Crazy (but fun) Week

Friday morning began a week-and-a-half that is surely my busiest in quite a while. But so many fun things have happened in the last few days and will be happening this week! I planned to take pictures at all of these fun things, but so far, I've forgotten every time. But anyway, on Friday I met my sweet friend Megan at a town about an hour away (at the halfway point between where we both live) and hung out for a good part of the day. Jonah went with me and was a great traveling buddy. We met at Starbucks and chatted for a long time while Jonah watched a few videos on his DVD player....yes, I was that mom and it was more than worth it. That thing is one of God's greatest gifts to our generation of mothers, I am convinced. Then, we spent several hours shopping together and eating lunch. It was great to catch up...it had been a while, and it's always refreshing to spend time with this friend. We have great conversations that always uplift, and I was so excited to hear all about her wedding plans and thoughts on her upcoming marriage. I don't think I've written about this before, but when she got engaged this past fall, she called to ask me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding and I had to tell her I was pregnant (only six weeks at the time and wasn't telling anyone yet)....her wedding date is five days after my due date, and she's getting married in Maine. So that obviously won't work out! I was really sad about it. I don't think I have ever looked forward to a friend getting married as much as I do for her....she has such a passion for the Lord and a(n) (uncommon) wisdom about marriage that I think will just prepare her in ways I certainly wasn't prior to getting married. Their dating relationship has been such a mirror of God's glory, and I know their marriage will be as well. I don't know if it's just my experience...but it seems like opportunities for real excitement about people getting married (for the right reasons) just keep getting rarer. It's so sad. So I'm really celebrating this one. Anyway, it was a great day and a fun, refreshing time with a dear friend.

I hurried back home to throw my stuff together and immediately head out to our church's women's retreat for Friday night and most of the day Saturday. The topic of the weekend dealt with moving from fear to freedom, and I'll be blogging about that soon. I can hardly wait to share with you some of the things God placed on my heart during the retreat! It was also fun being there with some of the sweetest friends God has brought into my life since moving here. I got to share a cabin with some of my closest friends and we definitely shared some laughs. But it didn't seem like enough time! It seemed like good conversations got started but there wasn't enough time to finish them. I told the girls I think we need a follow-up retreat very soon...maybe at Starbucks one evening?? =)

Then, last night we hired a baby-sitter for only the third time ever, and Joel and I attended a wedding. It was good for the reasons that the groom's family is very dear to me and I loved being able to celebrate with and show my support for this couple and also because it was gorgeous!!! I so love a pretty wedding. I really wish I had taken pictures of the flower arrangements because you just wouldn't believe them. Lavishly beautiful. So I really did enjoy being there and being a part of it. But it didn't take long for the evening to go downhill just a bit. My extreme tiredness set in very quickly. Not to mention my hormonal craziness. I can't explain it, but I have started noticing that lately I have been pretty weird emotionally. Not that I'm never weird or emotional, but this is different. I don't even feel like the same me at all. I left the wedding wanting to cry, not knowing why. (Except maybe partly because we stayed at the reception for a long time and still had to leave before the cake-cutting. Wedding cake is near the top of my list of favorite things in life, so I was just a tad bitter. But that's a different story...) I really couldn't place my finger on what it was exactly that was bothering me, but you know how sometimes you just have these really high expectations of how an evening is going to go - like it's going to be all grand and glamorous - and then there is a let-down when it just ends up being normal? Well, that's how it was....enter in crazy emotional pregnant hormones. It was not pretty. Speaking of pretty, it's embarrassing to admit that that may have had something to do with it too....NOT feeling pretty. I felt unattractive, so obviously tired, and not dressed quite right for the occasion. (The dress I had planned on wearing - my only good option for maternity clothes for a wedding - got ruined an hour before the wedding. Completely ruined. So what I was forced to wear was not something I felt good in at all.) And when I got home, I took off my tall boots and my calves and ankles actually expanded past the width of my boots. And they weren't tight boots! It seemed like they were never going to stop growing outward. I have never had swelling like that before! My feet were HUGE. That has a way of making a girl feel prettier. No one else better get married before I have this baby, because I am not going. I have decided there is no need for me to attend a wedding while pregnant. It just couldn't be a good thing. Everyone will be in their beautiful cocktail dresses with strappy high heels and I'll be the very pregnant-looking one in the frumpy dress. They'll all be dancing and having a great time, and I'll be sitting down the whole time doing nothing but retaining water. Nothing good could come from putting myself through that again. And I hate to admit all this. Really. I like to think I can rise above the hormones. I mean, I do know that the Holy Spirit isn't limited during the nine months of pregnancy. But man, this is hard for me this time. The weird hormonal stuff. At this point in my pregnancy with Jonah, I was just starting to feel good physically. I had a different kind of experience where my last trimester was the one I felt the best in. So...maybe having more energy helped me not to experience the yucky emotional aspects of pregnancy as intensely...? And this time, I've really noticed a significant increase in my tiredness and lack of energy the last couple of weeks. Could that be contributing to me being this emotional basketcase right now? I mean, I'm telling you....I'm like a freak show. I've really had to apologize a lot to my husband this week....just for meanness. Nothing else. Just found myself being mean for no reason. Well, you know... for reasons like him getting a bad headache, forcing us to leave the wedding before we were able to eat cake. How dare he. Control your sickness, husband! =) Oh...I just am finding new things all the time that are making pregnancy even more interesting. And what's funny....someone who obviously doesn't know me very well asked me this weekend if I am enjoying my last months of pregnancy. Ahem. Couldn't she have used a different word than "enjoy"? It's not the word that first comes to my mind. I didn't want to lie. But I didn't have to, because a truthful answer came to mind very quickly: I am grateful for these months of pregnancy. There are things I don't enjoy but that I wouldn't trade for anything. These are signs of a life that God is growing and a blessing that He is cultivating in the life of our family, and I'll take nausea, back pain, big fat feet, weird emotional outbursts that come out of nowhere, ugly clothes....ALL of it. I'll take it all. I can't get over how blessed I am to be carrying this little girl inside of me and to be mothering this precious son of mine. What an unbelievable gift. So I will choose to praise Him for these things. But I'll need to deal with the meanness aspect. It's not good. Any thoughts about not being the wicked witch of the west when the pregnancy hormones are this high?!! They're kind of catching me off guard. Thanks for letting me be real with you about how I'm feeling right now and what struggles and insecurities have plagued me recently. It's not fun admitting them at all. But I did so that maybe just writing them will scream at me how superficial they are and I'll be disgusted with my fixation last night on the unimportant. I need to get it together. My family doesn't need to suffer through three more months of Crazy Hannah. I think they must have liked Old Hannah! Evidently, they miss her.

And I think you'll agree that God knows exactly what I need when I need it when you hear this: My husband and I will be leaving for a three day trip to Colorado this week. He'll be attending a conference while I spend lots of time reading and relaxing at the hotel. I'm hoping to have some good blogging time too. We'll also have lots of free time to spend together doing vacation-y things, and it's the refresher that I so obviously need right now. It was an unexpected trip that just came up in the last few weeks, and it's the sweetest surprise gift from the Lord. Pray for our travel and time together and for this mother's heart who is torn over leaving her son for these next few days. Satan is definitely trying to attack me with anxiety, and I'm just trying to fill my mind with truth as I prepare to get on that airplane tomorrow.

Thanks for your participation in the discussions of the last two posts. Loved it!