Dear Harper,

I've fed you too many Mike and Ike's this week. Leftover from my stocking, I sort of wonder if you like them too. Don't get used to them though, because once they are gone they are gone. We can miss them together.

You're dancing now, it's the strangest feeling. Sometimes you'll do a full on flip, other times you just feel like a little bouncy ball in my belly. Your dad can feel you too, I'll call him over, "Feel her, she's moving," then you'll stop. haha. Maybe you're a jokester like us. We are going to have fun in this home.

We named you a couple weeks ago, we both immediately fell in love with Harper. It's so you.  I'm now reading To Kill a Mockingbird, by another Harper. Not your namesake at all, but upon choosing it, figured I needed to brush up since so many will associate your name with hers.

I forgot how wonderful it is, I was told you can hear me now, so I've been reading bits and pieces aloud to you, you won't remember any of it though. Scout is such a cutie.

I pray for you so much. Once we found out you were a girl prayers have come a lot easier. There are specific things I pray over you every day.

I pray you'll find your identity in Christ. That you won't look to others to define who you are, but that you'll be secure in who HE says you are. Jr. High and High School can be so cruel, you'll be surrounded by kids looking to be defined, by anyone or anything. My prayer is that even then, you'll be grounded in your identity.

I pray you'll be joyful. You're about to be born into a really broken world. You won't notice it for a while, I'm glad for that. Even in this brokenness though, there are certain people who radiate joy, when I'm around them I feel it. It's like it floats from them to me and I don't want to leave their side, they are insanely refreshing to be around. I pray you'll be like that.

I pray you'll be drawn to truth. That you'll be an honest and trustworthy person and that you'll seek that quality out in the people you surround yourself with growing up. I pray you'll be able to discern truth from lies, its so hard sometimes to know which is which, so I pray for you it will come easy.

I pray you'll be content. That you'll have a deep trust in where the Lord has you, regardless of circumstance.

I pray you'll be a good sleeper. This one might be semi-selfish, haha, won't stop me from asking for it though. 

I pray you'll know grace. Harper, it is so sweet. I forget it all too often, I pray you'll just walk in it, extending it to others along the way.

These are just some of the things that have been laid on my heart for you. Some of them the things that I know, from experience, would have made my life much easier to have understood earlier on.

I love you already. I can't wait to meet you. I'm going to start feeding you better things this week, our Christmas candy is dwindling, we'll be alright without it.


-Kelsey

A Baby (a real one)

"Is there any chance you are pregnant?" I sat in the x-ray room ready to put on the ridiculously heavy vest.

"No, no there isn't...I'm pretty sure, no there's not."

 "Are you sure? Because if you are this can be very harmful to a baby, why don't you take a test just in case." She led me to the white tile bathroom, the cold kind, couldn't they just try to make it a little homier? A picture, a candle, anything.

Insurance is finally paying to have my back taken care of since my wreck...and really with this? I take the cup and a bottle of water and head in, this is silly, but protocol I'm sure so I won't fight it.

I walk back into the x-ray room and am told it would be best for me to go back to the doctors office and they'll be with me shortly.

There is no way, my mind starts racing. It's not that, no we said we'd stop preventing but it happens later...it always happens later, like a year, stop freaking out Kelsey. 

I wait for what seems like an eternity. The door opens with a grin, "it's positive." And all I can do is laugh.

I'm not big on surprises. My mom once told me this story of herself in grade school. It was Christmas time and one night she went and got all her presents out from underneath the tree, sat in the closet and unwrapped all of them, saw the goods, then carefully wrapped them back up.

It's genetic. We like knowing things.

So naturally, God would yell surprise! from heaven.

Because isn't His timeline and plan always the best one? Even when it doesn't fit into our own? (and let's be honest, does it ever?)

I leave and track down Todd so we can relish in this moment together. Wide eyed and wondering if this is when parenthood begins. A baby? Like a real one??

This has been a fun three months. And a WHOLE three months I might add, the doctor said she thinks its the earliest she's even caught a pregnancy. I hadn't even missed yet.

