limits

today was kinda hard. last night i was feeling really bad--nothing huge, just my body being worn down at the end of a busy week (sad that for me a 'busy week" is working 4 full days and being slightly active at night.) Well, i took some of my nighttime tylenol cough & sore throat meds ("blue medicine" as i lovingly refer to it)...and i didn't wake up until 12:30 this afternoon! i felt a little discouraged to have slept most of the day away, but i guess my body needed it. then at 2 i had to go see my doctor for a routine follow up visit for my cfs. i LOVE my doctor--he is very personable and takes time to relate to you and answer questions that you have. working in a medical office, i know that this is a rare and valuable trait in a doc! we talked about how i've been doing...the past few weeks have been rough, and he gave me the slightly disappointing news that he thinks i'm "about where [i'm] going to be in terms of [my] progress" in other words...he doesn't expect me to improve more than I have thus far. i do pretty well compared to a lot of people with this condition. i mean, i can keep a steady job and maintain a pretty active lifestyle, but i am always worn out and in pain by the end of the week. i definitely do better when i am exercising regularly and eating well, so i guess that just has to be even more of a focus now.

then we talked about children. as you all know, patrick & i have been discussing the prospect of having kids, so i wanted to get my doc's opinion on the whole topic. the good news: he doesn't think that my stomach scar is going to be an issue. he said that it will probably move up, and after i have a baby that i won't like it b/c when it stretches it will not go back down, but it shouldn't be too much of a discomfort or anything like that. the not so good news: basically he just told me what i already figured, but he thinks that it is not realistic for me to try to work and raise a child, and he insinuated that we may not need to have more than one. as a parent, he was definitely encouraging me not to deprive myself of the joy of having a child, but he wants me to be very careful and realistic and "remove as many possible external stressors in [my] life as possible before trying to have a baby" i.e.: i shouldn't expect to work and parent and still be able to function.

patrick and i talked about the whole thing tonight before he went to film a game and we're just trying to realisticly figure out what to do. for sure we aren't going to actively try to get preganant for at least another year, probably longer. financially we're going to continue to try to cut back and put more towards the house so that we can decrease that financial stress as much as possible. then i'm going to try to look into ways to work part time or from home or something to help when it comes to that time. then he said the hardest thing--we may just be able to have one child. ultimately, we will be thankful for whatever God gives us--even if we end up only being able to have bulldogs ;)--but that thought just breaks my heart. i mean, we already have names picked out for a boy and a girl...but again, it's in God's hands.

i am consistently reminded of a time in our pre-marital counseling with Richard Carwile when we were talking about the future. i was telling him how our plans were to start having kids at about 3 years into our marriage, and then to have 3 kids, each 3 years apart. i thought it was just a very basic simple plan and he kinda smirked and made a comment about how plans don't always work out. i thought "why wouldn't this work out--that's very realistic?" well, as they always say, God's plans are different than our own, no matter how much it makes sense to us. prayerfully, we will use this change in our plans for the future to give glory to God, and to put our trust in Him rather than ourselves.