I know that if I want to become more like Christ, I need to spend time with Him.

For me, that means daily devotions. 

Depending on my season of life, this has taken different forms for me. There was the working full-time season, the newborn baby season, the get-the-kids-off-to-school season. Since I’m a morning person, however, I’ve typically had to plan my quiet time for the beginning of the day, no matter what format I use. 

Today I thought I’d share a few details of how I currently schedule these moments.  It’s not the only way or even the best way, but it’s the method I’m currently using as I seek to grow in my Christian walk.

What:  I bring my Bible, a hymn book, and a small, 3-subject wire bound notebook.  In the notebook I have a section for prayer requests, one for my list of 1,000 gifts (which is now at 1,195!), and one for jotting down what I learn from the Scripture passage I read each day.

Where:  The couch in our living room, which is deserted this early in the day

When:  On weekdays, I typically start between 5:45 and 6:00 A.M. and spend 25-30 minutes

How:  I begin with prayer, read a hymn, write down three to five “gifts,” read a passage from the Bible, and practice my current memory passage.

Again, this is what works for me right now.  I still struggle with fitting this in on Saturdays as we typically sleep in a little bit and I have less of a routine.

I’ve used different methods for studying the Bible.  I’ve read through a devotional book, used a concordance to study a particular topic, chosen one book of the Bible to read through for a month, and examined specific characters from the Old Testament or New Testament. 

Are you able to find time to spend with God each day?  How do you like to study the Bible?  If there’s a particular tool or book that’s been an encouragement to you in this area, please let me know!

[Find previous posts in this series here:  Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.]

After taking three days to adjust to the news of our unborn baby’s neural tube defect, my husband and I resumed our normal routines. 

My husband returned to his job as the elementary principal at a Christian school and I went back to work at the hospital.  I remember a co-worker, Beth, pulling me into an empty conference room and telling me that, as a fellow Christian, she was so thankful for our choice to carry this baby to term.  She encouraged me to allow this trial to be a testimony of God’s grace that could impact others in our office.

My husband and I each developed our own responses to people who inquired about our baby.  Strangers would ask “Are you having a boy or a girl?” or “When are you due?”  Often I would just answer their question, as in “We’re not going to find out the gender” or “We’re due at the end of January.”  Then they would typically make a few more comments and I would try to move along. It was rare that I shared our baby’s total story. 

One day I was sitting out on the patio at work, eating my lunch, when two sweet older ladies at the next table began quizzing me about my pregnancy.  I answered their questions honestly, but I didn’t want to make them feel badly by telling them that our baby was going to die.  That was often the case during those months, as I knew most people were simply being friendly and wouldn’t know how to respond if I talked about our baby’s diagnosis.

My husband, though, would often tell people what was happening with our baby.  He was comfortable being straightforward and sharing the story.  Those who already knew about our baby’s difficulty didn’t typically bring it up in conversation. 

I still had to continue my prenatal visits at least once a month.  As I’ve mentioned before, there couldn’t have been a better doctor to guide us through this.  I have no doubt that he was another instrument of God’s grace and goodness.  He instructed his staff to give me the first appointment in the morning or the first one after lunch so that I didn’t have to spend time in the waiting room with other expectant mothers.  He was a gentle, comforting presence throughout my pregnancy.

One of the few moments from that time period that is still crystal clear in my mind came a few weeks after the diagnosis.  I was sitting in traffic on the interstate on my way home from work.  I felt something in my stomach, just a little flutter.  I realized that I had been experiencing that same feeling over the past few days and then it hit me – our baby was moving inside me.  This baby that couldn’t live outside of me was alive and those tiny feet and hands were pushing against my womb.  This baby was real, not just a picture on an ultrasound screen.  Those fluttery feelings were only the beginning, as the baby became very active as the days went by.

One night in October, I woke up in terrible pain.  I shifted positions in bed, wondering if this could be labor, but knowing that I shouldn’t be delivering for several more months.  I finally decided to wake up my husband and the pain become bad enough that we headed to the hospital.

To be continued next Monday….

[To catch up with the story, you can read Part 1 and Part 2.]

