Is my desire for privacy greater than my need for prayer?

Over the years, I've really struggled to come to terms with the whole idea of "waiting" until you've completed the risky first trimester of pregnancy to share the most exciting news of your life.  When people share before the magic number 12 people often remark about how early they are sharing.  When people share after the magic number 12 people often remark about how they can't imagine how someone would be able to contain that kind of information.  The double standard is suffocating and I have found myself in both scenarios, many times. 

What struck me the most after the loss of our first baby was how many women I knew personally who had experienced loss that I had no idea about.  How many had "told too soon" or "waited too long" to share and lost the life of a child who mattered to them.  

I soon realized that people don't know how to respond to a mother who has lost a child by miscarriage.  Let me just simplify it, you handle it the same way you would a friend who has lost a child who entered this world by birth. The moment a woman finds out she is pregnant, she becomes a Momma.  Her entire world changes.  What she eats, drinks, the vitamins she takes, her thoughts are consumed as she can no longer forget that there is a baby growing in her body.  She dreams, hopes, plans, and prepares.  And at some point, sometimes, all of the dreams, hopes, plans, and preparations stop when she learns of her loss.  Her life has all of the sudden dramatically shifted and what was to be is no longer coming.  So you treat her like a Momma, one who had a living child in her body that has gone to be with Jesus for reasons we can't comprehend. 

Because now, if she told "too early" she has to bear the burden of sharing her loss.  If she "waited too long" she realizes that others weren't able to share in her joy and so how can she tell them now? 

But you know what she gains when she is able to share her loss? She gains support.  Love.  Compassion. Strength from community.  

And this is where I struggle, with where the silent suffering occurs, when she "waits" to tell and now her loss becomes her secret.  Her sole cross to carry.  Where she finds herself isolated and unsure of what to do next.  Where questions like "When will you start a family?" cut deep because the person asking has no idea that she is trying but feels like she is failing.

Sadly, she believes the cultural lie that privacy is more powerful than the prayers of those who love her.  The lie that whispers, "don't tell before it's safe, you wouldn't want to jump the gun."  "Why would you tell people before you know if it will survive?" "Shouldn't you make sure everything is okay before you announce?"  Where she is pressured to keep her miracle secret because miscarriage is too much for others to know how to deal with.  

Fear of miscarriage is the number one anxiety of prenatal mothers.  God assures us hundreds of times throughout scripture to not fear.  I can't help but to feel like part of this anxiety is attributed to the pressure that comes from how to handle a new pregnancy and sharing with others.

Just recently, I found myself contemplating the subject once again. Then I realized the question I had to answer was, "Is my desire for privacy greater than my need for prayer?"   Essentially, do I fall victim again to the trap that I should wait only so that I may possibly have to mourn in private?

For me, for us, our family, our growing family, I will always chose prayer.  

Prayer over fear.
Prayer over anxiety.
Prayer over privacy.
Prayer over control.
Prayer over uncertainty.

So please, pray for our family. Prayer that the God of the universe would bring this baby to birth in October.  Prayer that His will for our family is greater than our human desires and that if earthly life isn't what is to come that peace would follow in waves to cover us. 

"Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in Him." Psalm 62:5

Baby Hall #2 coming October 2015!

Where Do You See Yourself in 5 Years?

This question always paralyzed me when presented.  I had no idea.  I am not and have never been a visionary, so answering it always felt fake and forced. Like some test question that I would never get right.

I still am not sure I could answer this question, even in my present state of life that is stable and purposeful.  Because to be honest, who can ever foresee the way God will move?

I moved home to Louisville from Dallas exactly five years ago this month.  February 10th. A day, that I have yet to forget.  I can still relive that day, the day that I finally gave up control and begged God to take over because I had destroyed my life with one bad decision after another.

On that day, I could have never imagined that God's plans for me were even bigger than my dreams.  The question isn't, where am I 5 years later, instead it's a declaration...

LOOK WHAT GOD DID!

Look at the life He restored.
Look at the woman He redeemed.
Look at the marriage He built.
Look at the child He gave.
Look at the ministry He created.
Look at the prayers He answered.
Look at the prayers He didn't.
Look at the story He is writing.
Look at the glory He is getting!

One of the most important lessons I've learned in these years is that praying the will of God means being ready for anything.  Praying the will of God is terrifying and beautiful all at once.  For me it has brought the purest joy and the deepest grief. 

