What's Next?

Since Reed and I married, we had assumed that post-graduation plans would include Reed working full time, and me continuing my education while I worked for a couple years. Then I would quit my job to become a stay at home mom. But this past year, we have been giving more and more thought to these plans. Two major problems with it were 1) Reed wanted to go into ministry, and so he needed to continue his education, and 2) we wanted to have children a lot sooner!

We first made the decision for me to stay home right after graduation instead of going to work, and began trying for a baby. That was a very easy decision, for both of us! While it hadn't always been that way, and the timing of our family was something we had gone in circles about before, it is amazing to see what the Lord does in each of our hearts when it is His timing! There is no use struggling against your spouse when you disagree about major decisions, the Lord will give peace in time about whatever decision He supports. (That, and the Bible has a lot to say about struggling against your husband- Proverbs 21:19, Ephesians 5:22-23, Colossians 3:18, Ephesians 5:33). When you stop fighting for your will, and submit to God's, you know you are living your life for His glory and not your own. Our first little one will be joining us in January, and we can't wait!

The second decision, about Reed continuing his education, was a little bit more difficult to make. Where would he go? When? What degree would he pursue? Why? Where would he work while in school? We chipped away at these questions one by one, until we finally decided that he would apply to Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY for the fall of 2010. He will pursue his Masters of Divinity, and is seeking to go into full time ministry after graduation. Though Reed will be a full time student, he will also need to be working as close to full time as he can. So, he is hoping to transfer to a Starbucks in KY because of their wonderful insurance, flexible schedules, and his love of coffee :)

So for now, we have both graduated and are working just under full time hours. We are soaking up this time we have as the only two in our family because we know time together will be precious after the baby is born. As excited as we are about baby joining us, we do not want to rush through this precious phase- this school free, child free time. After the baby comes, I will just be working just one of my part time babysitting jobs and will be bringing baby with me. Other than that I'll be home! We will move (Lord willing) to KY in June when our lease here is up, and Reed will begin seminary in the Fall. I hope to find at least 2 children to watch full time in my home, because we won't be able to live on Reed's Starbucks income alone.

So there you go! Our tentative plans for the next year or so. An adventure awaits us!

I'm back!

After a little break from my blog, I am back!

I decided to put the blog aside while I finished up my undergrad degree. And praise the Lord, I finished last Thursday. My hubby finished Thursday, as well! We've been shocked at how much more time we have; neither one of us realized how much time we really spent doing school, thinking about school, worrying about school. In our nearly 7 year relationship, this is the first time we have not been students! I think the feeling of relief is amplified because we're both done.

Other than that big news, I wanted to add an update to the last post before my hiatus. Baby is doing well, and I am nearly 16 weeks along. Next Monday, we find out the sex! I am doing 2x the number of Lovenox injections I did before, which means two shots a day. Surely a pain, but definitely worth it!

I look forward to regularly posting again!

Kerr Baby #2

I am joyous to announce that on Monday, Reed and I found out we are pregnant again! We are so happy that it only took three months since loosing Moriah to conceive again, though at the time it felt like an eternity! We are so very excited, though we are certainly aware of the difficulties that lay ahead due to my clotting condition. For the curious, for our first born boy and girl, we are still going with one of the names we picked out before, either Abel Kenneth or Michaela Reed.

I have already begun my Lovenox injections nightly and am already bruised all over, like in the picture from my previous post. Small price to pay. I have my first appointment tomorrow (high risk pregnancies can't wait the typical 8-10 weeks to go in) and I am eager to hear what the doctor has to say. As for my best guess, baby Kerr is due February 5 but I have recently switched OB/GYN's and she wants to induce about 2 weeks early--- Unless baby experiences intrauterine growth restriction, another negative side effect of my clotting disorder that would cause the induction to be moved up.

Please be praying with us. Obviously we hope that this child will be our first of many to hold, but ultimately we desire for God's will to be done.

Life in Pictures

I realized that I'd like to have more day-to-day things on my blog, as a way to keep my friends/family in touch with what's going on in our lives. I sorted through my recent pictures, and decided on a few that should give a peak into our ever so busy but fulfilling lives :)

Since pregnancy has been a pretty big topic this far in the blog, I'll start there. This is what my poor tummy looked like on one side after maybe three or four of the blood thinning shots I have to give myself while pregnant. Apparently, your whole stomach looks like this by the end of pregnancy. Yikes!