My husband and I returned home after our doctors’ appointments knowing we had difficult phone calls to make.  I don’t remember much about those couple of hours.  I had even forgotten that it was actually my husband who called my parents first to tell them the news, though my mom and my husband remember that.  He also called his parents and the administrator of the school where he was the elementary principal. 

We decided to go out for a quick supper – and we had a surprise waiting for us when we returned.  We walked back in the door an hour or so later and found luggage in our house.  Yes, we had company.  My husband’s best friend from high school, along with his wife, had stopped by to spend the night on their way up the coast.  They had a key to our house, so when they arrived and found we weren’t home, they had dropped off their stuff and gone to get supper themselves.  (Obviously this was in the days before cell phones were common!)  We had their visit scheduled for the next weekend, not this one. Although it was a minor detail at this point, the house was not clean, so I dashed around trying to tidy up before they got back.

Though I may not have seen it in that moment, I believe this was another gift from God.  Having them there for a day or two was a distraction during those first hours of dealing with our news.

Once I took all this in, I noticed that we had a message on our answering machine.  My doctor had called and left a message, checking to make sure that we were okay.  This wonderful man did so many thoughtful things for us in the coming months.

That night, while talking to my parents, the tears finally came in full force.  I remember sitting on our bed and thinking I could never cry enough to fully vent all my feelings of loss.

We didn’t go to church on Sunday.  I knew that our Pastor would let people know about our baby and I didn’t want to be there.  I hadn’t yet figured out how to respond to the sympathy, and I’m not sure I ever learned.  Our church family would come to be a huge blessing and support, but I wasn’t sure that I could emotionally handle being around when they first found out.

On Monday, my husband and I decided to spend another day together, so I called in to work.  I remember talking to Sharron, a fellow employee, telling her I was taking the day off and why.  She was very kind and I know she smoothed the way for me when I went back the next day.

From the moment they found out, many people began praying for us.  From the church we attended, to my home church where my dad is still the pastor, to my husband’s church, along with friends and family, we had so many people praying for us.  There was one gentleman from my home church that I know prayed for us daily – and I know that he, along with many others, were asking for God’s healing for this baby.  My maternal grandmother was another of our faithful prayer warriors.  She sent cards and notes to us throughout the pregnancy, letting us know that we were in her thoughts and prayers.

I can truthfully say that I never felt that our baby would be healed.  Once we had the ultrasound and heard the diagnosis, I just seemed to know that things would go exactly as the doctors said.  Was this a lack of faith?  A dose of realism?  An acceptance of this as God’s will?  I don’t know.  Maybe I was afraid of false hope, but for whatever reason, I just never thought this baby would be born whole

On Tuesday it was time to face the music, to begin dealing with the reactions of people I knew, as well as strangers who would innocently comment on my growing belly.

To be continued next Monday….

[Read Part One of our story here.]

My husband and I walked into the doctor’s office for our 18-week ultrasound on a Friday afternoon in August.  The ultrasound tech, Debbie, prepared me for the ultrasound as the three of us talked. She put our blank video in the machine so she could record the ultrasound for us to show to our families.

Debbie began working, describing what she was doing and what we were seeing on the screen.  It was so neat to see our baby’s heartbeat and precious little body.  Everything was fine at first; then Debbie got very quiet.  She was concentrating on the same area, going over it slowly again and again.  The phrase “deafening silence” was exactly what we were experiencing and I began to sense that something was wrong.

It really hadn’t entered my mind that there might be a problem with our baby.  Everything had seemed so fine and normal with my pregnancy thus far.  But the way Debbie’s face changed told me that something was wrong.  She finally laid down the instrument and said that she was going to get my doctor.  My husband and I talked quietly, wondering what she wasn’t telling us.

My doctor came in and took over the ultrasound.  Then, very gently, he told us that he thought our baby had a neural tube defect, but he wanted to send us to a nearby medical university facility that had a better ultrasound machine to confirm the diagnosis.  I am confident that the Lord intervened in allowing us to get in to the medical university on a late Friday afternoon.  Already it was a sign of His goodness, as I can’t imagine having had to wait over the weekend to find out the condition of our baby.

During that fifteen minute drive, I remember staring out the car window and trying to absorb what was happening.  What did this mean for the baby we’d been hoping and praying for the last couple of years?  We didn’t talk a lot, not sure what to say.