The fact that God is really watching this baby take form is fascinating to me. But its really given me this whole new perspective on His love for us that I have never thought about before, He LOVES this little baby, because he already KNOWS this baby. Everything about it, everyday, from the first heartbeat to the last breath. He loves us before anyone else ever has the chance to.

Can you wrap your mind around that? You were KNOWN before you ever were. Let it boggle. God loves this child more than I ever can or ever will, and He beat me to it.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Psalm 139:13-16

For three months I've been wondering when I would begin to love this little baby, when does that start? Maybe its different for everyone, but for me I am still  in process. As the baby grows so does my love, we share that, growth in the different ways.

Hearing the heartbeat helped. We recorded it and I could listen to it on repeat.

Of course there are still fears and the wondering if everything is still okay. I wish you could rent those heartbeat hearers, I'd just walk around with it all the time, just to make sure.

But then it wouldn't cultivate trust in me with my God, which is desperately needed, in all areas of my life.

He's growing that in me too, there's a lot of growing going on around here.

Love, 
Kels 

Thoughts on Trusting (through good and bad)

I've become obsessed with Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. Obsessed really with the idea of seasons in general. I wrote about it this week on The Global Shoppe blog, you can dive there if you want, but in case you were there and now you are here I'll spare you. 

There is a time for everything,and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal, 
a time to tear down and a time to build up,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance, 
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, 
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak, 
a time to love and a time to hate, 
a time for war and a time for peace. 

It does my heart good to write it out, even if we may not share the same beliefs, I think most  can share the comfort offered in those words. Share in the hope that things change, from the good to the bad and back again, because that's just life. 

This is the season of tearing down my distrust. 

I've had a car headache since March. To make a long story short we totaled our car 4 months after we bought it and then insurance offered us $2,000 less than what we paid for it and $3000 under the value. Blah, blah, blah...my life revolved around this for weeks. 

It is what it is and in the scope of life it doesn't really matter, but at the time it did so much. Three weeks ago I sat out on our back porch pouting and I heard that still small voice say, "Would you rather have what you paid for your car or would you rather learn how to trust me?" 

I know when I hear it, when it isn't my conscious, it's sweeter than my own voice, pierces directly to my heart and then spreads, a strange feeling I've learned to recognize. 

I'm reading One Thousand Gifts by Anne Voskamp. She enters her own season of counting blessings, all thousand of them, during this seasons switch and things are hard, she says it better than I ever could...

"Lord...that I'd day after day greedily take what looks like it's good from Your hand -- a child gloating over sweet candy..." My voice catches hard. I've been a thief, trying to hoard away all the good. "...but that I'd thrash wild to escape when what You give from Your hand feels bad -- like gravel in the mouth. Oh Father, forgive...Should I accept what is good from you, and not trouble?" (Job 2:10) 

I knew in that pitch black porch moment that I had to stop thrashing and accept it, trusting that he does make ALL things work together for His good, even what feels bad. The opportunity had been presented to learn that lesson, I had the choice, so I chose the latter. 

Me, Kelsey Sisson, who follows our online budget like a lion stalking prey, who had found an unhealthy security in a savings account suddenly didn't care at all what we were given for that silly car, knowing it would work out. 

I realized I hadn't been trusting God to provide for us, I was trusting money itself, which in turn manifested into a distrust of Him. Are you tracking? God can just as easily provide a car out of thin air, it isn't the money that provides its the hand behind it. 

And even then, even in this choice I was given He still chose to bless us with what we paid for the car. He could have let it work out like that on the front end. But he loves us too much to let us remain, he takes us through the above seasons to teach us, mold us, shape us.

In the end we were able to buy an ever nicer car then the one we had previously, in better condition with less miles. 

Heart full and feeling blessed. 

The kicker...

I wrote this Saturday night and literally as I was wrapping up that last sentence received one of those texts that makes your heart land in your stomach. I've been knee deep in a situation since January, really just completely in over my head, but for whatever reason I may not understand the Lord's kept me in it. 

Man, this world is a straight up mess. 

This season isn't over, continuing to be built up in the way of trust. Learning to accept not only the good but the seemingly bad too. 

Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever.

Psalm 125:1

-Kels