Big News!

I have been a HORRIBLE blogger.....mostly because I had a secret and knew that if I blogged, I'd want to tell.  I will be 19 weeks pregnant on Saturday.  We went to the specialist in Dallas this past Friday and received wonderful news.  We have a healthy baby boy growing right on track.  This has been a fairly simple pregnancy.  I didn't have a lot of sickness other than some nausea when I didn't eat enough and some sciatic nerve pain.  It has been a wonderful example and reminder of how God can work.  There have been moments where I had feelings of being scared but I AM human.  98% of the time both Bryan and I have been completely at peace and have been able to rest in His hands.  We feel very blessed to be at this point in our lives. 

So, we now have "perspective".  It's a wonderful thing because things that used to make me so nervous and things that I tried to control no longer haunt me.  That being said, perspective can be tricky.  I find myself judging others when they get upset about things that really don't matter.  So, it's a constant battle. 

I'll try to be better at updating the blog more frequently now. 

Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.” (John 8:12 NLT)

I don't really feel like I have anything clever to say today but it's been way too long since I've updated the blog.  Bryan and I had some life changing events occur over the past year, obviously.   It caused us to take a look at our lives and re-evaluate what was important.  We kept hearing, "SIMPLIFY".  We decided last October that we needed to sell our house.  We listed it For Sale By Owner and didn't get a ton of action.  There were at least 9 other homes on our street that were for sale.  That was scary, to say the least.  Some of those homes had been on the market for 2+ years at that point.  We knew the market wasn't good but we also knew that God was leading us down this path and if it was His plan, it was going to sell.  Nothing happened for several months until a realtor called us and asked us if she could talk to us about listing it.  We ended up hiring her and she sold it in 92 days.  That's a miracle in this market if you ask me.  The family that bought the home was looking for our exact home, everything about it was what they wanted. 
We are now living in a townhouse that we love.  We decided not to jump into buying another house, only having 2 weeks to pick one.  We want to take our time and really find the home we are supposed to be in.  Things are falling into place for us.  Bryan enjoys photography and has been offered the opportunity to take photos of houses for a local realtor.  It's been a huge blessing. 
More to come soon!!!!  

Happy Birthday baby boy!

Eden would be 1 year old today.  I can't believe it's been a year.  Bryan and I have learned so much and have become completely different people.  It's amazing how differently we see things.  All because of this special, precious baby.

Happy Birthday!  We love you so much!

Springtime and other stuff

I have never in my life been so excited about Spring!!!  This is the first time in my life that I feel like I've actually "stopped and smelled the roses".  It's almost a child-like excitement!!  The trees budding and the flowers popping seem to have some strong significance this year.  I guess it's probably natural to be affected by the weather and the different beautiful colors coming alive.   It's amazing how many different flowers and plants there are in this world.

I decided to leave my job as the Business Development Manager where I was working here in town.  There were so many wonderful people that I met while working there; employees and patients.  I know that God put me there so I could tell my story in the public eye.  I think I could have gotten into a very bad place if I weren't 'forced' to go somewhere every day.  It was a consistency I needed so that I didn't get consumed with my selfishness and self pity. For personal reasons, I decided to leave and have NO doubt that I made the right decision.

God blessed me with a job that I can do from home.  I couldn't ask for a better situation.  It's such a HUGE blessing and I will never take it for granted.  Bryan and I have been praying since last summer for God to lead us and let us know when and if we should start trying to have a family again.  Now that I am at a point that I can go to doctor's appointments when I need to and put my health first, we feel very confident that God is speaking to us.

In preparing to try to get pregnant again, I've begun consulting with a nutritionist with Nature's Sunshine.  I'll tell the story later on about how I came to find her.  It's an awesome story but I'm saving it for another time.  I've done some cleanses and started eating all organic fruits and veggies and hormone free meats.  It's been an overhaul of our refrigerator and pantry.  I have also completed P90X and am starting it over again, along with running and biking.  I have never been a fan of exercise, in fact I used to LOATHE it.  It has now become a part of my life and I look forward to it.  The more I exercise the more I want to eat things that are grown on trees or from the ground.  If you've never done research on Organic vs. Non-organic, you really should do yourself the favor and stop pumping yourself full of pesticides and hormones.  It's a lot like lead paint and second hand smoke.  If you think about it, when lead paint came out, they had no idea how bad it was until years later.  Second hand smoke was the same way, we find out 20 years later all the bad side effects.  Have you ever noticed little girls starting to develop way younger than they used to????  It's because there are hormones being pumped into chickens to make the chickens grow faster.  Then we eat them.....put two and two together.  I also believe that the pesticides that we ingest correlate with all the cancer that seems to be invading so many people.  I'm no doctor but it just makes sense.  It's been an exciting past few months of getting my body in tip top shape.  Now, being patient for God to do His thing is the next step.

