What's new pussycat?

So here it is, almost halfway through my Lenten journey, and I am just now starting my Lenten resolution.  *sigh*

Not much is new, but everything is new it seems.  So in my newness, not that much has changed I suppose you could say.  As an update: After 2 miscarriages within a year, my husband and I conceived again last August.  The baby is doing great, a healthy baby boy due June 18.  He is so active and I thank God everyday for him.  There are so many changes in this pregnancy for me, mostly psychological.  I am so grateful for this baby.  Not that I wasn't in my other 5 children's successful pregnancies, I just took so much for granted.  It got to a point after my 5th child, my second girl, where I was ashamed to admit to people that I was pregnant.  I was scared of what even my closest friends would think.  I shied away from the support network that I once depended on and withdrew so that the nasty comments about the privacy of my husband's and my marriage wouldn't become the butt of someone else's joke.  God reminded me that this was not His plan.  That every child should be loved, and cherished, and welcomed into the world all because of Him.  He saw my lack of willingness to love, to accept, even in the face of persecution, so He took two of the most precious gifts He could give back to Himself.  What a lesson life hands us in loss.  It really has changed my pregnancy journey this time.  When people start in with their usual worldly harassment I just blink back at them, because I realize now they don't understand what underlying grace accompanies every child that is allowed to make it into this world.  Instead of being ashamed by their pity upon me, I understand now that such a depraved person really is the one to be pitied.  And that at the root of it all is prayer.  People really, truly, desperately need prayer.

I wish I had all the same things.  Money, without the time it takes to make money.  A stay at home wife and mother to help support me as a stay at home wife and mother.  The ability to give my children BOTH everything they need and everything they desire.  The time to both do it right and to sit back and reflect on the enjoyment of doing it right.  But I realize that my dreams have evolved too.  I was pondering this a couple of months ago after one of my pre-natal appointments.  My husband was driving me home, and like most Americans in the country right now, we were discussing financial hardships we've faced this past year.  The thought occurred to me that money is not the root of a dream.  Sure, it is a sometimes needed fuel to help get us there.  But so many of us have fallen short on what it takes to live a dream, to succeed in a dream.  Success in a dreamed-of life may not look the same to the world as to the dreamer.  I realized driving home that we could always use more money, more time.  But what would I long for if I had all the money that I needed and all the time I desired?  I would want a large family around me.  It hit me then that I'm already living the dream.  I've never gone without, and neither have my children or my husband.  But I've gotten more than I deserve in that I'm already living in a large family with some of the most amazing people I've ever come to love and know on this earth.  People are meant to be loved and money is meant to be spent.  I wonder where the world started to get that backwards?

Happy Lent my friends.  I am praying for you and hope to be on again to share my ruminations as random as they are:)