Grace

Feel like hearing Grace's birth story? Grace was born at a time in our lives when we following our salvation,when we were already rooted into a good church and already feeling the effects of having God's undeserved grace all over our lives. Grace is my little testimony to God's hearing of and answering of prayer, to His desire to bless His people by giving them the desires of their heart,within His perfect will.
I prayed, and asked several members of my church family to pray, that this baby would be a girl. I laid the desires of my heart,first that we would succseed in becoming pregnant soon after we began trying because this was a good time for us to have our last child, and then that I would have a baby girl for my last baby,and God heard and blessed me with the desire of my heart :)

Grace was such a beautiful baby;she is beautiful today and she loves to sing God's praises~ even when she is having a grumpy morning on a Sunday she can always be distracted from herself by the wonderful corporate worship of God at church :)
Even a praise cd at home in the cd-player,while it pales in comparison(in some ways) can put her at ease and before we know it she is dancing around the living room clapping her little chubby hands :)

Prgnancy with Grace was full of surprises for me! Neverhave I been so sickin all my life!Ha ha:) I had morning sickness the likes of which I had never experienced before, and was told that this is normal when pregnant with a little girl! I also had to go an get a sinus infection(normal for me every Spring,before I figured out I had developed allergies & started taking Allegra to ward them off)and of course, since I was under 12 weeks prgnant, they could not treat me for fear of risk to the baby. Some of you may remember this; this was when I was laid out on my back on the living room floor for over a week, with Vertigo that made it impossible for me to be upright for more than several seconds without everything going swirly, and then black, and me inevitably hitting the floor again anyways ;) Lol! It was so funny ( to look back on.) Tyler was such a help to me and his family during these days when I was laid up, there with him and Josh in the living room, reading books and watching dvd's with them, but not really able to be there for them completely when they wanted me to make a snack or get up for anything else~ I would get up to go and do something, and fall back down to my knees half-way across the dining room,Lol! Tyler and Josh would come and help me crawl back to the living room floor, where I would lay there with my arm over my eyes and say "Tyler? Could you ...? I'm not feeling so well these days..." Tyler was always so willing to help, even when it interrupted something he was having fun doing and he was not thrilled about having to stop doing it for a little while. I could not have taken care of him and Joshua as well if he hadn't been so helpful to this cause until Al came home in the evenings. After the sinus infection cleared up(when I passed 12 weeks and was able to take meds,Lol)the rest of the time was cravings stronger than any I'd ever had with the previous 2 pregnancies; annoying cravings that came in the middle of the night and at horrid times like six in the morning, and would not let me out of their clenches until I satisfied them! I could usually make it about 20 minutes trying to ignore them, and then I'd be waking Al up and begging him to go to GIANT at 1in the morning to get me whatever it was I was having cravings for, usually sweets! (He was so patient with me in this; he really,really was. And many times, he would go!)I put on my usual full-pregnancy added weight of 125 lbs. by the 6th month, and by the 9th I had put on 135 lbs. and had the Dr. pestering me about not putting on too much weight and how this causes complications for the pregnancy and birth,Lol!"Get off my back,Dr.,and send your nurse out to get me some chocolate for while I sit through this exam, or I will get ugly!" I would say....(in my mind only.) Lol!

I had a lot of problems with Dr.'s during my pregnancy with Grace. First,my husbands company got bought out by Atlas Copco,so his insurance coverage changed providers, so no more Blue Cross; welcome to United Health. No one in our area likes United Health we found, so we lost our kids Pediatricians and our Dr.'s all in the same few weeks. Great. Lol. It actually took me over 4 months of calling,calling,calling people and the 1-800 customer service # on the back of our new health cards before I found anyone besides the Treatment Center(which wouldn't take our insurance either, and we had to pay $65-75 a pop to see,)to take on our kids and even then getting that was due to more praying, praying, praying and then much begging,begging,begging (Lol!) before somone would take our insurance and that place was Reading Pediatrics; Thank You God for Reading Pediatrics!!! However, they do not provide prenatal care so I had to leave my Dr. for another one, after having already planned out my C-section delivery date with Dr. #1. After seeing me up until 3 weeks before
Grace was born, this Dr. decided to go on vacation during the time my C-secetion was rescheduled for so, yup you guessed it, I had to find yet another Dr. who would be willing to do my birth, and Thank God, the secreatary at this office felt badly for me and made a phone call to the Reading Hospital Obstetrics ward, securing me a Dr. who has headed up the O.B. ward for the last twent years but was retiring in December, to do a Dec. 28th C-Section for me.. 3 days before my previously planned one. He was going to come in especially to do my surgery, and then not come in to work ever again, since he was officially retiring Dec. 1st! What a blessing this was!! I still had to trust yet another Dr. to cut me open,but,she had found a Dr. that would help me, and a good one at that! Needless to point out, I wrote her a glowing Thank-You letter of course and Alan and I sent her roses at her work ;)

Grace was born on Dec. 28th in the early afternoon, and we welcomed this little joy of our lives with open arms. Again, Daddy was the first one to hold the baby just as he had been able to with Josh. I held her constantly too, and just like with Tyler, the nurses couldn't pry her out of my hands unless it was really important(like shots or a check-up with the Dr., not so I could "rest" and she could see the nursery,Lol!)I have always been wierd about giving up my babies once I finally get them into my arms; probably this is foolish, since I did need my rest to recover, but I have always preffered sleeping with their little heads under my chin and their sweet breath on my neck, and I don't suspect that will ever change ;)

When I was 8&9 months pregnant with Grace I took a trip to Cali. to see my Dad and his wife Gaylon before I gave birth and was homebound for awhile (I know, stupidly ambituous) and while I was there she was prophesied over at their church and by my Dad and Gaylon's friends.They said that she would see angels, and that we shouldn't discourage her in this and tell her her visions weren't true; that she would make drawings of them and give them to us and that she would be strong in her Christian faith as a child even as well as an adult, and that she would be witness to many miricles in her lifetime. When one of Gaylon's friends cupped her hand over my huge belly and said this last part, I had an 'Elizabeth moment' because Gracie jumped! in my womb as if she was excited about this prophecy! Ha ha! It was a painful leap for me at least, since living quarters were so tight for her in there by then, but a joyful one too because I had always prayed that God would save all of my children, Gracie being no exception :)

I am so looking forward to watching my kids grow up, the Lord willing, and I am well aware that not everyone gets to do this~ some of God's children are taken up to be with Him again before their little one's are grown up, and I have no reason to believe that I could not be the recipient of that fate. Should God choose to take me from this earth,however, I know that my husband and I have done well to teach these children about God, to take them to this wonderful church, and to these wonderful Christian friends homes, fostered wonderful Godly friendships for them and cared for their souls the best we could, and I would know that God has the best plan, even if that would be it. I so look forward to the blessings of watching them grow, but I know it is the Lord's hands who grow them and establish them firmly in His word and I am but a spectator, planting and watering just as C.B. said on Sunday, but the passively watching the growing take place, for this is the Lord's work and not mine :)

Now I want to do a whole post on God's answers to prayer and His modern-day miricles, like prophecy, but I know that C.B. has preached on this subject and that his sermons are far better at exclaimming and enjoying the word of the Lord than any words I could use, so I will refer anyone who has ears to hear to our churches website: http://www.christccberks.org/, a beautiful site put together by our pastor C.B.'s wife,Shannon. It has many of his sermons available to listen to online under 'resources', and it is such a blessing to us! God bless you,praying for you all to have a God-glorifying day;) :)

(Just copy and paste that link into your web browser:)