I will keep you all posted!!!

Precious Friends

Sweet Ella Kate

One of my good friends, Tracy, that I met shortly after we moved to Tyler, was pregnant at the same time I was.  We had due dates very close to each other.  This is her sweet little girl, Ella Kate.  They visited The Children's Park in Tyler to take some pictures.  The caption that Tracy sent said, "We took Ella Kate's 6 month pictures a couple of weeks ago and she wanted me to share one with you.  She took a picture with her special friend who I just know would have been her very best friend!"


Tracy has no idea how special it is to me that she constantly tells me that Ella Kate will know all about her friend, Eden.  When you lose a child, your biggest fear is that no one will remember him or her.  Thank you, Tracy.  This made my year!!!

Thank God for the Fleas!!!

I love my church!  The teaching we receive is so rich and helpful for growth.  Do you feel like that?  If not, you are missing something.  Not that church is the only way to grow close to our God, but it's definitely something we are told to do.

Matthew 18:20

"For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

This week, Luke preached from Hebrews about finding the joy through suffering.  While that is usually VERY difficult on our own,  we should learn to teach ourselves to trust God through those sufferings.  When you do, you will find much joy in horrible, awful things.  Sounds a little twisted but it's so true.  Just try it.......

After church I went over to my parents' house to spend the afternoon there while Bryan was at a meeting.  I was telling my mom about what we learned at church and she remembered a story that she had read.  The story was from the book, "The Hiding Place" by Corrie Ten Boom.

'Corrie was taken to a prison in Scheveningen, along with her father, her sister Betsie and her brother Willem. Corrie's beloved father died in prison ten days after his arrest. Corrie spent the following months of prison life sustaining herself with the words of life she found in her tiny Bible, secretly given to her by a friendly nurse during an examination. In June of 1944, Corrie and her sister Betsie were moved to Vught, a labor camp in southern Holland. Conditions at the labor camp were awful, but Corrie was thankful that they had not been sent to Germany. She was also thankful that she was able to be with her sister and around people rather than in solitary confinement as she had been in Scheveningen. Two months after arriving at Vught, Corrie was transferred to her worst nightmare: the notoriously infamous German concentration camp: Ravensbruck. If what Corrie and Betsie had faced before was in any way challenging, it was nothing compared to what they would go through at Ravensbruck. Corrie's one thought was how she could smuggle her Bible into the camp. She prayed that God would somehow make her invisible when it came her turn to be searched. Corrie would later relate with a shining face how God answered her prayer with a miracle! She was able to walk right by the guards without being touched.

Corrie was put into a cell with her sister Betsie. Her worry now was that the guards would see the Bible and take it away from them, the two sister's only source of hope and comfort. The place was so infested with fleas that the sisters could not move without instantly being covered with the bugs. Betsie told Corrie that they should thank God for the fleas, Corrie wasn't sure she could do this, but she and Betsie bowed their heads and thanked God for even the fleas. Weeks later, Corrie was struck by the blessing that came for her obedience to thank God in all circumstances; Betsie had heard a supervisor say she wouldn't step through the door of their cell because of all the fleas, and neither would the guards. It was because of the fleas that Corrie and Betsie were able to continue to keep their Bible without the guards finding it.

Corrie endured all the cruelties inflicted upon her bravely, the ones she could not bear were the ones inflicted on her already weak sister. Betsie greeted each day and each trial with the same sweet smile, rejoicing in the fact that she could share Jesus' love with her fellow prisoners. Corrie did everything in her power to help her dying sister, but the horrible conditions, rampant filth and piercing cold overtook her. Before she died, Betsie said something to Corrie that would stay with her for the rest of her life "[we]...must tell people what we have learned here. We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still. They will listen to us, Corrie, because we have been here."

