An introduction in the form of a Fair Well....

Currently I sit in my dinning room, listening to my husband curse the Mario Cart Gods in the background, wondering how I got this far.

How far is far? you ask...
Well as many have done, and will do, let me take you through my year and show you.

It started off with a bang...actually, a really loud sneeze.
I went to surprise my husband (then boyfriend) Eamon at his apartment in Austin. I was on the last half of my Christmas Break, and decided it was not going to be spent in Rockport for the tenth year of my life. I packed up Charlie-my trusty...ahem, trusty 1992 Chevy Caviler hatch-back station wagon- with all my dormitory paraphernalia and headed to Austin, hoping I would make it before the ball dropped. Well, after we putted along for four hours in the...not so cold...I made it!
Shivering with anticipation I knocked on his door... His roommate answered it, I waltzed in and there my manly man was...sick. Coughing, sneezing, and very hard to pull a reaction out of.
When midnight came, I did not get my kiss. This would be the third year that I would get jipped out of the great tradition, and this time it had NOTHING to do with distance, or being grounded.

I couldn't sleep that night.
Here it was January 1st, 2008 and THIS was the big introduction to what I was praying to be the biggest year of my life. ARE YOU KIDDING ME???
Because I am emotionally unstable at many points, I stayed up and cried and pitied myself for hours.
Oh but the pittifulness did not stop there. Eamon took me to see Juno at The Alamo Draft House. Well I THOUGHT it was a good idea... I left, once again, pathetic because I wanted a baby. Not even engaged yet, I questioned the Lords will and damned Hollywood and my unaffected ovaries for not producing a child.

EVENTUALLY I got over it. It was time for me to go back to Kerrville (boy can I pick em...) to finish my year at Schriener University. This was the private university that I managed to cry my way into with my sob story of how I must prove to my mother who was 15 years old when she had me, that I was not a waste of her education. Wah, wah, wah. The entirety of my Christmas Break was spent driving, crying, talking to missional communities (one of which was Intentional Gatherings) and dragging my heels in the dirt and shell road back to Schriener. I was an ace in all my classes, working at the most rewarding job I've ever had, getting a crap load of scholarships, and ignoring God. I know I went there for so many reasons, but school was a gag inducing, teeth pulling experience that I did not want to continue to endure.

So, never the less, I went back and started up another semester at Schriener.

During the next couple of months I made plans for my Spring Break. I felt the Lord tell me to move to the Metroplex (which I thought was just Dallas, do you see WHY I get lost all of the time?) and figure out what the Lord does there. Haha, no not figure out, experience what my sweet Lover does here. I hitch hiked my way (not literally) up to Dallas, then to Plano, then to Arlington to surprise Eamon. He had moved to Arlington with two of his friends after he heard my call...not his, but mine. My time was spent getting to know Keri, Paige, Valerie, Meghan and Harley. But my intentions were not souly to see how this community of Followers worked, but to become a fiance. Like so many times before, and to come, Eamon did not have a car and neither did I. We had to arrange rides to and from Arlington and Ft. Worth to see each other, and only a few times. On the last night we were to see each other, I was positive, let me repeat POSITIVE he was going to propose and...he didn't. We weren't going to see each other again until May and I was crushed.
VERY long story short, after days of prayer and hours and hours of walking Eamon came from Arlington to Ft Worth, got down on one knee at 2 a.m. and asked me to be his wife.



Fast forward to June...yes three months later...to a slightly sunburned us, a white dress, a smokin hot white tux some sunflowers and no shoes. We were married in Rockport, young, seeking the Lords love, and drinking it up in each other.
We have never felt so showered, and have never been so receptive to this kind of Love. Oh, and NEVER so eager or hurried to get the heck out of Rockport.
We wanted our marriage bed to be OUR bed, so we drove 8 and a half hours all the way back to Arlington to try to obey my fertility charts and just rest.
Some mornings I still wake up in awe that I see the man of my dreams in bed next to me, drooling slightly, but definitely beside me.




So a Summer of Love did indeed occur, and the Honeymoon had to come to an abrupt end. It was time to spread myself so thin, that I'm not sure if I've regained all of my pieces YET.
I was working at Lifetime Family Wellness Center and Hurst, and about to attend a full time schedule at the Fabulous University of Texas Arlington...

Well around the time of Keri's wedding I told God what was going to happen. You'll soon know my past with that, and we should all know you just don't do that, it always ends bad. Now I will never test this again, because I have learned my limits, but I told Him "I am taking this weekend in Austin, and I am going to just listen. No homework is going to be done, no schedule will be jotted down, and not a single decision will be made unless it is Your Will. Should I quit school?"
The night we got back in to town the Lord came to me in a dream and told me to stop going to school and take care of kids. Two days later Susan Wooley got ahold of me and told me that she loved the way I handled her to precious daughters when she came to the office, and wanted me to help her out a couple of days a week!
That was it! This was the beginning! I thought my path was going to go back to childcare and I was thrilled!

In all this excitement, September came to a close and October crept up on us, but something very predictable did not. My "cycle" can be used to tell time I tell you. Ovulation on the 16th day, menses on the 30th or 31st day rotationally. Like clockwork. Well...the 4th of October was here...no period. The 5th, 6th...all went by. NADA, zip, ziltch, zero. Eamon and I looked at our charts and figured that the weekend of Keri's wedding, when I left my thermometer at home, we may have gotten ourselves a little pregnant. It made sense, so on the 7th...we...celebrated :]
Day after day went by and NOTHING. And with the absence of a period, came the absence of a plus sign. My chart also had NO idea when I ovulated.
Well on the 21st of October, I had a talk with Susan. She just kept saying things like- "Well you know your pregnant, stop worrying, your stressing the baby out!"
That day was our 4 month anniversary, so I decided to get one last test. I held my pee down the packed intersection on the ride home, ran upstairs, and did the deed. I didn't even have to wait. SECONDS passed, and two GLORIOUS pink positive lines showed up.
I anxiously awaited Eamon's arrival from work.
He was ecstatic! After the tears he shed with me after we thought I had a miscarriage, and the hope we had for me to welcome motherhood, we were ARE going to be parents.
The funny thing with God is that He can do all sorts of things...like postpone my trusty [I mean REALLY trusty, not trusty like my station wagon] Ovulation to the 8th of October-which oddly enough results in a baby :]

November brought on the first baby appointment where we saw and heard Baby Burke for the first time. I cried, duh. I also started to pray over every body part while I was in the shower so that during labor, the Lord will have already taken my pain, and begin to heal my body as soon as possible.

December has brought us rest, Love and assurance of Friends and Family in the Lord's care.

Hello to you all, and goodbye to 2008!