So thankful for His Prayer

Until recently, I have never truly understood why The Lord said "when you pray, pray like this". It's never been hard for me to pray. I always have stuff for which to be thankful, and I certainly always have stuff for which I ask from God. It's easy for me to be thankful or specific about my needs or protection for my kids, family, etc. I have a sovereign God to whom I can go for anything under the sun. How can that be hard?

In the past year, more times than I care to count, I have honestly not known what to pray. Speechless. My heart cries out but I haven't known the words to say. Matthew 6 has been such a blessing to me. When the words haven't come, it has shared my heart. When I couldn't come up with what to ask The Lord to do, His prayer has been more than sufficient. He tells us how to pray and the Holy Spirit hears our groans.  So thankful that He knew what I would need.

“And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (Matthew 6:7-15 ESV)

A Day in the Life of Cooper's Mommy...

Cooper is so funny these days. Since it's usually just him and me when he does these things, I'm going to post about a few of them so that you can all share in our fun.

For example, this morning (like every morning) I asked him what he wanted to wear today. He chose his Elmo slippers. That's it. No clothes, just Elmo slippers.

A few minutes ago, he got a tissue, covered Kenzie's face with it, and said, "Blow!" When she ran he chased her so that he could blow her nose for her.

Good times.

Things that go beep in the night...

It's 2:55 a.m. and I am woken by my husband with, "Do you hear that beeping?!" I tell him that I do now and see that he is rummaging through the bathroom drawers, my nightstand drawers, frantically looking for the source of the beep.

As I try to figure out what the heck is going on he brings me Cooper who is ready to eat. Well, Cooper is also on the verge of waking completely which we try to avoid. All of you who know about Coop's sleeping habits will understand. We will try to keep from waking him at all costs at this time of the night.

So Lance asks me about a thermometer, looks in the top drawer of my nightstand, then the bottom drawer. Then moves back to the bedroom. He is getting extremely frustrated. I slowly start figuring out what is going on. This happened to me once. I know that it is just my key finder in my purse telling me to change the batteries. But, Lance is too far away for me to yell this to him for fear of waking Cooper! Instead, I watch him travel to the kitchen, look around, back to the bedroom, look around, more opening of drawers...

At this point I start to get tickled by the whole thing and am doing my best to not burst into laughter. I get it together, and wait for Lance to come to me. I was not trying to keep this information from him; he just was too busy rummaging for me to tell him! I couldn't yell with the baby in my arms! At one point, he paused to clean his ears with Qtips. I just about lost it then.

He eventually comes to take Cooper back to bed, at which point I get up, get the key finder, and take out the batteries. Problem solved.

If anyone is keeping track, he had been looking for the beep in the night for 55 minutes.

Great is Thy Faithfulness

I don’t blog often but Lance and I want this time in our lives to be documented. The past few months for us have been the hardest of our lives; yet we have never been closer or felt so at peace. I’m going to try to tell a story while throwing in our random thoughts that we were having at the time. It may be a jumbled mess but I’m going to give it a shot. Try and stick with me.

A few months ago I was having the best pregnancy with no complications. Not only was my pregnancy going perfectly but so were our lives. We were so excited to be having our first baby and so thankful that the pregnancy was so easy. As far as we knew the baby and I were very healthy and headed to a normal delivery. It was at this time that I got an urge to pray for God to use us. I didn’t necessarily want to pray for this, but I felt led to pray for God to use us to bring Him glory. I knew that this could mean anything but I prayed it anyway. Of course you always want to bring God glory, but I was praying it knowing that it could bring hard times. I hoped it wouldn’t, but I just prayed. Be careful what you pray for…or better yet, don’t.