Betsie was not ever able to leave the camp and tell people, but her words still made it to the world through her sister Corrie.

Two days after her sister died, Corrie was released. She would later discover that her release was an "administrative error". One week after her release all of the women in her age group were sent to the gas chambers. Only Corrie knew that there was no error, God makes no errors.'

Bryan works for a hospital in IT.  Hospitals never close and as we all know, computers tend to have a mind of their own and will shut down at the most inconvenient times.  He got a call last night at about 8:00PM that one of his servers was not coming back up during a routine systems check.  So, he made his way to the hospital thinking it was a simple reboot command.  Wouldn't it be nice if it was that easy???  I told him to "Thank God for the Fleas".  No one likes to be called into work unexpectedly, unless they are just a glutton for punishment.  Bryan was a little upset but he said that he was praying on the way to the hospital and thanking Him.  When he got there he found it was actually a bad hard drive and not a reboot issue.  If someone hadn't been doing a routine check and had trouble rebooting, Bryan would have found out the hard way that the hard drive was bad.  All 30 something of the hospitals would have been shut down.  That's not something you want to happen.....EVER.  And it usually takes a lot longer than the 6-7 hours that it took last night.  It would have been a small crisis.

So, last night we both saw that you need to thank God for the fleas!!!! 

Watercolor for Eden

My mom has ALWAYS said that she really wanted to learn to paint.  A few weeks ago she drew a picture that made me cry tears of joy.  She said it was just something that came to her head.  I never knew she could draw so well.  She never gives herself enough credit.  She is so talented at so many things.  I love her sooooo much!!  So I told her I wanted her to paint the drawing for me so she decided that she would take a class at Hobby Lobby to learn the basic techniques.  She also spent many hours watching videos online.  This is the beautiful picture she painted for me.

I know it's been quite some time since I've posted.  I've been praying for God to give me the words to write that would glorify him.  So, after several weeks of praying and hearing the gentle nudge from Him, this is what I've heard.  First, I wanted to put a couple of pictures of Eden on the blog.  A few people have asked to see pictures but I understand that it must be difficult to know how to ask a person a question like that.  Will they be upset or happy that I asked????  Well, I'm at a point now that I love to show off my son!

Several people have asked Bryan and me when I was going to post something new.  So this is what has been placed on my heart.  In several of my posts I have written about how God is blessing us and what he is teaching me.  Many of our friends and family have told me that they are glad that I have something to hold onto (referring to God) to get through this tough time in our lives.  I would like to clarify something, God is NOT a crutch or sign of weakness.  Once you fully commit yourself and your life to HIM as HIS, you will never look back.  I can whole-heartedly tell you all without a shadow of a doubt that Bryan and I are not the same people we were a year ago.  That's a wonderful thing!!!!  We haven't given up anything, we've only been blessed and blessed and blessed and blessed.  I want to scream at the top of my lungs to share the good news of Jesus Christ our Savior.  Do you know him?  Have you ever thought about it but don't know how to get to know him?  Jesus said,  "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:6
Want to know the answer....... THIS IS IT, and it's THIS SIMPLE!!!! You should say these words to GOD:  

Dear God,
I know that I am a sinner and need forgiveness. I believe that Jesus Christ shed His precious blood and died for my sin. I am willing to turn from sin. I invite Christ into my heart and life as my personal Saviour.


These are the steps to Salvation: 


1. Acknowledge in your heart that Jesus is Lord. 

2. Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord.


3. Believe that Jesus died for your sins and was raised three days later.


4. Repent of your sins and get baptized in the name of Jesus.

Your life here on this earth will never be the same once you take these steps.  Not only will your life here on earth be changed, you will live an eternity in Heaven with our LORD.  Doesn't that sound great????  It does to me.  

If you have any questions about getting to know God, please reach out to me.  If I don't know the answer, I'll find someone who does.  You see I'm not an expert on the bible or am I the model Christian, but I do love Jesus and I want to share HIS love and HIS promise with you!!!  

Sincerely, 

The Albee's 

4:6 (NIV)