1) Prayer works! Yes this seems simple and is not a new lesson for me - but it kinda is. I always believed this as a child - "Ask anything in my name and it will be given to you" etc. Seemed simple enough. And for most of my life I was taught this and saw it in action. When miracles were prayed for, we often got them. Then in the past 5 years I had kinda lost faith in prayer. Maybe it was going to a church that is so wrapped up in Calvinism that they can't pray for you without adding the words "if it be Your will" before the request and after the request the words "and give her the grace to accept your will" as if they don't really expect God to do anything about your situation other than give you the strength to deal with it. Maybe it was because the things I was praying for the most in those 5 years were just not happening. Maybe it was simply because life is much harder than I expected. Whatever the reason, I was finding it harder and harder to pray with expectation. Then some women in my mom's church took over praying for me. They had seen so many miracles in the past year, it was easy for them to pray with faith and expectation. So I just gave my infertility woes to them and stopped praying for myself. But the story doesn't just end with me getting pregnant four months later (two weeks after they finally had the opportunity to lay hands on me). They continued to pray. And I continued to have an easy and uneventful pregnancy. Then at 32 weeks, we had a scare - a complication - a freak-out really. And they prayed. At 33 weeks, someone in the group got the fabulous idea of laying hands on a card since I couldn't be there. They prayed over the card, signed it and dropped it in the mail. When it arrived, Michael Paul rubbed the card all over my bare belly. Yes we felt a little silly, but hey, I wasn't doubting this time - these women are anointed. The next day the situation resolved itself and has remained resolved until now. Furthermore, all those things I had prayed for (things having nothing to do with me or pregnancy) for five years and never got an answer were answered one by one in the past nine months. It's like, when God finally sent the rain, it poured, and overflowed, and everything in my little world was answered. I hope I will always remember that no matter how long the dry spell, God will always answer the prayer eventually and the answer will always be better than what you even asked for.
2) "If you choose to..." is a phrase we should all learn to say a lot more. I am sure I am not the only pregnant person who has had to suffer through all the unsolicited advice and all the conversations that start "you ARE going to .... because if you .... then you (insert phrase that implies you are going to be a bad mother). I first heard the "if you choose to" phrase from my sister-in-law. I was asking her some questions about cloth diapering and she said, "oh that reminds me, if you choose to circumcise then you will need to ..." I don't even remember what she said after that because I was so taken aback by her saying "if you choose to." I sat there pondering it for the rest of our conversation. I felt so respected. I felt like she trusted me to make my own decisions as a mother. I felt at ease knowing she was confident enough in herself that if I chose to do something different from her she wouldn't feel threatened by me. I loved the fact that she didn't just assume that since my husband (her brother) is circumcised and every other male in the family is circumcised that I would surely do the same. I still had a choice! It was amazing. Then I realized I had never felt that way in one of these advice giving conversations before - especially all the ones I was having with my friends who were slightly ahead of me in childbearing. I pondered it for days. Such a simple phrase and so so powerful. It's one thing to claim I don't judge people. It's an entirely different thing to go out of my way to make another person not feel judged by me. I am committing myself to use this phrase as much as possible in my own conversations with friends in the future.
3) The best listeners are the people who A) have the same values/desires as you and B) have been through what you are going through. This seems so simple when I write it. But my tendency when needing to talk had always been to talk to Michael Paul, or call one of the same three people (mom, sister, best friend). And then many times I would feel worse after the conversation. There have been many times I have needed a good listener, or some good advice in the last nine months. And I have learned to stop first and actually think about who would be the best person to talk to. For example, when I learned a certain complication might make natural childbirth an impossibility, it did me no good to talk to someone for whom that was not important to them. They only made me feel silly for being so upset. Saying, "what's the big deal, lots of women have epidurals and c-sections" did NOT make me feel better. In fact, it pissed me off! On a lighter note, I also learned it is best not to talk about my passion for cloth diapering with someone who chooses not to or my interest in attachment parenting with some one who follows "Babywise" down to the letter or my desire for a homebirth with someone who thinks all women who choose that are selfish and crazy. (sooner or later someone is going to feel judged or annoyed and unheard). So many positives have come from this new commitment on my part to reach out beyond my circle of 4 people. I have talked to my sister-in-law more in the past few months than I had in the last 5 years combined. I was able to rekindle a friendship with my long-lost high-school best friend. I grew much closer to an older wiser woman in my church. I have to say, I am rather surprised at my introverted self. Pregnancy forced me to come out of my shell a bit more and I was definitely blessed for doing so.
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