adventures in pregnancy: mr. bean

Pregnancy has not been good for blogging.  I thought it might be.  I mean, I could whine and moan about the discomforts of pregnancy for NINE WHOLE MONTHS, right?  Ample material!  But...I also started to think of how SICK of my whining my friends and readers would get...and how sad my friends who struggle with conceiving might feel...and how STINKIN' TIRED I would be--so tired that even spending time whining and moaning seemed as though it might take too much energy.  I remember after my first trimester how I knew I was beginning to feel a bit better because the idea of watching a TV show downstairs on the couch was not so overwhelmingly exhausting (I'd been crashing in bed many hours a day).  LAYING ON THE COUCH was exhausting!  I mean, seriously!  Who can blog?

Not to mention that my blog definitely takes a food slant and just try writing about food when you can't stomach food.  Just, ew.  Gross.

I have barely cooked for my family in months.  Yep, that's right.  Me.  Flathead Mama.  Foodie.  More often than not, I find myself getting take-out or making a big salad for dinner.  Or a sandwich.  Mmmmmm....  Garlic has become persona non grata, which eliminates basically all of my recipes except dessert (although if I had found a way to add garlic to dessert, that probably would be part of my repertoire too!).  The first trimester, I couldn't cook or even stand cooking smells in the house.  I was craving chili one day and I made my husband cook it on the barbecue grill.  A few friends brought me casseroles.  BLESS THEM.  Because of them, my family could actually eat a few home-cooked meals!  And Sweet Peaks...Oh, God bless Sweet Peaks...their creamy, homemade ice cream was one of the few things that tasted really good.  Hence, my visits about three times a week.  No exaggeration.

And then...just as the afternoon sickness of nausea began to abate, I got a bad sinus infection that turned into a cough that made me throw up (which, strangely enough, I had never done from pregnancy nausea...in either pregnancy!).  And then I got food poisoning and had diarrhea for 4 days.  I was reminded of the line from The Devil Wears Prada: "I'm just one stomach flu away from my goal weight."  Haha.  In a way, it was good.  I had gained a little weight before getting pregnant.  This equaled me out a little bit.  Look on the positive side, I guess.  I wouldn't recommend 4 days of diarrhea as the best diet ever though.  Don't try this at home.

I got so depleted, I started having what almost felt like contractions.  So I had to get checked out at labor and delivery.  There was enough instability that they ordered an ultrasound.  But ultimately, baby was found to be staying put.  I went home, rested, stayed in bed (some more) while my husband did basically everything (some more).  BLESS HIM.  Without him, I probably couldn't have gotten well.  But I did.

The last week or so has been good.  We have done more fun things in the last week than in practically the whole pregnancy combined.  (Arts Festival!  Swimming at the lake!  Farmer's Market!  Thursday Fest in Kalispell!  Movie with the hubby!)  I'm tired and sore these days (and suffering from more allergies than usual), but functional.  And we found out this week that our baby Bean is a boy, so we have taken to calling him Mr. Bean.  I'm feeling him move more and more and so grateful to have gotten this far.  So grateful for the husband, daughter, family, and friends who have helped me through the hormones and sickness and difficulties of the first trimester (and part of the second).  So grateful to God for sustaining me even through an all-too-frequent negative attitude.  So grateful for the good and replenishing activities I've been able to do this week.

I hope with some renewed health and energy, I will be able to post a little more often.  But however things work out, know that I plan to be with this blog long-term.  Because, well, writing is awesome.  And so are my readers.

Summer Vacation: Seattle, Portland and the Oregon Coast (Part II)

Beautiful sculpture in front of the headquarters of World Vision 

Before I get to the second half of our vacation in Oregon, I wanted to mention our visit to World Vision in Federal Way, Washington.  We thought visiting their headquarters and taking a tour would be a great learning experience for Burrito and it was!  We pray every night for the "people in trouble" in Africa and it was great for Burrito to see pictures and hands-on illustrations of what people in Africa and other impoverished areas of the world go through.  It was wonderful to see the ways World Vision is helping through working in entire villages to provide clean water, food, health care, schooling and micro loans for businesses.  I was also impressed with their efficiency and preparation.  For example, they stash emergency supplies in specific locations around the world so that they can get in when there is a natural disaster or other emergency and begin assistance immediately.  Their long-term relationships and ongoing work within each country also helps them to make sure supplies actually get to the people who need them.  Very impressive.

