Growing Up!

My Little Lady is going to be 7 months old on Christmas?! What?! Can you believe it? It's crazy. Along with turning 7 months...she is standing on her own, well pulling herself up and hanging on to things standing. She just started crawling forward, she's mastered backwards crawling!

I can't believe that she is already doing these things, but I knew they were coming. She's been working really hard at doing them. However, she has yet to get a tooth....kinda crazy since she has been chewing on EVERYTHING for the last 2 months. But she'll have teeth for the rest of her life, she doesn't need them right now!

Here's Lindsay standing last night....she's such a little poser. She's been throwing her head back and smiling for the last 2 days....CRACKS me up! :)

Half A Year

So today is the day. Well okay not THE DAY, but 6 months ago today I was pushing my daughter out! I can't believe it. Lindsay has been around for half a year already! It's just flown by. Actually this whole year has flown by, which given everything that has happened this year, I'm glad it's flown by.

Lindsay went to the doctor's office on Friday. She weighs 17 lbs and is 27 inches long. She is in the 80th percentile for both height and weight. So I've got a good sized baby, we think she's going to be tall....just my luck, all my kids will be taller than me by 6th grade! :) After her doctor's appointment on Friday she got sick. She's all stuffed up and can't breath :(.

We leave for Grandma Helen's in the morning. The last time we were there was in January, when Mary died. It's been almost a year, CRAZY!!! So I hope this weekend won't bring up all those feelings and we'll be able to enjoy our time.

Regret and Forgiveness

Mistakes. People make them, and others don't understand. When do people think it's okay to pass judgement or expect people to not make mistakes? The only perfect person that has ever lived was Jesus Christ. Beyond that people make mistakes.

I am troubled with a situation. A friend of mine came to me with a problem, she also told a few others, who didn't react the way she thought they would. Some people believe that you shouldn't give blanket forgiveness in fear of it looking like acceptance.

I would like to bring in exhibit A. If you read 2 Samuel you will come across the story of David and Bathsheba. When David committed the crime of adultery he wanted to cover it up, and then when he couldn't he had the husband of Bathsheba killed so he could take her as his wife. Although David made this mistake he is still looked at as the most spiritual/Godly person in the Old Testament. My point is, when David first committed the sin, he wasn't sorry for it. It wasn't until later when he had to face the consequences of his actions was he repetitive for his sin.

So I close this post with this....I cannot pass judgment on this situation because I've been there. And at this point in the game, I didn't fully understand the consequences of my sin, but later I did and I repented. Therefore I will be here for my friend and I will listen and encourage until she is at a point to understand the consequences. And then I will be there when she needs to repent and move on. I encourage others to do the same. I don't approve of the sin, nor do I accept it as being okay, but I will give forgiveness to someone that needs it and needs God guidance at this time.

Okay so I never continued my story from before......

In September of 2007 all of our decisions changed. On September 7th we found out that one of our good buddies, Bryan Scripsick, was killed in Iraq. This was the first person that we knew personally to die over there, it tore us up. So we drove 22 hours straight to get to his funeral in Pauls Valley, OK. During the drive I was very sleepy and not feeling well, but I was mourning the loss of a great friend so that would explain everything, right?! After the funeral we spent some time with Bryan's family and our friends which helped us all. On the way back we stopped in New Mexico and spent some down time with Jimmy's Aunt and Uncle, it was a great time of healing. When we got back I went back to work, however I was still exhausted and just not feeling well. On Saturday, September 22nd I was at work and talking to my boss in my office. She was talking and I fell asleep! I know, great way to impress the boss and secure your job right?! Well we decided that I should go home. When I got home I went to my neighbor's house and she convinced me to do a pregnancy test. I "knew" that it was going to come back negative so I really didn't want to do it, but I went home, grabbed just the test from our master bathroom, walked across the apartment to the guest bath and peed on the darn stick.

Now our apartment was a two bedroom, two bath apartment with the living room, kitchen, and eating area in between the bedrooms. Jimmy was on the couch in the living room watching his Wolverines beat Penn State while I was in the guest bathroom taking the test (which I told him nothing about!). Done peeing and a line shows up across the test (great told you I wasn't pregnant), the second line shows up in the second pane to tell you that the test is working, (yep still not pregnant), washed my hands, a second line shows up on the first pane, now there is a plus sign (WAIT....WHAT!!!! A PLUS SIGN! NO WAY!!! (heart is racing) I must have read the box wrong, I have to double check). I ran across the apartment into our bathroom and re-read the instructions three times. "If a plus sign appears, even a faint one, you're pregnant." (Okay, I have to check the test again, it hasn't been the full three minutes, I have to double check) I ran back across the apartment, by now Jimmy is wondering what I'm doing. I looked at the test, there is a bold plus sign (NO FREAKING WAY!!!!). I ran out to the living room, jumping up and down, crying, I yelled to Jimmy, "WE'RE PREGNANT!!!!"

Okay so have you seen The Notebook? Remember when he picks up the girl and kisses her and they twirl around, that's what the Morris' living room looked like, minus the rain. We cried and laughed and hugged and kissed. It was great. A few days later we decided that we would not re-enlist and that we would move back to Indiana.

