Category Archives: Family

March 26, 2012 · 6:00 am

What’s Distracting You From Your REAL Calling?

What’s distracting you from what God’s called you to do?

This was the question asked by my pastor from the pulpit.

Easy, I thought. Everything.

Immediately my brain went into overdrive, listing all the things that distracted me from writing.

Laundry. Cleaning. The Internet. Time. Obligations. My children. TV. My husband. Life. Time. Lack of time. Church responsibilities. Friends. Life. Laundry. Cooking. Grocery shopping. Time. Twitter. My emotions. Life.

I started making mental lists of all the things that distracted me and how I could better organize my life to contain or limit these distractions.

God called me to be a writer. And life distracts me from it.

My pastor continued to talk, but it wasn’t his voice I heard in my ear. My pastor’s voice was but a murmur, while a stronger, clearer voice rang through me, piercing my heart with conviction. God spoke to me as my mind whirled, stilling my thoughts with one clear statement.

Before I called you to write, I called you to be a wife and a mother.

Did I mention conviction?

Here I was, trying to figure out what I could do to limit the things that were distracting me from writing, including better management of my family, when it’s writing that’s distracting me from them.

Writing is distracting me from my first, true calling.

God has called me to write. But before that, he called me to be wife and mom.

Priorities. Calling. Being the woman God has called me to be.

I’m passionate about my family. I’m passionate about writing. God has called me to do both, but I know what the real distractions are.

Share with me: What’s distracting you from your real calling?

12 Comments

Filed under Family, The Christian Walk, Writing

Tagged as distractions, family, marriage, writing

March 23, 2012 · 6:00 am

What Not To Say To A Woman With Infertility

No matter the reason or the source of the issue, infertility is a difficult problem for any woman to face, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

And it can be compounded when well-meaning, well-intentioned people who want to help say the wrong thing.

Coming from a place of experience, I’d like to share this little list with you in order to help you should you ever feel the need to encourage a woman who’s dealing with this issue.

This list is meant to educate and encourage women who are struggling with any form of infertility and those who want to help, encourage, and love them through it.

Here’s my top 6 list of what NOT to say:

6. Getting pregnant is so easy!

Must be nice. My husband says that ‘must be nice’ is my go-to response for everything, but the other day when I was talking to an acquaintance about our struggles with infertility and she commented that she got pregnant while on birth control, I held my tongue. (Actually, I bit it. I know she didn’t mean for it to come out the way it did.) Some people can get pregnant by just being in the same room with their spouse, it seems, but for some of us, it’s not so easy. So we’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t rub it in that you’ve had 18 children in the past 5 years and gotten pregnant each time while using 10 different forms of birth control.

5. Have you tried _____?

(Fill in the blank with various drugs, treatments, herbal remedies, etc.) Please don’t offer medical advice. When a woman is struggling with infertility, she usually becomes a self-professed expert on all possible ways to get pregnant. Let her work with her doctor and let them come up with the proper plan. I can’t even keep track of how many times it was suggested that we try herbal remedies and cough syrup. And how many times I smiled and pretended it was that easy.

4. God told me it’s going to be okay.

Unless God has directly shown/told/spoken to the couple to whom infertility is affecting, this is not a good thing to say, mostly because it might not be okay. For reasons only He understands, they might not have a child. And if not, your message from God doesn’t bring the peace they’ll need to seek from the Lord on their own.

3. But you already have a child.

Wow. This one is like a knife in the heart. No matter whether you have zero children or ten, the desire to have a child is the same. Secondary Infertility affects women who have been able to have one (or more) children with no problems, and then suddenly, and most often inexplicably, find themselves facing infertility. Just because a woman has one or more children doesn’t mean she’s not dealing with infertility, so please don’t assume that because she’s got kids she’s not dealing with this issue. Any time a couple has to resort to using medications and procedures to get pregnant, infertility is an issue. And no matter whether it takes 6 months or 6 years, emotionally, it wreaks havoc on the heart. So please don’t tell a woman she should forget about her desire to have more children because she already has one. That one (or more) is a blessing, but the ache to have another will be the same as her ache to have the first.

2. Just adopt, then you’ll get pregnant.

This is not a good thing to say for many reasons, but let’s narrow it down to two. First, this cheapens the glorious blessing that is adoption. When a couple chooses to adopt, in my opinion, God sows that family together in bonded love the same way as He would if giving the parents a biological child. So when you encourage someone to adopt “just so” they can get a biological child, it’s like equating that adopted child to an item you can pick up at the local grocery store. Not special. Not valuable. Not as important as a biological child. Secondly, while I have heard stories of women who have gotten pregnant while going through or just after the adoption process, this is a very, very infrequent occurrence. So it’s not a good idea to encourage a woman with this statement.

1. Just relax and it will happen.

No it won’t. 99.9% of the time, relaxing has nothing to do with fixing an infertility issue. If it were that easy, those of us struggling with infertility would definitely try that well before working with doctors and medical experts to try to get pregnant. Relaxing is not an option when it comes to getting pregnant when you’re struggling with infertility. “Relaxing” doesn’t make the problem go away. So please understand that when you tell a woman to relax, it’s likely that you’ll only increase her level of stress.

If there’s a person in your life who’s struggling with infertility, there are lots of good and helpful things to say. Here are some suggestions:

1. “I’m praying for you.” And do it. Actually pray. Even better? Pray out loud with that person so that they know you mean what you say.

2. “I can’t imagine how hard this must be. I’m going to be here for you if there’s anything you need.”

3. Encourage the woman to read 1 Samuel 1:10-11 and pray the prayer of Hannah.

4. If you know someone else who has struggled with infertility, put them in contact with each other. Speaking from experience, having someone to encourage you who’s had a similar experience is incredibly helpful.

