Summer fun and decision making!

Well it's been almost four months since our miscarriage and most days it feels like years. We have both enjoyed these past few months together and it has been enjoyable "not trying" to have a baby. We both needed this time to breath and reciprocate from the past few years!!!

But being the woman I am I'm still trying to figure out what's next. I've been praying for God to lead us in the right direction. I've gone over all our options and prayed over them and each day I change my mind on what to do next. All the while hoping we just get pregnant on our own. I realized over the past few months that all I really want is a baby, any way I can get it, even if it's not our DNA!

I feel like I've done very well dealing with the announcements of our friends who are expecting and I'm just hoping it will be our turn next! A few weeks ago there was a couple in our church that took in a baby that their family couldn't take care of. I just cried because I thought why can't someone just knock on our door with a baby. I realized then that I would take any baby I could get! Just to be a mommy!! I told Charlie maybe we should put out an ad out for anyone who knows someone who doesn't want their baby we will take it:))) as funny as it sounds it's the truth, we are sooo ready to be patents! ( yes, we will take any baby that nobody wants, but we do want it to be legal...just in case you read this and thought I would go all crazy and steal one....;))

So this brings me to my prayer requests. I am currently working on our application for adoption and at the same time I'm working on our application for a grant to help us pay for our transfer if our embryos. I feel like I should at least try both and see what God can do. We are along for prayers on both of these things. We will be happy either way God leads us but we want to go the way He wants us to. Please be praying for our embryos that we may or may not put in. Please pray for our possible baby that may be brought into our lives and for the mother who will give it to us! Lots of things to pray for I know but we will continue to PUSH until our prayers are answered or until God takes this desire out of my heart. And right now the desire is in there do far I'm bursting with joy at the possibility to be a mommy!!!!

Thank you got your continued prayers for Charlie and I as we continue to do Gods will and bring Him all the glory!!!!

"for I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord......."

Mothers Day

Mother's day is coming up, and yes it's a hard day for me ( and Charlie). This will be the third Mothers day that I will celebrate with the thought of "maybe next year I'll be a mommy." This year will be a little different because for a short time I was a mommy and next Sunday I will remember and cherish those few weeks when all my dreams came true. I will give thanks for the time that God answered our prayers and celebrate the fact that one day we will be celebrating Mother's day with babies everywhere!!! I hope that my sweet babies in heaven are proud of the mommy they would of had down here and are anxiously awaited the day that I will meet them. I often dream about that day and get excited to know that no matter what happens down here with our fertility issues one day I'll meet my babies!!! Praise Jesus!!!!

Now, I will not just be celebrating the short time I was a mommy; I will also be celebrating the many many wonderful years I've spent with my mom. This year our celebration will be bittersweet. Even though she didn't carry out the pregnancy of her grandchildren, she was gracious and so humble that she gave up her body so that Charlie and I could be parents.There are not enough ways to say "thank you" enough. So this Mother's day I get to spend time with my mom and try to shower her with love and cherish all the memories we've created over the past few months. Both good and bad memories are times that I wouldn't give up for the world. I have a bond with my mom that no one can ever break. I will forever be thankful for her sacrifices she has made and the one sacrifice she tried to make for my husband and I.
There is a quote that I found that reminds me of my mom, it says "you've never really lived unless you have done so something for someone who can never repay you" My mom can say that she has lived because what she did for me my whole life including these past few months I can never ever repay her. I only hope and pray that I'm half as good a mom as she was to me. Happy Mother's day mom I love you!!!

I will also be celebrating Mother's day with my sweet mother in law. Even though she didn't raise me, she raised the most important man in my life. It's because of her that my husband is so wonderful to me. She taught him just how great you should treat your wife. I'm forever grateful for the wonderful Christian women that she is! I'm grateful for a mother in law who I know loves me as her own. I know without a doubt she prays without ceasing for Charlie and myself and her future grand babies. I'm truly blessed with a wonderful mother in law!

