Sunday, November 25, 2012

The Curse


A couple of weeks ago when we met a pro-life Dr. outside our church, we got into a very interesting discussion. We started discussing the need for generational healing and how it could be a possible road block as to why we had not been able to conceive and why we miscarried. Now at first it sounds crazy and I am almost offended at the thought of someone thinking I am cursed because of my family background and that is a reason we lost our Cecilia Esperanza (Yes that is the name of our little one, isn't it a beautiful name!?) Part of me thinks that this notion is crazy and I need to stay far away from people who think like this on the other hand this is a topic that JJ and I have discussed before.

A few years ago I started praying for the healing of my family tree. I come from a broken family where my father was not around and when he was, those few times I remember, it was nothing but drama. To this day I don't know exactly where my father is, so I don't know much info. especially medical history of my father's family. I know much more about my mother's side but those facts are not pretty. There has been abuse in all forms in my family among other generational sins. I have been praying for years that the chain is broken and stops, I have also prayed for my future children so that they would not be vulnerable to these unhealthy family patterns. Mass and confession have been a big part of the prayer process to break these ties plus the intercession of St. Joseph, Terror of demons.

Now with this all said, someone hinting that I am not doing enough to have a family frankly pisses me off! When we were talking with the Dr. I am sure she did not mean to imply that we were not doing enough or praying enough she was just trying to bring up another avenue that we might want to explore, but I am just so tired of the try this, try that advice to have children. She mentioned the notion of being cursed and that saying the word Infertility to describe your situation is like cursing yourself. I don't agree with this because IF is a medical diagnosis and the word that is usually used by medical professionals. I do prefer the word subfertility in all honesty but no one knows what I mean when I say that and I am too lazy to explain it so I usually use IF. I do believe that God can change IF to fertility at any time.

I think it is destructive to tell a woman who has suffered a miscarriage or is dealing with IF that she might be cursed because of her family background or by someone she may know. As if we don't already feel like a leper enough, to say this would do more harm than good. I think that if there has been some foul play on the spiritual dimension toward the person it is best that they discover it themselves or it is pointed out and guided by a spiritual director. I know there have been people who do not like me, I have even had someone come up to me and "apologize" to me for not liking me. When I asked them if I offended them in some way or if it was something I did they said "No, its just you." Ouch, women can be cruel! Now for someone to go so far as to curse me would be more than cruel it would be evil. The only thing that can battle evil and win is Jesus Christ! So it would no longer be a battle on the physical realm it would be a battle on the spiritual realm. I am a firm believer that the power of Jesus Christ the King can kick some serious a**(We watched Lord of The Rings Return of the King last night w/ some friends, so I am a little pumped up)!

I am not perfect and I know that I have things like character flaws and habitual sins to overcome but I don't think that God is waiting for me and my family background to be perfect to give us children, of course we are trying to use this time wisely so that we become better people and in turn better parents. I pray on a regular basis at Mass for healing in all forms for myself and my family. One miracle I have witnessed is that my maternal grandma went to reconciliation this year for the first time in over 50 years! She is now able to receive the Eucharist and she is on fire for her relationship with God. I love that I can talk to my grandma about God and she no longer roles her eyes or thinks I am crazy. She is even asking questions about the faith to better understand it and she calls me when she needs prayer or to let me know she is praying for me and JJ. This is power of Jesus Christ the King and I entrust myself to Him wholeheartedly!

I know you were expecting me to tell you all about Seattle but that will be for next time probably in a Quick takes. In the mean time here is a picture of some of the beauty we saw there, this was actually in Vancouver, B.C.




        

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Wordless Wednesday!

Happy Wednesday :)

Thursday, November 15, 2012

QuickTakes!

 
 
--- 1 ---
JJ has been working a lot! In the last month he worked six days a week and some 10hr days. Which means that we have not gotten to spend very much time together other than Sundays, which has now become very precious to us. This past weekend he did not work Sat. and he had Mon. off in honor of our Veterans, so we got three whole days together. Sat. was spent traveling 8hrs in the car round trip to meet the new interns. It was so great to spend time together, catch our breath from the business, and just talk and laugh. We got to talk more about adoption, ways to save our money and how much we love mountains. On Sunday we had a serendipitous meeting with a pro-life obgyn who had come out of the adoration chapel as we were coming out of Mass. She had shut down her practice for a while and has opened it back up again. The great news is that she is only 20 min. away so I can refer clients to her who can not travel the 1.5 hrs away to our local NaPro Dr. Awesome. She is also thinking/praying about becoming NaPro trained! She has been an obgyn for many years and it would be great to have a NaPro Dr. so close in L.A., yes please!  
 
