Dwell in Me

Seeking God in the Every Day

Monthly Archives: June 2013


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Our Nursery

Confession: We have a nursery in our house.

When we moved into the house, we set aside one of the three bedrooms as a nursery. I didn’t want anything to go in it. I was so sure that we would be decorating it soon for a baby and I didn’t want to end up putting a bunch of junk in there that we would need to find new places for when a baby was on the way.

When we received our infertility diagnosis, our view of things changed. The “nursery” became the spare bedroom. We let some things get piled up in there–but it mostly just has books lining the walls. The books are waiting for shelving we plan to build in our office, a project that will almost surely be completed before we have a baby.

Then we read a book called The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson. My mom gave it to me in February when she and my dad came for a visit. And DH and I read a chapter each night together until we finished the book. The book is all about prayer–powerful prayer. It’s not about getting what you want from God. It’s more about getting what God wants for you by dedicating yourself to praying more consistently and with more intention and focus.

I don’t really know how to explain it, but after reading that book we decided to rechristen the room as the nursery. DH and I have made a habit of going in there every night to pray specifically about our hope for a child, asking God to mold our desires to his, and telling God that we have planned this room as a nursery and that we will keep asking for his blessing in that room until he directs us in a different way. We read prayers or Bible verses and we add our own prayers. Sometimes we stay in there for just a few minutes. Sometimes much longer. We say we are using the nursery as a prayer circle.

Before I only ventured in there if I was looking for a book. Now we go in every day. It used to feel haunted, and there is no baby there–yet. But I have come to enjoy having a place that helps us focus our prayers.

And perhaps one day the nursery will be used for a baby of ours. Or perhaps God has another plan. We’ll have to wait and see what he intends for us. In the meantime, I am so grateful to have a God who hears our prayers and who cares about our desires. And I trust that his will is best for our life, even if things turn out differently than I think I want.

Is there something you want to pray more intentionally about? What do you do to focus your prayers? Is there something I can pray for you? I’d be honored to join you in praying for God’s direction and peace in your life.


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Modern Miracles?

I’ve been a negligent blogger lately. I guess if I want to over-analyze, it’s probably not a bad thing. I started the blog because I needed a space to write and air my grievances, a space to heal. And I needed to know I wasn’t the only person out here on this messed up ride called infertility. So the fact that I haven’t felt as compelled lately to post–well, I think it may indicate that my attitude has improved. And it has. The peace I mentioned in my last post apparently wasn’t just a momentary fluke, because I’m still feeling it.

My circumstances haven’t changed. We’re still waiting. And honestly, hoping and praying we’ll end up avoiding actually doing inferitlity treatments. It’s a long shot, for sure, but wouldn’t that be amazing? And I know nothing is too difficult for the LORD.

All this has had me thinking lately about miracles and answered prayers. How many miracles do we ignore completely? How many answers to prayer do we miss because we’re too caught up in the day to day? This season of infertility has called our attention more and more toward how God is moving in our lives all the time, in ways we maybe wouldn’t have called out or mentioned before.

It has been amazing to grow through this difficulty with my best friend. I’ve watched his faith deepen throughout the past several months. He’s thanking God for things I don’t think he would have seen God’s hand in even six months ago. He’s taking more leadership for our family as the spiritual head of our household. I have a tendency to step in and take over, infringing on his leadership, but I’ve been praying that would change, and that DH would really be the spiritual leader of our house. Another answer to prayer?

And little tiny things–like how DH’s car passed its inspection this weekend despite having an indicator light on that best estimates suggest will require a $1000 fix we just can’t afford right now. And how our first two rounds of medicine were free because the insurance company and/or the pharmacy messed up and told us they were covered 100 percent, and they actually went by what they told us despite the fact that it should have cost $500+ each time. And how they billed our most recent round of meds as a $20 copay (by the grace of God!).

There are everyday little things that may seem insignificant, but it is so nice to be reminded that God has not forgotten us. He hears us and he cares about us. He’s in it with us and he knows how he will resolve things for us. What an incredible relief!