It meant walking away from a lot of things, sometimes things I loved and wanted. 
It meant walking away from people.  People who weren't good for me and some who I thought were. 
It meant praising God in hospital rooms were babies lay motionless on monitors.
It meant saying no to lifetime dreams when doors were closing all around me. 

But, LOOK WHAT GOD DID!

It meant finding the love of a man God gave me after a decision of obedience.
It meant giving birth to a sweet little boy named Brooks.
It meant giving up my new job for my dream job.
It meant living each day with the purest trust that God's will for my life is unpredictable yet safe.

So where will I be in 5 years?

Guess we'll just have to wait and see what God does.

The Day I Threw Woody

It was a Monday.

Woody's hat kept falling off and Brooks was so annoyed with this continual game of put on fall off put on fall off.  He walked over to me with frustration and slung Woody right into my face. His floppy arms and hard plastic hands smacked my cheek and nose and inflicted a ridiculous amount of pain considering it was a mostly soft toy.  In an attempt to keep myself from completely bullying my child by yelling at him I peeled Woody off of my face and did what any logical, 30 year old mother would do...

I threw him across the living room.

Is this real life? Did I actually just do that? Who am I? What just happened? All of these raced through my head as I watched him crash to the floor.

In an effort to control myself I completely lost control.  In a moment of sheer shock of the amount of pain a character could inflict I came completely undone.  As quickly as I lost control I realized my error.  That little face just stared at me as if he had no idea who I was. Shock covered his own face and he couldn't take his eyes off me.  I couldn't decide if it was confusion or fear but I prayed for the first.  I quickly removed us both from the situation and suggested we go to the kitchen to do something. Anything to take his mind off what he had just witnessed but mostly because I needed to get myself in check for acting like Mommy Dearest.

As babes do, he went on as if nothing had happened. Until later in the day when he couldn't get that silly hat on Woody and I watched in horror as he chucked him across the room.  Oh, and I thought Woody actually hitting me in the face today was the worst pain I would feel.  I stood there completely overcome with shame at the reality of the quote we see plastered all over- your children will follow your example, they will be who you are so be who you want them to be.  He is me.  He is crazy, out of control, throw Woody across the room because you're frustrated me. 

He looked at me for my reaction, I kneeled down and apologized for throwing Woody today.  I told him we don't throw our toys.  We don't hit Mommy and we don't throw our toys.  Off he ran, Woody in hand. I sat there praying fervently that he would one day follow the example of apologizing instead of the example of throwing in anger.

It lingered in my head all day. I shared my Mom fail with a close friend.  I shared it with my husband.  I needed to confront it instead of hide it. Bring my dark into the light where Satan couldn't use it against me later as a secret I had kept buried deep. 

As I watched him happily bounce away, God taught me yet another lesson through the tiny boy.  That when we ask for forgiveness, God looks at us, he sees us, he forgives and we all move on. Maybe throwing Woody today wasn't a total loss.

What Death Teaches Us

 This sweet moment between Brooks & his Great Papaw Bowen was taken just an hour before he went to be with Jesus. In a rare toddler moment, Brooks sat and looked at him for over five minutes and reached out his hand to caress his Papaw's hand so gently.  There wasn't a dry eye in the room!

"For He knows how weak we are, he remembers we are only dust. Our days on earth are like grass, like wildflowers, we bloom and die." Psalm 103:14

I read this verse in Psalms the night before we lost him.  I prayed for the Holy Spirit to fill me with something.  Encouragement, promise, hope, a reminder that this life is all but temporary.  Without fail, He led me to this.  A verse that sits one below a favorite of mine, one that is embedded on my heart and inscribed on a bracelet Dale wears. 

As we spent our days bedside, with one of the first men I'd ever fallen in love with, I was flooded with emotions and thoughts about life and death.  Life teaches us lessons time and time again, but death, do we ever stop to think in the midst of it that it is worthy of teaching us as well?  I've never experienced death before, and yet I wasn't surprised to see that God would use such a time to speak to my heart in a way that I knew would change me, encourage me, and challenge me.

Earth's treasures are useless. Matthew 6:19 Don't store up treasures here on earth where moths eat them rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal.