--- 2 ---
Meeting the new FertilityCare Practitioner Interns! On Sat. I got to meet the new CA program interns. It was a small class of 4 and one was from South Carolina. They had just taken their final exam and were having their lunch break before heading back into lectures about yellow stamps and infertility. The poor ladies looked so tired and d-o-n-e, I remember what that felt like to be in lectures from 9am-6pm with lunch and some potty breaks in between. I am excited for them and I got to give them a gift bag I put together with a couple of letters of encouragement from some of us from the class before. It has become a tradition for the class before to meet the new class, which was started 3 classes before us. I am so thankful for my Creighton family!   
 
--- 3 ---
Speaking of Creighton I recently got two new clients which brings me to a grand total of 10 and just 8 more from my required number to finish the program. It is tough to get clients here, not many people are interested and it is a lot of advertising and marketing which my husband and I don't have very much experience in. Plus I am not bilingual which would be helpful here in L.A. I have an Intro. Session coming up this Sat. which I know I will get at least two new clients who confirmed with me recently. I am hoping to do my supervisor visit some time in January. Ahhh, I am scared of the sup. visit! I am even more scared of the final exam...
 
--- 4 ---
 Election, I know a little late huh?! I was not going to go there but I will. I did not want Barack Obama to win but I did not want Mitt Romney to win either. I am glad that this whole election is over and my little Independent heart can rest if only for a little while. I will say that I hope BO keeps his promise to compromise with republicans and independents. A huge way he can do that is to stop spending our hard earned money on services we can not afford any more and remove the HHS mandate from ObamaCare! We are in serious danger of our religious liberty as Catholics in this country and I hope the president can see that and honor the U.S. Constitution! I will continue to pray for BO and our country because who would want to be president, it is a tough job. There I am done.  
 
--- 5 ---
 Christmas is coming! I am seeing all of the decorations and advertisements but I am not stressed one bit. JJ and I decided that we did not want to give any gifts this year and we do not want to receive any gifts this year. I know you are thinking Scrooge, Bah Humbug, and the Grinch but let me explain. We have had a tough year starting it off w/ miscarriage, JJ's injury and knowing that we will not be celebrating baby's 1st Christmas even though I was just days pregnant last Christmas. While we were talking about what to do and get everyone this Christmas we found ourselves stumped. After thinking about it for a little while we decided that we would rather have quality time with those we love. So we are inviting family over for Christmas and everyone will bring a generic $10 gift then we will do a game gift exchange complete w/ food, movies and games! JJ and I will not be exchanging gifts either which we traditionally do on Epiphany, we will each plan a day date out for one another. I will still make my applesauce and candies for everyone and I will get my goddaughter something because she is only a baby and it will be so cute to watch her try and open a gift plus quality time at the LA Arboretum with her Nina :) Still think its Grinch like?
   
--- 6 ---
So my progesterone is still low :( My NaPro Dr. is upping my dose to give me greater post peak support. We will be making an appt. soon to go see Dr. Awesome to look at cycle plans before her maternity leave. So we will probably go see her in Dec. and we will go back to monitoring my prog. every cycle so the vampires get to have fun drawing my blood again, ouch. On the opposite side we got our first packet from an adoption agency! We looked at the price and said we can't afford it. Then I went on my super secret awesome Facebook group to ask about other people's experience and we got some good info. to look into, like the Adoption Tax Credit that may expire soon and a possible reimbursement from JJ's employer. Thanks so much for the info. all we will be praying about and investigating what would be the best thing for us. For now we have discerned that foster care is not for us at this point. One big reason is that we would like to homeschool and we are opposed to certain vaccines which we would have no choice in because the State would have more say so than us.    


--- 7 ---
 
Finally Vacation Time! We will be going on vacation to Seattle this Sat. and returning Thanksgiving evening. We are so excited, woohoo! My next blog will probably be from there and I will try and take great pictures :)
 
 
For more Quick Takes, visit Jen @ Conversion Diary!




















 

Friday, November 9, 2012

Guest Blogger!

  Hello people of blogosphere. I am honored to be a guest here on the Crow's Nest. I'd like to thank my wife for the invitation to share with you a bit of my perspective on things. 

We eat very healthy. My wife has to take a lot of vitamins supplements and I don't like it because it is something that is sucky for her. I can't drink milk because I stink afterwards. I take a vitamin once a day and I feel that it helps me because when I don't take it I feel not as good. I like the rain and it is raining right now. It makes me think of when my wife and I were at our honeymoon because it was very stormy and we had to stay inside. What a drag... just kidding.

