Worry Much?

I don't know where I got this from or if I was born this way but as long as I can remember I have always been a nervous natured person or as people call me, a worry wart. I remember staying up all night as a little girl watching KY3 weather to make sure my family wasn't going to be destroyed by a tornado every time it would storm. I also remember one occasion I started bawling out of nowhere not long after my Dad passed away from cancer because my mom came home with a cotton ball taped on her arm from a blood draw and I just knew she had cancer and she was going to die too and we would all be orphans. Or when Matt joined the Marine Corp I acted like I was attending a funeral for nearly a year because I was so scared something bad would happen to him. The list goes on, I never really seen this to be an issue until I had a child of my own. Oh my goodness!!!! Sometimes I literally get sick over nothing. I have had myself convinced Sawyer was deathly sick or injured numerous times. There have been a few times he has needed medical attention but 99% of the time he is perfectly fine. But as I lay here writing this I am now determined to bleach every square inch of my house tomorrow because I just watched on the 10 o' clock news that a 2 year old named Sawyer just die from e-coli. See what I mean?!? It's literally like a sickness.

I don't want to be this way. But how do you stop? I feel like this is who I am, and I can't imagine just not worrying. I have decided that the only chance I have to overcome these irrational fears and worries is to trust God with them. Easier said than done, but I know he has the power to take these worries away from me and give me peace. So here is what I have dug up - 1 Peter 5:7: Casting all you care upon Him; for He careth for you.  God cares for me, He loves me and and He knows what is best for me....therefore I need to be better at leaving it in his hands. He created the entire universe so I am sure he can handle taking care of me and my family's needs. I know Satan loves this about me, because I am so busy worrying sometimes that I never take the time to appreciate all the blessings I do have instead I am busy thinking about all the things that could go wrong. Here's another verse I found, 2 Timothy 1:7: For God hath not give us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. That's pretty self explanatory. These scriptures make me feel better. I serve a powerful God and he cares for His flock. I just need to keep these in mind so I can keep Satan's nasty thoughts out of my mind.

I am sure I am not the only one who feels this way and I am sure as a mother that it is normal to worry to an extent. When it starts hindering your walk with the Lord, something has got to change. As I laid here tonight panicking over e-coli, I realized I was taking it too far and I need to calm down and soak in the Word. The worst part is, I know the worry has just begun. I still have driving and dating years ahead of me and Lord have mercy if any of my children ever join the armed forces. Ahhhh!!! I had better stop ha ha, here I go again!!

I Hate The Feeling

The past week has been a little interesting for me, to say the least.  I had a minor surgery done last Tuesday that required general anesthesia and pain meds.  I spent all of Monday cleaning the house so my husband wouldn't be overwhelmed with laundry and chores along with the task of keeping up with our 1.5 year old and taking care of me if I needed it.  So Monday was rushed.  Tuesday came and we dropped our son off with his grandparents early and headed to the hospital.  We waited for what seemed like forever for them to get me prepped for surgery and then waited even longer in a holding pre-op room for them to administer the anesthesia and do the actual surgery.  I woke up feeling no pain and feeling relatively normal immediately.  They wheeled me in a post-op room where we sat for another two hours waiting on my pain meds prescription to be filled.  Last surgery I had done there was at the surgery center, not the actual hospital and I liked the surgery center much better!! I was in and out and home in no time there, but at the hospital there were a lot of delays and the nurses were much crabbier there.  Josh finally got my script filled and I was medicated for the ride home.  We pick up Sawyer and by the time we made it to the house it was late and time to get Sawyer ready for bed.  I was a little sad about that, I am not used to spending that much time away from Sawyer.  Oh not to mention, I freak out every time I have to be put under with general anesthesia.  Yes, I know these people manage airways for a living and they are good at saving lives if something went south BUT I hate, hate, hate the feeling you get knowing that your life is literally in the hands of someone that you don't even know. So I was a little emotional before the surgery.  The surgery itself was non life threatening, however having to be intubated and the risk of overdose, etc. just is too much for me to think about.  I about bawled when we dropped Sawyer off that morning and I cried in the pre-op room before surgery and made Josh pray out loud for me.  Then he kissed me and said, "Nothing will happen to you, but just in case....I love you."   Lol....not something you want to hear everyday.

Anyways,  Wednesday and Thursday I was on pain meds so the days are kinda fuzzy to me.  Thursday night I decided that I was going to wean myself off of the pain medication.  Well from then on until yesterday night (a total of 3 days) I paid for that.  I am not sure why, but my body is extremely sensitive to pain medicine.  I was having some crazy withdrawal symptoms.   Insomnia, depression, nausea, rapid pulse, shortness of breath, dizziness, a few other similar things.  I was miserable.  Last night I almost passed out at church and my heart was beating crazy fast.  This morning I woke up and I felt normal and I have stayed that way all day but I have literally spent so much time not being myself that today I almost don't remember who I am.  It sounds a little dramatic, but it's the truth.  I just feel like it's going to take awhile for me to remember what life was like before those almost 7 days of being sick or totally wiped out from pain meds.  So ya, that pretty much sums it up.  Not that great.  

