Thanksgiving....

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His love endures forever.

Psalm 136:1

There are many verses on "Giving Thanks" in the Bible, but that is one of my favorites. It's also one of my favorite praise songs!

Anyways, we are glad we have the Thanksgiving holiday. It remind us of what we should be doing all of the time -- that is, giving thanks. We don't do it enough.

I (Sarah) am thankful for so many things, but the top three have to be 1) I have a God who loves me for who I am, and I have the freedom to worship him in this country 2) I have a wonderful husband who also loves me for who I am, and 3) I have a very cute and wonderful son whom we love very much.

I want to take a moment to reflect on Luke, our son. Keep reading -- this could get long. It may be one of those posts for "true friends."

Thankgiving weekend, 2007 (specifically, Sunday, November 25) will always be special in my heart. That was the day we found out I was pregnant with Luke. I look back on that day with a heavy heart, however. When the pregnancy test was positive, I was actually crying when I told Marc, and sadly, they weren't necessarily tears of joy. They were tears of not trusting God in the way I should.

Most of you reading this know that just four months before Thanksgiving, Marc and I went through a miscarriage. That miscarriage happened after trying to get pregnant for 18 months -- thinking that pregnancy may not have even been an option for us (we were starting the process of fertility testing at that time).

The miscarriage absolutely tore me apart. I don't think most of you realize just how much it did tear me apart. I was a mess for several months. Looking back on it, I realize I probably should have seen a counselor or been a part of a support group. It was extremely difficult always seeing other women (especially at church) pregnant or having babies.

However, we persevered. I realized that God allowed it all to happen (infertility and miscarriage) for some purpose. I'm not completely sure what his entire purpose was, but I have since realized that God did teach me some things through the experience -- it made me realize just how much I wanted a baby, it made me realize that I worked too much and put way too much focus on work and money, etc.

I remember telling Marc that I want to always "be there" for other women or couples when they go through miscarriages. Miscarriages are all too common. More people than we know have been through them. Since last summer, God has given me the opportunity to have very long conversations and offering of support with two different, very strong women who too suffered miscarraiges -- one of them even lost twins. I hope that I was able to offer encouragement and support to both of them. Sadly, I'm sure it will happen to somebody else we know. I hope that I will again be able to offer that support -- even into my old age.

Anyways, back to Thanksgiving, 2007....my tears on the positive pregnancy test were indeed not trusting God. I didn't trust that this pregnancy would be successful -- and it couldn't have been. Many women suffer through multiple miscarriages.

Over the course of the next month, I was in and out of the dr's office many times for blood work -- constantly checking hormone levels. My confidence went up slightly as the hormone levels continued to rise. My nausea, though not fun at all, was actually a welcome sigh of relief. We told a couple of close friends, and we practically begged them to keep it a secret. We have some wonderful friends who did keep it all a secret!

December 31, 2007, was another day of tears -- this time, happy tears as we saw Luke's beating heart on the sonogram. Even though we saw that beating heart, however, I (especially) still had doubts about telling people our good news. We finally shared the news with our parents over the next couple of weeks, and by 13-14 weeks, at the persistence of Marc, we started to tell other people. If Marc wouldn't have persisted on telling people, I would, out of fear, probably still not told people for another 4-5 weeks. It's funny now when I think about it, but the not-so-funny part was the lack of trust in God.

One of my points to this blog post is to not make blog readers feel sorry for us. I just merely want to share our story out possibly helping somebody else. I also realize that we have a fairly "easy" story with a happy ending. Infertility and miscarriage are actually very common, and many times, couples' stories end up completely different than our's.

Another point to this blog post is to share a new meaning of Thanksgiving to us -- it was the Thanksgiving holiday weekend where our lives started to change forever -- in a great way.

A third point on this blog is that this experience did teach me to trust God. I know that He ultimately has the my very best in His plans. It's just so hard to see sometimes. Trust is something I will always be working on in my spiritual growth. I'm sure many of you are also working on that. If you have any good advice, please let me know!

My last point to this blog post is to simply say that Marc and I are extremely thankful for Luke -- born July 21, 2008. I hope we don't just express that on Thanksgiving, but we express that each and every day he's with us.


Here's an updated photo of him -- taken just the other night.