One Bar

Simultaneously, three of my electronical gizmos were on their last battery bar. My phone beeped at me, screaming "Battery is Low" and my two cameras were blinking "Low Battery" as well.

As I plugged in all three to charge up, I realized that my personal Low Battery light is blinking too. I desperately need somewhere to plug in, to recharge, to power up. This pregnancy and events of the past few weekds have drained all my battery reserves, and it doesn't help that I've been largely without the things in life that keep me going like the Energizer Bunny.

I've been in a particularly emotional mood lately. I'm not sure why. I suppose it has to do with a lot of different things, some little and some monumental, that are adding up to be almost more than I can handle. I think I'm having a mid-life crisis...just a couple weeks shy of my 28th birthday. Not sure how that happens, but it is what it is. :) There is a portent of stormy weather ahead...Perhaps not so much stormy weather as earthquakes. Things that will rock my world. Things that will cause fissures and cracks in what we consider normality. Things that will change the direction of our lives and bring change and growth (hopefully). Most specifically, the decisions related to Adam's job and his future plans for doctor-hood.

When you're climbing a mountain, you look forward to reaching the summit. I feel like Adam and I have been climbing a mountain for our whole marriage, through medical school, then residency, then private-sector work, then residency again. We could see the top and we knew the goal. We had a map to make it to the summit and although we took a couple detours, we are reaching the point where we can finally take in the beauty of the view from the top.

Right?

Except it feels as though we've started to see that what we thought was the summit was really just the valley at the base of another mountain. A mountain that we know we're supposed to climb, but we're not sure which path to take and there is no map. There is no solid direction. And worse yet, there is fog covering the paths. There is more than one way to continue on our journey and we can't see which path would be the fastest, or the easiest, or the most beautiful. But we're looking behind us, thinking, Dang. What we thought was the struggle of the climb, through rocks and mud and steep incline, was really quite beautiful, and there really is no more beauty at this point of our journey than there was before.

There must be joy in the journey.

So, to answer the question I get about a hundred times a week (just joking...kind of), we really don't know which path we're going to take. We have no idea where we're going to put down roots, and we feel that the right opportunity hasn't presented itself to us yet. So we're waiting. It is something that my heart can hardly stand, as I'm someone who craves the life of normalcy and roots. I want a house that is ours, a quiet house on a peaceful street. A house that will feel like a home, because I can make it so without worrying about the landlord or having to move more "stuff" in the near future. I like to have a firm grip on my life, and control it as best I can, and this out-of-control feeling is so not fun for me. I certainly do not like living an unsettled life.

And yet I have no idea how I will react when we finally are settled and have no "escape" from the difficult things. I find myself thinking much too often that it doesn't matter what is going on here, because at least we'll be moving soon. It's not that big of a deal to have no friends in the area because we'll be moving soon. It's fine that I don't feel a part of our ward because we'll be moving soon. The "moving soon" excuse is convenient. But it's making me pull away from life here, and that can be a dangerous habit to let into my life.

In less than a year, we'll be unpacking boxes at the base of a new summit in preparation for a new climb.

Hopefully by then I'll learn how to have joy in the journey.

Exhaling

*picture from my six-week ultrasound

Well, many of you already know...there's a bun in the Murdock oven.

I've been thinking about the effects of disappointment and loss.

There is something that happens, that is beyond words, when you've been through life experiences that disappoint you or bring pain to your life. You walk with a certain degree of dread, knowing that there could be something poised around the next corner, ready and waiting to jump at you. It becomes easy to let that dread taint your experiences and rob you of the joy that could be felt today. I felt like, for weeks, I was holding my breath as I waited for the 12th week of pregnancy. There is something about losing a baby through first trimester miscarriage that makes peace in the first trimester of subsequent pregnancies nearly impossible. The first trimester becomes 12 weeks of waiting...waiting for a heartbeat, waiting to pass that magical threshold when you can finally exhale.

While I never enjoyed the all-day sickness and nausea that accompanied the first trimester of this pregnancy, I gloried in each day that I was sick. Being sick meant something was still right. It meant that there was continued life, continued growth, continued progress. Yet I was still holding my breath, because I remember. I remember the one pregnancy that didn't make it to 12 weeks. I remember the day I woke up and thought "I feel really good today!" And I remember the time I learned that my feeling good was the sign that growth and progress and life stopped. So I continued to hold my breath, waiting for week 12.

And yesterday when I heard that heartbeat, at exactly 12 weeks, I finally exhaled.

It feels so good to breathe.

The Force Is Strong

Halloween 2009...
Nate as "Commander Cody" and Aidan as "Master Yoda"

These are two of Nate's buddies from church...who obviously love the same thing as him.
It's ALL about Star Wars at ALL of our houses right now!
(And Nate's dad couldn't be happier...)

Master Yoda vs. Lord Vader

Connection...Vader is defeated!

"Dude! That really hurt!"

We had a really great Halloween, despite the fact that Adam was working until late. The kids had already fallen in exhausted heaps in their beds when Dad came home... but he took the opportunity to look through their candy bags for "Dad Tax." In my house growing up, it was 10%. Luckily for the Dad of this house, our kids only like about 10% of the candy they bring home. You can do the math on that one.

One thing we found (and really loved) this year was a local mall's Halloween Carnival. There were jump houses and carnival games, and they had a petting zoo and lots of contests and prizes. It was really fun. The stores in the mall were handing out candy, too, so the kids could walk door-to-door and get their bags full without having to guess as to which neighborhoods would be the best bet. If we're here next year, we may not even venture into the neighborhoods -- maybe we'll just go to the mall! :)

Hope your Halloween was full of treats and not tricks!