Thinking About Making my Blog Private

So due to the reality that sooner or later someone who I never intended to read my would read my blog I am seriously considering making my blog a private blog. I ofter use my blog to vent. Not all the time however some times, so I am thinking hard about making my blog private.

If you have any feed back let me know. One of the reasons I have not yet made it private was due to the fact that I myself do not always like to sign in so I can read the blogs of others. However, if I am being lazy then I am being lazy. There are some people with out gmail accounts that I want to have access to my blog. Oh well, they may just have to get gmail accounts and that is it.

I have other news I want to put up here however I think I will wait until I have decided whether or not to make the blog private!

I hope you guys are all well and that you have a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend!

Blessings, Leanne

One Level of Success

So there is officially one level of success to my surgery. No I am not pregnant. For Jeral and I that is the ultimate level of success. However (sorry boys you may just want to go read a different persons blog at this point) I cycled naturally. Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Which is one level of success. And hey we will take this because it will decrease my chances of ovarian cancer and uterine cancer. So I will take this as something amazing. So with this it also means that we are not going to wait to see if I am ovulating with my cycles or if they are an-ovulatory, so starting in 5 days I will be back on a lovely drug called clomid. If you could just please keep praying with us. I know after awhile it is easy to forget, so please pray this works! Thanks guys!

I am also back in the land of peace. Maybe that is because I just have been so busy the last week, or it could be that I know Jesus knows how much we want to start our family, and I know I need to trust Him. After all I have done everything I could have to take control of this and nope, not working so back to trust and peace. Which if I look back to a week ago, I would way rather be in a place of trusting Jesus and resting in His peace, than in the turmoil of last week.

Well that is all for now. I hope you guys all have a great day!

Leanne

Photo Shoot and Going Back to the Gym

Okay so my friend Katie is amazing and quick. She took our photo's yesterday. We haven't done this since we got married, plus I have lost a ton of weight (yes I am tooting my own horn). I weigh less than I did when we got married. I still have a bit to go, however we need a picture for the Christmas letter this year!


So here are some of the ones I like! We still have not picked the one for a the Christmas letter so we'll see.

So there they are. There are more on Facebook. I love my hubby! I am blessed by him, and so lucky to be married to him. He is one of the most amazing men ever, and he is super good looking!!!! :)

Today was also my first day back at the gym since the surgery. Oiy, surgery on your ovaries, and then three and a half weeks of not running sure make it difficult the first day back. It was good to be there though, and to start again working towards my goal of loosing 85 pounds and becoming the healthiest I have ever been in my life. We'll see what tomorrow holds I may be to tired to do squat. Oh well one day at a time!

This, That, and the Other

Nothing to new going on here. I am busy mostly with the enormous amount of fruit we have. Man do we ever have plumbs, pears, and apples coming out of our ears. I have taken care of the plumbs. Now I am busy cutting up the pears and drying them into pear chips and tomorrow I will go onto the apples, and I will also make a bunch of pies and freeze them. Oiy, when did I become s domesticated? No seriously I love being a house wife and I love getting to cook, just not the cleaning aspect.

Today Jeral and I have some pictures taken of us. We have not done this since our wedding, well we have taken self portraits, we just have not had anyone else take them for us. And lucky us my friend is a photographer, so she came out with her kids and took pictures of us. The sun was out, and it was a warm day today. So all in all great for taking pictures. I'll post some when we get them back. After the picture taking we settled in for a nice visit and a cup of tea.

I am realizing more and more that Jeral and I need to be intentional about going out of dates. We do not have children yet so we should not be a disconnected and out of touch with each other. We have time to connect and catch up on what is going on, and yet we both get some busy and just to plain old tired to communicate (laziness on our part). I remember my former boss and his wife telling us remember to keep dating once you are married. And we were like yeah, yeah we will. Well after about a year we go lazy and the intentional dating has not happened. Even tonight Jeral is now tired so the long warm bath in the jacuzzi tub we have is not going to happen. Oh well, such is life. I guess I am realizing that when we are intentional we bicker less and our marriage is overall much better.

Well those are my thoughts for now. Hope all is going well for everyone! Take care!

Faithful, Surrender, and Trust

It is late and I should be going to bed, however I am still thinking way to much to close my eyes just yet.

I have been thinking a bit here and there after yesterday's post. In all honesty I did a lot of numbing first and then the thinking afterwards.

One question that has been running through my head is,"What if Jesus decides that Jeral and I are not to be parents, will I be able to be happy with that?" Then I hear Joy's voice reminding me that our Heavenly Father is not the kind of Father who places a desire in our hearts only to snatch it and never fulfill it. I still place my hurts from my earthy father an mother onto my Heavenly Father. I still have my fears that He is messing with us, with me. Even though I say I know He is not messing with us, my actions do not follow suit. So maybe it is time to take that final leap of faith and surrender to Jesus everything I have been holding onto.

When I sit still and spend time with Jesus I feel that He has promised to one day open my ovaries and womb and bless us with children. About a year ago we felt Jesus was asking us to not give Him the back door. We felt he was asking us for a year. So maybe it is time to surrender to Him. Not because I have too, instead because I want too.

The Bible continually talks about Jesus being faithful even when we are not. The truth is my Heavenly Father has been faithful to both Jeral and I through this whole journey. Jesus knew that there were certain issues and unhealthy patterns in my life that we passed on by my parents to me, and that before I had children I wanted to make sure I was breaking the cycle so my future children would not have these passed onto them. I have been blessed to have had the last two years to work towards that goal. Jesus was faithful in that. He knew that desire so He in His love withheld another desire. So does this mean that He will forever with hold the desire to be a mom, to be a biological mom? I know that I am not able to answer that question. I do know He sees the bigger picture.

