I haven't shared this blog with but a handful of people, mainly because I don't want everyone in my life to know exactly what's going on, but I shared it with a few people that God laid on my heart to share it with. I felt very comfortable sharing it with these people, and now I'm really glad I did.
Now that a few people know what to specifically pray for, I'm really starting to notice it...
...I post about not being able to get Clomid from one doctor, and a different doctor prescribes it to me, no questions asked, no extra money owed and someone I have to see every 3 months anyway.
...I post about being unhappy/sad/depressed, and overnight everything seems to be fine again and I don't mind smiling and joking around at work anymore. I still feel like maybe one good cry would really solve everything but it usually takes a lot for me to cry like I need to right now and I've been trying not to bottle everything up anymore. Running my face into the freezer the other day almost caused it, but I didn't have time for a break down (the black eye I had the next day was pretty epic though).
Now, I have another prayer request. Derek and I have been married for almost 6 years now and still have no church home. In the first few years of marriage we were moving around a lot and didn't want to have to join several different churches, so we just went to whatever church best suited us for that Sunday. When we lived in Plano we started going to Prestonwood, and really enjoyed it, but we started going on Saturday nights and Derek fell in love with Saturday night services. Since we moved back to Denton almost 3 years ago we haven't been regularly attending a church. It's strange, but no church in Denton has a Saturday night service. At first this was nice. Growing up being in the church every time the doors were open, and a lot when they weren't, it was nice to take a break from not having to be in church every Sunday, sitting in the same spot, surrounded by the same people. We're only about 15 minutes away from my Dad's church in Sanger so on special Sundays, we're there (i.e., Christmas, Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day). Also any time all of my sisters are in town at the same time. I was in the Sanger Christmas Celebration as part of the adult choir this past Christmas and that was a ton of fun, but I would rather have my own church family, where I go. There was one church in Denton that had a Saturday night service for a little while, but they were a fairly new church and didn't have a permanent location. They moved to a larger location and got rid of the Saturday night service. I've been looking into this church a lot. It's called Grace Pointe Church, so at first I was a little nervous about it. I don't like non-denominational churches. They make me nervous. You can go to their website and see what they believe and preach, but that doesn't mean that somewhere along the lines there won't be a minister on the staff that has their own ideals of things that aren't quite right.
As you drive out of our neighborhood you pretty much run straight into McKinney Street Baptist Church. It's a fairly large church, but there were never many cars there on Sunday mornings, and it's awkward trying to visit an old, established church so we tried going there. On my way home a few weeks ago (sometime around the middle of February) they were taking the sign down for the church and there two church vans parked around the sign with Grace Pointe's logo on it. So I went online to see what was going on. Apparently, back in December, Grace Pointe bought McKinney Street Baptist Church and they were joining congregations. This was great, but I still couldn't find what I was looking for on their website. After quite awhile poking around I finally found it; their affiliation. And it's with the Southern Baptist Convention. Phew. Finally, I know that what they're preaching/teaching is truly what I believe.
Their staff looks fairly young from the online photos, and from watching people go into the church last week on our way to Sanger, it looks to be a fairly young congregation as well. They run a Mother's Day Out and a preschool, so their children's building is huge. I really feel led to visit this church, but I cannot get Derek talked into starting to go to church again on Sunday mornings. Being a teacher, he says, he's up early 5 days out of the week and he enjoys his two days with nothing to do. I keep trying to calmly tell him that he wakes up early on the weekends anyway and it's only a couple of hours out of his morning. I need friends. He needs friends. And church is the only place that we're going to find these friends. I keep finding opportunities to reiterate the fact that if we went to church, we would have friends. Like a couple of weeks ago when we had to go to Huntsville to see Rachel in her first ever leading roll in a play at Sam Houston. We were going to be gone all day and we needed the dogs let out. But everyone who knows us and knows the dogs were going to be in Huntsville that Saturday. Thankfully, I have one friend who could do it, and he had just happened to move back from California 5 days before and was going to be in Denton that Saturday. If he hadn't been here, I'm not sure what we would have done. We were gone for 12 hours; that's too long for dogs not to get to potty. But I kept telling Derek, "If we went to church, we would have friends in Denton that I wouldn't mind asking to come over and do this." He gets bored on the weekends and wants to do something with other people, but there's no people to do stuff with. Again I tell him, "If we went to church, we would have friends to do things with." He gets annoyed with me being around him all the time (and soooooo vise-versa) and I, again, tell him, "If we went to church, I would have friends to go do things with and I wouldn't have the need to talk to you all the time."
So I ask that you pray for God to lay it on Derek's heart to take the step to ask me to go to church, instead of me having to drag him church, or making him feel guilty and like he needs to go to church. I want him to take the spiritual leadership role in our family that I've been craving our whole marriage and that he just doesn't seem like he wants to do (mainly because he's lazy). I'm part of a family who has always prayed together, and I've never once prayed with Derek. I pray for him all the time however. Usually at night when I can't get to sleep because he's snoring. But I feel that this is something that is vitally important in our infertility journey. He's been so far removed from the church for so long that he has actually said in the last couple of years, "Why would we just pray for that? God can't fix this. Only we can fix this." It blew my mind. This is a man who, at one point in his life, was ready to be a youth minister. I asked him about that during that other conversation and his response was, "Sure, when I was young and stupid." I know that there's a good, God fearing, spiritual leading man in there somewhere, it's just gotten lost over the years. This is a huge prayer request, but one that has been laid on my heart to share. Not for selfish reasons, but because I don't feel right bringing a baby into a home where we don't faithfully attend church. It's not fair to my children. He was raised only going to church because his Grandmother made them be in church with her every Sunday. When she died when he was about 10, they stopped going and his parents haven't been actively apart of a congregation since. It's the polar-opposite of the way I was raised and the way my family is. Sometimes I can't quite understand it.
I apologize for this being so long. It took me about an hour to write, wow. Once it all started coming out, I couldn't stop the flow.
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