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2005-10-15 - 10.15pm previous entry next entry

10 years....

Thank you for all the nice comments about the photos and Arthur's 11 month birthday!

This is such a lame-o entry because I wanted to write a big thing about something and I feel so utterly miserable with nausea today that I can't :( I swear I have never felt so sick. For so many hours without a break. Except that I know I did the last time I was pregnant. But ugh, all the same. I'm so thankful because it means my baby is probably thriving inside me, but I am finding it hard to deal with this evening, after a day of being utterly unable to do a THING for the awful nausea, and feeling like I could throw up at any time, and it being soooooooooooo hard to chew and swallow food, and sip any fluids. Tonight I have a headache, and I know it's because I am dehydrated, yet I can't shove enough into my stomach to fix it. I feel so bad, like I'm letting my body down, and my baby, and Arthur, because he needs a mummy who isn't dehydrated, and also he needs his mummy to make his milk for him like usual. Ugh. It has just been a hard day and I'm tired of feeling so sick already :( It feels like an eternity before I'm at the stage where it might pass or ease off. I know this should be in my pregnancy diary but oh well.

What I MEANT to write tonight is that this evening it has been 10 years since I became a Christian. October 15th 1995, somewhere around 8pm :) I wanted so badly to write a big entry about my feelings about that and my history, but I feel too gross.

But I WILL say that I feel too gross to write about it because I am experiencing blessing number fifty million and one (!!) since I let God into my life! Of course he was blessing me so much before that, but somehow it feels amazing to acknowledge him in everything since. God has literally - literally - turned my life around since I gave it to him to deal with. I will write the short version:

When I became a Christian I was suffering from depression. The clinical, diagnosed, suicidal kind. It started in my last year at school (age 16) and I was 19 when I became a Christian. It did continue for a while longer though. I went on Prozac. Prozac and I did NOT get along. It turned me from somebody who was depressed into somebody who was depressed and UNSTABLE, seriously. It was on Prozac that I attempted suicide. Stoopid Prozac. Anyway, I was a brand new Christian when that happened, like only a few months or something. I was at my workplace and after my attempt failed I just walked out and kept walking till I reached the nearest hospital, where I tried to check myself in. They told me I needed a referral, and basically, "Buh-bye!" Can you believe that?!!

So standing out in the car park, I didn't know where else to go or what else to do. I felt utterly unsafe and like I had no idea who I was. I had left my coat and bag at work (I never went back there either), and I only had the clothes I was wearing. I rummaged in my jeans pocket (I NEVER put anything in my jeans pockets) and there was a church leaflet folded teeny tiny. Somebody's phone number was on it, but I knew that lady was a school teacher and it was term-time and during school hours so she would not be there. I phoned anyway, and there she was. She drove right over and picked me up, and we spent the afternoon talking and praying, which I had never really done before with anyone like that.

Anyway. I felt compelled to come off the Prozac. I didn't want to see my doctor or follow advice, so whether it was wise or not, I just stopped taking it. I never had one single day of depression since that day. Not even the next day! Not ever. I have felt depressed sometimes, but it's so different. Back in those days, it was literally like a taste in my mouth. I could feel it was chemical. Sometimes I think how the Prozac must have jump started me or something, though my doctor couldn't really figure it out, nor my therapist. But actually I'm pretty sure it had much more to do with God than anything else!

Thank you God for healing me from hideous depression and setting me free!!

Okay, then there was Neil. We were already dating at this time, because we met on the Alpha Course which I started at a church in Wimbledon right after I became a Christian. I met Neil in November 1995. Nearly 10 years! He was on the course too, and the same friend invited us, though we had never met before. He was on her degree course and had been brought up in an actively Christian home, but had lost any desire to pray and stuff during his time at Uni. Sooo I met Neil. We became really good friends. I never had a good male friend before! We had so much fun together. I drove and he didn't have a car (I drove my mum's) so I would give him lifts everywhere.

How we fell in love is a whole 'nother LONG story that I should go into another time, but basically I began to realise I was falling in love with him, as more than a friend. I had no idea if he had any feelings for me like that (I presumed not) and I was scared about having such feelings. I went with a new friend from church to a prayer clinic, and explained my new feelings and that I was afraid to even consider a more-than-friends relationship with a man because I had been sexually abused several times (at 7, 14, and 19 - all completely isolated incidents from each other) and felt terrified of men in general. Hence no male friends I suppose. So they prayed. I felt SUCH an incredible sense of freedom as they prayed that I asked them to pray that Neil would have feelings for me, and that he would miss me while he was away at home over the half-term break, hahaha! Sneaky me :) Anyway, God answered that prayer right away, hehe! Neil told me he really missed me that break and it surprised him how much. Mwa-ha-ha! ;)

Okay I was so confident that on the way out from the prayer clinic I stopped at the Christian bookshop and bought a book on weddings, hehehe! My friend said that was a bit premature, but I just knew :)

So needless to say, God blessed me with my wonderful husband. Long lonnng story of how it all happened, but that's for another entry. I could not IMAGINE a more perfect husband for me. God has blessed me so much :) Thank you God for blessing me with my wonderful husband!!

