Starting a new journey

I tell my clients all the time to journal in order to express their emotions, fears and irrational thoughts. My own therapist tells me to journal as well for the very same reason. My mom has jumped on to the journal bandwagon and has repeatedly told me to journal. Friends and family have received the journal memo as well and have tried to encourage me to find the benefits of journaling.

Have I listened to any of their advice or my own? Nope. I'm not sure if I'm just a defiant little kid, or am I simply too lazy to buy a journal and start writing. Maybe it is a little of both.Thanks to my job as a historian for a couple years at the Amen Clinics, I have fallen in love with typing. I am a super impatient, instant gratification addict, so I love typing upwards of 80-90 wpm rather than using a pen at a much slower speed and getting a cramp in my hand each time I try to write faster. So with this typing preference, I figured I could just do my own modern version of journaling and start a blog. It is 2010 anyways, and I'll be saving some trees if I avoid the paper route. Rationalization at its best.

One of the main reasons, serious note here, that I'm starting a blog, is to record my journey and share it with the people I love as I experience pregnancy. Yep. Pregnancy. Today I am 11 weeks, 1 day pregnant. How do I feel? I feel tired, nauseous, bloated, tired, tired and tired. Outside of normal pregnancy symptoms, my emotions are a cocktail blend of fear, doubt, insecurity, happiness, excitement and uncertainty. Don't get me wrong, I'm so blessed that God has given me the opportunity to be a mother! So blessed. But I am slowly realizing that this possible 9/10 month journey is putting me in a situation that is beyond awkward and so dang scary.

After miscarrying in January 2010, to be put back into a situation that presents itself in such a similar fashion and has me face the possibility of another loss, is something that terrifies me. Also, as many of you know, and I'm starting to find out, there is just nothing you can control and nothing you can do to ensure that your baby will reach full term and be delivered on the expectant due date. What! Nothing I or you can do. UGH! I hate that scenario. All of my life, I have succeeded by doing, by controlling, and by pushing forward. Now I am in a situation where I just have to have faith and simply do my part in taking care of my body. YUCK! I don't like this helpless kind of situation. The CONTROL FREAK in me wants to control. I almost feel like my hands and feet have been bound or taken away from me. In addition, I usually put myself in situations that guarantee my success. Ha! Smart thinking huh? Why would I do anything different? So being in this situation here, you know the pregnancy one, there is no guarantee.

So this is why I titled my blog, "Breaking down the control freak." My control freak personality is getting a beating.

And you know what, THANK GOD for the beating. Thank you Heavenly Father for this journey, for this adventure and for this opportunity to become broken. I know that God has my best interest in hand, and even if He were to take this baby from my womb tonight, I'd be better for it. Of course, I want to be a mom. Of course, I want to meet this little "it" growing inside of me and show him or her love and God's creation. And of course, I don't like worrying every second about another miscarriage, about the lack of control I have over this baby, etc. But I know that I'm being shaped and defined into a more Christ-like image. I can just feel God working. He's breaking down the control freak. And guess what, I'm working hard on letting Him...stepping aside and harnessing up that tendency to resist and do it my way.

So I include you on my journey and challenges that this pregnancy is inevitably going to bring me. Thanks for your support and joining me as I fall, cry, whine, and question. I can't do it without any of you. And thanks for reading my 2010 tree-saving, lazy verion of journaling.