After our whirlwind trip to Seattle, we began the trek down to Portland.  We began to be interested in Portland a year or so ago when we started watching Portlandia on IFC.  The opening song and comedic segment of the show stated that "The dream of the '90s is alive in Portland" and reminded us that it is the city where "young people go to retire."  We thought this was hilarious (and let's face it, we've met people from other cities...cough, Minneapolis-St. Paul...who remind us greatly of the characters who people Portlandia).  We (cough, I) also enjoyed being poked fun at a bit.  One of the first sketches involve a couple who are so deeply interested in where their food comes from that they want to know the name of the chicken they are being served at a restaurant, as well as all of the aspects of its life, and finally decide to visit the farm where he was raised before ordering dinner.  This is foodie/locavore taken to the extreme.  I can take a little good-natured ribbing!

We were only in Portland two nights, but I can testify that the slogan you find on a building downtime ("Keep Portland Weird") is entirely warranted and will not be a difficult goal to achieve.  I saw all of the following downtown during our visit: Rastafarians, a "gang" of guys on segways decorated with roses in a parade, people trying to get Oregon voters to sign up for a bill to make pot legal, a street preacher, street musicians, a dad pushing a baby car seat in an umbrella stroller, a piano player who was playing the piano on a rigged-up bicycle, one and only one very dressed up trendy lady, artists molding your face into a garden gnome in 10 minutes, a guy dressed up as Spiderman (complete with full face mask) on a bike, and a very fine variety of street food.  Quite the collection of folks!

In the midst of the weirdness that is Portland, we managed to have a nice time, though. First off, we had to visit the famous Powell's City of Books (a bookstore that takes up an entire city block and is the largest new and used bookstore in the world!).  I was in bliss surrounded by that many books, but Burrito was quickly bored.  She did enjoy waiting with a little girl who had lost her Daddy though until the store manager could call her dad on the intercom.  Powell's even has a machine where you can self-publish your book!  I loved the quote on these stairs:

 Next, we visited the Saturday Market downtown, where local artists sell their work and world street food is available for lunch.  I opted for the yakisoba noodles from the Hawaiian food truck, while staring longingly at the Lebanese and African food trucks (garlic figured majorly in their offerings and I was still dealing with garlic aversion).  We also visited the Lan Su Chinese Gardens in the heart of Portland.  We learned that for Chinese culture, there is no division between garden and home, as perhaps there would be in the United States or Great Britain.  The home is a garden and together they create a cohesive whole, providing serenity throughout.  I loved the quotation in the program: "Most cherished in this mundane world is a place without traffic; truly in the midst of a city there can be mountain and forest."--Wen Zhengming

We also had the pleasure of taking time for tea at the Chinese tea house located in the middle of the garden.  It was a deeply peaceful location and Burrito loved having a "tea party."  I sampled the licorice tea, she tried orange-cranberry and Daddy tried jasmine tea. 

After an eventful day in Portland, we took our next day to spend on a relaxing trip to the Oregon Coast where Christopher had a Sunday morning 5k planned in Cannon Beach.  Early forecasts had been for rain, but we were so glad that it turned out to be a nice day.  As is the case in Oregon, the beach was a bit cold at first (and the water is always cold that far north), but it was blissful laying on the sand and smelling the salt air and hearing the crash of the waves.  This was Burrito's first big trip to the ocean too (she had been to the Atlantic Ocean once but not long enough to play and enjoy it).  She worked on sand castles, hunted for shells and ran, giggling, through the bracingly cold water on the shore.

Seaside, OR--the end of Lewis and Clark's journey.

I am always at my most peaceful at the ocean.

 After a visit to Cannon Beach (which has a quiet, family-friendly vibe), we headed over to Seaside (which is louder and busier) where we stayed at a very affordable mini-apartment for the night right on the beach (on the quieter side of town).  Nothing beats being able to see the ocean from your bedroom!  The next morning, we sadly said goodbye to the ocean and began to make our trek home.

All in all, it was a great family vacation, made even nicer by a shorter drive than our usual massively long trek back to the Midwest.  We had never visited Seattle or Portland before so it was wonderful to experience new places.

Summer Vacation: Seattle, Portland and the Oregon Coast (Part 1)

I just returned from our family vacation last week.  I had been keeping my expectations low for vacation.  Would I be able to sleep on the road?  (Thanks to insomnia, this is often a problem for me.)  Would I feel well enough to walk around and see the sights?  Would I be able to eat anything good (thanks to continuing nausea)?