On October 29^th, Lance made a very unhealthy dinner of steak fingers and french fries. I’m a pretty healthy eater but I was eight months pregnant so I ate it. I then ate some cereal and a grilled cheese. Again…eight months pregnant. We went to bed and about 2:00 a.m. I started feeling extremely sick. I figured that I had just eaten way too much. I have a pretty high pain tolerance so I tried unsuccessfully to sleep through it. The next morning I told Lance that I may be going into labor because this was the worst pain I had ever felt so we headed to the doctor. I was only able to see the P.A. and she told me that I just had a virus. I tried to tell her that it couldn’t be that because I don’t get viruses but she didn’t believe me so after arguing with her for almost three hours I gave up and decided to go home and wait it out. I spent the rest of the day in the most pain I have ever felt but there was nothing I could do so I just went on with my day. That night was even worse and I told Lance that I really must be dying because nothing could possibly hurt this badly. If this wasn’t labor, I wasn’t going to be able to handle labor! So as I’m pacing at two o’clock in the morning I’m trying my hardest to figure out if I should go to the emergency room or just suck it up and lay back down but I just was in so much pain. The next morning at about 6:00 I told Lance that he had to take me to the hospital because something was definitely wrong. By this time I decided to take my temperature and it was over 103 degrees so we headed to Austin. I walked in to my doctor’s office and said please check my appendix because this is definitely not a virus. She drew some blood and came to the conclusion that I was “very sick”. That’s all she would tell me. I am immediately sent into surgery. Prior to surgery our friends Jason and Steve came to the hospital to pray with us. Eight months pregnant isn’t the best time to have surgery. We prayed for me but mostly our baby as we were told that this was very likely to bring on labor and it was just too early. During surgery the doctor finds that my appendix had been ruptured for about two days and I had peritonitis which is just a really bad infection due to all of the toxins released when the appendix ruptured. The baby and I get through that fine, thank you, Jesus. Now the goal is to keep me pregnant. Bed rest brought on more complications but walking was sure to bring on labor so we were kind of stuck. My family came and stayed with us during this time and we are so thankful for that because I don’t know what we would have done without them. The doctors were going to keep me in the hospital until I had the baby whether it was one day or two months. I barely remember the week following surgery due to all of the medication but I can say that we had so many people praying for us and just loving us. It was amazing. Now comes the hard part.

Exactly one week following my surgery I went into labor. They told us prior to this that I was far enough along that the baby would be fine; just a little small. However, right before he was born they brought in twenty people that were called the “Code Blue Team”. That wasn’t very comforting at all. But still we prayed and were prayed for. At 11:06 p.m. Cooper Allen Yarbough was born and was healthy, again, thank you, Jesus. He weighed 5 lbs. and 12 oz. (Side note: Appendicitis hurts MUCH worse than labor) Since he was so small they took him to NICU. This was fine with me because I was still in the hospital so I could visit him all day long. He could leave as soon as he got his feeding down. That was his only problem. It never occurred to me that I would be discharged before he was. The hardest thing I have ever had to do was leave my baby. I didn’t expect it all so when I left I just felt lost. Lance and I then began the routine of going to the hospital all day, going home to sleep and doing the same thing the next day. Every day we cried and prayed over our son before we left the hospital. Every night we prayed that he could leave the hospital. Lance prayed for patience. I didn’t want patience, I wanted my baby home. I told him that Cooper had to be home by Friday. I couldn’t do it past Friday; I was just at my limit. I was completely broken at this point and demanded that he stop praying for patience and pray that Cooper could come home on Friday. We recruited our friends and families to pray for the same thing. The doctors kept telling us that Friday was very unlikely. If you’ve ever had a baby in NICU you know that they don’t ever really like to tell you anything. All they would say is that Friday is very unlikely. As much as I knew that I couldn’t do it past Friday I guess God knew it too because Thursday morning we got the report that Cooper all of a sudden had done what he had to do to come home and he could leave in 24 hours if he didn’t have any setbacks. Again I cried but I have never been so happy. So Friday we brought home our baby. He was in NICU for a total of ten days. He recently was readmitted to the hospital for three days with RSV but has recovered quickly, no doubt thanks to the hands laid on him in prayer.

Through this we have learned to depend completely on God. The doctors didn’t know what was happening but God did. He said that following Him was not going to be easy and He kept that promise but He also showed us so much through this. We were able to pray like we’ve never prayed before. We had to. I am so thankful that I serve a faithful God. If everything was easy, how would He receive any glory? Hey, I asked for it! Lance and I feel like we came out the other side closer than ever before.

