And then we had twins… (I’ll have to get to that story at a later date) What a whirlwind the last couple months have been. I feel like the luckiest Mama in the whole world! I Love these sweet little faces looking up at me!!

I want to thank everyone that has taken the time to read this blog and commented here or on Facebook. You have all really encouraged me. As I had said I really never wanted to write a blog and I had a lot of fear about opening up. You all made it worth it. Thank you!

Ok Where did I leave off…

In August of 2010, we were blessed with another beautiful baby boy and we spent most of the year hanging out with the boys and trying to sleep. We were going to church out in Minooka at The Village Christian Church.  It was far from us but we love the people there and it is a comfortable & laid back kinda church so we went as often as we could. The Spring of 2011 we had the boys dedication ceremony. For those of you that don’t know what that means, in a nut shell we committed to raising them to follow Jesus and to teach them the bible. I’m not really sure I knew at the time how to do that or what that really meant. I went to church and I liked it, I prayed sometimes but I wasn’t sure if I was even doing it right and I didn’t know if I really loved Jesus. I mean he’s cool and I was thankful he died on the cross for us. But, In my heart I didn’t really understand, I didn’t know God. And I was seriously intimidated to crack open a bible. At a christian church it is common towards the end of a sermon a pastor will ask if anyone that has not accepted Jesus as their savior to repeat after him and accept him into your life. For a long time, every time I went to church I would say those words over again in my head. I was never really sure I had done it. I felt like if my life didn’t look Christian than I must not be christian. It made me feel like I didn’t deserve to be saved, was I doing it for God? How do you do things for God? Was I just faking it? I don’t want to be faking it. I needed to try harder to be good enough, right?!?

Meanwhile, for months our neighbors were inviting us to their church in Orland Park and we kept declining. We all really liked our church I was happy there and I was afraid if we didn’t like it I wouldn’t know what to say to them. But they kept persisting so finally on Easter with a plethora of services to choose from we couldn’t keep making excuses. So we went to Parkview and Pastor Tim preached on “How Good is Good Enough?”  It answered so many questions. Jesus died for me and I am forgiven. I don’t have to do anything to be a christian other than believe in Jesus. I know now that by doing that there is a desire put into my heart to follow him. It makes me see that the “rules” from God are really there to help me have my best life. And that if I seek him (by praying and reading his word- the bible) he will change my heart, heal my brokeness and my life by default will change.

Towards the end of Spring we started to feel like…. Maybe we should be married? I always knew we would get married at some point but maybe it’s time.  I never thought much of it before, lots of people have kids before they get married. Lots of people never get married. The bible says you should be married before you have sex…. I obviously didn’t grow up believing that was true. So why does it matter now? I can’t go back and change the past. And I didn’t want to, I would miss out on my two boys.  I thought about all the consequences that in general can come from premarital sex (abortions, unwanted pregnancies, single parents, sexually transmitted diseases) It made me think… what are my personal consequences from premarital sex? I know there are some times that I am really grateful that I don’t have a very good memory. How would life look different if we had waited? Maybe we would have a stronger, more intimate connection?  I started wondering why God created sex to be only for marriage. Why does he give us all the commandments? Rules? I’ve always hated rules. Never followed them well. In my mind, Rules=Guilt. But if we followed this one rule I wondered if it would have saved us some heart ache, some trouble. I like the way Jarrid Wilson explains it here.

We got engaged and started planning.  On 11/11/11 we got married.

It felt like everything was falling into place. Have you ever heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs ? Looking back that is the process I went through. When I was alone back at my apartment I was struggling just to make rent and get food on the table for my little man. I felt lost, alone and I carried the weight of the world on my shoulders. When we moved in with Jay, I finally felt safe. When we got married I felt loved and that sense of belonging. Life was starting to look like what I never expected it could. I was happily married, I was the Vice President of the PTO, (If you knew me when I was my younger rebel self, ditching school every other day you’d know this is SHOCKING) a volunteer coordinator, one night a month at the homeless shelter.  I had totally become a “Pinterest mom” – Mastering birthday parties, Christmas Cookies and DIY’s.  Then we bought a minivan… (I swore it would never happen, I was so sad I wouldn’t even go to the dealership with him to pick it out.) A few days later I loved it. I was an official soccer mom! I made it right? Success! But inside something still felt wrong… I still felt not good enough. Like there was a side of myself I was hiding…  A deep dark past lingering around every corner telling me I couldn’t be this person. What was I missing? Why was I not 100% fulfilled?