No one was in the waiting room as we came in and filled out a brief amount of paperwork.  I got ready for another ultrasound.  I remember sitting close to my husband and him shedding a few tears as we considered that our dream of having a child might be ending differently than we had expected.

This high tech ultrasound confirmed my doctor’s suspicion; our baby had anencephaly.  The woman explained that the neural tube is like a zipper.  In spina bifida, the zipper doesn’t close in the middle, leaving the spine exposed.  In anencephaly, the end of the zipper doesn’t close, leaving the brain exposed.  A baby with anenecephaly can live in the mother’s womb, attached to the umbilical cord; but for all those months, the brain is exposed to amniotic fluid and begins to deteriorate.  Gently but firmly, we were told that there was no way our baby would live outside the womb.

I was simply numb.  I got dressed, then we had to meet with a genetic counselor.  While there’s not a strong genetic link for anencephaly, she had questions she wanted us to answer.  She was the first one to offer the option of an abortion.  My husband and I didn’t have to think about that for a second.  There was no danger to my physical health by carrying this baby and, though we already knew the outcome of this pregnancy, we would not end this baby’s life.

I cannot put into words how much those couple of hours forever changed our lives.  Never again would I enter a pregnancy with only hope and excitement.  No ultrasound would ever seem routine, no prenatal doctor’s visit just a normal occurrence.  And never again would I look at my husband the same, for we became partners in a new way, walking through this tragedy together.

And yes, my relationship with God would change as well.  I didn’t feel anger or bitterness as we left the doctor’s office for the drive home, still only numbness.  There weren’t even tears at this point…my eyes were dry, I felt like I couldn’t cry.  I could only think and think and think about what all this would mean.

And little did I know what the coming months would hold.

To be continued next Monday…

When you were a child, did you ever plan out how your life would be?

I did.

I’d go to college, get married, teach school for a couple of years, then be a stay-at-home mom to three kids, two boys with a girl in the middle.

That’s exactly how it all unfolded….at first.

I married my husband the summer after college graduation and we both started teaching in a Christian school.  Four years into our marriage, we decided it was time to start a family.

[Isn’t that cute??!  We decided.  Yes, in our naiveté, we just assumed it would happen.  Only it didn’t.]

After a year of not getting pregnant, I went to see my doctor.  He asked that we wait a bit longer before doing any testing.   When we approached the two-year mark with no child on the way, he agreed to run a test, which showed that everything seemed normal.  He prescribed a medication that he thought might help things along.  I was supposed to start taking the medication the following month, but before I did, I found out that we were expecting a baby.

By this time, most of the couples our age already had babies.  We were thrilled to be on the road to joining them!  We were so excited – as was our family, especially since this would be the first grandchild on my side.  It was fun to finally start looking at baby things – thinking about how I’d decorate the nursery, which brand of stroller we should buy, what name we should choose.

All of this happened in the spring of 1997, so I let our school administrator know that I wouldn’t be coming back to teach in the fall.  Since the beginning of our marriage, we had planned and saved so that I would be able to stay at home with our children. 

While teaching, I had always gotten office work through a temporary employment agency during the summers.  I did the same this year, intending to keep the temporary job until the baby came.  I got a wonderful assignment working in the administrative offices of a hospital.

As the weeks progressed, I was healthy and felt relatively good.  All of my prenatal visits went well.  We had decided not to find out the gender of the baby, but were still very excited about my 18-week ultrasound appointment.  The doctor’s office said we could bring along a video (yes, this was in the old days!) to record the ultrasound and show it to our family later.

Our appointment was on a hot Friday afternoon in mid-August.  We walked in to the office, so excited about “seeing” our baby for the first time.

To be continued next Monday…

We all have a story.

If you’ve lived for very long, you’ve experienced laughter and tears, joy and sorrow, moments that sear your soul.

Every one’s story is different, each plot with its own twists and turns.  Always, God is at work, and often we have no clue in the present what He is unfolding for our future.

For the next several Mondays, beginning September 2, I’m going to share part of my story.  I want to record the memories for our daughters, to give them all there is to know about their older sister.

The theme of this story is God’s grace.  While sadness is interwoven through its pages, these posts won’t be written for tears.  They’ll be written to tell how God’s grace is evident in every trial  – how the people He places in our lives and the circumstances He surrounds us with can always work to His glory.

