Out of the Blue

This morning I received an email from a dear friend that was a reply to an email conversation we had on February 16.  The first email was from me to her, in it I shared my heart, my fears, my struggles.  I was 6 weeks along in my pregnancy at the time.  

Her email today said:  "I've held on to this email and periodically glanced at it to pray and remind me of your journey through this pregnancy. Now that you are nearly at the end of one journey (and at the beginning of another) I wanted to remind you of it as well. Look at how God has brought you through. Remember how these struggles were big struggles for you at the time. I hope that it brings you peace in knowing that your current struggles will soon be of the past as well. Soon you will be bringing home a beautiful new life. It won't matter how he/she got here. Soon. I love you."

A few days ago, I had cried on the phone to her about the fear of the unknown and all of the things that had been filling my pregnant mind lately.  I'm so thankful for my sweet friend who took the time to look back with me to show me where I've been, where I struggled, and how God has proven himself faithful.  This is such an encouragement to me, now at 36 weeks, as I venture on into the unknown with my mind filled with questions of what might be.  

Maternity Photo Shoot

A few weeks ago, my dear friend Rachel (we went to college together) came to our house to do a maternity photo shoot.  It was an exciting day and I had way more fun than I would've ever imagined.  I also was surprised at the feeling I had during the shoot.  I remember a similar feeling when I was walking down the aisle at my wedding, a feeling like, oh my goodness this day, that I've dreamed about for so long, is finally here.  Not that I had dreamed about a maternity photo shoot forever, but with our journey over the last year and a half the moments to be celebrating what was to come and what is in my belly was a really surreal thing.

Here is a highlight video from our shoot.  Rachel did such a great job!





www.ra-photo.com

What a Journey

So in order to explain my thought process and how I ended up teary eyed looking through pictures on Facebook, I must admit a somewhat vain activity I was partaking in.  You see, I'm terribly tired today.  I'm not trying to complain, but my body hurts so badly and I think I saw more of the night last night than I saw of my eyelids.  My exhaustion made me wonder if 9 week pregnant Cara looked as tired as 34 week pregnant feels.  So I decided to look back through pictures I've posted on Facebook to see if I could tell.  I began flipping through my profile pictures to find the 9 week pregnant version of myself and ended up flipping through a few years worth of profile pictures (see this is where I feel vain for even admitting that I was essentially looking at pictures of myself).  There are a lot of old pictures there, but there are a lot of pictures from the last year. When I saw the ones that were taken after Grant was born, I got sad thinking about how much my heart hurt during that time, but so happy that, amidst the sadness, there was also a lot of true happiness.  Pictures of my brand new nephew (who is so big right now and rapidly approaching his first birthday), pictures of Josh and I on our fall decorated porch, pictures from my cousin Jenny's wedding, and pictures from Christmas (among others, I change my picture frequently).  So many happy things that happened while I was dealing with grief and so desperately wanting there to be life within me again.  Then I found the picture of Josh and I with our nephew August in the I'm going to be a Big Cousin shirt that I made him for our big reveal that we were expecting again.  The tears started again, what had seemed like such a long season of my life, was really a very short season and just like that things were different.

This last 34 weeks has actually gone by so quickly.  I'm amazed each day that there is a person growing in my belly and I'm so excited to meet this little guy or girl.  The the last weeks of pregnancy speeding by, I've been introduced to a new array of emotions, sheer excitement: that this dream, this prayer will be coming to be so quickly, extreme fear: I used to feel like I could be a mom no problem, but now I'm questioning my abilities, bittersweet feelings that this season of it just being Josh and me is coming to close while being excited to start this new chapter, and worry (I can't think of a better word, because it isn't obsessive worry, just curious, I don't know what to expect, will everything be ok worry) about how everything will go down and how this baby will arrive.  So, I'm holding on to the truth that I know that God has this under control, he knows what he is doing, and will give us what we need to flourish through another change of seasons in life.  I'd appreciate your prayers that we could just enjoy these last 6 (or less) weeks until the baby arrives and trust that what will be will be!