Enough.

Confession: I am a worrier.

In our culture today, worrying has become a relatively minor sin, or, as Jerry Bridges would call it, a "respectable sin".  Saying, "I am a worrier" sounds less offensive than, "I am a cheater" or, "I am a liar."  "Everyone worries" is a common argument.  In fact, many people (Christians or otherwise) would not consider worrying to be a sin at all.  The truth is that worrying belittles God.  Essentially, it is saying to God that we do not trust Him to take care of our future and that we do not believe him to be enough for our present.  (Continue reading here.)

"The days are long, but the years are short."

I might add that the nights are long, too, when you have a newborn and a two-year-old.  Otherwise, the above quote from my mom couldn't be more accurate.  Yesterday was the first time in 22 years that I haven't been to a first day of school.  That was weird.  I'll go back in October, but for now, I'm staying home with my girls and trying to figure out life with a new little person in it.  Piper goes to school part-time, but Caroline and I hang out at the house.  She's a very easy baby (as far as babies go), but I'm exhausted.  When Piper is home, she's a challenge.  I know that our sweet little girl is hidden somewhere behind all of the defiance, tantrums, and accidents, but there are certainly days when I feel my body physically release all kinds of tension after she is finally in bed (following nearly an hour-long bedtime routine) and Caroline is bathed, changed, and fed.  The days do seem long.

Then I look at this precious family of mine, and I realize that God knows exactly how much I can handle.  They're not perfect, I'm not perfect, and being a mom is plain hard sometimes.  The years will be short.  But there can be joy in each moment, if I choose to look for it.

 

Caroline

After having one baby, you wonder how in the world you could possibly love another as much as the first.  And then you do.  This is the story of Caroline Grace.

On Monday, August 3rd, at 2:23 a.m., I woke up out of a dead sleep, flipped on the bedside lamp, and told Andrew, "Uh, I'm pretty sure my water just broke."  Sure enough, it had.  The prompt little lady decided that she was ready to come into the world on her exact due date.  Oddly, my body was not ready and did not go into active labor on its own.  We waited to go up to the hospital until 9:30 because I had a doctor's appointment then anyway, and he sent me across the street to Labor and Delivery.  After a couple of doses of a medication to speed up the process and working through contractions for nearly 11 hours, I still hadn't made any progress.  Eventually, I got an epidural and Pitocin and was ready to push just three hours later.  After about seven minutes of pushing, Caroline was here.  (I'll spare you the rest of the details.)  According to the nurses, I should have about seven more babies.  Right.

Most things about Caroline's birth were not at all like the movies, but the moment she came out was every bit the same.  Andrew and I burst into tears immediately, and our hearts were so full of love that we thought they would explode.  Suddenly, all of the annoyances of pregnancy and the pains of childbirth were worth everything.

Piper was a miracle because she made me a mother for the first time, and this child is a miracle because she beat the odds.  Doctors said she wouldn't be here.  I remember staring at Piper in disbelief during her first days home because I couldn't believe that she was mine.  The feelings are identical with Caroline.

Being home has been hard, honestly.  Caroline is an unbelievably easy, sweet baby, and I couldn't be more thankful.  Piper has had a hard time adjusting, which I should have expected more than I did.  Every day gets a little less difficult, which gives me hope that our well-mannered, thoughtful two-year-old will soon make her return.  For now, though, our "new normal" is tough.  One of the best parts of this experience has been having Andrew by my side the whole time.  I'm dreading when he has to go back to work next week.  During labor and delivery, he was my rock, and he continues to be steady and patient during the trials of parenting and my flip-flopping hormones.  He reminds me that I'm beautiful when all I feel lately is swollen and sore.  I've been more attracted to him in the past few days than I have been since we've known each other.  Things will get easier, I'm sure.

