Women in the Scriptures

While perusing Pinterest the other day I noticed a picture that looked like this:

I didn’t know what it was, but I was intrigued by the word CHALLENGE at the bottom.  The link took me to a site called womeninthescriptures.blogspot.com
I highly recommend that you check out this site. The challenge is this- read the scriptures and mark every section that refers to women in any way.  Keep a journal or notebook of thoughts, inspirations, and facts that you learn about the women.  I will be taking the full challenge this year. In an attempt to keep my resolution of being my best self I think that includes amping up my scripture study and this is a good motivating factor. I’m even starting in Genesis!!
**Note: The author of this website is LDS. She includes the Book of Mormon in the scriptural challenge. However, if you are not LDS but are interested, please join me in reading the King James Bible and finding out more about the women that are mentioned there. Scripture study is for all faiths! **
While you are perusing this wonderful site, I also recommend the post entitled “Infertility and the Scriptural Promise.” Click the title to go directly there.
Let me know if you decide to take the challenge too!

On Resolutions

  In 2013 I resolve to be . . . myself. I resolve to be my best self. I have always liked the quote by Marianne Williamson about people being afraid of their best selves. You can read the entire quote here.
  I have been thinking about my infertility a lot lately. I finally had to come to the conclusion that my life is not supposed to be centered around motherhood. It should be centered around the other aspects of my life. I am going to focus on being a wife, being a sister, being a daughter, being a neighbor, being a ward member, being a teacher, and being a friend. I know many people who have become bitter about the blessings that life didn’t give them. Therefore, my first new years resolution is to magnify the blessings that I have been given by being my best self. Hopefully I will discover new talents, make new friends, and  positively affect my little piece of the world. 
  I have also spent a lot of time pondering President Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s October 2012 General Conference talk Of Regrets and Resolutions.  The entire text is wonderful but my favorite portion is under the subtitle “I Wish I Had Let Myself Be Happier.” He says,

Sometimes in life we become so focused on the finish line that we fail to find joy in the journey. I don’t go cycling with my wife because I’m excited about finishing. I go because the experience of being with her is sweet and enjoyable.
Doesn’t it seem foolish to spoil sweet and joyful experiences because we are constantly anticipating the moment when they will end?

[…]
We shouldn’t wait to be happy until we reach some future point, only to discover that happiness was already available—all the time! Life is not meant to be appreciated only in retrospect. “This is the day which the Lord hath made … ,” the Psalmist wrote. “Rejoice and be glad in it.”

  I adopted this motto back in October. It made crummy days not so crummy and I was able to enjoy the Christmas season because I made a point of not rushing through December in an attempt to get to the 25th as fast as possible. So far, it seems like a pretty good resolution to continue into the new year.
  So my resolutions for 2013 are to find joy in the journey of my life, to appreciate each day, and to learn something new about myself. Wish me luck!

Biking the Hiawatha Trail

I have lots of things to post about but I’ll start with a little trip to the past before I get too far ahead of myself. More posts to come this week! I promise!
This summer, Jake and I biked the Hiawatha Trail in Northern Idaho.  It was an amazing experience and one that I would do over and over again. Normally I prefer to tell stories with words, but in this case I think the pictures would be better, although even they won’t do justice to the view!
We camped near Salmon, ID on our way up to the trail. It snowed on us, but my husband is such a trooper, and braved the cold to keep me warm.


The trail begins here in Montana and winds through a two mile long tunnel through the mountain.

It was cold, and damp, and darker than dark, but we survived and came out safely on the other side in Idaho!

The view that greeted us on the other side was amazing! It is absolutely breathtaking!

We made friends and shared our lunch with them. 

This little guy wasn’t a very polite diner. He stole my mayonnaise packet and hid it under the rock.

The bike trail followed an old railroad trail. It wound through the mountains high above the treetops, streams, and valleys.

Come visit Idaho! It is amazing!!

Hi… I’m back.

I didn’t mean to disappear from the blogging world, it just kind of happened. After my last post, life got complicated and keeping up on my journal didn’t make the cut in my priorities.  Sorry.

Anyway, enough with excuses. 