On a side note, I am extremely thrilled because my little brother Matt now has the ability to Skype!  I haven't mentioned him yet.  He is in the Marine Corp and this year he graduated from Quantico, VA MSG training school and is now going to be a US Embassy guard for the next 3 years.  Every year he will be given a new location, and this July he arrived at his first location which was in Madagascar!! So crazy and awesome for him.  So now he lives on the compound there and I think that he is really enjoying it but he just now got internet access to his laptop so he can talk to us.  For the past few months we have only been able to communicate via FB messenger so I was so happy to see him!  :)  I love my brothers, all of them in totally different ways but I love them all very much!  We all spent so much time together growing up, so it's hard for me to be away from them.  I need to be better at seeing the ones that are here more often.  I am really bad about not knowing the value of what I have until it's taken away.  So if this blog or myself ever crosses your mind, please say a prayer for him.  For his safety, emotional and spirtitual state.  I pray for him every night, specifically for those 3 aspects.  I worry for him especially since he isn't somewhere that he can be spiritually fed well.  I pray that the Lord will live in his heart and shine through him no matter where he is or what he is doing.  I am sure that being isolated on a small foreign island can be rough at times.  So I will end this entry with this, pray for all the troops.  I can't even begin to imagine how hard and discouraging it is for those away from home. God bless them and their families!

Baby Fever

I am glad that my husband doesn't pay that much attention to my blog because he would have a stroke if he read this. So, I remember that before we decided to have Sawyer I had baby fever....bad.  At first it started out with me looking at pictures of babies on facebook and seeing them at Walmart and getting all excited for the time that Josh and I would have one of our own.  Then that slowly turned in a slight feeling of jealousy anytime a fb friend would post that they were pregnant or I would see a picture of a baby.  Then that turned into me googling pregnancy and baby names and then my sister in law had a baby and I seen Josh holding him in the hospital room and my baby fever was full on!  Okay, quick note to husbands - if you don't want your wife to have baby fever or if you don't want her baby fever to become worse, DO NOT HOLD A BABY!  Big mistake!!! So I couldn't take it after that, I had to have one.  I mean, I couldn't live without being pregnant any longer.  People always asked us about babies and we always played it cool too.  "Hey, when are you guys going to have a baby?" Us - "Oh, not for a long time....we are just enjoying being married right now."  While really all we could think about was having a child of our own.  I mean that's normal right?  You want people to be surprised when you announce your big news. So anyways, we were pregnant not long after and my baby fever disappeared quick, fast and in a hurry.  I remember being 8 weeks pregnant and I had done nothing but puke or feel like I was on the verge of puking.  I remember laying on the couch panicking over the thought that I just might die from all the puking and that I didn't even remember what normal felt like anymore and I wasn't sure if I would ever feel normal again.  Ya, sounds dramatic....but you actually think those things.  I mean, I think that when I have a 24 hour stomach bug so 2 weeks of it had me begging God for mercy.  Well, lucky me had morning sickness for the whole 9 months...yay!  I had a super rough delivery that scared the living daylights out of us and if circumstances had been different it could have actually killed Sawyer and then to top it off Sawyer was not the definition of an easy baby.  He screamed non stop for months.  At that point, I didn't think I would ever, ever, ever, ever have baby fever again. 

Where am I now?  The beginning stages of baby fever.  God is smart.  He somehow programmed women to be gluttons of punishment. Your life is turned upside down, your body goes through changes that is just not even imaginable or describable, you experience pain and fear like you have never known before (hopefully you have never experienced before) but then less than 2 years later all of the details become extremely fuzzy and somehow us women remember the experience as pleasant, wonderful, and totally manageable.  Some women even do this sooner.  Okay, there is an exception: some women (lucky ducks) have extremely wonderful pregnancies and the labor goes smooth and their babies are very mild mannered.  I can totally understand why they would want to do it all over again.  I envy them, however for a lot of women this is not the case.  And that my friends, is why God made women the way we are.  I know if you put a man through that, the kid would be an only child.

So as I was saying, Sawyer is so much fun these days!!  He is still a little difficult to keep up with and he is still a ball of energy, oh also he has hit the terrible 2s a little early.  Tantrums and the word no are a regular thing around here.  However, I see that everyday he learns soo much and that everyday he becomes easier to enjoy and he makes me laugh and smile so much.  My heart is entirely full of love for him and we are so proud of what an awesome being he has become in less than 2 years. So even though I am not ready just yet to put myself through that torture, I am ready to get ready...make sense?  I have a vacation that we have already booked to Florida next June, and I don't want to be pregnant or have a newborn for that so I am thinking anytime after that maybe.  We will see how we feel then, but Sawyer will be over 2 years old by next summer and that would make him 3 or older before we have another and I think that is a good amount of time to have between 2 children.  Hopefully, Sawyer will be potty trained and sleeping a big boy bed and talking well by then and that would make life so much easier.  Not to mention maybe he could be more of a helper by then.  I think he would immensely enjoy a sibling, maybe not a first but when they were a little older he would have a blast.  So yes, I am definitely excited about our future but as for right now I am just soaking in each and every day with my handsome boys and just being us 3.  I don't want to rush through these precious years and time with Sawyer.  He is still my baby and I don't want to evict him from that status just yet. So here's to me overcoming a fear of mine...something I thought I would never want to do again!  I am so thankful that God is preparing my mommy heart and soul.  I think Josh's daddy heart will be ready by then too! Thank goodness that God gave us momma's baby fever huh?