thoughts today...

I am 24 weeks pregnant today. The baby moves, grows, and is starting to fall into suit of taking over my appearance. Last Sunday in church several women came to find me to say they had no idea I was even pregnant. How encouraging to know my stomach muscles haven't completely lost their touch come number 5! The kids feel baby kick. The life that is expressed on their little faces and in their eyes in that very moment never ceases to cause me to step back and enjoy the mystery of it again in a fresh way. I can't help but smile at their amazed and bewildered smiles. Life. So precious!

We are plugging right along with school. If I can keep up my stingy allowances of 'days off', of which no one really seems to mind!, we will be completed sometime the beginning of May. Ready to be done that time of year anyways seems to really allow its benefits to having a bit of a break before new baby comes the following month. I feel incredibly blessed the timing of this one. Summer vacation. Have a baby. Have sunny and leisurely days to get to know a new someone. Rest and take in the summer heat. Sit in the shade while the kids play. Start the new school year off with now 2 on the books and a somewhat more adjusted 3 month old...and hopefully self! I couldn't have planned it more perfect if I had tried.God is really really good to me.

The weeks seem fuller than I ever remember. Efforts to sit down and have dinner together have had to be more on the strategic home front. That family time is priceless. Sit down. Slow down. Eat. Talk. Look at faces I love and lives I get to be part of. Faces that love me. Little voices that proclaim I'm the best cooker ever. Laughter over absolutely nothing and yet everything I ever want to remember. A look from him. A side joke only we know. He's home here with me. With us. And I love this man who has such a call on his life. The favor of God inexpressibly evident. I like him and he makes me laugh.

Sophia sings. All the time. All day long. Songs just for Boaz, Love Chunk, Baby Love Chunk (to the tune of Love Shack) and God, Come to this heart Oh Lord. She's really rather beautiful to listen to. Gabe and I make eyes and I can see the layers of his heart peeling back with each word, each note. My eyes must say the same thing because we start laughing. How does something so little, so beautiful, cause so much emotion to take over. She sings, All of my days with you, All of my days in Your love, and I hear them and I can't help but pray that is always the song of her heart. I choose in that moment to have a crazy faith in God for my children and I'm moved to pray for them like never before. For assuredly I say to you whoever says to this mountain, 'Be removed and be cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believe that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. "Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them. Mark 11:23-24. 

I am thankful for parents and grandparents and great grandparents who prayed those very prayers for me and who now pray right along side Gabe and I on behalf of these Arrows. Let them be faith filled prayers.

All of your days.

Boys, three of them, and as far as too many dreams to count at this point is concerned, another one! With dark hair. Lots of it. The last one was Chunky himself! and oh how we loved him. No, I have no idea what we are having. A girl would be shocking seeing as I'm obviously prepared in every emotional way for a boy. And I love not knowing!

My midwife comes to my home and sits on my couch. We chat and catch up. That is my appointment in a nutshell and I love that too. Ducks continue to line up in a row and we are well on our way to another home birth.

Kids beam around the house when I spill the news Grammy and Grampy come tomorrow for the day! That's what those special cookies are for. And for us tonight with our Daddy. Chicken in the crock pot. Chicken and biscuits on the menu. Time and no where to go together on the agenda.

Little boys have runny noses and one of those little boys who never naps is napping. It's a slow day. Nothing out of the ordinary. But I'm filled with an extraordinary love. It's Jesus. I know. And He gives the passion to my seemingly mundane days. He fills my heart. Where I feel I'm losing time, he reminds me. It's not quantity it's quality. I lost my box for time some time ago. I can let that make me a bit weepy but something more has been stirred up in me. Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. 2 Corinthians 9:6

That is what I think in terms of you now time. And I don't despise you anymore. God shed some much needed light on you: He can give me the grace to make you count.