There are so many this mothers day that I am grateful to have in my life. My Gram, my Mamaw in heaven, Charlie's Mamaw and my sister in law. All great moms who deserve recognition this Mother's day. I'm grateful for each of these sweet women who are all great moms and wonderful christian women who have all impacted my life.

So looking back this Mother's day will be hard but man I'm so so blessed and I know that one day I will get to join these ladies in celebrating this wonderful and much deserving day. I can't wait to be a mommy!!!!!

Spring time

This time of year is one of my favorites. I love the fact that after a long cold winter everything begins to come out and grow again. It's like starting new with a new outlook. This has all helped me in my healing process. I've learned so much from this time in our lives and am great full for the things we've encountered that has helped us through. Recently I received a devotional from a sweet friend. The scripture from 1 John 1:5 which says " God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness in Him"
God is light, God is illuminating, warm, bright, hopeful, good. He is the source of life and all of good things. But not only is God light, but He is also not darkness. So God can't be cold, cruel, evil, or hurtful. It's impossible for him to be any of those things because not a drop of darkness dwells in Him.
We didn't lose our babies because God is punishing us, because He doesn't work like that. My God is light and He will bring us our light in His time!!! He works for good and we will trust His timing.
It's time for us to come out of hibernation, to warm up from the cold that has grown in us and start in grow in His light, and wait until He says "it's time". You see this time of year is my favorite because I know new growth is just beginning!!!! Praise Jesus!!!

What doesn't kill u makes u stronger!!

I know it's been a while since I've posted. People have been asking if I'll keep this up. And yes I am and will keep up with this blog. These past few weeks have been much better. I've learned that the healing process takes more time than I've allowed and that I have to stop and mourn before I can go on. Our lives will never be the same, our world will never go back to the way it was before 2012. However the changes in our lives are for the better. I've never loved my husband more than I do today. I'll love him even more tomorrow. What we have together no one else will ever know nor will they understand. Our love is binded together by our loss. I see love in a whole different light when i hold our friends precious bundles of joy i realize just what exactly comes out of all this pain. I love babies so much more now than I ever had. I see just exactly what a true miracle looks like. Life as we have known it won't be the same, the experience we had has forever changed our hearts!

We went to our follow up appt with dr. Gentry and he told us to keep our heads up. He thinks that it didn't work because it didn't work. But we got pregnant and that's the farthest we've ever gone and were taking the right steps now. He wants to do the frozen embryo transfer anytime after April and he wants to use just me since I was able to get pregnant. He did say that our chance of conceiving on our own did increase because we got pregnant so he encourages us to try on our own and use the heparin and baby aspirin. We were very pleased to hear this and to know that it's not an impossible task for us to get pregnant. But it does happen on God's time and not ours.
Since this talk we have discussed different options and we were pleased with how well they are working with us. We ask that you please pray for our next steps because they could be life changing and with God our miracle can finally happen.

About four weeks after our miscarriage the most wonderful, crazy and loving women went home to be with the Lord. I watched my sweet Mamaw Alberta suffer and then pass away. The women who taught me to peel potatoes at age 4, who danced and sang Johnny Cash in the kitchen, who took me to more places in my 6 years of life than I've been to all my life together, left this world. I remember thinking she would never die. As I sat and held her hand so confused as to why God was allowing this to happen to us, all I can think of was when she got to heaven I wanted her to hold my babies. And I take comfort in knowing that she is there with them and will keep them until we get there to hold them ourselves. We planted the flowers we got from the funeral in the back yard in memory of her and our babies. Everyday I can look out the back window and be reminded of God's promises!!

2012 hasn't really turned out they way we planned. But it has turned out the way that God wanted it to. We pray daily that this baby will one day be in our arms and I know my heavenly father hears those prayers and we shall someday soon be parents.