I have to say that things went better than expected.  We went to bed early each night, woke up early and spent our mornings (when I had more energy) walking around and doing fun things.  When I began to crash in early afternoon, we returned to our hotel and Christopher took Burrito to the pool or somewhere else fun and I laid down and rested.  It worked pretty well!  I'm a bit disappointed that my nausea limitations kept me from enjoying as much of the ample foodie-friendly cuisine to be found on the coast as I would have liked, but I'm happy that I did manage to try a few highlights.  Now, I will simply have to return another time when I am feeling better!

In Seattle, we bought the City Pass and found it a great way to save money and simplify our site-seeing.  My favorite site was the Space Needle, which was a super classy way to see the views in Seattle.  They had one of the best gift shops among the city's attractions too.  I will have to return sometime to sip a glass of red wine from the top of Seattle.

We also managed to escape the rain for a day and get to the Woodland Park Zoo, which was fun for Burrito.  She also greatly enjoyed the Aquarium, which is super toddler-friendly.  In one section, kids can reach into touching pools and touch starfish and other underwater animals.  Christopher and Burrito, my science buffs, enjoyed the Science Museum quite a bit.  We took a Harbor Tour through Argosy Cruises as well.  The boat could have been a bit cleaner but our tour guide was well informed and entertaining and we enjoyed being out on the water.

My very favorite place in Seattle, though, was the Pike Place Market!  This, my friends, is foodie mecca!  If I lived in Seattle, I think I would do most of my grocery shopping there.  From fresh farm vegetables and fruit, freshly caught fish (I forgot how good fresh fish smell), handmade cheese (and you can even see it made at Beecher's Handmade Cheese), sausages and prepared meats, bakeries....This is the home of beautiful food!  We spent the morning of my birthday at Pike Place and it was wonderful.

We stopped at the beautiful Le Panier Bakery and sampled pain au chocolat along with gorgeous, colorful macaroons.  This may be hard to believe, but I had never had real French macaroons before.  Now I see what all the fuss is about!  We had orange and lemon macaroons.  Little pillows of joy!

We lunched at Pike Place Chowder; their clam chowder is the best I've ever had: buttery and flavorful!  We enjoyed the joy of the fish tossers and the live musicians and the general happiness among everyone working and shopping in the market.  And of course I had to visit the original Starbucks and grab a birthday mocha!  Pretty sure it tasted better from the original store!:-)

We also managed to stop by one of the most famous food trucks in Seattle and the United States: Maximus Minimus.  This pig-shaped food truck has been featured on a number of TV shows and is known for its pulled pork sandwiches, with either Maximus (spicy) or Minimus (sweet) barbecue sauce.  We also got some delicious mac and cheese that is prepared by Beecher's and available in the Market, topped off with some Maximus sauce.  It was all pretty crave-worthy. 

In my next post, I'll share why keeping Portland weird is not an unreachable goal and how the ocean is the best place to be, even if a toddler is nagging at you the whole time.

To be continued...

i can finally talk about it: expecting baby number two!

Last month, Christopher and I found out that we are expecting our second baby in December.  I haven't been able to blog much for two reasons: 1) Extreme exhaustion and 2) I couldn't write about what was really going on!

It's amazing how in just weeks, your body COMPLETELY CHANGES as a pregnant lady.  Circulation is affected.  Suddenly, taking a load of clothes out of the washer completely winds me.  I've been sick as a dog when it comes to morning sickness (which in my case should be called evening sickness!). 

I'll be honest...I've been struggling a lot with "receiving with thanksgiving" this first stage of pregnancy.  The exhaustion and nausea have been all-consuming and of course pregnancy brings up all kinds of self-doubt and worry as well.  And I worry about all that I am placing on my husband's shoulders (despite his gracious willingness to shoulder the burden).  I've been looking for resources online to help my attitude improve.  I've been asking for prayers for my attitude to improve.  I know that this too shall pass and I know that ultimately I am struggling with what is a difficult part of a very happy thing (a new baby), but it has been hard.  For those of you with experience in the art of weathering the first trimester, I'd love any advice and encouragement you can offer.  I will share insights I am learning as I go through as well, but for now I am not the expert.  I need to learn and grow.  (And perhaps accept the suffering that comes?)

