Encouragement from the Lord

I attended a prayer retreat this morning that my small group did with another small group from church. It was a lovely time of refreshment and connection with God, though I did enter into it with a bit of trepidation.

You see, it was a similar retreat where, when I presented myself to the Lord, He upended my life by telling me to go to Kenya. After having been in the process for five years now and not being further along with support raising than we are (45% as of 4/30), I was a bit fearful of what He would say this time around.

What He gave me was in Isaiah 41.

"I took you from the ends of the earth, from its farthest corners I called you. I said, 'You are my servant'; I have chosen you and have not rejected you. So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

Reminds me of the song lyrics:

Strength will come when we wait upon the Lord, wait upon the Lord, we will wait upon the Lord our God; who reigns forever!

Thank you, Lord.

Hormonal update

Once again I'm delinquent in updating this online journal. I'm just following a pattern set early on. You should see my diaries from middle school and high school. Um, well maybe you shouldn't. The point is that I'd have four entries in a row for four sequential days. Then there would be one entry about four months later and then nothing for another six months, followed by another four entries in a row for four sequential days. I'm nothing if not inconsistent!!


This time, however, I have a good reason. Remember I told you I'd gone to a hormone doctor? The supplements she recommended after my first visit did wonders to clear my brain fog! Wow! I have my memory back! Even though I'm not following the "white" diet to the letter, I did end up losing about 15 pounds and felt much better.


Then came the second visit. She'd gotten my blood tests back indicating my hormone levels and decided to put me on a daily regimen of a very low dose of estrogen and testosterone bioidenticals, combined with a cyclical regimen of progesterone. After starting the E/T regimen I slowly morphed into Jezebel. My mood disintegrated way past cranky and on into seething. I was mad at everyone and every circumstance. Jeff was blessed by his 14 hour a day job which kept him away from me, but poor Ashley bore the brunt of my PMS on steroids.


I really wanted to give it a month to see if eventually my mood would even out, but after putting Ashley in tears three days in a row by being just plain mean, I gave up. The P hormone seems OK, but the E/T made me feel extra-terrestrial...and not the warm, bald E.T. type, but the fangs hanging out, claws beared, Alien vs. Predator type.


Consequently, nothing happened that didn't have to happen from mid April to mid May. Blog updates fell into the latter category.


What did have to happen was mostly schooling. Ashley's teacher sent out a notice saying if she was 80-90% finished with a course and we wanted to work on next year's curriculum this summer to let her know and she'd get the curriculum to us. Ashley had all of her vocabulary and grammar complete as well as most of her spelling, but still had a significant portion of literature and composition to do. The way it works with COVA is that these five are averaged into "Language Arts." The average was about 90%, so I ordered up grade 5 Language Arts and grade 5 math, 'cause we were at 80% with that. Little did I realize that "advancing" to the 5th grade meant 4th grade went away, which further meant that we had to finish 4th grade Language Arts by Apri l 30, and 4th grade Math by May 29th! Of course, I didn't clue into this until midway through April. So, not only did Ashley have to put up with ferocious mama bear teacher, she also had to do six hours of Language Arts a day for the last half of April, and nothing but Math for most of May. She did it though! And now we are two tests away from being done for the year!

Yipee!!!!