The Day I Gave Away the Diapers

I coupon. I love to coupon. I am not obsessive about it like those weirdos on TLC Extreme Couponing, but I love to save my little family money. Three years ago last week we started out on a journey, one that we thought wouldn't take very long, but surprisingly here we still are....waiting. Maybe I should explain.....

Three years ago in February Donnie and I felt God was laying it on our hearts to adopt. We did our research, mounds and mounds of paperwork, fingerprints, and criminal background checks. We paid our money and we waited....and waited....and waited. So the next year rolled around we did all our updated paperwork (maybe just one mound this time), fingerprints, criminal background checks, and paid our money. Again, we waited....and waited...and waited. So here we are at year number three. Getting ready to start the paperwork process all over again, not really expecting anything, but always praying for the best. So you are probably asking, how do coupons play into this?....Read on.

When we were first approved for adoption we decided that I would stay home with the baby (a must, by the standards of our adoption agency, for at least 6 months.) I knew staying home would mean one less salary, but really we could do it. Besides, what was the point in me working if it was just going to be to cover the cost of daycare?? We wouldn't be able to travel or shop like we did then, but we knew it would all be okay because we would finally have the one thing we really wanted in this life....a baby. So, with a new resolve, I set out to learn about coupons. The one thing I learned early on is, if you do it just right, you can save a lot of money. I asked questions, I looked at adds, I scoured the Internet for any kind of deal I could find. Again, not trying to store things up, but instead saving money on our bi-monthly grocery trip. During this process, and having been told by the agency that we would definitely be chosen sooner rather than later, I started asking questions about diapers. All my friends told me if I had really good coupons on diapers, then I should by them now. "Coupons expire, diapers don't" was a phrase that was echoed over and over to me by my friends. So I decided since we were going to be picked quickly (according to our social worker) that I would start buying, and putting away diapers. I bought in all sizes, friends told me what sizes to get the most of, and I put them away, knowing that we would be chosen soon. After a year of waiting, and not hearing anything, I quit buying as many diapers. As year two, then three rolled past, I didn't buy any. My hope, faith, and trust that we would be getting a baby started to fall away, and those diapers were a constant reminder of the "failure" I felt that I was, but I just couldn't let them go.

Most of you know about the tornadoes in Alabama this spring. One of the students in the program where I work was from a very hard hit town right outside of Tuscaloosa. She sent out an email describing the devastation, the lack of food, clothes, and water, and then told a story of how there were a lot of young families that didn't have diapers, food, or clothing for their babies. The story hit hard with me, I knew what I should do. I had all these diapers, unused, sitting in the top of my closet. The bible verse from Matthew 6 kept replaying in my head. If you don't know it, here it is:
19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

I came home from work that day, with a heavy, heavy heart, and went to the back bedroom where I started pulling all the diapers, and wipes out of the closet. I cried. Cried like I haven't in a long time. Cried for the people in Alabama who were hurting. Cried because I felt like I was "giving up" on the dream of ever becoming a mother. Cried because I had no words to express how sad my heart actually was at that time.

The next day I took most of the diapers and wipes that I had stored, to work, and gave them to the student that was headed home to Alabama that afternoon. It was probably one of the hardest things I've ever done. I'm sure most of you are thinking that is insane, and that it was just diapers, but when you've wanted to be a Mommy for as long as you can remember, have done everything imaginable to your body, mind, and spirit to make it happen, when it never did... it indeed felt as if I was tearing away my hope for a future. Then God reminded me of this simple verse from Jeremiah 29:

11For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

While I still had some diapers left, it wasn't near the amount that I had originally put away for a sweet baby. The thought of being able to give them to multiple babies, babies that had lost everything, overflowed my heart with joy. Fast forward to this weekend when my friend Julianne sent out a need for a family she had met. When she said they had a 9 month old, I knew just how I could help meet part of their need. I took diapers, and wipes out of the closet, this time with no tears, but with a faith and confidence that I know that come from this verse out of Romans 8:

28And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

When I bought those diapers, I never knew I would use them for a different purpose than what I had intended. While I don't understand it all, I do understand that God is still working on me. Showing me daily about His love, and letting me know little by little that the things He has in store for me.....I am just not suppose to understand.