I did begin to really embrace the joy of this pregnancy when we told Burrito the big secret on Sunday.  I'm sure she thinks that an alien has taken over Mom's body (partially true) since I've been acting so weird.  She was absolutely delighted and has been helping me get Bean's (our nickname for the baby) room organized.  She loves to hear every detail about the pregnancy and how Bean will grow and develop.  She is delighted by it all and it delights me to share with her.  It seems like throughout this time, we have gotten closer as mother and daughter.  She wants to snuggle and talk more (which I always used to wish she would do).  She wants to help.  She's even been acting a little more grown-up as we call her "big sister."  I'm so proud of the new parts of her I see emerging.

My experience with Burrito has taught me a lot.  I had many fears and worries before she was born too.  I was truly worried if I would be a good mother.  But despite some difficulties along the way, Burrito has shown me that there is truly nothing to fear.  My life is so much richer for having her in my life.  I am trying to trust in faith--believing without seeing--that the same will be true of Bean.

I'm also going to buy Creating with God: The Holy Confusing Blessedness of Pregnancy.
The author's argument?  Pregnancy is a way in which God works in us, even when it may be hard to detect His work.  The suffering we go through is not a waste but can train us in the practices of faith.  I think it will be just what the doctor ordered.

P.S. So much for the weight loss plan!

what i tell myself on the difficult days

Let's be honest.  Being a mother is not a piece of cake.  There are days (like this week) when Burrito spits up all over the car seat. Gross.  (I remember spitting up all over the car too when I was a kid.  Mom, how did you ever get that smell out?)  There are days when Burrito nags me constantly...she wants a snack...she wants me to play with her...she wants to watch a show...she dramatically throws herself on the floor if she doesn't get her way.  She won't let me accomplish simple tasks.  I get exasperated.  I miss the days when I could curl up with a book anytime during the day and no one would bug me.  I miss owning my own time.

There are days when she has sleep disturbances or refuses to go to sleep.  There are days when I am exhausted and have trouble finding the energy for her.

But on those days, I try very hard to remind myself of one simple fact.  I try to remind myself that one days I will long for these days.  And one kiss of those pudgy cheeks, one sweet, "You're my precious Mommy," one cuddle over a story time and it all comes back to me.  These days are so fleeting.  They will be over and done before I can catch my breath.  All older parents say this.  They say they just wish they had slowed down and enjoyed the little kid days.  They say they can't believe how fast it went.  They warn me.  "You will long for these days one day."  I say to it myself over and over again.

Yes, I try to listen.  And I listen not only because life goes fast but because it is fragile.  With grief, I hear of the heartbreaking journeys of mothers and fathers in Somalia, journeys to get their many children to food and water.  I read of how some parents have had to leave dying children by the side of the road in order to save others.  I shudder.  I can't imagine such a world.  A world in which parents have to make such choices.  My heart goes out to them as they are haunted by their decisions.

In recent days, as I think of the fragility of life, as I mourn for the lost children of Somalia, as I pray for the children and their parents, as I organize a fundraiser to help them, Burrito has become even more precious to me.  I hold her close.  I sit and play with her.  I read her stories.  And I drink in the precious life that is given to me in her.  I don't know why God allows the mothers of Somalia to suffer so with their children and why mine is healthy and strong.  I want their children to be healthy too.  I want their children to thrive too.  I don't know why, but I give thanks and I seek to cherish my child, to remember what a gift she is.

Life is fast and life is fragile.  May we treasure our children, our families, our time.

trying to match a toddler’s energy

I love Burrito.  I love spending time with her.  I love the magical moments that are sprinkled through the day.  When she says she loves me (without being asked).  When she learns something new.  When she says something unexpected that makes me laugh out loud.

But there are a whole lot of moments in this journey of parenthood that are pretty mundane.  Even (dare I say it?), boring. 

I struggle with trying to maintain interest in a toddler’s interests.  Because, well, I’m not a toddler.  Where I would like to finish reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, she would like to play doll house and “Mommy play doll house too!” (whatever that means!).  Some days I come up with awesome, creative ideas for play, but other days I have no stinkin’ clue.  Surely, other moms must be filling their days with their young ones with all kinds of new, creative play ideas.  I struggle with how to fill the hours.

And when it gets close to time for Daddy to come home, I count the minutes.  Not because I don’t love spending time with Burrito but because my mind can only fasten itself on the mindset of a toddler for so long.

I wonder how much active play time other moms have with their kids.  Do they stick their little ones in the corner with a pile of toys and let them go at it or do they play with them all day?  And how do they get their housework done?  It’s hard to clean when the little one asks you three times in a row, “What’s that noise?”  For the 70^th time that day.  It’s hard to write a letter when your toddler keeps trying to grab the pen.