If I am honest I would say that I do not want to be barren and childless for the rest of my life just so I can help others who are walking through this journey. I am selfish, I want more than life itself to be a mother. To carry my child within me, to go through the pains of child birth, and to feel all the joys and heartaches of parenthood. I also know that today right now I am not in a place to say I know Jesus will help me get to place of being okay with never having children, and I know Jesus is okay with this because He would rather I be honest with where I am at than to have me lie about it. I also know that He will bring both Jeral and me to the place He wants us to be despite my days of kicking and screaming. Yesterday was a kicking and screaming day, and today, well today is a different day, a new day so we will see how today is lived out.

Now though it is off to sleep and rest in the arms of the One who loves us, the one who in the words of Zephaniah longs to sing over us.

In a Brief Moment

So I do not know where to begin. This entry is most likely going to be raw and packed full of emotion, so beware. This is my way of processing what is happening.

I just wish that when the bottom is about to fall out it would not happen right after I see my counsellor. The one person I would be able to fall apart in front of and not feel terrified too I just saw and now have to wait 2 more weeks to see. AHHHHHHHHH!

Something has come up. I am not going to go into details about it because I am a little worried that if those who this involved were to read the blog I would end up getting an angry phone call from them. However I will say it involves money a lot of money. As Jeral was talking about the situation I felt that I heard Jesus whispering give them the adoption money. After the sale of some quota on the farm Jeral and I set aside $15000 to adopt if we are not pregnant soon. After 20 months of trying we just want to start our family soon, and so we set aside the money. We did not feel this was going against Jesus asking us to give him a year with out actually pursuing the adoption process. We set the money aside in a GIC so that it was there when the year was over and we would not have to worry about where the funds for our child were going to come from. So to feel that I am hearing Jesus say give them the adoption money right now is pushing my faith beyond my limits right now.

I am confused and angry that in a moment and just one simple sentence and whisper would be able to steal my peace from me. For a month a whole month I was at peace with whatever happened in terms of biological or not biological children. We had a game plan. When the year was up then we would start the adoption process. Giving them that money was not in the plan. They will get the money in 2 more years like agreed upon, before I was even in the picture. So why now, why is this being brought up now, just as the year of waiting and "not giving God the back door" is almost over?

I feel as though he is asking me to let go of my last hope. Knowing that we would have the money to adopt and that we would have a child with in the next year gave me hope and the ability to be at peace. However I guess it was a faulty peace. It was a peace based on us having something in our back pocket to ensure that we would have a little MacKenzie Joy or Jacob Zachariah one day soon. It was not a peace based on complete trust in my Heavenly DADA.

Then I got furious at one point. Jeral at least got the choice as the weather or not he really wanted to be a biological father. I told him about my PCOS and that it may mean adopting one day, and I told Jeral I would not blame him or judge him if he decided he wanted biological children enough to decided to end our relationship and so he could pursue a relationship with some one else. I on the other hand never got a choice. Jesus never asked me if I wanted PCOS. I never got to say I am okay with not having children someday. I know I am over reacting just a little bit. I am going into my what if mode? What if we give the adoption money to them, as a step of faith that Jesus has heard our gut wrenching prayers and then I stay barren? What if then in 6 years when financially we will have no worries potential birth mothers won't look at us as perspective parents because Jeral will be 49? He does not want to be a grandfather when he is a father. I just so want to give him what is beyond my ability to give to him.

Maybe this is Jesus way of finally getting me to let go of hoping in the things I can do to fix the problem, so I can hold onto the One who is holding us and who is not messing with us or going to mess this up. Today is just a day where this journey hurts more than it has in a while.

Post Op Report

So amidst the heart ache of yesterday I totally forgot to blog about finally getting the post op report from my doctor.

So in short the finding were that yes I have PCOS. My ovaries were enlarged bi-laterally. So using 35 watts of electricity they drilled into my ovaries numerous times. The surgeon felt that my ovaries responded well from what he observed. Only time will really tell if the procedure is successful (aka- we get pregnant).

Upon investigation while inside of me my fallopian tubes, my uterus, pelvis, and cervix are all normal. Yeah for that. Some women have tilted uterus', and narrow cervix's, or twisted and blocked tubes and that is not the case for me. So happy to hear that.

We were at peace with whatever was found because we trust that Jesus wants the best for us, and has only the best for us. I have come a long way in this journey. And as I say that I am relieved that it appears my ovaries are the only issue in the fertility journey.

So now we continue the journey of adding to our family. It is a journey we decided to embark on 19 months ago. It is a journey we have struggled with, cried over, I have been angry and resentful towards God at times, and yet today I know that something is being grown in both Jeral and I that otherwise would not have had to chance to be grown. The last 19 months have challenged us, stretched us, and shaped us. So as we continue on the journey we ask for you prayers.

It is strange. I have come to realize that I have many friends and acquaintances that are also on the this journey with us. More than I ever actually thought. Fertility issues are all around us. For some reason God has chosen some of us to journey this struggle. So to all my friends and even those who I only know of, Jeral and I will continue to hold you up in our prayers, as we prayer also for us. You are not alone. None of us are alone.

Love and Prayers, Leanne and Jeral

Pray for the Newby's

I got an email this morning asking us to pray for some friends of ours. Tara, Preston, and their son Jacob were on their way up to Canada from Oregon for holidays with family and friends. They stopped at a motor vehicle accident scene to help out and some how Preston was killed while helping. Please pray for their families, and for Tara who is pregnant with their second child.

My heart aches for my friends. We love you guys!