord for the sweet reminder that each of us are in your heart and you know how to love each of us, right where we are.

"they got me!'

we love the series "band of brothers". it is an amazing mini-series about WWII. One of the characters, a writer and a man who hated war, gets shot somewhere along the line. when it happened he yelled out "they  got me". you definitely get the impression that he had practiced what he would say in the event of getting shot. "they got me" was not in his plans. he was actually quite embarrassed about it, like he was in an old spaghetti western and a guy named "black-eyed pete" got him good.

anyway this is the memory that came flooding into my mind the other day when Shawn and I were walking out of a restaurant. He had Emma and i had all the stuff. as i walk up to the car i hear shawn yell (really loud) "My Knee!!!" i turn around, and in my memory this is all in slow motion, to see shawn stumbling to the ground doing all he can to not land with his full weight on our daughter.

i have a horrible habit- i laugh at the most inopportune times. i wish i could stop, honestly i do.

my husband just sacrificed his knee- threw all of his body weight onto it- to make sure that emma's little organs didn't get squished. i wish, in retrospect, that i could have felt more like a MASH nurse, that rushed to his side and did something STAT. instead i grabbed Emma, had to turn around because i couldn't stop laughing.

this is very embarrassing for me.

mostly because when he yelled out "my knee!"and then started to roll back and forth on the ground,  all i could hear was "they got me!" and it felt like the whole world instantly turned into a john wayne movie.

shawn is fine, emma is fine. and i did truly care about his well being in between fits of laughter.

i am grateful that he knows that i am like this - he didn't even get mad at me. good man.