I got sick with M.E. right after we married and was housebound for 2 years, and that was a MISERABLE time, but most of you already know that God healed me, November 10th 2001!! Thank you God for healing me when I was sick. I LOVE you Lord.

The most precious gift I was ever given here on this earth is my baby boy. I know he is a gift from God. November 9th 2005. Wow, nice things happen to me in November, don't they?! :) Thank you Jesus for my precious little boy. What an incredible blessing.

NOW I have mucho-nausea and a teeny tiny beating heart deep in my body - yet another blessing from God! Thank you Lord for my precious second child who I know you are knitting together even as I write this.

I am just so blessed. God has done so many other amazing things in my life these last 10 years, too many to write about. He has literally provided thousands of pounds from absolutely nowhere when we have been stuck financially - twice. He blessed us with our first two homes. One of them would not have been ours to live in without God's amazing financial blessing. He provided the exact amount we prayed for. God is just awesome.

Soooo many tiny things that God did that could not be explained any other way, much to the annoyance of my parents, who were extremely against my being a Christian! Like the time when Mummy lost her wedding ring in the garden and we all searched for HOURS, and she was so upset and crying and saying it was gone for good, and suddenly I thought I could not believe I hadn't thought to ask God! I stood there in the garden and prayed silently, and immediately had a visual image in my mind's eye of a branch with twigs coming off it in a certain way, with the ring lying at its root. It took me all of 10 seconds to find the branch exactly as my mind saw it, and there was the ring at the foot of it :) My parents were soooo confused when I told them what God has showed me!

Or the time I lay hands on my cat and prayed that his arthritis in his little front paws would go away, and he leapt up like I touched him with a hot poker and stood there shaking his front paws about weirdly (I kid you not!) and immediately lost his limp, haha! Yup. They couldn't explain that one either :)

God is so incredibly awesomely wonderful, and I love him so so so so so much. It's a different type of love I suppose, but incredibly intimate, and I would definitely say that I love him more than I even love my own son. For those of you with children of your own, or even those of you who have an idea of how much I totally LOVE Arthur, you see that my love for God is overwhelming. I have a living relationship with God, I think that's what it is that makes me love him so. Only it's much more than that also. I don't just choose to believe in a set of beliefs. I just KNOW God, personally, like I know Neil or my mum I suppose. It's different though, but hard to explain.

Anyway, I love him! Love him love him love him! I wish I had stuck closer to him over the years. I wish I was closer to him NOW than I am. I get distracted by life and forget to tune into his presence every day. I feel sad about that, especially when I think of all those things he has blessed me with. Those are like the solid part of a cake. The filling and the icing and decoration have been the countless times I have spent in his presence, just "being" with him. Or crying my heart out and begging him to draw me close to him, and suddenly feeling something that can never be described, as though somebody just communicated to me that they loved me beyond my brain's capacity to understand it or my body's ability to feel it. I love the times where I have just felt "lost" in God. Like there's nothing else in the world but God and me. Like nothing else matters. I could sing of my love for him forever at those times, and spend the rest of my days talking with him and praising him. Sing sing singing when he puts music in my heart and I feel it run through my veins and pour out of my tear ducts as I sing it.

I can't imagine continuing my life as I was before I gave my life to Jesus. I just can't begin to imagine. I am so glad that I didn't. I can't even tell you. I would not be where I am now. I would not have the people in my life that I have now. I would not be the person that I am now. Maybe I wouldn't even be around now?

Anyway, I am so thankful to God for these last 10 years! He is the main definition of what my life is about. Now if only I could live that out more....

Well, that is what I wanted to write about tonight. I also needed to update about Arthur's physio appointment with his feet. We have to go back at the beginning of December after he is a year old. If he is walking by then, we'll see how his feet do, and fit him into STIFF walking shoes, ugh! If he isn't walking by then, he needs one or two more sets of full-leg plaster casts!!! :( I am so bummed about this. But his feet just aren't quite getting straight enough on their own, and they will only cause him problems in the future if it's not fixed. I am still hoping that he will start walking and we'll fit him with boxy stiff shoes and those will correct his feet as he walks. But it does seem likely that he will be in plaster casts yet again. Only one or two sets though, she hopes, and once that is done it will be sooooooo worth it. My poor Boo! So we wait and see till December.

Okay, this was much longer than I thought it would be - I'm glad I got to write about it in more detail! I feel grim now though, so I'm going to bed. No photos today, must take some new ones soon!

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