Other women have carried anencephalic babies.  We’ve all made difficult choices as we walked the road given to us.  What I’ll share are the choices my husband and I made, the experiences we encountered, and the lessons God taught us on our journey.

Wherever you are in your story, may you embrace it today and seek God’s power and strength to glorify Him in its pages.

Updated:  Here are the seven posts that I wrote in this series. 

Part 1:  My Plans

Part 2:  The Diagnosis

Part 3:  Sharing Our Grief

Part 4:  Life Goes On

Part 5:  It’s Time

Part 6:  Angel

Part 7:  The Conclusion

I received a blessing, a gift, on Saturday.

And it was so undeserved.

Inwardly, I was moaning and groaning, my attitude rotten, my thoughts ugly.

Yet in spite of that, God gave me something that day.  Not a physical, hold-in-my-hands gift, but a blessing that could only have come from Him.

Why?

Maybe I could have understood if I’d been sweet and lovable and, well, more spiritual.

But He saw what I truly was – what I am in my selfishness more often than I should be – and He gave anyway.

Isn’t that just like our amazing God?!

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“…it’s important to remember that while we don’t always get what we want, we always get what we choose.”  ~John Maxwell in The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth

We all have the power of choice.  We get to choose our actions, our responses, our attitudes, and in most cases, our direction and which dreams we will follow.

There are big choices in life.  You can choose to stay in debt or budget your money to get out of debt.  You can choose to change jobs or continue in your current employment.  From a move to another city to how to educate your children to which church to attend, you get to choose.

Maybe the choices you face today are not as life changing as those mentioned above, yet you still get to make many choices.

You can choose…

…a grateful or complaining spirit

…to “stop and smell the roses” or rush through the day

…love and respect for your husband or apathy and disrespect

…to give your children a smile or a weary sigh

…an act of generosity or a selfish heart

…to seize the moments of the day or let them waste away

…to live in the power of Christ or struggle through on your own

What will you choose today?

This wasn’t what I’d planned to write about today.

But my heart has been gripped by the tragic bus accident that happened in Indianapolis on Saturday.  Along with another adult, the youth pastor and his wife were killed. 

It’s difficult to read his Twitter account on that morning as he tweets of the youth group’s departure from camp and asks for prayers for safety.  Later, just over an hour before the accident occurred, he tweets their anticipated arrival time at the church.

Why has this story touched me so?

Maybe it’s because our church teens were returning from camp the same day.

Maybe it’s because, like this father and son, my dad is a pastor and my brother works with the church youth group.

Maybe it’s because I’ve put my girls on a bus before and just assumed that they will return to me safely.

Or maybe it’s because I, too, have lost a child.

Mine was just a stillborn infant.  While I only had nine months of memories – and these parents have many more – I can still feel the raw edges of that grief.  I can’t begin to comprehend all of the pain – from loss of loved ones to seeing an orphaned toddler and the motherless children of the other woman who left this world. 

Yet from my experience, there are a few things I know.

• I know that God is good.
• I know that God gives grace, a special grace, a grace that non-believers can’t understand.
• I know where my child – and these loved ones – are.

While I know people who know the families of those who were involved, I’ll likely never meet any of them personally here on earth. 

But in these dark days of sorrow, I want them to know that a piece of their grief is mine.

Did you have an older sister or brother that you looked up to as a child?  I was the oldest sibling in my family, so I didn’t have that experience.  However, I remember one of my friends had an older sister that I thought was very special.  She was pretty, popular, and had lots of poise.

These days, that’s almost how I feel when I think of the virtuous woman described in Proverbs 31.  Thankfully, the criteria for who I want to emulate is just a bit different now!  When I study the verses describing all that she does, I want to be just like her.

I see how prepared she is, how well she takes care of her husband and children, and how efficiently she runs her household.  Most of all, I read how she fears God and realize that it’s the key to it all.

She challenges me – and that’s good.

Thanks to all of you who have encouraged me in this ebook writing process!  May we all grow to be more virtuous as we walk with Christ and access the power of His Holy Spirit.

Click the link below to access your free copy of this ebook.

Mining the Gems of Proverbs 31:  One-Word Virtues for the Christian Woman