5. Don’t say anything. Just love her, support her, and listen when she needs you to.

Share with me: What can you add to these lists?

14 Comments

Filed under Family, Infertility

Tagged as family, infertility, pregnancy

July 15, 2011 · 6:41 am

Say Cheese!

I always have my boys’ photos done in the summer. It’s just easier on our schedules, and since I only have their official portrait made once a year, summer just works out best.

But this year I decided to deviate from the norm. I wanted a family photo, too. We haven’t had a professional family photo taken since before my youngest was born. (I know– I’m horrible). So, I enlisted the services of my very talented and amazing friend, Marion, from Marion’s Photography.

Not only was she going to do a family session, she was going to do some head shots for me so that I’d have some professional photos for my blog, etc. And since my normal go-to photography place is Walmart (don’t judge– I have cute portraits of my boys!), actually scheduling a session with a professional photographer who happens to be a friend was like graduating up to the big time!

The day of our session came and the only thing I prayed for was low humidity.

We started early to try to beat the heat, but even at 8:45am, Georgia thermometers were registering in the 80s, and the humidity was at 8000%. Seriously. We might as well have been in the rainforest. With each minute we were out there, the heat went up one degree.

But my amazing, acrobatic photographer friend worked like a camera wizard, snapping shots as quickly as possible in order to give my hair a fighting chance against the poof that was threatening to take over. And she brought her adorable pre-teen daughter as her assistant who helped keep me smiling.

When my husband and boys showed up for their portion, my eldest son cooperated very well. He smiled for the camera. But for some reason, he takes saying “cheese” literally and his smile for a camera, any camera, is bigger than his face. Hey, it might not be a natural smile, but it’s a smile, so I’ll take it.

But my two year old was another story. He smiled, all right, but he would not look at the camera for anything. Isn’t that they way it always goes?

After several minutes of wrangling them and trying to dance and sing and basically make myself look like an idiot so that my little one would look at the camera, we decided to do the family shot.

By that point my oldest was obsessed with the train tracks nearby and just wanted to play on them.

“Look at the camera,” I’d say through clenched teeth as I held my smile.

“I am, Mom!” my 5 year old would respond as he looked up to my face. *camera click*

“No!!!!” the two year old would squeal as he looked everywhere but at the camera. *camera click*

By this point I was sweating even more, thinking there’s no way there’s gonna be a good family shot in all this. My husband was standing there, staring at the camera, waiting for someone to tell him what to do while I was working my best poses. I learned everything I know from America’s Next Top Model. Marion sweetly directed us into our proper positions. Apparently the “flopped over like a willow tree” pose that I learned from Tyra Banks wasn’t really going to work for a family photo.

Marion was so sweet with my boys, and very, very patient with all of us. Besides her daughter, she has three young boys of her own, so her mommy-skills were definitely helpful. And she understood my vanity in wanting to get a shot in which I didn’t look like I had a poodle on my head, so we worked against the elements. (There would have been less humidity if it had actually been raining.)

And since we were outside, of course the mosquitoes were attacking me. I asked Marion to please Photoshop out the red streaks on my arms from where I was scratching.

Marion then suggested we do some shots on the tracks. Since my boys are train-obsessed, this was a cool idea.

“Now this is the life,” my oldest said when he reached the tracks. I pulled out some toys and they began playing with them while Marion’s camera clicked away.

“Do you think they’ll walk?” Marion asked.

“Sure.” So we told them to walk on the tracks.

But first we had to convince the oldest one that the tracks were not currently being used, and no, a train is not going to “come around the bend” and squish them.

All was well until my 5yo tried to hold the 2yo’s hand. Then the 2yo proceeded to scream and yell, “NO!” He was done. He ran. He fell. He hates dirt on his hands, so now he was obsessed with getting the dirt off, so he wiped them all over his perfectly clean shirt. He looked at me, sweat pouring down his little face, his hair matted to his head and said, “Time to go home.”

My husband, although sweating buckets in the heat, stayed very calm and cool through it all.

At this point, I look like I’ve been swimming, the humidity has turned my hair into its own swamp creature, and I’m begging the kids to stand still for one more shot. And I’m laughing, because I should have known better than to believe that we’d get the boys to sit or stand still and look at the camera.

One shot, I was thinking. All I need is one shot to hang on our wall and show that we really are a happy family.

My two year old threw his hands in the air and screamed, “It’s time to go home!” (As if we didn’t hear him the first time.) Marion did get a shot of that.

What an amazing and talented photographer friend I have. Somehow she used her magical talent and managed to capture memories that I’ll cherish forever. See below! She’s so good that she knew how to make and anticipate the accidents that would look like incredible, planned photos. Maybe I should have just claimed that those were planned shots…

I’ve learned some things from this experience.
1. When your photographer has children the same age as your kids, it certainly helps with compassion and understanding.
2. Even children don’t function well in 8000% humidity.
3. Photographers are part acrobat. Marion was able to get herself into some crazy positions to get the best shot. She’s amazing.
4. Two year olds do not smile on command. I actually knew this before we began, but I had delusions of grandeur.
5. Photographers have amazing minds. They can “see” things that I can’t see and that fascinates me.
6. Next year I won’t book our session in July. I’ll shoot for October. Or perhaps January.

I hope and pray that Marion didn’t laugh her way through editing our shots. I’m afraid our session might look like a blooper reel and that we might end up on one of those “Awkward Family Photo” websites by accident. Hope not.

So here’s my shameless plug. Check out Marion’s website (link above!). If you live in or near west Georgia, and need a fantastic photographer, you should book a session with her. She’s amazing in all ways and God has truly blessed her with talent!