So, we divide the day up into portions.  I give myself little breaks throughout the day.  She is perfectly capable of doing some playing on her own now.  We eat breakfast together, then I take a shower while she plays by herself.  Then we usually end up doing something together.  Then lunch, followed by story and nap.  After nap, it’s snack time and try to come up with something else to do together.

I do better some days, better than others.  Some days I am SUPER MAMA, full of creative ideas and energy.  Some days I am SUPER TIRED MAMA, finding it difficult to summon the energy. 

I hope I am doing right by Burrito.  She really is a wonderful child and it is a miracle to see her grow and change each day.  But sometimes I just wish I had more ideas and energy.

Anybody else out ever feel like that?

how I came to be a stay-at-home mommy in montana

This time last year, I was beginning to fray at the edges.  

Ok, I had started to fray a while back.  The truth is, in recent months, I was finally beginning to admit to myself that I was fraying at the edges.  I had a one year old daughter (who I will call “Burrito” for reasons I’ll explain in another post).  My husband and I were serving as pastors of two churches in rural North Dakota.  My father had just been placed on Hospice in Arizona, and I was trying to provide effective care for the wide-ranging needs of 600 or so members of our churches and attempting to still care well for my little family.  And I had just begun to suffer from serious insomnia a few months before. 

The lowest of the low point was the weekend of our biggest service at our northern congregation.  The service was during the big town celebration in a predominantly Icelandic community.  This little North Dakota town didn’t have a lot of notoriety throughout the rest of the year, but every August during the celebration of Icelandic independence from Denmark (the “Deuce of August”), large crowds gathered for the festival.  Important people journeyed from the homeland, including the Prime Minister of Iceland on two of the four summers we were there.  Each year, we conducted a worship service in the heart of the festival and it always turned out to be one of the best attended services of the year.

On this particular day in August, it was my turn to preach.  I had not slept for four nights before this (seemingly out of nowhere) and as I stood up to give my message to the large crowd, I remember the room swaying around me.  I remember a feeling of wispiness and unreality.  It was all I could do to keep my focus on each sentence and try to read what I had written.  My lips and whole body felt weighted down under each heavy word.  When I finished, I collapsed, exhausted, into my chair and my husband led the rest of the service, as we had agreed.

For four nights, I had not slept.  I was wrung out and exhausted and my bed at night became a torture chamber of fear.  Watch the clock.  Count the minutes.  Mind wide-awake.  Unable to shut it down.  “If I go to sleep RIGHT NOW, I can have four hours of sleep.  But I must go to sleep RIGHT NOW.”  But of course, I couldn’t.  It was like I had literally forgotten how to sleep.

Yes, that was the low point.

As you will come to see, I am a particularly stubborn individual.  I was beginning to feel the pull of the exhaustion months and months before.  Some of you might not know a pastor or a pastor’s life very well.  But if you’ve been in any sort of leadership position, you might understand a bit of what I was going through.

I got into ministry because I loved God and His Word and I wanted to share it with others.  I think I was more attached to this work of ministry than I was to the idea of being a mother, in fact.  I had grown up dreaming about getting married and about doing an important work in the world (Writing a book?  Being a missionary?), but not too much about having a baby.  More about that later.

What I didn’t count on was the 24-7 nature of being a pastor.  When you are a pastor, you can get called anytime of the day or night and there’s no telling what kind of situation you will face: someone’s drunken rantings, an expected death, a tragic death, someone’s anger due to your own fault or not due to anything you did at all.  There are countless expectations put on you, some intended, some not.  Everybody who sits in the pew has a different idea of what you should be doing with your time.  Some are charitable, some are not.  That’s human nature; that’s people.  And that’s the burden of leadership.  It goes with the territory, and it went ok for a while, I guess.  Until I had a baby.

The most surprising thing that happened to me when my daughter was born and as I got to know her in the months that followed was the profound love that absolutely captured my heart for her.  Suddenly, my new role as mother—previously not very interesting to me—became the dominant role of my life. 

