He sees right through me.

An excerpt from yesterday's conversation...

"Honey, can we go to Target today? There's a few little things I want to look for and I didn't buy anything at Anthropologie yesterday."

"How long are you going to use that one?"

We have winners!

Chase is a winner because he guessed the EXACT right number of shoes- 52. Ellen is a winner because I drew her name.

You both get these fabulous handmade keychains! Isn't that the most exciting prize ever? Yeah, I thought so.

I love my husband.

I was feeling kind of down this evening. Tomorrow is our third anniversary, and I also felt sad about feeling sad on our anniversary. So what did Kyle do to cheer me up? He gave me my anniversary gift early! He did a good job surprising me. He knows I usually hate surprises, and I had no clue this was coming.

As it turns out, he's been planning it for quite some time with help from a few connections he's made through work. This Saturday, he's taking me to the fabulous Fox Theater in St. Louis, where we will see a production of Mary Poppins. We will be sitting in the private Fox Club box seats, which means we have special parking, a special entrance, a meal served before the show, and great seats!

We're hoping to head up early on Saturday and make a day of it. (We'll also be taking Charlie to his new family, which is another reason I was sad...) I'm hoping that this little trip will be the boost I need before school starts, and a wonderful day of celebrating three years of marriage.

You Can Win!

Tonight I decided that the shoes stored in my closet and under my bed needed some serious purging and rearranging. Mid-process, I decided to count just how many pairs of shoes I currently own. I laid them out all over my bedroom floor and started counting. You can't tell from the stinky phone picture with a kitty in the middle (my camera officially bit the dust), but it was quite a display... almost shameful.
Take a guess at how many pairs I have! The closest number will get a prize. You have until 11:59pm, Central Daylight Time, on Tuesday, August 14.

If you also tell me how many pairs of shoes you own, your name will be entered for a bonus prize!

*For those of you guessing from Facebook, please jump over to the original post at the blog to take a shot!

Suspicions confirmed. We're infertile.

"You guys definitely have infertility." The words hit me upside the head. In my heart, I already knew it was true, but some part of me was still holding out hope that our timing had just been off... off for over two years.

My initial reaction was to giggle when the doctor left the room. It was wildly unfitting and inappropriate. I kept looking at Kyle and repeating the words, "We're infertile... hahaha... We're barren... hahaha." It wasn't until we left the office that the full emotional weight of the diagnosis hit me.

I've seen other doctors in the past who suspected this, but no one ever confirmed it with tests and a proper thorough look at all of my symptoms. According to my physician, I'm a "classic case" of Poly-cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). Basically, my ovaries don't produce eggs as they should.

Now, it's not completely hopeless. There are medications and treatments we can try to increase our chances of conception. We're just very cautious about which treatments we are willing to use. Also, we're very confused about God's timing in all of this.

We still feel very strongly that we are both supposed to start graduate programs next year, but waiting to try and conceive is only going to hurt our chances. Older is not better when you're facing infertility. Do we keep trying and have babies while we're students? While not impossible, that would be very difficult. Do we put graduate school on hold until we've exhausted all our conception options? There's a chance that, even with treatment, it may never happen. We both want to adopt someday in the future, but we'd also like to try to make a baby.

We would highly covet your prayers through all of this. We know that Christ is sovereign over everything, even my malfunctioning ovaries.

A Mark of Maturity

It is the mark of a mature man that his sense of responsibility takes precedence over his own feelings. It is a mark of godliness that he acknowledges God's care of all men, not only of himself. Moses was such a man. When God told him that he must go up Mt. Nebo, look over the land promised to Israel, and then die without entering into it because of his disobedience at Meribah, there is not a word of resentment of self-pity or self-justification from Moses.

Instead his concern was for the people he had been shepherding, that they might be brought home. The God to whom he addressed the prayer was the Most High over every nation (Deuteronomy 32:8). Moses saw things with a vision that encompassed far more than his own horizon.

Lord, deliver us from smallness and self-pity. "Make us masters of ourselves that we may be the servants of others." (Sir Alexander Patterson)