Gotta have Faith

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

About 6 months ago our church started this series on the Screwtape Letters (For those of you have never read this book it is about a jr. demon who is try to to convert his "patient" over to the ways of the devil.) One of the main things we covered in the class was spiritual warfare and how easy it is to fall in to the trap. Since this class I have thought about things in a different light.

With that being said, I have been struggling with faith. Not the, "Is there a God," type of faith but more of the having faith in the plan that God has for my life and how I need to keep the faith in him.
In case you missed the memo and don't know me. I am slightly neurotic, annal and borderline OCD on having things the way I think that should be. I plan for my plans. This gives me a sense of comfort even if sometimes it is just a false sense of having the control.

But when my plan to have kids didn't happen exactly how I had planned I can't lie.. it put a chink in that faith.

Thankfully, faith has been put in front of me time after time in the past month. Helping to remind me that the plan that I have is not nearly as good as the plan God has for me.
Sunday our class started a new series... give you one guess what the class is on. Yep, keeping the faith.

I know that the weakness is my stress, I have the horrible problem with fixating on the items that stress me. When we were in Little Rock for the marathon I tired to text BB to see how the dog sitting was going. She didn't answer, so in true stalker style I text 3 more times. Automatically my mind wen straight to the worst thing possible. Kelly kept telling me to let it go, but it was like there was a hold on me and I couldn't get it out of my mind. 

I can't tell you how many times I had to take a minute today and just pray. This is a hard process giving up the control, but I am working on keeping the faith and stressing less about the lack of control I have.

Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. (Philippians 4:6)

technical difficulties

Holy COW.. Love technology, but sometimes it is a royal pain. I have been locked out of my blog for like 2 weeks... I some how created a new blog under my email and for the life of me could not get back to my precious runningcarlson!! Tragic I know, but worry no more I have 1 more password to remember and hopefully I am back on the blogging track!

I won't bore you with a 2 week long recap, but I will give you the highlights.
I had my birthday and thanks to some fabulous family and friends I was blessed with a couple of celebrations and had a fabulous day week.  I will say the highlight of the day was when my wonderful and amazing husband supervised me with the earrings I wanted. He is a keeper.

Juicing-
So last June Kelly and I watched a documentary with his parents and Klee and it caused us to change the way we ate and convert to a vegetarian diet. When people find this out they normally think we are weird and once I was even asked if  I was PETA? So I figured I would give it a try and see how it went, basically agreeing to the facts in the movie and want to have a healthier diet I didn't know if it was something that we would be able to sustain long term. Then came my physical at the gym. When she took my HDL (Good Cholesterol) and the average number for a female is 60... mine was 110. The woman administering my test told me in the 7 years she has been doing the test she has never seen one so high. So to wrap this long story up, is why we are still vegetarians and have now taken on the juicing trend.

Kelly bought this 2 weeks ago on amazon and last week while I was traveling for work it came in. Let me just say this is like his new toy (almost as fun and exciting as his new ipad....almost) I got several pictures of the juice he made in my absence. 

Runs-
In the past couple of weeks I have learned about some FABULOUS runs that are going on!
the color run
At this run they pelt you with dyed cornstarch and at the end of 3.1 miles you look like a rainbow rather than a hard core runner. The KC race sold out in a DAY!!

toughmudder
the tough mudder.. pretty intense 10-12 miles of running paired with 20-25 obstacles designed by military special forces. Not going to lie- I will have to step up my training in order to be able to do this one. I should start by swimming lessons.

Zombie Run
basically you run for your lives while zombies try to catch you and take away your lives (you get a flag football style belt and they basically steal these lives from you) Rumor is there is actually a river of blood.

Vaca-
Currently we are trying to plan our next family vacation. As it stands right now there will be a girls trip in conjunction with the boys annual golfing trip. The location for GW is still up in the air. Kaylee ( how I now call my BB- since she moved here last May it has been perfect, since she is my SIL I am completely allowed to spend extensive amounts of time with her. Which is why we are now Built in Besties or my BB) and I threw out San Fran or maybe San Diego, but that is a long flight that would eat in to some of our long weekend. 

New York was another one we thought of just since neither Julie nor I have ever been.
Any other recommendations out there from bloggers?

Let the Birthday Begin!

Seems like my last post created some buzz.. I want to thank those of you who sent me a note or a text of encouragement. I appreciate it, and while I am thankful to have people like you all in my life I really didn't mean for it to be quite so public. I completely forgot i was still attached to FB and shared my troubles with the whole world. I really meant to just write it for people like me who just can't understand why we can't get pregnant. I am


To tag on to my previous post though, after the 5th negative test i decided I needed to move on from my fixation and focus on things like it was business as usual. Which brings me to 3 favorite things i like to talk about. 1. MY BIRTHDAY and 2. Running 3. Vacation

For those of you that know me you know that i love love love my birthday, and could probably find a couple of posts in years past of my love for the celebration. This year though with how busy I am I am saddened to say I have not been on top of my normal birthday excitement. I blame this love on a couple of things: 1. my parents- they always made it a HUGE deal and when they got divorced i got double celebrations! 2. My friends- I don't know if this was a bentonville thing or not, but it was always a huge deal. All of my friends parents made it a big deal and they even made it a big deal when it wasn't their children. So really this isn't because I think I am fabulous and deserve some big party, but it was just the way it was and now... I love it. My poor poor husband has a lot of pressure on him around this time of year.
And now for my favorite thing to do.. My LIST!
1. toms
I also having been debating on adding the new ballet flats, but I have seen some bad reviews.. Thoughts? Are they as comfy as normal toms?