As I sat and touched his hands I could picture him fiddling with a pocket watch. Cleaning it, opening it, winding it.  I thought about all the hundreds that he had collected.  One of which he had given to me one Christmas.  I had held onto that pocket watch for dear life during all of life's moves, travels, and even a jeweler once who offered me more money than I had to my name at the time.  I thought about how I would wear it the next day and that one day I would get to pass it on.  And in that sense, that treasure didn't seem completely useless to me, because forever I would remember him by it.  But that pocket watch, like the hundreds that surrounded it, sure didn't matter as he inhaled and exhaled his last numbered breaths. It pierced my heart so deeply.  It was a reminder of my word for the year, contentment.  The reminder that no amount of stuff matters when we're breathing our last breaths.  What an image to be emblazed in my mind for when I struggle with material desires. A final lesson from my Papaw that wouldn't be forgotten.

Enjoy your precious life. Ecclesiastes 9:9 Live happily with the woman you love through all the meaningless days of life that God has given you under the sun.

I could picture him bickering with my Mamaw in a way that I knew meant he loved her.  He would argue his point and look at you and wink.  Even in those last years when Alzheimer's had set in and you weren't always sure he was aware, at just the right time he would look you in the eyes and wink when she would say something sassy or accuse him of doing something just to spite her.  As I sat and watched him breathe I could picture memory after memory of him enjoying life and bringing us all along for the ride.  Death has a way of pressing pause on life.  It allows you to say no to every other committment you have in a second to be there as you savor final moments.  In that moment, I could almost hear him whispering to me to not wait for death again to press pause and enjoy my precious life.  My baby, my husband, my own Daddy.  To soak in the beauty of each every day moment under the sun.  

Eternity matters.  1 John 2:24-25 So you must remain faithful to what you have been taught from the beginning. If you do, you will remain in fellowship with the Son and with the Father. And in this fellowship we enjoy the eternal life he promised us.

January 10th, 1991 he obidiently followed Jesus into the baptismal and was raised from the dead.  He was different from then I'm certain.  I don't remember those early days of his Christian life, but I knew where he kept his Bible and I knew where he could be found on a Saturday night.  In the back of the middle section of church.  He was a quiet servant with a gentle heart.  

In the final hours of his life I looked at my own Dad with a weary heart and asked why God hadn't already called him home.  Why he had been stripped of his identity & memory yet still resided in this earthly body instead of the glorious new body that I knew awaited him.  I didn't expect him to be able to explain to me God's plan, but I yearned to understand.  In a way only Dad's can, he looked at me with tear filled eyes and told me he believed it was because God was giving us a chance to remember the importance of salvation.  A time to openly talk about it together, a time to share it with those around us who may not quiet understand the message of Jesus and the promise of eternal life, a time to draw near to Jesus so he may draw near to us.  Eternity matters, and in the final moments of life when grief rushes in, only the promise of Heaven can provide hope that there is more than this.  

As the roses from his funeral slowly wither and fall, I am reminded daily of the verse the Holy Spirit gave me that cold Thursday night.  Just like flowers, we bloom and we die.  Oh how I long for my bloom of life to be filled with treasure that cannot be lost, memories that cannot be forgotten, and a hope of eternity with my sweet Papaw and many, many others.


 

Brooks' Baby Book

Just two weeks after Brooks was born, I began working on his baby book.  I knew from working on my pregnancy journal that I wanted something different and one of a kind. I had no idea when I started that it would end as a stunning, 5.5lbs, 327 page, 12 month labor of love. But it did and I couldn't be any happier with it!  However, it has set a standard that I now know will have to be met with each subsequent Hall baby and I am a little fearful of that as creating this with one babe in the house was challenging enough!  

I've received some requests after my posts of its progress and arrival on Instagram to share some of the content of the book.  Please know, I cannot take credit for the book in its entirety.  I scoured Pinterest and baby books in physical stores for hours seeking ideas for content and format.  I modeled the cover off one I particularly fell in love with off Pinterest one evening before Brooks was even born. Page by page it began to fall together...

A peek inside:

~ monthly journal entries to Brooks & a stats page with monthly picture
~ people who came to visit in hospital & pics of them
~ social media birth announcement & first birthday wishes
~ what things cost the year born
~ teething chart & teething habits
~ nicknames
~ professional pictures
~ first haircut
~ first holidays
~ first house & first nursery
~ doctors : delivery & pediatrician
~ immunization record & birth certificate
~ baby dedication attendees, cards, & certificate from church
~ first birthday invite & attendees

Along with 1200+ plus pictures of every day life, events, trips, and so on.  What would we do without an iPhone camera?! In the back I've also began taping in ticket stubs, voting stickers, first birthday wrapping paper, and so on.  I decided to close the book in my own way though, and wrote a letter to my future daughter in law.  Yes, it was as strange & difficult to write as you may imagine it would be! 

