Chapter 6--"the bearded lady"

My husband calls this journal the "warts and all version." Here's some more.....


As a child, i was expected to be the first among my friends to get married and have children. As a child, i planned to have many children and to marry and start having them by age 20. When i was in college, i planned to be a great teacher and have a career and be successful--or move to Germany and be a missionary working with a church in former East Germany (but that part was before we decided for sure to get married).

Anyway, the point is that lots of things change.

This is a particularly "warty" entry because i don't talk about this stuff much. But i was going through my journal the other day and found myself horribly disturbed by the overwhelming concentration on a desire to have children.

Like i said, i've always planned to have lots of kids and never even considered anything that would hinder that.

When i was nineteen, James and i were planning to get married and i went for my first "female" exam because i thought i should have birth control while i finished college.

The doctor i went to was concerned and sent me for an ultrasound, which revealed some of the symptoms of an "abnormality" called "polycystic ovarian syndrome." If you don't know what that is, the name doesn't really give it away. "PCOS" (for short because the other one takes way too long to type over and over again) was named for the hundreds of tiny cysts that form on the ovaries--or actually the falopian opening as i understand it...........but that's really not important right now. Outwardly, the symptoms tend to be, well, disturbing. I've done a lot of reading on this subject, and it seems that a lot of women carry PCOS and don't even know it because it is at a less severe level, and it doesn't really affect them that much. In its severity, however.....

Do you ever remember reading a book from 100 or so years ago in which there was a fair or carnival, and one of the attractions was a "bearded lady" ? I'm sure you thought that the bearded lady must be wearing a costume, but i have a hunch she wasn't. She probably had PCOS. PCOS is a big mystery for the most part to many and most doctors.....but it's easy to diagnose because of the "hirsutism." (that just means hairy). If you search your memory, you probably remember at least one or two times when the sight of a particularly hairy woman carved its image into your memory. You may have noticed really hairy arms or suspiciously thick stubble on the chin. The other day i actually saw a woman with a full blown goatee.

The other main symptom of severe PCOS is obesity. They go hand-in-hand. In fact besides aggressive hormone treatment, the only thing that doctors seems to agree will help PCOS is to lose weight--of course one of the symptoms of PCOS is that it causes weight gain.




Now, i have pretty much all the symptoms (that i know of) of severe PCOS. You might not have noticed easily because i --- well, i shave everything you can see. The whole hairiness thing is something that i'll have to share my personal struggle with in a different entry. But get this, after reading my journal entries about wanting babies, i'm thankful. I'm actually becoming thankful for this problem i face every day.

Here's why: i realized that while i was so consumed with the desire to have children, i was not consumed with God. Many times i have prayed in my life for God to make me what He wants me to be and to remove those things that are displeasing to Him. Well, there you go. God wants me to desire HIM more than anything. And that includes the natural desires that He gave us, if they in any way compete with Him.

So, i guess it's time to say "thank You" and "i trust You, Lord, to do exactly what You want to do in my life, whether i understand it or not."

chapter 5......the second fire

When we moved into our house (no money down), it happened at almost the same time that someone else sold us a car (no money down). It was incredible! The Buick LeSabre we had gotten from my parents was pretty much at its end, and we needed something else...and somebody james worked with for a little while sold it to us with a payment agreement which would total $1500.00. We were very impressed with God's provision for us.

I can't remember the dates exactly...i think (if i remember correctly) that we had one payment left to pay off our car. It was a beige/off white color oldsmobile 1998. We liked it, and it got us where we were going. 8).......and it didn't have a busted fender like the buick. 8)

If i have my time lines lined up correctly, James was beginning to try to yield to the Lord again, and things were going pretty well. Well, anyway, our habit was that James would drop me off at the courthouse for work and pick me up in the evening. One morning, as we were merrily sailing to work, we were almost there; we were just turning the corner next to City Hall when the engine started smoking....badly....like it was on fire.....because it WAS on fire!