Peace like a river in my soul

These past few days have been some of the hardest days of my life. There were so many days that I couldn't even get out of bed. Ive never known such pain and such agony. Ive cried, Ive screamed, Ive cried some more. I felt as if i would never know joy again, I mean true joy. Ive begged and pleaded with God to take away my pain to replace my broken heart with joy and happiness. Its been days since I felt "God's presence" in my life. I wondered where He was and why He had left me. What did I do wrong for this to not work. But in the end all I wanted was peace and joy back in my life.
This morning on my way to work I once again prayed for peace and joy, for God to heal my heart. The day didn't start off great I was still so sad and down. When I went to lunch I had a voicemail from my dad that said he was in Evansville and wanted to eat lunch. This is where my day got better, you see I LOVE my dad! He is the BEST listener and he always gives the best advice. He is so positive and uplifting! After lunch we walked down the hall and we talked about how I was doing. We talked about healing and how one day I would be ok, not back to normal because my life will never be the same but one day I would be ok. It was my first sign of hope. He said you know there is a reason for this, you know you were chosen to do this for a reason. (Have people told me this already, yes! But sometimes you really hear it when your ready to hear it) We walked some more and he said the most important thing " its going to be ok" Yes it is!!! Its going to be ok. The world didn't end, people didn't stop breathing because my heart was broken. I held my head up and continued my day with a little more joy. On my way home I finally broke! I finally praise the Lord for what he had done. Yes I thanked God for taking my babies. I praised HIS name that HIS will was done and not mine. I shouted "thank you" for answering my prayers. I got pregnant, when every doctor said we wouldn't I did!!! That in itself is worthy of praising! We are to praise God in the good times and we are to praise God in the bad as well. I feel that God didn't take my babies away to be mean, He took them away to fulfill His will. One day something great will happen, one day we will have a baby and I will praise Him just as much then as I did today. I realized that when I finally accepted this I began to have joy in my life!
I also realized today that I want a baby more than anything in this world, I would give my life to have a child of my own. Ive spent the last 3 years of my life trying and trying to have a baby. My every thought, my every prayer was spent on asking and trying for a baby. God showed me today that that same desire I have for my baby, He has for us. Only his desire for my attention and my love is sooooo much more. I just cried at the thought of this, He loves and cares for me. My God didn't put me in this situation for pain and suffering, no He put me in this situation for a reason. One day ill know why and I'm pretty sure it will be even better than I can imagine!!!

Thank you for all your prayers and encouraging words. We are so lucky to have so many people who care about us. I praise Jesus everyday for my sweet Charlie, he has taken such good care of me. Im truely blessed to have him in my life!!!



*****Also we want to say a BIG congrats to our good friends Tadd and Joanna on the birth of their new baby Grady Smith Brewer!!! He is such a cutie!!!******

From my point of view..... Mom

Many people are wondering...what's next????? The answer...we wait.
Throughout this entire process, and honestly for the first time in my life, I can say, I have been 100% in the will of God. As a family, we prayed and prayed and prayed for God's will and we all knew, without a shadow of a doubt, we were obediently following the plan God had laid out for us to follow. Everywhere we looked, we would see God. Everything we did, we would see God. There was never a time we doubted that we were being obedient.

When I woke up, Friday Feb 3, I was soooo sick!!! The best sick I had ever been in my life. I knew then, God had blessed me with my grand baby!! Sometime during the day, Donnie and I decided we would confirm what we already knew and take a pregnancy test. When I came home from work that afternoon, I took the test. I left the bathroom to go into the kitchen and before I'd had time to fix myself a glass of water, Donnie said, "I think it's time". I laughed and called back to him, "No, Donnie, we wait three minutes". He giggled (yes, I said giggled) and said, "No, I think it's time." I knew by his voice he had already been in the bathroom and checked the test and yes, it was postiive!!! My Donnie was like a little school girl...he couldn't contain his excitement!! It was precious!!! Then he sat down and with tears streaming down his face and said the sweetest words... "Robyn, I'm so humbled!! I don't know why, but God has trusted us to to bring our grandchild into this world...what an honor that God chose us." It was at that very moment, I became attached to that little child growing inside me...my grand baby...my daughter and son-in-law's baby.

