To swaddle or not to swaddle?!

I just got done reading an article in a parenting magazine about how swaddling is now considered potentially “bad” for your child. The first thought that popped into my head is “but Jesus was swaddled!” and I immediately think about how I, and the hospital staff where she was born, swaddled my daughter. Was I harming her? Is she going to have any medical problems because I swaddled her? What would be different if my parents hadn’t swaddled me? To be quite honest, people have been swaddling for a lot longer than them telling us not to! My mom said that with all of my siblings and I she was told something different…“swaddle them”…“let them sleep on their back”…“no! on their side”…“they could choke if they spit up, let them sleep on their tummy”…and on the advice went. So, how am I, 24 years later, supposed to know what to do with my children? Do I start solids at 4 or 6 months? Do I nurse or use formula? The short answer is, I don’t know! If I wanted, I could find doctors that would advocate either side of any of these issues. So how do I know what to do? There is so much good advice out there so how do I even remember it all? It worked for someone else, why isn’t it working for me? Are my kids going to be safe? On and on the worry and questions seem to go…

My firm belief is that God knows and is in control. I know that sounds so cliché but honestly, some of these “issues” are made bigger deals than they ought to be because parenting is mostly done by people who are tired, stressed, overworked and underfed. (Can you tell I’m in that stage?!) I just had a friend say something about needing a “control child” just to see if what they are doing with the other kids is actually working or if it’s just coincidence that things are working out. It’s true though! How do we truly know if something really works since it might work with one child in our family but not another? Again, I go back to the fact that God is in control. I surrender my child and husband each day to the Lord because I don’t know what the day holds for them or for me! I can’t predict what is going to happen and definitely can’t plan for any emergencies that might arise but one thing I know I will always be able to do is pray. When I surrender my husband and daughter to the Lord I feel a great burden being lifted. No longer am I in control of the situation but I have firmly placed it in God’s hands. That, I might add, is a command from the Lord! 1 Peter 5:7 says “Casting all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you. (ESV)” I’m the type of person that tries to control any given situation in order to have things come out my way and trust has not been an easy thing for me. But this past year I have been put in several situations where I literally had no other option but to trust the Lord for the outcome and the letting go has been hard but the rewards have been so sweet! I want to trust the Lord for the easy things, the not-so-difficult things that He brings my way and not just the big crises.

My husband is in the military and I had to come to grips with the fact that God is in control of his life and nothing will happen to him that He doesn’t want to happen. The same with my daughter. Every day is precious and I want to spend every day enjoying my family, with the grace and strength of God, and not spend my time worrying about what “might” happen. I hope this will encourage you to do the same!

I Said No but God Said Yes (Part 2)

I told God “I hate being alone” and God said to me “I’m sending your husband away for three months with no communication.” Talk about feeling alone in the world! I was 7 months pregnant when my husband left for Boot Camp. I was pretty sure at that time that he wouldn’t be back until after our first child was born. As a general rule, I don’t like being alone at all! Even if I’m sick and contagious, I want someone to be with me. It’s just the way I’ve always been. I definitely didn’t want to have my baby “alone” either! To have your husband leave you at such a critical juncture in your life is quite unnerving. During the three months he was gone, I prayed a lot for wisdom and peace about our decision. I began thinking of deployments and training periods and all the other times my husband could possibly be gone. It was so easy to let my mind go to all the worst possible scenarios. But I had to keep coming back to the fact that God was always with me and I was never truly alone. He was giving me a wonderful baby that would, for the next 18 years at least, always be with me. I was never truly going to be alone again and God was providing for that in His perfect way. Military wives go through things “alone” all the time but those of us who trust in the Lord are never truly alone and that is such a comfort to me.

This may seem silly, but I told God “I don’t like going to the doctor” so God said “I have 9 months of doctors appointments lined up for you.” I have never really liked doctor’s offices and even in college I would ask my boyfriend, now my husband, to go just to sit in the waiting room with me. That to me is the hardest part, sitting in that cold room waiting to be called back to see the doctor. Most of these appointments I had to attend alone. At the beginning of my pregnancy, my poor husband was working a lot trying to provide for our family so he couldn’t go and at the end of the pregnancy he was gone for training. For those of you who have had babies you know that most of your doctor’s appointments occur at the end of the pregnancy, so he missed the majority of them while he was in Boot Camp. During all those appointments, the Lord gave me strength and courage to get through them and to have a very healthy pregnancy! He gave me a wonderful friend who also was pregnant that I could share all my experiences with. I couldn’t believe how the Lord worked it out so that twice my husband was able to be off for my appointments! Of the two times he was able to be there the first was when we heard the baby’s heartbeat for the first time and the second was the ultrasound where we saw our baby for the first time. God kept reminding me that there are military wives everywhere who do things like doctor’s appointments alone every day and I’m not the only one.