Emotional Eating

I am an emotional eater. This is something I've always known, but since beginning Weight Watchers, it's become more apparent exactly how often I turn to food for comfort. Here is what really captured my attention today and made me realize how big of a struggle it truly is in my life.

So, last night we got a call from our social worker, that the most recent birth mom that was viewing our profile, had chosen someone else, and decided to place her baby outside of Memphis. While we should be use to this by now, this time was different. Our social worker had pretty much told us that they were only showing a few profiles, and more than likely this birth mom would be choosing us. We got excited, which is understandable, because we thought for the first time ever we would get to buy Santa presents for a baby. We didn't care that he/she would only be a few weeks old at Christmas, we were just excited to get to do something so small that others have done for years! So when the call came that we weren't picked, we were sad. Correction, we were devastated. We had to tell people that we had shared with that the mom didn't pick us. We had to tell family that we weren't going to be adding to the fold. We had to come to grips with the whole thing ourselves, and that....sucked.

Here's a little "back story." Before work yesterday I put a roast, potatoes, carrots, onions in the crock pot for dinner. While I'm not a huge meat fan, Donnie is, and this meal has a little bit of "goodness" for both of us. I love the way the carrots, onions and potatoes taste after marinating with the roast all day, and Donnie loves the roast. So, when I got home yesterday, dinner was ready! The social worker called before dinner, so after we spent time crying, hugging, and processing the information, we sat down to eat. I couldn't tell you what that meal tasted like to SAVE.MY.LIFE. It was food, and it was filling a void that had been created just a few minutes before. When we got up from dinner, Donnie informed me that he was going to get some ice cream. I told him I didn't want any, but shocker...when he got home I ate some. Then, a few hours later I ate pretzels. I wasn't hungry at all, but somehow it still seemed like a good idea, and I still ate some before bed. I went to bed around 9:00, exhausted from emotions, and thought surely Friday would be a better day. Well, today, when I got up the feeling of sadness was still there, and surprise, surprise...I wanted to eat.

I have been at my desk since 7:50 this morning, and every 10 to 15 minutes, I start rummaging around for food. Now, when I started weight watchers I "de-junked" my desk, and don't have snacks lying around like I use too. Sadly, I ate my only snack at 8:30, **side note-I did eat breakfast, but apparently convinced myself I needed my snack at 8:30** so now, I've been sitting here, waiting to go to lunch, starving, because I was trying to bring about happiness through food. How lame is that? Food..right, like that's ever helped anyone get over a rough spot in their life.

My new challenge is that any time I'm feeling empty, or sad, I turn to the bible for food. Just this morning I read:

Ephesians 3:19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled
to the measure with the fullness of God.


John 10:10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may
have life, and have it to the full.




I don't need to get my support or encouragement from food, as that will always leave me empty and wanting for more. I need to turn to Jesus where I can always count on something that will fill me up to overflowing!

Is there anything that you automatically turn to during times of trials or sadness?

**Another side note before closing out**While Donnie and I know that God has a plan for us, and that this baby wasn't the one chosen to become our family, we still ask that you pray for the health of the baby, and for the birth mom. Our one goal during this season of our life is that God is glorified! We pray that we are a living witness to God's work in our life, and that though we feel knocked down and run over, we still believe in His plan!

The Continual Ache

Shocking, I know. Two post in a week's time. I promise I'm trying to do better!