Later that same night, we also learned that Lynsey was pregnant. I'll be honest, I was a little shocked, but joy and excitement filled my heart!! I'll never forget that night, that moment changed me forever. I share this, not for people to be sad for us, but because I want you to know the joy we experienced for a few days. Joy we were able to experience because God Blessed us. And let me also add...those days were some of the best days of our entire lives!!!!!

Unfortunatly, our excitement was short lived... a few days later, God answered our prayer....He closed the door...No, He slammed the door! And, yes, it took us by surprise. Were we shocked? Yes. Were we sad? Yes. Were we disappointed? Yes. Were we heartbroken? Yes. Are we still all those things? ABSOLUTELY!!!
Have we stopped loving God because of this? NO!!! The best part of all this is also the hardest part....we asked for God's will...We asked if this wasn't God's will that He would close the door... and as hard as it is to accept, God answered our prayer...He closed the door... GOD DID WHAT HE KNEW WOULD BE BEST FOR OUR LIVES!! Sometimes that hurts. But, because God loves us, He closed the door on this journey. Why? He has something much, much better in store for our lives!!!

Since, Lynsey and I lost the pregnancies our families have had difficult days. We are grieving our loss and it's hard. During this process, we have experienced the evil of Satan. He is using our weak moments to weezle his way into our lives trying to break us down. Satan is powerful...he knows our weaknesses and he has attacked those weaknesses everyday. There have been times when I've cried out to Donnie and some of my friends asking, "why is God doing this?" I am so blessed to have Godly people surrounding me everyday who remind me, "Robyn, that's not God. Those bad things are Satan!!" Satan doesn't want our family to give God the glory for anything. He doesn't want us to say that God knows best. He doesn't want God to be glorified....PERIOD. We have to stop everyday and say..."Satan..you will NOT be victorous over us!!" And you know what, sometimes we have to say that more than one time a day because satan doesn't give up!

God has a plan for Lynsey and Charlie!! I believed that when we started this process. I believed that with every shot we took. I believed it with every pill we swallowed , I believed it when Dr. Gentry retrieved the eggs, I believed it when we did the transfer, I believed it when we got pregnant, and I BELIEVE IT TODAY!!! GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL!! GOD STILL HAS A PLAN!! AND GOD IS AN ALL LOVING, ALL KNOWING, ALL POWERFUL, ALL EVERYTHING GOD!!! So, what's next? We wait...we grieve...we listen...we get better...we hear...and we obey!!! When will we know? Only God knows that answer, but I know my God has a plan...a plan to prosper us and NOT harm us...a plan to give us hope and a future. I believe that with all my heart!! We may be sad but that sadness doesn't mean we have lost faith in God. Our sadness and hurt is developing us into stronger, more loving, more compasanate people. We don't know why, but for some crazy reason, God has chosen our little family to go through this and now...we wait patiently upon the Lord!!!! PUSH!!!!
Somebody's Praying

Somebody's Praying, I can feel it
Somebody's praying for me
Mighty hands are guiding me
To protect what I can't see
Lord I believe, Lord I believe
That Somebody's prayin, for me.

Angels are watchin', I can feel it
Angels are watchin' over me
There's many miles ahead 'til I get home
Still I'm safely kept before your thrown
'Cause Lord I believe, Lord I believe
Your angels are watchin' over me.

Well, I've walked through barren wilderness
When my pillow was a stone
And I've been through the darkest caverns
Where no light had ever shown.
Still I went on 'cause there was someone
who was down on theri knees
And Lord, I thank you for those people
Prayin' all this time for me.

Somebody's prayin', I can feel it
Somebody's prayin for me
Mighty hands are guiding me
To protect me from what I can't see
Lord I believe, Lord I believe
Somebody's prayin' for me...

Thanks to everyone praying for healing!!!