The final time I want to share with you is when I told God that I trusted Him and He proved to me that I was still learning what trust truly is. After my husband left for Boot Camp, I kept telling people that I was fine and I was trusting God for whatever came my way while Ryan was gone. But after a series of circumstances and conversations I realized that I was saying what I wanted people to hear. It wasn’t truly what was in my heart. It wasn’t until God withheld some things from me that I realized that I didn’t trust that He was protecting or taking care of me. Our pastor in Texas had recently preached a message on needing only God. His point was that we don’t need money, we don’t need insurance, and we don’t need a spouse to be secure in this life. We need only HIM! Those points in our pastor’s message hit home so hard during Boot Camp. While my husband was gone, we didn’t see any of the money that he was making. It was put into a bank account that neither of us had access to until after he graduated. Only then did God teach me that I don’t need money to trust Him. He had allowed us to build up a small amount of savings, an amount that was perfect for the time my husband was gone. I also didn’t have insurance for 3 months because I did not have Power of Attorney to get my military ID. Again, God proved that he was my Great Physician and He was taking better care of me than any doctor ever could. Of course, my husband was gone and unreachable for most of the time except by letters that basically took a week to get to him. That taught me that I don’t “need” my husband, I need only God.

God has proved Himself so faithful in my life and I look forward to how He will continue to teach me more in the future. I love being a part of the Marine family and I know this is where God has our family for the time being. 

I Said No but God Said Yes (Part 1)

As I was thinking back over my husband and I’s journey into the “land of the leathernecks” I realized that several times I told God “No, I would never do that” and God said to me “O ye of little faith”. It started off with me telling God I didn’t want to marry a Marine. My view of the Marine Corps was that they were all stuck up and snobby about their “lofty” position, even though I failed to see it as such. Most Marines will even admit to being stuck up and snobby because they think they are the best. I tend to agree with them now but not when I was telling God no. I didn’t like most of the Marines that I knew, and now as I look back I realize I didn’t know that many. I didn’t want my husband to become one of “them”. When my husband first started considering the military, he was looking at the Navy and I was alright with that. I gave God my stamp of approval on that and was excited about becoming a Navy wife. However, as the months dragged on while we waited for a job opening, my husband said he couldn’t leave our growing family hanging with no substantial job in the immediate future and he started looking to other branches of service. I was currently 6 months pregnant. He had come to the conclusion, after much prayer and thought, that the military was where God was leading him but not necessarily to the Navy. He wanted to talk with the Marine recruiters and I almost said out loud “No way!” After my own thought and prayer I realized that this may very well be where the Lord wanted my husband. I went with him to the recruiters and he left there saying “I want to do some PT with them and run the IST and see how I do.” He did such a good job and enjoyed it so much that he came home knowing this is what God wanted him to pursue. After that, the Lord clearly paved the way for him and once things got rolling, they haven’t stopped! Again, the Lord was making His way clear to us and it was definitely different from mine!

The next time I remember verbally saying no was when we were deciding who would be there with me for the birth of our first child. I wanted it to just be me and my husband to enjoy this miracle. Even though I knew my mom wanted to be there I said no and she decided she wasn't going to come until after our baby was born. Because of the uncertainties of babies coming, she wasn’t sure whether she should book a flight for my due date or wait until we called and said I was in labor. She decided on waiting until she got the call so she most definitely wouldn’t have been there for the birth. But, with everything falling into place so quickly with the Marine Corps my husband most definitely wasn't going to be there...he would be in Boot Camp far, far away so now God was telling me "Yes, Leah will be there with you." From this I was learning that Gods ways are not always our ways and He always has a much better plan in mind for us. What only He knew at that time was that my husband would make it back in time for our daughter’s birth and with a few hours to spare! 

                Before we were even pregnant with Aurora, I had told God how I wanted things laid out. We were going to start our family after we had been married for 2 years. That would give us enough time to do what we wanted, which was mostly taking a couple vacations just by ourselves. We would also be able to pay back most, if not all, of my husband’s college loans and then we would be more financially secure and feel more like it was time to start a family. Again, I was telling God “No, I don’t want a child yet” but God was saying “I have a different plan in mind for you.” As I look into my beautiful daughter’s face, I realize that His plan is always best but so often it doesn’t match ours at all. We were not expecting to be pregnant 7 months after we got married but God had something different in mind.