Ultimately, it’s a reminder that I’m a benefactor of the ultimate miracle: that God loved me enough to find a way to pay the cost of my sin. Forgiveness: What a miracle.

Miracles really do happen all the time. I pray that I won’t be blind to them in my life. And that seeing miracles–both those that affect me directly and others’ answers to prayer–will strengthen my faith that God is, absolutely, beyond any doubt, able to work the miracle of children in my life should he choose. And if not, it’s not because of any lack on his part. It’s because he has something better planned.

Praise God. The God who heals and hears and IS.  


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Not Making Plans

It’s so hard to make any plans when you’re infertile. Partly because infertility alone is something you never planned and you can’t know how it will be resolved. And partly because one of the lessons of infertility is that we don’t have as much control over our lives as we might think or desire. So what’s the use in planning anyway?

So, it’s been a while since my last update. We checked out apartments, but we just couldn’t see ourselves going from a house to an apartment again. The dogs like having a yard, and we like that they have a yard. We started looking for a house we could rent. No luck on that front. At least not yet. We’ve gone out a few times to drive around the various neighborhoods near downtown. The Heights gets a lot of hype, but I’m not sure I get the appeal. I mean, you still can’t really walk anywhere, and Houston’s public transit system is lousy, so it’s not like when we lived in Arlington, VA, and only had to pull the car out of the garage once or twice a week.

I loved one little part of town; it’s called Montrose. It’s eclectic and really cute, and it actually seems pretty walkable; there are restaurants and coffee/tea houses dotted throughout, a couple of nice parks, and the zoned elementary school is actually a magnet Montessori school. Montrose is also slightly less expensive than the Heights, though I don’t really understand why.

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As an aside: We’ve learned some interesting things about Houston Independent School District, though we have more to learn if we end up moving into downtown and having children. But the key takeaway so far is that HISD has a really robust magnet program that includes the aforementioned Montessori elementary school, an elementary school with a dual language program, an elementary school that is 100 percent gifted students, middle schools with various magnets for gifted programs and arts and other things, a high school that is specifically geared for kids who want to go into a medical profession, a high school that offers an international baccalaureate (not yet clear on what that is), a fine arts high school, and a number of other things depending on what a child might be interested in. I’m really kind of fascinated by all these programs and curious about how they work, but it explains a bit about how housing prices can be super high in areas zoned to mediocre to poor elementary schools. Where you’re zoned seems to have little effect on where your children actually attend classes.

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Really, we’ve been going back and forth. We keep checking out the Houston real estate website (har.com), to see what houses are available. We’ve talked about buying a little bungalow–similar in size to what we would have expected to live in if we’d stayed in DC, though the DC houses all had basements at least. These houses are about 1000 sq. ft. less than what we currently have–but I guess we have more space than we really need for two. Most were built between 1920 and 1940 and have been remodeled inside. They are on decent sized lots that a developer would stick two townhouses on if it were sold for lot value. If we bought one of these bungalows, then, maybe in a few years, when we can afford it, we could add on to the house or even tear it down and build new. Which would mean that we could wait until we had a better understanding of our future financial situation. Part of the issue is that we don’t know how much DH is likely to be earning in the near future, especially since it seems his industry is really bonus-oriented.

So, everything is up in the air. We contacted our Realtor to see how much he’d have us sell our house for if we sold it now. And we did go to an open house last weekend in the Heights. But, we’re hesitating. Maybe we will wait and try to sell our house next summer, after we’ve had some time to adjust to DH’s new schedule, and after we’ve had a chance to see if infertility treatments work for us or not.

Then again, maybe we’ll go look at some houses tomorrow when DH gets off his last night shift and decide we don’t want to wait.

I just wish we could decide and stick with it. Also, I wish the houses where we are looking weren’t so expensive. Or that we had the capital to buy a lot and just sit on it until we could afford to build. But that is definitely not to be.

But what if it’s just greener grass because it’s not what we have now? A temporary antidote to general dissatisfaction?

And why does it have to be so difficult to make any plans?

In the two-weeks since I last wrote, something unexpected happened. I’ll post on that next, as this is already long enough.