Tonight is Thanksgiving Eve. I am sitting in my kitchen, smelling homemade chicken noodle soup and snacking on chocolate chips. I was watching MI-5 on Netflix and contemplating making cookies with the chocolate chips, but then my internet crashed so I decided to blog instead. (I’ll post this when the wireless comes back up.)

A lot has not happened here since I last posted. School started so I went back to work. Jake has been working in Pocatello, but was transferred home just this week. Starting Monday, I have my husband back. : )  It’s pretty much the same ol’ thing as always.

Tomorrow we are going to my mom’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. Friday I am cooking dinner for the missionaries and having some family over too. That’s the reason for the soup. I thought I’d do a test run before I have to cook it for company in two days. Saturday is a second Thanksgiving type dinner with the in-laws and out of town family.  Sunday is a day of rest, thankfully.

I love this time of year. Autumn is my favorite season and Thanksgiving might be my favorite holiday.  I have a lot to be thankful for this year and I have made a point of thanking my Father in Heaven daily for the blessings in my life.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I am back. I’ll try to write a few “catch-up posts” in the next few days, if anyone is interested. And, as always, we’re still hoping to adopt so please keep your ears open for us.  Thanks!

Adoption Profile: Up and Running

Yea! It’s official!
Check us out at www.itsaboutlove.org/ial/profiles/27947516/ourMessage.jsf
Somewhere out there is a young girl who has to make a big decision. It will affect her future, the future of her baby, and our future as well. She’s not going to know there is a couple in Twin Falls, Idaho who wants to help her.
So we need to reach out to her. 
To help us find her we need your help. Here’s how you can be of most service to us:
1. Share our postcard/advertisement on Facebook and encourage your friends to share it too.
2. Copy the image of the postcard to your own blog and hyperlink the image to our adoption profile. (Please don’t link it to our personal blog.)
3. If you live outside the Magic Valley, print out copies of the postcard at your local photo shop. Then hand them out to anyone who may be able to help us. This would include doctor’s offices, family law offices, pregnancy crisis centers, community action buildings, high school counselors, et cetera.
It’s a good idea to ask permission before you hang them on business bulletin boards. Since YOUR contact info isn’t on them, it is me that will get the angry e-mail if the business owner doesn't like it.   
4. Say lots of prayers for us and our future baby’s birth mother.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your love and support of us.

Support

One of the questions we were asked yesterday during our home study was “Does your family support the idea of adoption?”

YES! Yes they do!

We have received a ton of love and support from family and friends.

Apparently, this is a big issue in the adoption community. There are people who will treat the adopted child differently or look down on them because their biological parents are not part of the family. We shall call these people Malfoys because they are like the Harry Potter characters who believe in “pure blood status”.

I am very grateful that our family and friends are not Malfoys. Everyone that I have spoken to about the adoption process has been more than helpful. We have received good advice, help with our paperwork, and lots of prayers and support.

So this is a shout out to our friends and family members: Thanks for being so awesome!

Our Adoption Process

Phew!!! We’re done with all the preliminaries!

This morning we completed the final step of the adoption preparation. We’ve done the background checks, we’ve done the employment verifications, we’ve written our letter to the birth mother, and now even the home study is complete.

The LDS Family Services representative came by today to complete the home study. I was pretty nervous. I have been cleaning and stressing for a few days now. My mom came over to do yard work, and Jake’s mom came and helped me decorate the nursery.

In the end, we failed on only one point- we didn’t have a smoke alarm in the nursery. However, he thought that everything else seemed good to go. We showed him around the house. He met the dog. He checked the fire extinguishers. He interviewed us as a couple, and he interviewed us individually. And I guess we passed!

Our profile should be up and running by this evening. 

Now we wait.

Brother Jacobia said that most adoptive couples are waiting for at least a year or two before they are chosen. BUT if we want to beat the odds, then we will need to advertise, advertise, advertise. I am going to make postcards with links to our adoption profile. These postcards will be available for downloading and printing (wherever you print your photos) sometime by the end of the week. Then these postcards can be put on bulletin boards in counseling offices, or doctor’s offices, or wherever! The more we can share our story, the better our odds will be. 

Will you help us?

Marriage

This subject has been on my mind a lot this week because of three very poignant conversations that I’ve had with friends this past month or so.