This post was spurred on by a friend that I've known for a long time. In fact, I've watched her grow up as I was friends with her oldest brother, her parents worked with the youth, and our families have gone to the same church together for a lot of years. It's a post that will be very open, honest, and expose some of my rawest emotions. The reason I'm doing it is, God has spoken very softly to my heart and has encouraged me to start a women's bible study for women experiencing infertility. The bible study that I have yearned and prayed so long for, will begin at the end of August at my house. I know that to begin to be honest with these women, I had to start somewhere, so why not here? To say I am nervous is all truth. To say that I can't understand why God is asking ME to do this, is a HUGE question. To say that the ONLY way any of this is possible, is because God is there upholding me, is quite the understatement. I don't understand it all, but I know I need to obey.

The reason I decided to post this was because I know most of the readers of this blog are my friends. People who support and uplift me daily, and for them, I will forever be grateful. We could not have been able to get through the past 5 years without you. We love you more than you know!

So, here's our story. When we got married, Donnie was 36 and I was 31. Not spring chickens by any stretch of the imagination, and we knew that kids would need to come sooner rather than later. So, our plan was to stay on birth control for six months, and then start trying to have a baby. We knew it would be hard, as I have PCOS, but we also knew many women with PCOS who still get pregnant. We officially ended up getting off of birth control 4 months after we got married. There was some confusion at the pharmacy about what our insurance would cover (go figure) and we just decided it was the perfect opportunity to just get off of it completely. As of this September, we have officially been trying to have a baby for 5 years. And it sucks.

I have been a pin cushion at the fertility clinic for 4 of those 5 years. The only time we stopped going was last year when I needed a break from the needles, the ultrasounds, and peeing in a cup. I've seen two different doctors, both of them in the same practice, but both very different in their method of "helping." Some days I've felt nothing more than a file on a desk, and some days I've thought "If I have to go up here one more time I'll scream." When you know your cycles better than you know what you want for dinner, and on any given day you can spout off information, very technically, about what you are "supposed" to do, then you know you've been going to the doctor too much. As of yet, we've had no success through the help of the fertility clinic. I've probably taken, over the span of our 5 year marriage, approximately 30 pregnancy tests. Each time I've cried when it came back negative. The weird thing is, I always knew it would, and told myself this was just part of the "process," mainly because I was told to take these test, but nonetheless, the girly side of me always won, and my brain went to "what if," instead of "just business." Just this past month we've decided to return to the fertility clinic, of course with guarded hearts, but realizing we were telling God how to bless us, not letting him just do it on his own.

Last year, as you know, we felt God calling us to adopt. Actually, we felt God hitting us upside the head and saying "will you quit being so stubborn and listen to me?" So, we started the LONG process of adoption. After a very extensive home study, 10 hours of training, reading books, and making a profile, we were approved. Actually, it will be exactly 1 year next month that we were approved. We've never been told an actual time frame that someone would pick us, but we were told it would be about a year. Of course, always the optimist, I thought for sure someone would pick us sooner rather than later. What I didn't know, is that adoption is just as emotional as infertility, and your emotions stay on edge just as much.

About two months ago we got a call from our social worker saying a girl in Pensacola asked to see our profile. To say we were ecstatic is erring on the side of caution. We were elated and immediately began to pray for this baby. We prayed for the mom, we told only a few people, but asked them to pray as well, and we sat back with "a good feeling." We were told to start looking for pediatricians, figuring out a "loose" travel plan, and got updates every time the girl went to the office. I started looking at fabric for a nursery, heck, we would even occasionally go out and look at travel systems-after all, we would have to get the child home. We were told that the birth mom did not want to pick a family in Florida, so we felt even better about our chances of being the ones chosen! We just KNEW this would be our baby. For a solid six weeks we prayed as this girl looked at our profile. Though we needed to say cautious, we opened our hearts to the hope of a child. Sadly, about two weeks ago, we learned that she had picked another family, in Florida, and their joy, was our sadness. She had decided she wanted more visits than our once a year trip to Florida would offer, and we were sad. As we told those that knew, which wasn't a whole lot of people, I did just fine. I was surprised at my own strength, and even wondered a few times when the other shoe would drop. It really didn't, until this weekend.