We found out about Caroline just a few weeks following the hardest moments we have ever endured as a couple.  There was never any debate about her name; it literally took us about five minutes to decide what she would be called if she was a girl.  Caroline: "joyful song".  It is based on Psalm 126, and one of my favorite hymns that we sing at church:

"Our mouths, they were filled, filled with laughter

Our tongues they were loosed, loosed with joy

Restore us, O Lord,

Restore us, O Lord,

Although we are weeping, 

Lord, help us keep sowing the seeds of your kingdom

For the day you will reap them

Your sheaves we will carry, 

Lord, please do not tarry, 

All those who sow weeping will go out with songs of joy."

Truly, He has filled us with joy a hundred times over through this precious child, the perfect addition to our little family.

He has done great things.

We renewed our vows last weekend.

I'm not exactly sure what I had envisioned for this celebration, but whatever I wanted was exactly what happened.  It was the perfect day.  When Andrew and I got married six years ago, I was convinced that our wedding day would be the best day of our lives, and it probably was up until that point.  But I'm really happy to think, now, that that wonderful day was just the beginning of several "best days" to come.  The day that Piper was born was a "best day", and this sixth anniversary celebration was another one.

There were many times in the last couple of years when I didn't think that we would make it to our fifth anniversary, much less to our sixth.  Though six years isn't necessarily one of the "big" or "special" anniversaries, it is the biggest and most special one to us.  This July 11th, we got to celebrate, not just the fact that we made it to year six, but that we made it to year six more in love and more grateful than we've ever been before- not in spite of the hard times, but because of them.

I complain a lot (at least in my head) about how huge and unattractive I feel because I'm nine months pregnant, but I think that when I look back at the pictures from our vow renewal ceremony years from now, I will realize that I was glowing and possibly more beautiful than I've ever been before.  There is something so precious about another life growing inside of a human being, and this life in particular is a marker or healing for us.  Our entire little family of four got to be a part of us recommitting our lives to each other and to God.

If I had to do our wedding over again, I'd most likely do a lot of things differently.  I was all about having a grand, fancy wedding at the time, but now I tend to think that the most important thing can easily get lost in the pursuit of perfect flowers, an expensive dress, and the most exquisite food.  My dress for this past weekend cost less than a tenth of my wedding dress, we had no flowers, and everyone ate sandwiches from Wal-Mart afterward (which were pretty tasty and economical, by the way).  We had no obligation to invite my mom's Great-Uncle Charlie (who doesn't actually exist, but you get my point), but we got to be with the people who have walked through our lives and our marriage with us, which happened to be about 60 people instead of 225.  We chose a lovely church for our wedding, but for renewing our vows, we got to be at this church, City Pres, that has loved us and become our home over the past four years.  And everything about all of that was perfect.  In the words of the song that we all sang together at our ceremony, truly, "He has done great things."

"We will feast in the house of Zion,

We will sing with our hearts restored,

'He has done great things,' we will say together

We will feast and weep no more!"

My greatest love on this earth

Our sweet Piper

Family.  Missed you, brother.

Two families are one.

My people.

Before "walking down the aisle" as a family

Forever, again.

Probably more pictures to come...

Minimizing the Miraculous

I remember sitting in a park in Alaska around this time last year, staring off at Denali in the distance while listening to the rush of a nearby stream that cut through the mountains and thinking simply, “This is nice.”  Not, “This is spectacular,” “What an amazing view,” or, “I’ve never seen such beautiful scenery anywhere.”  “This is nice” was all I felt.  Even in that moment, I knew that I should have been more aware of my surroundings and more appreciative of the Creator’s handiwork.  But I wasn’t.  

Continue reading here. 

I have a two-year-old.

This hardly seems possible.  Just a few days ago, I feel, we were driving to Edmond to meet Piper in the hospital.  As my mom always says about toddlerhood, "The days are long, but the years are short."   I couldn't be more thankful for this spunky, stubborn, intelligent, perceptive, kind, and beautiful gift.  Piper Anna, I love you and am so blessed to get to be your momma.

Here are a few pictures from her safari birthday party.