I don’t really know what I want to say right now, I just feel like I should say something. 

I guess I should start by saying that I’ve noticed that throughout all of these conversations has been one very underlying theme: Marriage is hard.

Marriage is kind of like a balancing act, with its contradicting qualities. In a marriage, you are an individual but also part of a team. You have to be strong and reliable for your spouse, but allow yourself to lean on them for strength as well. You have to be willing to bend and compromise, but you have to voice your own thoughts and your own beliefs.

I am sitting here tonight feeling inadequate as a friend. I wish I had some great words of wisdom to offer the wonderful women who have reached out to me this past month. I wish I could say just the right thing to solve all their problems, but I can’t. 

I will be celebrating my sixth wedding anniversary this weekend. I will celebrate by sleeping in, doing some exercising, going for a drive in the country, and hopefully calling my dear husband on the phone. This is not the first time that we will spend our anniversary miles and miles apart, nor will it be the last, I’m sure.  I hope that even though we are apart he knows how much I love him, how grateful I am that he is a part of my life. 

Maybe I’ll have more wisdom after my seventh year.

Road Trip around Idaho

 

I wanted to go camping over Memorial Day Weekend, but Jake didn’t.

So we compromised.

(There were wild creatures about, it was very scary.)

This last week, we did go camping for real. We left on Monday, returned on Friday, and drove from one end of the state to the other in five days, driving four to six hours almost every day. It was a lot of fun.

Actually the first night wasn’t all that much fun. We camped in the Salmon National Forest near Wallace Lake. It was a tiny little lake and we were the only ones up there.

(Isolated from the rest of the world)

It was dark, and cold, and very quiet. As the realization that we were completely alone began to sink in, so did the clouds. Within a few hours of our arrival, we found ourselves in a miniature blizzard, completely unprepared for the cold.

Jake chopping wood for the morning in a small blizzard.

By the time we got up in the morning, the snow had started to melt, but we lost no time in packing up camp as quickly as possible and getting out of there.

The next two nights we stayed in Wallace, Idaho (far away from Wallace Lake).  We stayed in an old quaint motel called the Stardust Inn, where the mattresses are uncomfortable, there is no hair dryer, and they have actual keys for getting into the rooms, but where they did have WI-fi and warm showers.

Beautiful Views of Idaho!

While we were in Wallace, we biked the Hiawatha Trail. This will be a completely separate blog because there is so much to say about this experience. It was really incredible.

(At the mouth of The Tunnel, and the beginning of the ride).

The last night we camped again, this time in McCall, Idaho.  The campground was much better than the first.  We built ourselves a nice fire, where we read our books and ate s’mores. Yummy!

Livin’ the good life!

Overall, the trip was great.  We haven’t spent that much time together in weeks, possibly even months or years. We saw some beautiful country, read some good books, had some good conversations, but we’re very glad to be back home.

The Beginnings of a New Journey

They say that when God closes a door, he opens a window. Sometimes I think that when God closes a door, he makes several windows available to us and it is our job to pick the one we want and open it ourselves.
In our case, I feel that God has, at least temporarily, closed the door to us having our own children. And with the many windows available to us we have made a decision. We are going to adopt.
In fact, we began the adoption process today. This morning we met with Brother Jacobia from the LDS Family Services office here in Twin Falls. We received lots of information and a packet of forms to fill out so thick that one may think we were applying for a National Security clearance, not parenthood. Despite the overwhelming amount of information that we received, or maybe because of it, I am getting very excited about our decision to adopt.
It will be a slow process, I can see that already. First, we will need to fill out all of the paperwork including back ground checks, physicals from our doctors, letters of recommendation, and surveys. Next, we will have to complete ten hours of adoption training and have a home study done too. Then, we will write up our profile in an attempt to impress a birth mother with what wonderful people we are. Finally, we sit back and wait to be chosen. It will be a journey fraught with disappointments, setbacks, and struggle but I have a very good feeling that it will end with a happily ever after.
If you know of anyone who is thinking of placing her child in adoptive care, please let her know about us. Share our story with her and encourage her to contact us.  We are at the mercy of word of mouth contacts and we are hoping for your help on the path that we have chosen.