2. New Bedding!!!
I have been struggling with this one for a WHILE.. at first i was going to sew my own since i couldn't find colors i liked, but it isn't just doesn't make since cost wise. So now i am on the hunt.. I want navy and maybe some yellow or i go with blue's and teals.. i am hoping that I will be inspired by something!

3. Clothes-

what women doesn't want clothes?

I still love BR, and Loft. I also hate that NWA is lacking a Limited or a Nordstrom for that matter!

4. Michael Kors Watch-

Kelly got me one for Christmas and it has now given me the bug and I NEED another!

5. Diamond earrings- I know.. but I can't help but put them on the list

6. A new camera-

I got a Nikon Coolpix a few years ago and I can't lie.. Not a fan. The color is off and it doesn't do well at all with anything that may be moving faster than a turtle.

I am still in the process of research but would welcome recomendations?

Last on the list.... All the Xmen, James Bonds, Mission Impossibles movies--- but this can't be considered a present due to the fact that they will benfit both Carlson's!

working on me...

Blogging- it is what I use to do when I was bored at work... Don't judge me, we know there are 2 main types of dedicated bloggers: stay at home moms and people that are bored at work. Not to discount the outliers that come home and write a riveting blog after a long day at work, but I feel that most fall in to the two buckets listed above.
When I got my new job that all changed. I love my position but from the day I started it has pretty much been a hit the ground running type of role. So between work, my husband being in school for his MBA, volunteering for about 4 things and planning for Italy I gave up trying to fit it in.

When we got back from vacation we decided we would start talking about babies. Which to me the type A planner that meant we would promptly come back from vacation in November and I would be pregnant. I even stopped taking my pill in September to get everything out of my system.Turns out God has his own set of plans.

I even thought about all of the creative and fun ways I would tell my sweet husband, and every month I would have convinced myself we were going to have a baby.  I began to notice all of the other babies every where I went, everyone around me seemed to be expecting. to add more salt to the wound I even got asked to teach a class for the kids at church. Obviously they have no clue that we were trying or in better terms- I was obsessing about have kids and we didn't want it to become public knowledge just yet.

When I evaluate all of the blessings that I have in my life I realize that I am blessed beyond what I deserve and I by no means am I the only one who has had this struggle and mine hasn't been that long, but coupled with the constant worrier that I am I went straight to the worst.
Maybe I can't have kids
Maybe Kelly can't have kids
What if something is wrong with me
What if all of the things that I do has caused to much stress on my body
Am I too old? I am not in my 30's yet, but you hear all these crazy statistics.

My breakdown came in January.  Kelly and I went out for dinner for Valentines day and was we are sitting at the restaurant he looks across the table and says, "are you pregnant yet? I want a baby, I would love to have one right now."  This is big on sooo many levels. for the past 5 years of marriage Kelly has been adamate almost to the point of obnoxious about not wanting kids yet. For him to say something like that it was huge. He was completely unaware of what I had been going through- judge if you will, but I wasn't ready to tell him (nor My fabulous SIL) about what internally I was going through.  
January 26th I was a day late. I had even had a small case of flu like symptoms. I almost could not even focus I was so excited. Then the internal battle began of me trying to calm myself down and then to change the focus of my thoughts. When I woke up the morning of the 27th.. I couldn't take it anymore, I had to take a test. As I waited to proposed 3 minuted for the 2 vs 1 line I prayed for children. I kept thinking it has technically been 3 months- what's the deal?  When the test read one line as opposed to 2 I cried. I sat on the floor and cried. I truly thought I was having a baby and I wasn't mentally prepared for the negative.

I called Kaylee. Kaylee is my SIL and moved here last May after graduation and since that time we have joked that we are built in besties. Neither of us have ever had a sister and this was FABULOUS. I had a built in best Friend a mile away (she rents near our house)  and never had to worry about to much girl time since it was in fact my sister in law. I cried to her and told her how upset I was, and without all of the details she basically told me I put too much pressure on myself and we were no longer talking about babies.
Both of my parents knew about the flu and they were anxiously waiting for the call for me to tell them it wasn't something that would go away for 9 months. My dad called me first thing Friday morning to check on me (this normally happens) but today he got more that he bargained for. I lost it all over again. Bless his heart he wasn't sure what to say other than I love you baby girl and it will be ok.
Next up was my mom. Telling her was harder for the fact that she was so sweet and I just felt so fragile and out of control.

Around lunch time I received an email from Kasey a sweet girl my dad works with. The email consisted of Kasey telling me how she thought I was a Godly woman with all of my stuff together and how great she thought I was. Cue the tears again... I sat in my car and prayed- I prayed to let it go.
I realized after that 3 round of tears that I will have a baby when it is time and when it comes down to it the only thing that I can control is my stress.

For the past month that has been my focus, being the person that I need to be and giving up the "I have control" syndrome. I have started each day with the attitude of: Do the best you can, work through the things that you have control over, and let go of those you can't.

It is by no means easy and I still fixate on things and constantly work to "let it go" but I needed to work on making me the best person I can be with or without children.