Behold, 12 x 12 inches of Brooks' first year of life in all its glory!

Book created and published by Blurb.

www.blurb.com

Fallen Mirrors

I could hear the tiny fists pounding against the mirror over and over. I scrambled into the closet and warned the sweet boy of his impending demise if he continued to play near the unanchored mirror leaning against the wall.

He looked at me blankly and ran off to play.

Days later, the same tiny fists began pounding the same leaning mirror. 

"No no Brooks, you can't touch the mirror. It will fall and hurt the baby." 

Each time the closet would be left opened he would wander in and the scenario would repeat. Again and again.  I would talk to him about the danger, remove him from the situation, and distract him with other activities. 

But each time, the desire to pound tiny palms against the mirror and look at the "baybee" drew him back in. 

Then it happened. One Saturday morning as we both stood there getting ready, the mirror crashed on top of him after tiny fists stopped pounding and started pulling instead.  It trapped him and scared him.  He cried out and I ran.  I lifted the mirror and scooped him up.  Soothing him, rocking him, comforting him in his disobedience that led to self inflicted pain. There was no "I told you so." No anger or snark.  No spanking or discussion.  

I sat there rocking him in awe as I realized God was teaching me about himself through my child.  About his heart as my father. 

God has told me no so many times in my life.  The no's have come in a plethora of ways. Warning signs, verbal reprimands, talks, questions, and sometimes flat out red flags that should have sent me running away screaming.  Yet every time I've ignored the no, disobeyed the command, when the mirror falls, He takes me into his arms and He comforts me.  He never tells me "I told you so." His love abounds despite my mistakes.  How deep the Father's love for me.  For us.  For my sweet Brooks who will need Jesus to comfort him when one of life's mirrors crashes down upon his disobedience. 

And yet again, my tiny boy, gave me a glimpse into God's love for me. He taught me a lesson that I hadn't fully grasped on my own.  How great the Father's love for us is. 

He Is Enough

Contentment.

My one little word for 2015. 

Two weeks ago our pastor challenged us to pray for God to reveal a word to us for the year that we would focus on.  It's funny to me how the mind plays tricks on us.  How we think we know what God will speak to us (which is totally hilarious that I would think I can predict God, who has proven himself to be completely unpredictable yet always perfect).  Someone please tell me I'm not the only one who tries to project things on God?! 

Anyways, contentment, my word, isn't what I would have expected. Discipline, maybe. But not contentment. 

Contentment wasn't on my radar because I'm not discontented. I wouldn't even say I'm not happy with my life or wish anything different.  Because I am, and I wouldn't.  So I began to pray for clarity about my word.  The one that just kept coming to mind.  And then the pieces began to fall together.

For the last five years, every year, something big has happened.  Some change, something new, something exciting, and at first, something traumatic.  New jobs, new houses, four pregnancies, one baby, and all in all, A LOT of BIG changes for us.  As 2015 approaches, I've found myself peeking around the corner waiting for the next big thing.  Is this our year to build a house? Will we buy instead? Are we going to try for another baby? All of these questions about the future and my ever nagging desire to squash uncertainty like a bug with a "plan." 

It was like God told me to simmer down. Be content. Be still. Enjoy the slow ride. Enjoy the now.  And I finally got it. It is like salve to the wound of the unknown. 

I started seeking out scripture on being content.  The Bible has so much to say about it. It covers so many areas of my life that I find myself in contempt of being content.  

"So if we have enough food & clothing, let us be content." 1 Timothy 6:8

"Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth." 1 Timothy 6:6

"Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have." Philippians 4:11

This struggle with contentment isn't just mine. It's yours too.  We live in the culture of comparison.  Where we see perfectly staged lives, meals, children, outfits, homes, cars, etc on social media. We are bombarded with advertisements online of things we must have.  We are led to believe that we must have everything that we desire. And that if we don't get it, that we are being deprived of truly living. This lie is stealing my joy and it's stealing yours too.  Jesus Christ didn't come to give us abundant homes. Abundant closets. Abundant bank accounts.  He came to give us abundant life. Life that is rich and satisfying in a way that no online purchase, bank statement, or amount of square footage can give you.  

For the year, contentment is my focus. Living abundantly in Christ, not in purchases. Leaning into Him to be completed satisfied in all because He is Enough.  He is enough for me and He is enough for you.