The Woman with the Issue

From the time I was a little girl, I have always been intrigued by the story in the Bible about the woman with the issue of blood. As a child, I had no idea what "issue of blood" meant and would fabricate ideas about how this woman could have an issue with her blood. For example, maybe her blood was wine instead of blood (I think I was getting "turning water into wine" confused with "wine into blood". Bible stories are a lot to keep track of when you are a kid!). There was also a time that I remember seeing a children's movie about this particular story and this particular woman was crawling on the ground trying to reach Jesus and receive healing. Of course that was totally lost on me and all I could think was, She would probably feel a lot better if she didn't crawl on the ground and let people walk all over her. It made perfect sense to me. Genius, really.

As a young girl, I never thought that I would one day relate to this woman in indescribable ways. I can relate, really I can.

I first noticed my "issue of blood" when I was a sophomore in college. For no legitimate reason at all, I was absolutely and inexplicably exhausted. I remember walking to class one day and willing myself to lift my leg to take my next step. It was kind of surreal to experience, there I was barely 20 and I felt like my body had aged on me, over night. I wish this wasn't the case, but I skipped a lot of classes because of that very fact. It was hard not to feel like I was just a lazy bum, but I know now that really I wasn't. Not only was I exhausted, I was also experience unbelievably heavy bleeding during my cycle, bleeding that would last weeks at a time. There were a few times that I had to go to the ER due to so much loss of blood. Lets just say that it isn't a good idea for a 98 pound woman to loose that much blood.

These occurrences continued into my first year of marriage and into the "Lets make a family" stage. After a while, I decided to go back to the doctor and see if they had any more answers for me. They ran a few tests and found out that I have Thyroid Disease (An autoimmune disease that causes my white blood cells to attack my thyroid gland and slowly but surely kill it off. Dramatic, I know.) I am so blessed that the doctors discovered that. It was a long and hard road getting my thyroid numbers to the place that the need to be, but I am thrilled to inform you that they are still well within normal range.

However, I am still loosing a lot of blood on a monthly basis for an amount of time of anywhere between 2-6 weeks. Not fun. So what do I do now? Good question. I am asking the Lord that very question. He knows and I don't. I mean, for Pete sake, He made me! I can trust Him, even with my fragile and temporary body. I will be seeing a doctor as soon as they can get me in, so hopefully there will be some resolution to an issue that has plagued me for a long time now. God can use whatever He wants to make me whole, even a dusty old hem. Here are a few verses that have been running through my head the past week. I hope they encourage you as much as they encourage me.

Praise the Lord O my soul,
All my inner being, praise His holy name.
Praise the Lord, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits -
who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,
who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
Psalm 103:1-5

The parts that really stick with me are "Forget not all his benefits...", "...and heals all your diseases...", "...who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagel's". I am so blessed, blessed with good things. Just because things haven't gone as "planned" doesn't mean that they haven't gone as He planned. What a good God I serve.

If you think about it, would you pray for Chris and I as we navigate our way through this again.

Food bloggers

I love to read food blogs. Well, mostly I like to look at the pictures. Food is so beautiful. I don't know why I think it is so beautiful, but whenever I see a plate of deliciously beautiful food, I get warm fuzzy feelings. Mmmm.

I thought I would share one of my most favorite food blog with you We Are Not Martha. I think you will like it.

Baby Boom

When you are a woman who has a hard time getting pregnant, you go through what I like to call "baby booms". You know, when everyone around you gets pregnant. So far I have survived it through one of those "baby booms" and I am emerging into another one. This one is a little less surreal than the first one because everyone who had a baby during the first boom is having or had another baby, but still, it is kind of weird nonetheless.

When I find out that another woman is expecting, I like to buy them presents. Why? Well, I think it helps me to feel excited and joyful for the expecting family, otherwise I could just get stuck in a "poor me" cycle. I like to buy people gifts anyways...it makes me excited to find something special for a special person, so it makes sense for me to want to buy something for an expecting mother and baby because it does in fact get the excitement going. Chris just thinks it is weird that I have to buy presents for people whenever I find out they are pregnant, but he doesn't try to stop me. He knows it is kind of cathartic for me.

I think that I am at a healthy place right now. I don't necessarily break down every time that "that time of the month" rolls around, I keep it together pretty well. But I can't help but wonder what it would be like to have a living being growing inside of me, a part of me. Sometimes I catch my self staring at pregnant bellies imagining what kind of sensations they are experiencing, that kind of discomfort they are learning to adjust to. I have to admit, I would love to experience the emotions of being excited yet scared spit less of labor and delivery. Sometimes I just wonder, I wonder what it would be like or should I say, I wonder what it will be like.

Well, here's to making it through another "baby boom" and here's to one day being a part of it! Cheers dears!

Rest and Relaxation

First and foremost, today is my honey's birthday! Happy birthday Chris! The world is a better place because you were brought into it.

This past weekend Chris and I went to Santa Fe with our good friends Mike and Bryn for a marriage retreat. This was our third year going. We like to think of it as our yearly scheduled maintenance. Usually we stay in Glorieta, NM where the conference is held, but this time we got a room in Santa Fe (one of my very favorite places on this earth!). Mike and Bryn stayed in Santa Fe also and we had a WONDERFUL time double dating with them all weekend.

On Saturday morning we decided to spend the whole day having fun in the down town Santa Fe area. We went to the Farmers Market (which was one of the best I have every been too), had a unbelievably good lunch at Flying Star (my absolute favorite restaurant), went to REI and let the guys shop to their hearts desire (Chris got a great soft shell jacket for his birthday), walked around the plaza, had a great dinner from Trader Joe's, went to a great seminar at the conference and ended the day off with a delicious dessert from Flying Star. It was a wonderful day. I think that Bryn and I wore out the boys a bit though, due to the fact that shopping energizes us and it wears them out. But they were incredibly good sports and let their girls have fun. Here are a few snap shots of the great day!