Lance and I were shown so much love throughout this. During times like these you need your friends and family more than ever. We have the best of both that anyone can ask for and I know now that God strategically placed all of us together for times like these. The problem was that our closest friends were going through their own crises.  And we all still prayed for each other and just loved each other. They came to the hospital to see us and we called to check on them every time we weren’t at the hospital. We were all just getting our butts kicked. It was a rough season for this group of friends. 

We know that God has received glory through this somehow. We will probably never see the results and we don’t need to. We will trust that He ordained these times for His purpose and we will thankful and humbled that my family was able to be used.

Great is Thy Faithfulness.

Timing is Everything...just not my timing

Within this blog you will find nothing profound; only observations. As some of you may know I occasionally work at a health food store. By occasionally I mean less than once a week and by work I mean volunteer. I always say I'm too busy to go but when I'm there I'm super excited for anyone that needs help. Many times it's your routine cold or allergies or stomach ache; however, there are those few rare occasions when someone not only needs some health advice, but also a hug. These times are my favorite.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not excited that someone is sad, only that I get to talk to them about it. I get really excited when I get to help someone. So about three weeks ago a woman came in in tears. She was the cartoon character that when teary eyed, the eyes literally filled with tears then they overflowed. It was very sad! Her husband is chronically ill and she was having her share of ailments herself. Without going into her personal life I will say that she was not necessarily at risk, however, felt horrible!

I first just gave her a hug because she made me want to cry because of how sad she was! Then I just listened. For one hour I listened to this woman and helped in any way that I could (which was not much) in the way of vitamins and herbs. After she left, I realized that I was so enthralled in her story that I had completely forgotten to get her number to call and check on her! So I began a small investigation of sorts. I found out her name from the credit card receipt. I looked up her number so that I could call her in one month to see how her new regimen was working.

Now...fast forward to the present.

Today I had one million things to do! I had to be in Austin by four and lots of errands to run prior to going up there. So I go to the post office (one of the last things on my list) but I'm already running about an hour behind my schedule. I was talking on the phone and was very frazzled. So I hung up the phone and threw it on the seat so that I could run into the post office just real quick. I go in, mail my packages, and come back out to my car.

Hmmmmm......how to unlock the door...especially when I can see the keys on the passenger seat...funny enough...right next to my phone!! Now let me just say that there aren't many pay phones now that two year olds carry cell phones! So I decide to walk to the hfs. It's a beautiful day so I think that maybe I should just enjoy my little walk. It's only about a half a mile, maybe three-quarters at the most. However, please remember that I have many things to do today for work!

I get to the hfs, call Lance and ask him to come get me, eat a popsicle (I really like popsicles), and then I wait. Lance gets there in about fifteen or twenty minutes and we get ready to walk out the door. I then decided to walk behind the counter to throw away my popsicle wrapper and a customer walks up to pay for her one item. I was going to ring her up super fast so that the girl working could talk to the other customer in the store.

Who was the customer you ask?? None other than my previously sad friend!! I got super excited! I gave her a now happy because she's happy hug and was able to hear how much healthier she feels!! She was happy, healthy, and her husband's heath had improved for the first time . because of a new regimen. Yay!

My one half hour hassle turned in to the most exciting part of my week!

After A Minor Setback

As you can see, I am a terrible blogger. However, I have decided to get right back in the saddle after my long lapse in blogs. I just can't seem to find the time or the topic to blog about. Let me tell you what made me decide to blog today...Jason's blog. I didn't want to comment on his blog because I was more interested in reading the heated discussion going on there. If only I had so much to say! Don't worry, I always think of something.

Well, the first good news is that our house is almost built!! Almost is very subjective, however, it looks like a house so I'm going with it. I can tell which room is which and where the living room is! This is very exciting to me because I've never bought a house before and I'm over the apartment living. There is a chance that we'll be in by September, keep your fingers crossed.

The second good news is that Lance and I are engaged! (Yes, I know that all of you probably thought we were already engaged, or even married by now...not the case) We were engaged on June 30th and it's great! We're very excited and are looking forward to everything!

Pretty soon, there will be a whole new Lance & Coop! First the new house in September-ish, then Lance graduates in December (it's true), then we'll be married in March! It's like we're being reinvented!

Oh and guess who's yard got Yard of the Month???? Not ours but one of Lance's!!

Yep, I'm marrying the hot lawn boy who created the Yard of the Month...