Let me preface the next paragraph by saying, over the time we've been trying to have a baby, I've had MANY friends have children. I have hosted, co-hosted, or attended baby showers multiple times. During the years of 2007-2008, I went to at least one, if not two baby showers a month. Sure, when I got in my car to go home, waves of sadness would reduce me to a pile of tears, but I've never been malicious, or hurtful to any of these people. I've never pushed my sadness on to them, and I've never made them feel bad about talking about their pregnancies, or having their tiny babies with them all the time. I've always been genuinely happy for them, and have taken great joy in being able to visit with them, and hold their little one's just days after birth. That's what made the events of this weekend so hard. We found out on Saturday that someone close to us was pregnant. While it was a shock, we were okay with it...like I said, neither Donnie nor I have ever wished anything bad on anyone who is pregnant, or starting a family. This announcement was a little harder on us than most, maybe because of what we just went through with the adoption stuff, or maybe because we had just gone to the fertility doctor the day before, or maybe it was because I had just taken, yet another, pregnancy test during vacation two weeks ago (again at the request of my doctor, because when you are losing weight, "you never know.") Of course, it was negative, but I never realized how I squashed down those emotions, in the efforts of having "a good time," while we were away.

On Saturday, I called my grandmother to see how she was doing (she's been very sick for a few weeks.) During the course of the conversation we started talking about people getting pregnant, starting families through adoption, etc. , and she said to me " Well, Amy and Brent never gave me a great-grandchild, you and Donnie can't, so I'm going to have count on the other grandkids to give me something to live for." Um, ouch....still raw, and now you are pouring salt in my wounds? So as we continue on with the conversation and she tells me that while she's been sick she's been talking to God a lot. If you know her, you know this is not at all unusual, and she does this quite openly, quite often. Shebthen proceeds to dump the rest of the salt canister into my wounds with this one.... "Kim-you just need to be happy for people that have babies-not sad. (Okay, never said I was sad, just that to say "it was an accident to someone that's been trying a while is not exactly what they want to hear") and then... "I've been thinking that not everyone is made to carry children (I agree with that) and that maybe God is telling you that you and Donnie are not to be parents, so you need to stop pursuing all this stuff you are doing and just be happy being alone together." Silence...on my end of the line. You've got to be kidding me right? My OWN grandmother is saying this to me....out loud? So I say, "well Mimi, you never know what God has in store" and try to leave it at that-however she had other plans in mind. She then proceeds to tell me that "You were too old when you got married, and this has been wasted time." Seriously, am I throwing up yet because that salt in my wounds sure is hurting. Part of me, well all of me, wanted to scream " do you know what we go through on almost a daily basis where it comes to children?" Do you know that we pray for the birth mom and baby, even if it is me, every time we pray? Do you know that I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God gave me a mother's heart at a young age, and that, to quote Psalm 27:13 "I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living."?!?! But I didn't. I was told to respect my elders, so I hung up with her a short while later and sobbed. I sobbed like I've never sobbed before, and felt hopeless. The kind of hopeless where you feel like you are letting everyone down. The kind of hopeless that leads to the "why am I here" type questions. Just plain hopeless. And I stayed there-until this morning.