I made these!  Took a cake decorating class and crossed one off of my list of 30 things to do before turning 30. :)

Lots of presents to open...

"Wow this new kitchen is amazing!"

"Thank you, Papa, for building my cool new kitchen."

The girl loves her daddy (and cupcakes).

Bubbles.

A Good Life

Last week, I worked at Youth Leadership Forum, a leadership camp for high school juniors and seniors with disabilities that I've been a part of for the past six summers.  As always, camp was inspiring, fun, and exhausting.  One of the questions we helped campers ponder this summer was, "What is a good life to you?"  We, as counselors, prompted campers to think of their life after high school and to begin making decisions about housing, schooling, jobs, and other important aspects of "adult life".  While helping campers make plans for their futures, I found myself re-evaluating some of my life goals, as well.

I've been offered an opportunity to teach a blended full-day Pre-K class at a public elementary school here in Norman next year (although I technically won't be starting until October because I'll be on maternity leave).  "Blended" means that I will be teaching ten typically developing kiddos and five students with special needs in the same class.  Also, this is the first time that Norman Public Schools has offered full-day Pre-K.  (Normally, classes are split into a morning and an afternoon class.  I'll actually have the same students all day next year.)  And, for the first time in four years, I'll be at one school with the same job all day.  No more eating lunch in the car, no more switching gears and grade levels completely at noon, and only one set of lesson plans.  Y'all.  I'm sure that these are all things which most people take for granted, but for me, they're huge.  I'm also looking forward to teaching at this particular school because of the high-needs clientele of it.  I used to romanticize the idea of teaching in a school with 90+ percentage of its students qualifying for free or reduced lunch prices, and although I now better understand the many challenges that come with teaching students in poverty, I really can't wait to serve this often-overlooked population in an otherwise middle-class city and district.

Lately, I have been swinging on the pendulum between the ideas of staying home and continuing to work full-time.  For next year, I'm committed to my job.  But as Piper has gotten older, I've started to feel like I'm missing out somewhat on her life as she is at school and I am at work all day.  Admittedly, I'm not much of a newborn person, but the more interactive she has become in the past few months, the more I have wished I was around to see her developments and milestones.  We will continue to take one year at a time as far as work goes, but one thing I have decided for sure is that I am not going to continue pursuing my master's degree at this time.

This was a tough decision, and I really hate having to swallow my pride.  As I continued to think about my reasons for doing grad school, though, I realized that most of them didn't make a whole lot of sense.  Part of me wanted to get my degree because, according to Andrew's family, "the Fenricks marry up."  His brother and sister both married people who are more educated than they are, and I felt that I needed to "continue the tradition," even though it's not really a tradition and no one in his family is putting any pressure on me to do that.  Part of me wanted to get my degree because people in my profession will think I'm awesome and intelligent.  Truth be told, there are fantastic public school Pre-K teachers who have a master's degree, and there are equally good ones who do not.  Finally, I think a small part of me wanted to recreate the college experience, which, as I quickly discovered, cannot be recreated as a graduate student.  The four years of college undergraduate life truly are one-of-a-kind.  Oh, and I'm not completely sure that I want to be a reading specialist, which is what my degree would help me achieve.  Grad school is too much time and money to not be sure about something like that.  Aside from everything else, higher education is no longer an individual commitment; it is a decision that involves the whole family.  Perhaps there will be time, years down the road, when my whole family can more easily commit to this decision.  

When I think about my "good life," it is right now, watching my little girl "mow the yard" in her panties (because hey, she's potty-trained now!) with her dad.  It's having time to make supper for my family instead of popping a frozen pizza in the oven.  It's possessing energy at the end of the day to smile at Piper when she does something silly instead of getting frustrated with her because I'm out of steam.  It's saying "no" to being a stellar student so I can say "yes" to being a good teacher, wife, and mom.  And yes, sometimes it is watching Netflix instead of working on an end-of-semester presentation.  No shame in stating the obvious. :)

I'm giving birth in less than six weeks.  NBD.