The Reason.

By the way...

I feel I must explain the reason behind the openness in my previous post. I normally would never share about something like a miscarriage so openly, and probably not at all. However, God has been leading me, inexplicably, to be more open about it. I know that I was encouraged tremendously by several women who have shared with me that they have been there, too. If I can help anyone by being candid about my life, I think I should.

I hope that sufficiently explains it. This isn't to serve as a justification, as I need none. Just a simple explanation behind my reasoning.

Update - Fast Forward a Year

::Kristen logs in to blogger, looks sheepishly at the date at the top of last published post, grimaces.::

Apologies, people.

Life is crazy. You know it, I know it. Yet, most people still manage to keep a blog up-to-date within a year, at least. Oh well. Life goes on.

Well, life has changed a lot at the Learned house over the past year. We live in a different place now. We moved from our two-bedroom apartment into a three-bedroom townhouse over New Years' this year. It suits us well - definitely better than the apartment. We have room to live. Hopefully this will be the last place we live until we buy a house.

Last year was a good one for us.

This one, however, got off to a rough start.

In December, we discovered that I was pregnant. We were so excited - and it was really quite surreal. It seemed like no sooner did we find out and manage to absorb the news and get excited about it that I noticed that I wasn't feeling right. I wound up losing the baby at about 6 weeks. It was an early miscarriage, so it wasn't as painful as it might have been later. Physically, that is.

Emotionally, it was terrible.

The fear I experienced when I realized something wasn't right.

The dread I felt when I was going through what I thought it probably was.

The smallness I felt when I realized I couldn't do anything to stop it.

The emptiness I felt when I knew it was over.

The humiliation I felt when I had to tell the people that knew (there weren't many).

The grief I felt (and have continued to feel) for the little person I loved and lost, and for what could have been.

The minute amount of hope I had been holding onto until my doctor's appointment in the middle of the following week. I cherished a teeny tiny flicker of hope that I'd go to the doctor's office and they'd say, oh, Mrs. Learned, you ARE pregnant, and everything is fine, and it must have just been a scare. Here, let's do an ultrasound and prove it! However, that wasn't what happened. And I knew it wouldn't be. But it still was another crushing blow when, at the doctor's office, they confirmed that I wasn't pregnant.

The loneliness I felt. I only shared my body with the baby for a few weeks. But I felt very alone in my body all by myself when he (I feel like it was a boy, for some reason) wasn't there anymore.

The confusion. What went wrong? What should I do now? Should I keep the estimated due date on the calendar, or white it out and pretend it never happened? Should we try again, or wait? Should I even feel this way about a miscarriage that happened so early? Am I overreacting?

I can't wait to meet our little one in heaven. I never dreamed that I would be one of those women who had experienced something like this - the loss of a child. Some might scoff and say that I haven't experienced the loss of a child - and I know that compared to the loss of some I know who have lost babies during birth or the first few months of life, I have lost little. But it is a loss. My life is changed because of that experience, and earth has lost a little more appeal. I can't wait to get to heaven and meet my Lord, and also get to meet my baby.

But life is good, too!

I have been experiencing a revival of sorts in the past month or so. At church, Jeff and Jason have been teaching through a series on four attributes of God: God is Great, Good, Glorious, and Gracious. They were so timely for me. Each message was delivered, it seemed, right to my heart from God's. (If you want to hear them, I highly recommend. Download them at www.visiodei.org).

I'm not ready to describe in great detail what God's doing in my life right now to people en masse, but I will be. And until then, I will continue to try to keep up the posting here. For posterity, if nothing else.

Emergency Fund is Funded!

I know, the blog title was a bit of a spoiler for the post that's to come, but I don't care: Our $1,000 Emergency Fund is now funded!

Mostly because of our tax return. But still, no matter how it happened, its done now and we can move to Step 2 of our Total Money Makeover!

We have actually cheated a bit - we have paid a few things off that needed to get addressed immediately, plus taken care of a few other things such as car repair, doctor appointments, new glasses, and cat spaying. No matter - it feels so wonderful to have been able to take care of things and now really and truly move on to the Debt Snowball.