   Well, we are going through the process of trying to see what we think about adoption. We thought that it was easier than this.  Now that we have looked into some agencies and got some information we are still faced with some challenges. One agency sent us a form that had a lot of boxes that we are to check off about our preferences with what kind of child we would want to adopt... What kind!?!?!! How do you answer those kinds of questions? I have never really thought about these specifics before. Maybe I have a little, but to see labels like "drug abuse" and "learning disability" and all the other options, it makes me feel like we are trying to get the perfect kid. I did not know that these things mattered, but I'm finding out that they do. We are called to be husband and wife as well as mother and father. We want to raise children and they are not going to be perfect, whether they are adopted or biological. So, that's hard.

  I have heard some weird stories about adoption. The kid tuns out to be crazy and the parents go crazy. The parents finally tell them they are adopted and they run away from home... that sort of stuff. I have also heard many, many more stories that are life changing in a very different way. A very good way. Stories about those that were adopted having a great childhood and loving their adoptive parents. I think it all comes down to the fact that these kids need a mother and a father to raise them and we are open to do just that. It's like we just have to pick up where some one else left off.

   Adoption costs money. It seems kind of funky, like we would be "buying" a child at the store or something. I do not know the exact cost for all that is involved. We are finding out when the next informational session is going to take place and, this time, we are more serious about going. We have said in the past that we would " go to the next one", but never have. I think that it is a very important step to take to help us in our discernment on this subject. God is not going to force us to do this, we have to get off the couch.

  This is JJ signing out.

      

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Right Place, Wrong Time?

Let me preface this post by saying that I love my husband very much and I am so blessed to be married to him. I will refer to my husband as JJ on my blog from now on.

To understand this post you need a little bit of background information. I have known of JJ for 14 years and have known him as a friend for almost 12 yrs. We went to the same high school and he was two grades ahead of me. I knew of JJ because he played football and I did the stats, uniform organization and water for the football teams at our HS.

We started to become friends my Jr. year when he started college. We hung out because we went to the same church and were in the youth group. We became better friends when I graduated HS and went to the same college. My second semester at college we were in gospel choir together along with some other friends. That semester is when we both knew we liked each other but neither of us said anything so nothing came of it. We were still really good friends and could talk to each other about almost anything (except for that fact that we liked each other)!

We would talk about being open to religious life and how awesome the Carmelite order is and I would try and get him to talk more because JJ was very shy back then. Then about a year or so later I went on NET and opened my heart more to the possibility of becoming a Carmelite even though my heart's desire was always to be a wife and a mother. During that year JJ was doing the same thing, discerning with different orders and as much as he tried to go to the Discalced Carmelite Friar house it just never worked out. So he started to pursue what career he should have and God opened the doors for him to go into the electrical trade.

After I came back from NET I really wanted to know if I was called to the Carmelite sisters so I started to work for them and spend a lot more time with the sisters. Why the Carmelites? Well, JJ and I are very Carmelite in our spirituality so much so that our honeymoon was in Carmel, CA plus, my bday is the feast of OLMC. As much as my desire for the Carmelite order grew I knew I was not called to be a sister and those feelings for JJ started to come back even though I tried to ignore them for as long as I possibly could. I will not bore you with the details and drama behind how we got together let's just say it was interesting.  

Now what does this have to do with IF? Well there have been times during this IF journey where I have questioned my vocation. Since JJ and I were very open to becoming Carmelites I have wondered if that is where we were really suppose to be. Thoughts like did I make the right choice to get married?  What If I became a Carmelite sister, I would not be going through IF? Why would we be called to marriage but not be able to have children? Why Lord, would you call us away from the safe haven of Carmel to suffer like this? The last two questions were very difficult for me to ask God because I love my husband very much and I love Carmel very much.

I have also thought about the timing of our relationship, marriage, and TTC like we were in the right place at the wrong time. Should we have gotten married sooner? Should my husband and I have started to court sooner than we did, like when we first started to like each other? Should we have tried to have children once we got married instead of waiting a year to figure out my wonky cycles? Did we waste our time? Our we wasting our time now not TTC for health reasons?     

IF does not just affect your confidence in who you are as a woman but it can also affect your confidence as a wife and your vocation. I remember apologizing to my husband that he got me as a wife because of my lack of fertility and he would get so mad and tell me not to talk about his wife that way. I know now not to do that because it is wrong and it is another way the devil wants to kick you when you are down. Obviously the answer to all these questions is simple, God has me exactly where He wants me. I know that JJ and I are suppose to be married and God has revealed to me in a lot of ways why JJ and I are called to be husband and wife. Whether or not you have questioned your vocation God has each of us where we are for a reason and I have learned to stop trying to figure out the reason. All we have to do is keep moving forward with His grace! Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Pray for us!

p.s Next time I will have a guest blogger! If you would like to be a guest blogger here, you can contact me by leaving a comment here or on our Facebook.