I know, I know.  Everybody says this will happen to you when you have kids, but you see I really didn’t understand kids before Burrito was born.  I had never babysat a child under the age of 5.  I had never changed a diaper.  I wondered if I had what it took to be a mother.  I had always been much more attached to the idea of having a career or a ministry than the idea of being a mom.  The idea of having a baby was to me something I wanted to be sure to do before I died.  But it was also something I was frankly scared to death of.  But I couldn’t have been more mistaken about how much I was going to love being a mother.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not going to tell you those first few months were easy.  You watch these chick flick movies about having a baby and you think you are supposed to have these rapturous feelings about your screaming, diaper messing little one from day one…even though they are a bit of a stranger to you.  I didn’t have those rapturous feelings all the time right away.

First of all, I got off to a rough start.  I was going to have a home birth, and Burrito didn’t want to come and didn’t want to come.  I was in pretty intense labor at home for two days before I decided, “Yep, I need to go to the hospital.”  Like I said, I’m pretty stubborn.  (And apparently, so is my daughter.)

So, I had a c-section, and I was absolutely exhausted after that.  My maternity leave was spent trying to heal up from the trauma on my body and journeying through a painful start to nursing.

I remember that in the early days it was easy to resent the baby who never wanted to go to sleep and who woke up so often.  I remember the despair and exhaustion and the physical pain from the c-section.  I remember how I felt it physically when she cried.

Yes, those days were tough.  We had family and friends come and help us the first couple of weeks but I was pretty stubborn there too.  I could have gotten a little more help, I think, but somehow it was important to me to do things for myself, my way.  I wanted to own those early days.  But I was very, very tired.

But even in the most painful times, there was this strong attachment to my daughter.  I have never before felt it physically in my body when another human being cried, but I felt it with her.  I think we bonded early on over the trauma we had been through…me to bring her into the world, her to adjust to the world she had been brought into.  I think we neither one like change too well at first.

I went back to work, and I was trying to work, care for the family, take care of the baby, nurse the baby every couple of hours, and somehow remember to eat.  I felt like I was letting everybody down.  I felt really, really empty.  I remember one time agreeing to go to a meeting for a funeral when I should have been nursing and how crummy I felt and how I knew I shouldn’t have done that but how I felt I would let the grieving family down if I didn’t go.

A family friend cautioned me that if things didn’t start getting better for me soon, I might have to face that I was asking too much of myself and my health.  She said I might need to think about making some major changes in my life.  I shrugged her comments off.  No way.  I’m super woman.  I can do this.

I did start going to counseling, and it was helpful, but that was before the onset of the insomnia.  When it began, my counselor convinced me to go to the doctor.  I finally went.  I have battled anxiety and depression since at least my teen years, but I finally had to admit that this had gotten out of control.  Medication slowly began to bring stability back to my life.  I could handle the stress much better, but I still felt like I was letting people down: my husband, my baby, my churches.  Honestly, I want to do things so whole-heartedly, so when I feel I am not giving something my all, it bothers me a lot.  But I was doing better, so I slogged through. In the rural towns in North Dakota where we served, pastors come and go a lot.  It’s pretty tough on people and I really wanted to not let them down, to give this thing a chance.  In my head, I was committed to a ten year stint with them.  I even told some people that that was what I hoped to do.

But then things began to turn.  To add to the stress, my Dad died in February of 2010.  I had barely had a chance to mourn his loss when some major church conflicts and threats on my job began in the summer.  This time I didn’t stop sleeping, but it was awfully stressful.  And I was willing to go through it, to not take the easy way out, but more factors circled around and without going into all the sad details, it became clear…it was time to go. 

We were planning to join a different denomination (kinda like the “brand” of church) and since there were smaller numbers of churches and positions in this “brand”  available, we decided my husband would be the one to look for a call.  To our surprise, he quickly jumped to the top of the list at a church in Bigfork, MT.  My first reaction was “Montana?!”  As far as I knew, there was no state more isolated than North Dakota, except maybe Montana! 

But when I started to look online and when we came to visit, all that changed.  Here was a magical land of trees and mountains, of gourmet food and fine theatre, but the safety of a small town.  I quickly became very excited about Montana. 

But the biggest joy about Montana was that here I could do what my heart had been calling me to do for two years.  Here I could be free to focus on my daughter and her care.  Here I could stop missing out on her priceless moments.  Here I could stop feeling so divided all the time.  And what a surprise it has been that this was my heart’s desire!  I thought I was just a career woman, but my daughter has completely changed my life.  She has turned my desires into something completely different.  She has awakened my heart.  There is no place I’d rather be right now than home with her.  And that is a blessing that this time last year I couldn’t have even predicted.

There’s so much more I want to share with you about my life and the journey of motherhood.  So, stay tuned!