In the end its all ok, if its not ok then its not the end

Well it's been such a roller coaster of emotions this week!
I'll start with Friday February 3rd that morning on my way to work I got a call from mom. She sounded a little upset but she said " Lynsey, I don't need to take a pregnancy test." and I said ok why. She replied " because I'm so so sick" I just laughed, she had been sick all morning. When I hung up the phone I turned Klove back up and David Crowder was singing our song. I just cried and cried. God Wink!
That afternoon when I was leaving work I checked my phone and saw mom had sent me a picture message. It was a picture of a positive pregnancy test. I couldn't believe it. I called her and I could hear anything she was saying because dad was yelling in the background like a little school girl! She said she knew the whole time she just wanted to prove it. So she said ok Its your turn. I had to go try on bridesmaid dresses so it would be a while. After I was done I rushed home to take a test. My home pregnancy test was the two line one. So when I peed I saw a faint line. Charlie couldn't see it, so he says. So we went to Charlie's parents to tell them. I should them moms picture and then showed them my test and sure enough they saw the line too.
Mom and dad were on there way to my house to get more medicine so I told her to bring her digital test so we could be sure. When they got to the house I went ahead and took the digital test ( because dad was going to have a heart attack if I didn't) we made Charlie go look. He came out of the bathroom really quite when he look Ed up from the test he said " looks like we're having two babies" we all screamed and cried! We were all in shock! I've never ever seen Charlie so happy in all my life! Our dreams were coming true! We sent out the picture of both test to some family. It was so hard not to tell everyone. I even talked to Dr. Gentry and he said it was ok to be excited, we were pregnant! We've never been pregnant before. This was the farthest we've ever been! You can't even imagine the excitement!!!!!
The next few days were rough for me and mom, she had morning sickness and I had night sickness. As bad as it was it was totally worth it!
Tuesday morning I woke up about 4 so sick! Charlie found me in the bathroom and said " we paid a lot of money for you to be like this" ha ha. After 3 hours and LOTS of sickness later I began to wonder if it was a bug. I decided to call Dr. Gentry's office to see what I needed to do. Bea called back and said its probably not a bug but something called hyperemesis. It is extreme sickness that's caused my multiples. She wanted me to get to Evansville for bloodwork ASAP! Since we were going ahead with the pregnancy test she said mom could have hers done too. I instantly began to panic, multiples!!!! Oh no!
Dad drive mom and I to get the bloodwork, we knew the test would be positive we were just nervous about the possibility on multiples. About an hour and a half after the bloodwork Bea called. She said all my labs were fine so it may just have been a bug. She also said our tests came back positive but our levels were low. We instantly panicked! She told us not to worry that it was still good. We were in shock, here we were just a few minutes earlier trying to decide what to do with all these babies and now our two babies could possibly be in danger.
We had to go back Thursday to see if our numbers doubled. If they double everything was going good if not we were in danger of losing them. Wednesday was a rough day of wonder and worry and lots of Internet looking. Wasn't a good idea!
By Thursday I was a nervous wreck, we didn't get the call until 3 hours after the bloodwork. Bea said mine and mom's level went down. My heart sank! I just couldn't believe it!
She told us that if we had a positive test on Friday that our hcg was probably high then and we probably began losing them over the weekend.

I've asked Charlie before if he thought it was harder to not get pregnant or get pregnant and lose it. We found our answer yesterday. I'm not sure if I've ever known such pain. I feel like it was a joke to be so excited one minute and do heartbroken the next. I feel like there is someone somewhere laughing and pointing and saying " you actually thought it would work" ha ha ha!

We appreciate all the prayers text and kind words. We are very very lucky to have so many people who love us and care for us. Please continue to pray for healing and peace as we face these next few days.
God allowed us to go through this journey for a reason. He allowed me to do this blog for His purpose. Even though at this very moment I can't understand why I know that His plan is way better than ours. He knows my desire for a baby and hopefully one day we will know the joy of being parents. If its even close to what we felt for those few days I can't wait! God is still a good God and we will still trust and serve Him!

We go to see Dr. Gentry next week to see what to do next. Bea mentioned that we may have an embryo problem. If so I don't know if it will ever work. Regardless of what he wants to do mom and I both need to let our bodies heal. Pray for us in these next few days as our bodies will go through a lot. Lots of pain and lots of heartache.

I have a quote around my house from psalms that says "weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning". One morning my joy will come, one morning.