"I am picking up the pieces, putting them where they go but where do they go Lord where do they go?"

This is a lyric to a song that I am listening to today as I clean my house. Here are rooms of my house before the boys left for the beach. In the past few days I have opened up cabinets, closets and looked at these various rooms overwhelmed and in shock that this is what our life has come to. See these rooms, these closets, these cabinets they symbolize our life for the past 4 years.

This could be lengthy as I get you up to speed on where we have been and how it came to this....

-The first year of dating I started a new business, Chris left a job and started his own business as well. We worked out of a one bedroom condo. We struggled with finances but we had a vision of where we were going....
-A year into our relationship we were blessed with the news that Dylan was on the way. He was a HUGE surprise and wasn't included in our big vision for the future at that time. So we quickly and not so prayerfully came up with a new plan. Chris would go out on the road for 6 weeks to do production for a tour to get the money to buy a house. I would get a full time job and keep my business going part time in the evenings and on the weekends. A month before Dylan came we bought a house and moved in quickly and hastily.
-The following year with Dylan was amazing. He changed us. He WAS part of the plan, a bigger, better plan than we could have ever come up with on our own. I continued working out of the house. Chris stayed home with Dylan for 3 months after I went back to work. He worked from the house and somehow managed throughout this to keep his business moving forward. I grew a bit resentful that he was getting to raise our child AND grow his business. I left my full time job and went back to work on my business full time.
-Marriage? Well this was the big question from many folks for a while. When were we going to get married. When we learned of Dylan we discussed it, we both wanted to do it for the right reasons and never question why we did it....After a year of raising Dylan we knew that we wanted to continue growing our family, we knew that our life together is secured and that we had found a life partner.
-The wedding planning came at a time when both of our businesses were thankfully growing and doing well. We were insanely busy with work and Dylan. We took every single client opportunity we came across. One or both of us worked most holidays - Easter, my first Mother's Day, Father's Day, 4th of July, New Year's Eve....Somehow luckily we still managed to eat dinner as a family, put Dylan to bed most nights and have occasional family days so we really thought we were on track, it would slow down soon. Looking back now I see how out of control our life had become when I think about the fact that we sold our honeymoon week to Wal-Mart...They bought out our honeymoon so that Chris could produce an event where he would be out of town for 2 weeks. He left the day after our wedding. No honeymoon or post-marital bliss, it was back to work for both of us. We did manage to reluctantly and not so willingly squeeze in 6 weeks of pre-marital counseling. I credit this partly to where we are today in our spiritual journey as a married couple although I didn't appreciate it at the time. I can recall every word today that our pastor said and now it all makes sense.
-We started right away trying to get pregnant again. It took 7 months, looking back now I laugh at the thought of us worrying why we weren't getting pregnant. We know the facts of life and it isn't going to happen when we only say hello in the morning and good night in the evening...A vacation during Christmas brought Bella.
-Time for a new plan. How would we make this work? How would we find the time and money to get it all done. After a few arguments about how I would not be a stay at home mom, I would not give up my career, we would make it work. We merged our businesses together and decided to grow them as one. We moved into a shared office space and started working to expand. I worked 6 days a week, sometimes 15 hour days on Saturdays. The pregnancy was going great and I would keep working at this rate until August, then I would take a long maternity leave to prepare.
-Well you know the rest of the story.....here we are today. OUR big plan not really working out as we had envisioned. I am a stay at home and hospital mom. I couldn't think of anything else I would rather be right now. In true form Chris is able to manage both his clients and mine, keeping both moving forward. Have I mentioned that my husband is pretty incredible? AND we have learned the power of prayer, we continue to learn about constant communication with God and we are finding answers in the silence. We are learning that we have to put Him first, above all else and everything else falls into place. It truly does....

So while the boys are at the beach, I am picking up the pieces, putting them where they go and asking the Lord along the way, "where do they go Lord, where do they go?" I won't get them all into place today or tomorrow but prayerfully our life and our house will come together at God speed...