That's how we ended up here. In November we moved back and then it felt like our whole lives fell apart. Our house was not ready for our arrival, we got in a huge fight with Jimmy's Mom, the family was split. Then just after the New Year we made up, we were starting to reconnect as a family until that terrible day. Saturday, January 19, 2008 our world came crashing down. I kidnapped Jimmy for the weekend, just because we needed at least one last weekend of just us before Lindsay came. I took him up north to his Grandma's house and then to the Notre Dame vs. Michigan hockey game at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit on Saturday. We started driving to the game and I called Jourdan to see how the day was going for her, see it was Snowball that night and Jourdan was going, so she should have been getting ready. She didn't answer her phone. Okay Jourdan is never without her phone, if you need to get a hold of her just call her cell, she always has it. So I thought something was wrong when she didn't answer, but Jimmy said she was probably just getting her hair done, to not worry about it. We enjoyed the game, ND lost :(, and went out to the car. It was around 11pm, maybe a little before I can't remember for sure. I had 9 missed calls on my phone from Jimmy's Dad. Jimmy had a few missed calls too, but from a couple of people. Jimmy called his Dad and then started sobbing and had outbursts of pain. I took the phone from Jimmy and learned what happened.

Mary, Jourdan, and Jourdan's friend Kara were on their way back up to South Bend from Indianapolis and were hit head-on. Mary died instantly, Jourdan and Kara were airlifted to the Fort Wayne hospital in critical condition. I had to get my husband to Fort Wayne as soon as possible so he could see his sister. So I drove 5 hours straight down to Fort Wayne through the middle of the night. We made it just fine.

Well we are still working on getting over/through that. On May 25th I gave birth to our first daughter. She came in at 8 lbs 6 oz and 20 inches long, she was born at 3:03pm. Her name is Lindsay Abigail Morris. She is a joy!

Life's Lessons

The older I get, the younger I seem to be to the rest of the world. Not that I'm complaining that people don't see how old and battered I really am, but it gets a little tiresome when life has taught you alot already and people don't want to see your maturity because of how "young" you look.

I was a mother at 18, I know that doesn't seem too young, but I wasn't ready. I was barely out of the house, still at college, trying to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. :) I moved across country to clear my mind and to handle my problems. Sure, some might think I was running away from my problems, but that wasn't the case. Infact I was running towards my solution. After months of prayer and deep soul searching, I realized I wasn't old enough, nor in the position to handle raising a child. I didn't want a life of struggle for my child, I didn't want my child to suffer because of my immaturity. I was 15 weeks along when I decided to give my child a better life, and chose his adoptive parents. I went through the rest of my pregnancy knowing that the child I was carrying was going to have a better life than what I could have provided it at the time. I had a peace about the situation. Our God is amazing, he really has a plan for everything, he carried me throughout my pregnancy and the emotions afterwards.

During my pregnancy, God brought my husband back into my life. We went to middle school and high school together and always knew each other from a distance. We both happened to be living in California at the time. Isn't it amazing how God works?! From Indiana to California, and then we fall in love! :) We got married in February of 2005, when I was only 19 and he was 20 by the way, and we've had a great relationship ever since. I've learned that in a marriage you must think about your spouse before yourself. Infact isn't that the way we are always supposed to live? To treat others the way we would like to be treated. I think this is something God has really pushed on me hard. I always try to look at things from the other person's eyes and put myself in their shoes.

I've been through many trials in my life, but the last 5 years seem to be the most trying. My husband started to have pains right after we got married. He is a Marine, so he wasn't going to tell anyone about these pains because he didn't want to look weak. (yeah right like a 6'4" 200 lbs. Marine can look weak) After months of telling the Marine Corps that something was seriously wrong, yelling at comands, writing the President of the United States, Jimmy finally got medical treatment. And guess what....something was seriously wrong! He had a problem that made him infertial, and caused him great pain. He had surgery and 3 months later was shipped overseas! He spent 6 months serving overseas before coming home. Do you want a real test of your marriage?? Send your spouse to a combat zone for 6 months, waking up everyday hoping that your spouse is doing the same! After his deployment we started infertility testing, and we got the results around November of 2006.....because it took the Marine Corps so long to realize the problem my husband was now infertial and the only possiblity of us ever having kids would be to do invetrofertilization. However, it would be slim picking and we probably wouldn't get pregnant. How do you, at age 21 & 22, deal with the reality that you will never be able to have kids naturally? And on top of that, just two years prior you gave your perfectly healthy baby boy up for adoption when you could have kept him! My answer at the time was to get angry and upset and to cry, cry alot!

In December '06 we found out that Jimmy would be shipped out again in February for 7 months to Iraq. With the Marine Corps you typically have around 6 months of intense training before you deploy to prepare. Jimmy had 3 months to fit in 6 months of training, so I didn't see him very much. He was scheduled to leave on Febraury 20, 2007, he came home from a 2 week long training mission on the 13th and said that the deployment was cancelled! Yeah! You would think that I was instantly happy, my husband was not going back to war and would be home for the remainder of his term out of harms way, but I was upset. I just spent 3 months of preparing myself to not see my husband for 7 months, I got the house ready for him to be gone, I got mentally ready for the worse to happen and now nothing was happening. My husband was coming home every night. It's a little bit of an adjustment.

In April '07 we said goodbye to all of our really good friends, whose deployment was not cancelled! It wasn't until summer came around that Jimmy and I really started talking about our inability to have children. At this time my answer changed from crying to relying on God. We knew that everything happens for a reason and that for some reason God didn't want us to have children right now. We were bummed, but we were learning to deal with it. And then we had to make the desion to re-enlist in the Marine Corps or get out, and if we were getting out do we stay in California or do we move back to Indiana. Decisions decisions, and they weren't easy decisions! So we decided that we would get out of the Marine Corps and purchase a new townhouse/condo and stay in sunny southern California.