This morning our church had Dr. Charles Fowler come in view of a call to be our pastor. I went in expecting great things, after all we had gone to an informational meeting on Saturday and I just felt he was right for GBC. I will stop here and ask, have you ever gone to church with the outside looking great, but the inside holding together by bare strings, and just your flesh and bone? Have you ever set in a pew, choir loft, wherever and thought God, are you here today? Well, that's where I was. Smiling on the outside, weeping on the in. So, off I go into the choir loft, and start to get emotional BEFORE we even started our patriotic music. By the time the played Tapps, you could've put a fork in me, because I was done. But still, I heard God whispering to me "just wait." So, Pastor Charles took the stage, and begin to give a message, inspired by God, to our church. He talked about obstacles in life, those "giants" that are there, that we don't think we can move. One of his quotes hit straight into my heart..."the enemy does not control our future." WOW. Talk about toe stepping. He was all over mine...as if he was right up in the choir loft preaching to just me. I can't even begin to explain how I needed that sermon. I can't even begin to explain why he chose to preach on that as his first sermon at GBC, but all I know as that God was there, and HE was all over it! When I finally saw Donnie, who incidentally also sings in choir, he met me with that all knowing smile. He said "do you think the sermon was aimed just at us?" I laughed because I felt the same way. I came home this afternoon with a new resolve, and new attitude. I know that God does hold my future, and that HE is the only one that can close the doors. Not my grandmother, God love her, nor my parents, friends, or even doctors. He holds the plans for us, and those plans are perfect! Though we may not be able to see it now, no matter how He decides to shape our future, we (I) will obey.

So with that, I will close this part of my continual testimony. I know that God is taking me through this to be able to share with other women. I know that, at this season in my life, it is my cross to bear. What I have to still learn is that this "cross" is also a great joy! I can say that, I do have a group of close friends that have prayed for us for the past few years. They've prayed tears of joy and sadness over us, they've been there when we didn't know what else to do, and they've always put their arms around us. You know who you are, and just know YOU are loved!

Well, it's Saturday morning at 8:45 and we are up and about getting ready to go to a fun filled day of adoption training. Wait, did I say fun filled? Sorry...what I meant was, we are about to go sit through an agonizing 6 hours of training that, so far has proved not to be very beneficial to us. We've already sat through 5.75 hours of the 10 hours of required training. I know that this class will put us over the "required" amount, however we are "required" to do this all day training before we can adopt. We missed the last one because we were in Puerto Rico (picture to the right). Sadly, well, not so sadly, I wish we there again today! The first time we missed I didn't feel bad about it, in fact I didn't even think about it while lying out by that beautiful pool, sleeping in late, and going over to the private island to spend the day....nope, did not think about the training one bit! However, today we have to go. Most of you would probably think, oh take all the training you can to get you ready for your new little one, and sure, if this was about baby care, I would be all for it! This training however is about how to do our profile (already done and turned in two months ago), the legal aspects of adoption (already went to that training last month), how it feels to be an adoptive parent (I think that would kind of be common sense, and not necessarily something you could train people about, but whatever, and lastly what "the loss" feels like to the birth parent. Again, not something that should be considered training, but still that part may be interesting to know.

This is the part that gets me about the "loss" portion of the training. Most everyone sitting in that room as a "waiting parent" parent has experienced loss in some form or another. Sure, most of us have never had to give up a child we carried for months, bonded with, and will always have an attachment too, but another form of loss. I personally believe, if any of the other couples in the class have felt loss like we have, it's very real, and something even the social workers look around and try to explain away. You see, today marks 4 years of Donnie and I trying to have a baby. Why do I remember that? Well, I knew we had prayed about it, and I was going to stop birth control in September. Ironically, the day to "renew" my prescription was September 11th, and that night instead of running to Walgreens to pick up the prescription, we decided to quit taking the pill. 36 times in the last 4 years I've experienced loss on a very personal level. Each time I didn't start I would take a "test" and it would be negative. If you don't know anything about PCOS, you are very irregular, so this has led to the 36 test I've taken in the past 4 years. Sure, you become numb to it, and realize it's not going to be positive, but still, in the back of your head there is that little voice that says "maybe this one time." I would pray that none of you would ever have to go through this because it's a pain, and sense of loss, that you never forget. Sure, I'm SUPER excited about our adoption, and how God has led us to this point, but their are days that I think about those times of "loss" and wonder what God wanted to teach me through all of it......just my thoughts on a Saturday morning....have a great day!