Struggling

This has been a difficult week.  It feels like there are so many choices to be made and I have so little control over any of them.  It finally got to the point where I just painted our living and dining room so I could have some control over SOMETHING in my life - even if it was just a paint color.  I suppose I was surprised that I had done so well during the holiday season this year.  Last year the only things I could hear at Christmas were about the pregnant Mary and baby Jesus.  This year I was better able to focus on the real reason for the season and not focus quite so much on the adorable little ones in their sweet Christmas outfits or the way we were only filling an extra stocking for our dogs again this year.  (Not that I didn't think about those things - obviously I did because I'm writing about them here.  They just didn't impact me like they had in the past.)

Surprisingly, it's an upcoming milestone birthday that has me reeling instead.  It shouldn't make that much difference because it's only another day.  Just a number, right?  Unfortunately, that number is plastered all over fertility calendars and graphs and it's at this number that the line begins to plummet downward.  Suddenly, I lie awake at night and I can HEAR the clock ticking.  We're running out of time.  I've also been faced with the question of whether I'm "mature" recently.  This simply compounded the issue.  On one hand I want to be young and fertile with no laugh lines or gray hairs, on the other I'm ready to be a "grown-up".  I even see it when I go shopping!  I'm definitely not "Forever 21", but I'm by no means thrilled by the "Womens" department either.  I'm living in limbo-land with a yearning desire for some solid footing.

Perhaps someday soon there will be progress in one of the areas I'm wondering about.  For now, I've been convicted to get on my knees and to open up my Bible.  I certainly don't have the answers right now, but I know there is a plan for our lives that is greater than anything I could come up with on my own.  It's time to go back and claim Jeremiah 29:11 again.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord. "Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans for a hope and a future."