In other news, we are welcoming a new little member into the Learned family this weekend: another cat! Phoebe is a cat that we got 2 and a half years ago when my beloved Coco passed away, and she has been living with my dad, but since he got a new job and is having to be away from home a lot more, he wants her to live somewhere where she will have company and plenty of attention and love. I am very excited to have her live with us, and I think that she and Moira and Athena will get along great. Maybe not in the first couple of days, but over time, it will be great.

I'll keep you posted!

Updates and Such.

I will say it: the main reason I haven't blogged in awhile is because we have been so ding dang busy. There's been a lot of fodder for blogging, just no time (or energy) to write.

So I will take advantage of some time now and update.

Rob is working at Intrex Computers as a tech. He's repairing PCs, which isn't his ultimate goal, but its great for now as he continues to press on toward getting his CCNA. Now that we are more settled in our larger, two bedroom apartment and our finances are not so crazy, its beginning to seem possible to study and get the CCNA behind us again. Not to mention other things, like cleaning...reading...you get the picture.

My job also has undergone a change. I am working for the same boss, but now at a different location, since the one I was at before closed. My boss moved me to his other location and things are working out nicely. One of the best parts is that I am right across the street from Rob. Literally. Intrex faces North Raleigh Business Center. We get to have lunch together every day. Its wonderful!

I am getting more involved at our church also. I am helping one of our pastors once a week with some administrative stuff and I am really enjoying it...it is a nice way to be involved at church and meet some of the people there.

I put together a reading list for 2010. I didn't read much at all last year, and for my own accountability, I wanted to make it a priority to get more books under my belt. This is a foreign concept to me, though. I have never in my life done a thing like this, but upon reflection of last year, I realized that I couldn't think of a single book I read from beginning to end (execpt for The Total Money Makeover) and I was a little upset about it. Reading is one of the best things I can do...I learn and experience new things...not to mention that the activity of reading is probably my favorite of anything else I do. No wonder I was so stressed and crazy last year.

So, my reading list, for anyone who cares:
1 - The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
2 - Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
3 - Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
4 - The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5 - The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
6 - Moby Dick by Herman Melville
7 - Shirley by Charlotte Brontё
8 - Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
9 - 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márques
10 - Confessions by Augustine
11 - The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
12 - Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
13 - Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

So, there it is, in no particular order. And what am I reading right now? Well, I have started and am about a third of the way through Madame Bovary, but I am actually reading The Appeal by John Grisham. Yes, I know. Not on the list. Not great literature. But I definitely enjoy Grisham novels and it has been a long time since I have read one...and its fun! So I will return to Flaubert after I finish Grisham.

I have also been studying languages again lately. I love languages and am pretty good at learning them. I took quite a bit of Spanish in high school and some in college also, and I don't want to forget what I have learned, but rather to press on and keep adding to my vocabulary and practicing my grammar so that I can speak it fluently. I have been reviewing it for a couple of weeks, and have begun reading Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone). I figure that I have read that book so many times in English that reading it in Spanish will be a challenge, but not so much as if I were reading a book for the first time. It has been an excellent way to learn new words, practice grammar and seal it in. I have really enjoyed it. I also am beginning to study some Greek again. I took Greek in college also, but it was Biblical Greek instead of modern Greek. Quite a different way to learn a language, that was. So since my Spanish isn't really learning, but rather, reviewing, I'm beginning to learn Greek in order to be able to speak it.

Our Total Money Makeover is going. We are working on getting current...doing the things that we need to do first. We got Rob's glasses replaced, are doing work on the cars, and in general, doing things that will be a problem if they remain undone. Even the little that we have been able to do so far has been a tremendous load off...I'm sleeping much better at night.

Well, that's about as much updating as I can bear, and probably as much as anyone reading can bear anyway. I will continue to update on life and what we're up to as much as I can. But no promises, hah.

I'm Sorry, I'm Sorry.

I swore I wasn't going to be one of those people who start a blog and then never write.

But...it appears as though I am.

Ah, well...one day at a time.