Thursday, April 22, 2010

Our Threshold

The threshold is the point in the journey where you have gone from your known world to the unknown and becomes the official starting point of the journey. The threshold was a gradual thing that first started when the menstrual cycle wasn't starting when I figured it would. A little nervous to see what this could result in I postponed using a home pregnancy test that I got from my bridal shower several months previous. After still not having the cycle for two weeks I decided it was time to do the test. I started in my unknown world, never having to pee on something other than in a toilet bowel or on a log out camping ( yes I sit on logs, I never could figure out squatting). The test was filling up and there was the plus sign, the positive that says you are pregnant. I let me doubts get with me because I wasn't sure I was ready for this, and didn't really let it set in yet. Four days later I decided to go to the health center on the college campus to get an official pregnancy test. Again another unknown phase: peeing into a cup, I am not sure which is more ackward, a cup or a stick. The results came quick and it is official: I am pregnant and I am due the end of December. I have stepped from my known world of living, breathing, thinking, going about as a regular person, to my new unknown world knowing that there is a super tiny little individual growing inside me, getting ready to change my life forever.

Our journey of many new unknowns has officially begun!

Our Call

Yes, I mean "our Call." Even though this journey I will share will initially be about the different things I will experience in the journey of pregnancy, I could not fail to put that the beginning of this journey started as a duet, and in many cases will somewhat be a duet throughout various times of the journey. I call it "our Call" because it was not me alone that felt "the need to restore something missing in our lives." It is amazing to consider how much Heavenly Father is a part of the creating of families. For our entire marriage so far (which hasn't been that long, but long enough to feel remotely comfortable with each other) we simply didn't feel like we were ready to start having children, we felt like I should be more focused about finishing my schooling, especially since I was so close, I didn't want a pregnancy and the many possible complications that could come with it, to interfere with me completing my degree that is so very close in view. We were determined to wait before we even considered the next phase of our family life.

Then it all changed. And the magical part about it is that it changed for both of us at the same time, without either of us forcing feelings on each other. Yes, we both felt the call. Around the end of February, towards the beginning of March 2010, we started feeling different, like a simple subtle aching difference. We couldn't really pin point what it was, or why we were feeling different, but we both felt it there. Later on, with our own separate feelings and thinking we felt like maybe it was time to start having children, or at least to start considering it more, but still didn't approach these feelings to each other for a while. Then I took part in being trained in "Positive Discipline," a parenting strategy that I feel in love with the methods, after this two weekend workshop, I felt it so strongly that I didn't have to be scared anymore about being a parent. Then each after more feelings and stirrings started to come, I felt like it was time. Even though this went off course from our original goal of waiting till I finished my Bachelor's, I came to the realization that even though I still had a semester and half left of schooling, if this was the right thing to do, then I knew that God would bless us in our decisions, and that things would work out some how. I cannot deny the feelings that came so strongly about what I felt we should do. But I still needed to talk to my husband about it. And ironically enough, when we talked he had been feeling similar things as well, and the more we discussed it, the more we felt so strongly that this was the direction we need to take. Our call had be granted, we felt something missing in our life, a hole in our hearts, we felt the need to bring a new life to this world.