Liberated but Uncertain

Here I am again, world.

Today has been an event filled day for me concerning my personal life. As I have told some of you, I have decided to deactivate my Facebook account for personal reasons. I won't go into specifics, but I will say that I feel people have been very hateful to me, my family, and other people that are very close to me through Facebook posts, comments, etc. Most of it is family related, but I just feel that it is uncalled for and the public nature of all of it really makes me upset. I am not a super-private person, but I do like some privacy, and Facebook is NOT the place to argue with family or post one-sided slanderings.

Facebook makes it easy to share your lives and your feelings. However, it also makes it easy to openly slander others and say hurtful things to other people. You never know who may take offense to something, and so it is very important to hold your tongue, even when someone says something hurtful to you first. A big reason I decided to deactivate my account was my way of putting "holding my tongue" into surety. Our human will makes us want to say things to defend ourselves and sometimes that can be disastrous. I am trying to learn from others' recent mistakes and to hold my tongue better, as we are told to do in Psalms.

I may return to the Facebook world. It's kind of sad, in a way. I can remember being in graduate school (the first time) in 2005, sitting in my apartment when my friend Adam set up my Facebook account. He was the first to write on my wall. He said "Hi, I'm sitting at your computer right now" or something. I have always enjoyed Facebook and it is sad that something family related has driven me from it. But I have way more important things to worry about right now. . .not to mention, I was spending way too much of my time checking on people and reading people's updates, etc.

I write under the heading of Liberated because I do feel liberated. Facebook has been weighing on me lately - I know that sounds crazy, but we have had some things happen to where I felt convicted to delete some "friends" and I have felt very uncomfortable about it since then. I write under the heading of Uncertain because...that describes the rest of my life right now.

I am uncertain about the future right now. We are still waiting on Andy to hear back from the many jobs he has applied for and it has been a major stress for us. I just ask that you guys please keep us in your prayers so he can find a stable salary-paying job. This commission stuff is just not cutting it, especially in this economy. I am uncertain because I am almost 20 weeks pregnant and am needing to think about maternity leave, but finances have us in a bind.

I keep telling myself to just take a step back and remember my last post - what matters, what doesn't - as well as to not think about tomorrow, which God commands us to do. It's so hard not to think or worry about tomorrow!! It's impossible! . . . but isn't it said that all things are possible with Christ? To not worry about the future is possible? To not wonder how the bills will get paid and how the credit card company just raised their interest rate??

This is something we will get through, inevitably, and I will look back and say, "remember that time...?" Right now it seems huge and daunting and suffocating, but one day when it comes to this area I will hopefully feel Liberated as well.

I don't want to make this post completely depressing so I will say that on a lighter note, we have decided to name our baby girl Emory Ryan Arnold. It took forever for Andy to finally be okay with announcing this. I have loved the name Emory for months now, even before I was pregnant, and really didn't have any other girl names picked out except for that. Andy liked the name Ryan for a girl, so we just decided to put them together. We are very happy with the name!

On Thursday we had another ultrasound with Carolyn to make sure we were, indeed, having a girl. She got some awesome pictures again! Emory was smacking her lips and sort of smiling, lifting up her arms, and really squirming around this time!







My 18 week picture...this was taken a little over a week ago...growing daily!!



Here are some pictures of our crib that we picked up on Friday. I was so excited to find a beautiful crib on Craigslist for a great price!! I had been looking at this collection for the nursery anyway at Kids Furniture but it was super expensive. When I saw the listing on Craigslist I immediately emailed the lady about it and she was so sweet to hold it for us until we had our ultrasound to confirm that we were having a girl. Thanks to my mom for buying the crib for us...it is so special to me already!





That is all I have for now. Hopefully now that I'm not on Facebook so much I can update this blog more! Soon to follow - 20 week picture and update :)

Psalms 141:3
Set a guard, O Lord, before my mouth; keep watch at the door of my lips.