The weekend we lost our little one, we had the wonderful chance to go visit Reed's family in Tennessee. What a great distraction, and chance to be with family as we mourned our baby. We spent some time with Reed's folks, who were in from Korea (we hadn't seen them in a year).









We also met our newborn nephew Anderson and played with his big sis Maddie:



When we got back from Tennessee my brother Clee came to stay with us for a week, while he was on Spring Break. He hung out with Michael, the baby I watch:While Clee was here I took sweet Sophie, one of the other kids I watch, to a birthday party at a local (awesome!) children's museum:


On Easter, Reed, my brother, and I left Lynchburg very early in the morning to make the Easter service at our church in Maryland. Afterwards, my dad, his wife, my mom, Clee, Reed, and myself went out for coffee:
We went to my grandparent's house for Easter dinner before our drive home, but I don't have any pictures. :(

Of course, these pictures are in no way an exhaustive itinerary; I don't have any pictures of us in school, or Reed at work, or me with the other 4 I babysit, or church activities.... etc. I need to break out my camera more often! I will leave you with some cute pictures:

This is a cake I made one night when we had company. I thought it was pretty cute!

This one cracks me up! We have these espresso mugs (that Reed's parents brought us from China) which look like mini coffee mugs. Michael is always trying to grab my coffee out of my hands, so I thought I'd give him a little (empty!) mug of his own. He was having a drool-y day, so it looks like he spilled his drink down the front of his shirt!



Okay, I've got a soft spot for this big, crazy haired baby (and all the kids I watch, really). This is 4 month old Michael working on sitting up. I spend more time with this kid than anyone else in my life... Reed included. He is so precious!

Trying to Conceive

God has been teaching Reed and I so much in these past weeks. It is wonderful to me how God can use one lesson to teach so many different things to my heart. We have gone from trying to praise God through our storm, to knowing and trusting it was all for His glory, then realizing His will is greater than ours. This last lesson is the one I am currently still growing in; acknowledging that God is Lord and I am not is a hard lesson learned for a selfish sinner such as myself.

I find myself thinking about having a baby in the back of my head, this interior monologue that plays throughout my day. "Am I pregnant now? Will I be this month? If I am, when will the baby be born? Will there be complications? Will we lose the next one, too?" I have justified this constant parade of baby-thoughts because I feel that this is now my role in life, to have children, and since it is not going according to my plans, I am trying to plan even more. But no matter how I try to hide what my feelings truly are, I must be honest with myself: my thoughts during the day are nothing more than worry and attempts at control.

This is sin! In Matthew 6:24, the Bible says "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." Worrying about tomorrow does nothing but try to take control out of God's hands. By worrying or planning, I will not change a thing. Proverbs 20:24 says, "A man’s steps are from the LORD; how then can man understand his way?"

Not only should I not worry, and not try to over-plan my life, I need to rejoice in the truth that God's knows not only what is best for me, but for His glory! God is an all-knowing God, He alone knows why I am not pregnant. Maybe there is a lesson He wants me to see, a sin I must overcome. Maybe I would become violently ill when pregnant (like my Mom did) and would have to stop working. Maybe we're going to have triplets and we need to save up money first. Maybe He wants us to adopt all of our children and is teaching us patience first. It is not my place to know! My job here is to step out in faith, and trust in the Lord to do what is right.

The purpose of my life is to bring God glory while I am here on earth, and to obey Him in all I do. If the reason I want children is to glorify the Lord, and He would have something else for me in my life right now, than children must not be how He wants glory right now! I do not want my children, before they are even born, to become idols in my heart. God is first; if my heart truly wants children for selfless reasons, then I will be happy to surrender parenthood for God.

I need to step back, and not allow 'trying to conceive' to become my identity. That is not who I am, but a part of it. I will continue to follow my husband's lead and try to start a family unless God makes it obvious that He has some other plan for us. But I will no longer allow a month to feel pointless and wasted if I did not get pregnant. My desire is for Christ, and His best for me, not my best for me.

