Lowie

This is Natalie's "best friend," Logan.  Isn't she super sweet?  We're hoping that Natalie's hair grows up to be like Logan's, as Logan is only about a month older than Natalie. :)







Natalie and Logan have played together often enough that Natalie often asks for "Lowie."  It is super cute!







As we enter this season of decision-making and possible transition, I have been reflecting on how the Lord has worked in my heart over the past 6 months.

First, going from working full-time to being a full-time mom was challenging.  I LOVE my time with Natalie, but there's a huge shift in identity that has to happen.  Add moving to a new place where you don't know anyone and adapting to Taylor's new schedule, and there's a lot of questioning of one's self that occurs!  I have been anxious often whether to work, when my certification will finally come in, how to deal with challenging financial questions, and as I have turned to the Lord in these worries, He has been so faithfully responsive.  I am grateful for the difficulties because I do feel like the Lord has met me in them.  Remember about a year or so ago when I posted that I felt like the Lord said that moving to NC was the right thing, but that there were dark times ahead?  That has been so, so true...but also encouraging, because that knowledge enabled me to not doubt our decisions, even if that has been difficult sometimes.

I have also been greatly blessed by the community that the Lord has provided for me.  I have met some of the most wonderful women at the local library where we go to weekly story time; that is actually where we met Logan.  The library!  Who knew.  My MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group has also been a major encouragement to me.  And we've met wonderful couples at the churches that we have visited/been part of.  Without these wonderful women in my life, life would be a lot less rich.  I have been so encouraged by them.  They probably don't know how much.

I gave my testimony at MOPS this past week, and I thought I'd share it here.  It is LONG...you've been warned. :)

"My name is Christine Shipman, and this is my first year in MOPS.  I have a 16-month-old daughter named Natalie.

In this month’s MomSense magazine (the MOPS magazine), there is a wonderful article about learning to rejoice in our difficulties because the Lord develops our character through those circumstances.  The author introduces her article by describing myriad life changes that were extremely overwhelming and destabilizing to her.  As she listed out all of the things that she experienced, I thought, “Yep. Check.  That happened to us.” And more!   My daughter was born in Tucson, Arizona, in September 2011, and in early 2012, I went back to work full time in order to complete a certification.  This transition was difficult for us, but I quickly felt established as a “working mom,” and even though I didn’t have it all together, I felt like I was enjoying a job I loved and was also blessed with a sweet baby. 

In March 2012, my husband Taylor and I made the decision to move to Raleigh for him to pursue a Master’s degree in a 10-month program at NC State.  After 6 wonderful years in Arizona, we had been feeling the pull to move back east to be closer to our immediate families, who were scattered from Florida to Michigan but were all on the east coast/Midwest.  We made this decision with lots of excitement but also sadness, as we had grown very fond of the west.  But we felt a lot of confirmation from the Lord that this was the right move to make. 

We owned our home in Arizona, and many of you probably know that the housing market there went completely bust in the recession.  For us, it could have been worse, but we still lost a significant amount of money in selling our home.  However, the blessing was that we were able to sell it in three weeks, which we were very thankful for, as those of you who have sold a home know how horribly stressful it is!

We were so thankful for wonderful friends who helped us to pack, but 2 people working full time – up until the day we moved – with a 9 month old and no family around is not exactly a recipe for carefree days.  We would stay up until 2am packing on weekends and weekdays (which is actually a pretty nice time of day in June in Arizona!). Taylor left for Raleigh mid-June, as his program started at the end of June, but Natalie and I stayed in Tucson until mid-July, when I completed my certification.  My mom and sister helped my daughter and I drive out to Raleigh, and I began what felt like a completely new life.

I could ramble on and on about all the changes in our lives…about how I didn’t realize how much I’d put my identity in being a speech-pathologist, about how much would change by being a stay at home mom, about living on savings and having no income, about adjusting to apartment living after living in a house, about feeling very lonely and missing my SEVEN newly pregnant friends in Tucson, about readjusting to the east coast, about learning the culture of Raleigh, about loneliness as my husband dove headfirst in to an extremely intensive program requiring him to be up late in to the night, every night, about relearning our relationship to each other now that we are parents, about both of our parents moving from our childhood homes and further contributing to our sense of rootlessness, about wondering where we are going to live in the spring after this program is over and what kind of job Taylor is going to have, about our surprise pregnancy with baby #2 due in late July…I could probably talk for ages about each of these things.  It has been a difficult year. 

As I mentioned, a major part of this new life included our decision for me to stay at home full-time with Natalie.  While we were open to me working part time, my licensures and certifications took much longer to come through than we expected, which was in and of itself its own source of stress.  We decided that though the income would certainly be nice, me staying home with Natalie was an important investment in her life, one that we would never regret. 

I loved – and still love – staying home with her.  I feel very thankful for the ability to do so.  What I didn’t realize was how much I would struggle with my new identity as a stay at home mom after working full time.  Trying to figure out who I was, where my value came from, and the importance of the work I was doing with Natalie was challenging.  I was busy at home with Natalie – but a VERY different kind of busy than I was when working full time.  Through this particular struggle, MOPS has been an incredible source of encouragement to me.  Each week, I left feeling refreshed and revitalized as a mom, and I remembered the fact that my work with Natalie truly had eternal value.  Without my MOPS group, I would feel a lot more lost.  The women in my group have had an amazing impact on me, and I am so thankful for them.

I have also found that God is so faithful to faithless, anxious me.  Some how, as I cried out to him in the midst of my worries, he wooed me back to him.  He calmed my heart.  He assured me of His plan.  He got me back into His Word.  And in His Word…in the Old Testament, of all places!...I have found so much solace and peace.  I think the verse that most aptly describes my experience in His Word is Isaiah 30:15: “In repentance and rest is your salvation; in quietness and trust is your strength.”

I am still and will always be a work a progress, grateful to God for His grace through destabilizing times – and for Him using those hard times to bring me closer to Him.  I needed that.  There are still a lot of unknowns in our lives, but I am more able to trust and rest in Him.  I realized that so much of my identity was wrapped up in what I do and what I have and not in the fact that I am a follower of Christ, completely content in Him.

There is a wonderful book for us young moms called “Loving the Little Years,” by Rachel Jankovic.  I’d like to leave you with this quote from the book.

“[Moms] may say, ‘I used to be energetic, but now all these people take, take, take from me and now I have no time to just be me!’  And the world gathers around her and comforts her and says she needs some time to follow her dreams. But the Christian woman needs to see, "I used to be so boring!  But now my character has some depth, some people to love, some hardships to bear. Now I have some material to work with."

Incredibly, I do thank God for all the material that He has given me to work with this year!  Thanks for letting me share part of my journey with you."