We were thankfully short walking distance from my work, and also happened to pull in exactly in front of the office used by the Conroe Fire Department. Immediately, several men in red polos rushed out of the building with fire extinguishers in hand and took care of our problem....ok, well, not exactly. They put the fire out and said nice things to us.

I'm told that you don't really fix an engine that has caught on fire. I don't really know. But the first thing that ran through my husband's mind was that we didn't have a car anymore, and we really didn't have money to buy one, and WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Something nice is that the Lord had worked peace in me. I was standing there next to our burning car, and i wasn't the least bit worried, and i was kind of aggravated at my husband because he thought this seemed to be an emergency! 8) heee heee

It's neat how the Lord can help us see things from His point of view.

Anyway, i went to work and made a phone call. And that nice lady i talked about earlier, Brenda, came and picked up my husband. and helped him find someone to get rid of the car and her husband, Don, took James a couple days later to buy another car...the seller was a friend of Don and Brenda, and he allowed James to buy the car based on Don's assurance that and personal guarantee of James. I think that's one of the coolest things anyone has done for us.

But mostly, this was another moment of crisis in which the Lord showed us that HE is our provider. period.

and oh how beautiful it is when the family of God is just that.

Someone told me that the chinese character for the word crisis made of two characters, one that means danger, and another that means opportunity. cool. huh?

chapter 4.5

****if this is your first read, be sure to start at the beginning of the story....called "it's a good life"******

also, check in at the c-box to your left if you don't want to post....it's just fun to see who has been here. 8) thanks

now back to the story.

a home group is an incredible thing. i've never been a part of one before, but i don't know what i would do without them now. for me it became almost a therapy group for a while. this is the place i would go to spill whatever beans i had been holding in all day..or all week.
it's also the place you go to get a really very much needed hug and possibly to be held while you cry....it's the place where you talk about things you don't talk about anywhere else, and it's the place where you feel safe.

i guess you could say, i got hooked! 8)

ok, so--things are good, right?

we're both gainfully employed (meaning if we keep the budget, we can pay our bills). we have this great little house. i finally found a church. i'm starting to build relationships. everything is wonderful!

except the part about how my husband is definitely now NOT walking with God. don't get me wrong, james and i have always done a lot of things together, and that included backsliding. we went down together. but now that i was trying to fix that in my own life, well, james didn't really follow suit. one of the reasons i think of that house as the "purification house" is because of the lessons the Lord taught me through my relationship with my husband during those years.

both of us have done and said really hurtful things to one another in our moments of frustration and anger. God has been so gracious to wipe all of that away. and i don't have to go into the details to show you what i learned.

one thing i learned...you know in 1 corinthians 13, the love chapter, it says, "love always trusts." that's kind of a weird one if you think about it. the world usually says that you have to have trust in order to love. but it isn't what the Lord says. and He ministered to my heart about His love. that time and time again, He is hurt by us but never puts up a wall against us. His heart is always open to us when we come back to Him. He never says, "you know last time i told you to do something, you just did the opposite, and it really hurt me, and i forgive you, but i'm not going through that again." He continues to trust us even when we are untrustworthy. one of the reasons for that is that one who is never trusted with something cannot become trustworthy without the practice.

another thing i learned...you can't be on the same team and still be enemies. it's one or the other. something that i learned to remember in my own heart whenever i wanted to yell and insult and hurt my husband...is that we are on the same team. and one of the goals of this team is a happy marriage. so i cannot make my husband my enemy. i must make him my partner and work with him to find out how to love him in whatever situation we find ourselves. it took some time to get that one right. i definitely did my share of yelling and hurting and insulting.

a third thing....God honors the heart that will follow Him, even alone. meaning i had to learn and train myself that i would be in church no matter what my husband did. if he wanted to sleep, i was in church. if he wanted to go somewhere else, i was in church. if he wanted to .... whatever, i was in church. it took me a long time to get that one right, but i found out that God honors our commitment and uses it for His glory.

here's something else. God is always faithful. i mean always! 8)

ok, so that was chapter 4.5.....just a little tidbit. hope you liked it.

to be continued....