Psalm 37:4 says, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." This verse is not saying that God will give me want I want if I love Him, but that if I love Him, my desires and His will be one in the same. If that is true of my heart, than my desires and Christ's will be one in the same.

Lord, have me desire what it is that YOU want for my life. Allow me to use this time in my life to serve You and others in ways I will not be able to if you bless us with many children. Teach Reed and I what it is we are to learn, and continue to conform our hearts to Yours.

To God be the Glory

Genesis 22:12 "now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me."

Last Friday, March 13, I began experiencing some bleeding. After calling my doctor, going in for an ultrasound with Reed, and waiting for what felt like an eternity in the exam room, the nurse confirmed that we had lost our little baby at 6 weeks 3 days. A deep wealth of sadness, disappointment, and disbelief swelled up in and poured out from our hearts that moment and the hours afterwards. Through tears, Reed and I named our little one Moriah, after the land Abraham went to sacrifice his only son Isaac to demonstrate his loyalty to the one true God above all else. (Read the story here) We mourned for the little one lost, and for our sudden change of plans as we so hope to become parents.

Isaiah 41:10 "Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

Since that first day, God has done an amazing work on the hearts of my husband and I. We truly understand that for whatever reason, this was not the child the Lord wanted for us to have as part of our earthly family. We know the loss of our Moriah glorified God because He allowed it to happen, and for that we are thankful. Reed and I desire for our lives to be a living sacrifice to Him, for His glory, and to whatever end He desires. Because of this, not only do we know in our heads that loosing our baby was for the best, but we also rejoice in our hearts that He is glorified above all else. We not only accept it as God's will, but we eagerly pursue it, even if that means putting our own ideas of 'what's best' aside.

Not only has God used this an an opportunity to grow us closer to Him, He has also used it as an opportunity to mature the relationship between Reed and I. We have felt such a strong bond between each other through this, and have been drawing strength from the other's faith in God. To hear my husband's prayers for me, for our future family, and for our healing from this has been such a balm to my spirit. I find myself pausing more and more often to thank the Lord for such a godly, selfless, devoted, and caring lover and friend.

Psalm 16:8 "I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand I shall not be shaken."

So now we begin the journey again, because waiting longer to mourn Moriah will not take away the ache in our hearts, or fulfill our dream of becoming parents. From the very beginning, we are laying our desires down as a sacrifice to the Lord and we recognize now more than ever that our future is in His hands. My doctor told us that we do not need to wait 3 cycles to try again, as was previously believed, but that as soon as my hCG (pregnancy hormone produced by the placenta) is down to zero we can try again. We are praying that this will be next week; I go in for more blood testing Monday.

I feel less innocent going into the trying/pregnancy cycle this time around, I now have experienced what happens when a pregnancy does not go full term. I am praying that I can relax, and depend on the Lord, knowing He is in control of it all. Whatever He wills to happen will be so, no matter how much I plan or worry.

The unique mixture of joy and trial, faithfullness and testing that Reed and I feel is captured in these verses:

1 Peter 1:6-9 "In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls."

We're Pregnant!

It's true! We found out yesterday that we're having a baby! Reed and I are so thrilled, and feel so blessed that the Lord is allowing us to become parents. We were very surprised, as we had only been trying one month. It is still early in the pregnancy (5 weeks tomorrow) but we are sharing this information already because we would love it if our brothers and sisters in Christ could be praying for the health of myself and our little one. Due to my autoimmune disorder, Antiphospholipid Syndrome, both my baby and I are at a high risk for many complications, the most devastating of which are still birth or late term miscarriage. Of course, we know the Lord is able to do whatever He pleases with this child; Reed and I desire to give God the glory no matter what happens with our lives, and that includes this pregnancy as well.

Taken from the Antiphospholipid Syndrome Foundation of America's Website: "Antiphospholipid Antibody Syndrome or APS is an autoimmune disorder in which the body recognizes certain normal components of blood and/or cell membranes as foreign substances and produces antibodies against them."

You can read more about what this means for my baby and I during pregnancy here.

Thank you for your prayers! We are thrilled about meeting little Abel Kenneth or Michaela Reed sometime in the Fall.