The Farmers Market was at the newly renovated Santa Fe railroad yard.

All of the produce the so fragrant and at the peak of freshness.

The sky was so big, clear, and blue. Classic New Mexico.

We also took the Starbucks Via challenge and loved it! While we were walking around the plaza Bryn found the perfect Camel Back, a Starbucks coffee dispenser!

And here is the happy couple! :)

My little New Mexico Sunshine

As most of you know, Chris and I have the great honor of being the God-parents to Wesley Morgan Etterling. He is such a fun little guy! Wes is my guy and we love each other and have such a good time when we are together! Tommy and Tiffany have been so wonderful to allow us to be a part of Wesley's life. Seeing him grow and change has been such a fun experience for me! Wesley is has a piece of my heart and I am so happy to have him in my life as my little dude.

Thanks Tiff, for being so generous and allowing Chris and I love on Wes! You are such a dear friend to me.

Here are some super fun pictures of the Wes man and myself. Isn't he just a looker?



Yep, he melts my heart! I love you Wesley and I am so proud of you!

A little of this, a little of that.

There are very fun and unique qualities about being a girl. For instance, as a girl you can compliment other girls with out looking like a creep. This is in fact my favorite part about being a girl (with lip stick and high heels a close second and third). I love to give genuine compliments to other girls. We have all heard the wise saying, "If you can't find something good to say, don't say anything at all." I am physically incapable of not saying anything at all, so I have made it my mission to find something good to say about a person, even if I have to scrounge for that something good. You know what I have come to find? There is always at least one good thing to discover and compliment in a person.

For this reason, I believe that I am at the best possible job in the world for myself. I get to compliment women all day long and help them find products to make them feel pretty (because whether we like it or not, we all feel good about our selves when our beauty products are working with us and not against us). If you can't tell, I still absolutely adore my job. It fills my tank!

With that said, I will now go on to some other fun things. I have revamped another piece of furniture! I wish I thought to take a before picture, but I'm not that together. As those of you who have seen my house know, I have been using a bar stool as my night stand for the past 3 years. I am not sure why I have done so for 3 years... I will have to file that under my "unsolved mysteries" mental file. However, to my credit, I have bugged Chris about buying me one for quite awhile now. For some reason we just never found the right one for the right price. I finally got desperate and decided to take matters into my own hands, literally, and one day I looked at this little book shelf and thought, "That would be a wonderful night stand." It was a little too short for our mammoth bed so I went to Home Depot and picked up some pre-made legs, drilled some holes (with Chris' help), bought two $3 paint samples and made that dinky book shelf into a very functional piece of furniture. My room now feels completely like an adult room with real adult furniture, no "make shift" going on. Here is a picture!

From the front.

From the side.

In the room. There is a definite "His and Hers" thing going on.

Oh, and we also got a great antique mirror from Good Will! I feel like it gives our living room exactly what it was missing...well, maybe a leather couch would be nice...and a flat screen T.V. too! :) Here is a picture of the great mirror. Pay no attention to the husband holding it up, although I enjoyed the view, I realized that it just wasn't functional/practical to have Chris hold it up all the time, so we nailed it up.

Cute, huh? I mean the mirror! ;)

The fur baby (thanks Tiff!) is doing well! We have taken to calling him "turd burglar" and "dirt bag" but we love him nonetheless. Good thing you can't irreversibly emotionally scar dogs. :)

I Love My Job!

I just wanted to let every one, who is interested, know that I really like my new job! It is the perfect work environment for me! I get to talk to people, learn about things that make you prettier, and do a lot of domestic things (i.e. washing dishes, laundry, cleaning, keeping things running smoothly). Today, I got a make over just because they wanted me to learn about Aveda cosmetics! How fun is that?! Also, they are sending me to Albuquerque for an Aveda training for three days. If you can't tell, I am pretty excited!

And the best part is, I still have energy at the end of the day. With all of my thyroid issues, it has become kind of a struggle to maintain a normal energy level. I am usually exhausted by mid afternoon. But this job is just the right mixture of being active and an not being active. I was at the salon for 9 hours today and I still had enough energy to make dinner tonight. Yahoo! I think God gave me the perfect job for the season of life I am in.

Just wanted to let you know. :)

Unexpected growing

This weekend Chris and I spent the whole time together. We read together on the couch, took naps together, figured out dinner together, played with Charlie together, and did household chores together. We really like to be together, which is a good thing, because we are married. He is my favorite person to be around. I tend to get very chatty when I am around him, I just want to tell him EVERYTHING! We talk and talk and talk about things that don't really matter and things that do really matter. However, it is pretty unusual for Chris to remember to tell me things. Well, that sounds bad, but he has a hard time telling me things that I think are important (i.e. who he talked to that day, what they talked about, who is getting married, how they proposed, who is pregnant, who had their baby, et cetera, et cetera...). So this weekend, he had a list of information he knew I would want to know about. It really was pretty cute.

One thing, in particular, that he told me was about a few people in his office who are expecting. He beet around the bush a bit before he actually said it outright. Poor Chris, he wants to tell me these kinds of things but I think he is afraid it will upset me. Yes, there are days when I wonder why we aren't having a baby, but there are other days when I am secure in the fact that God has me in His hands and He has everything under control. Saturday happened to be one of those days where I was comfortable with the place that God has us and I was excited to hear the news about his co-workers. But he didn't seem very excited to tell. After he was finished, he went on to say that people at work have been asking him when he and his wife were going to start a family and that he doesn't know how to answer that question because we have been trying for two years. I could tell he was sad and my heart wrenched a little. Then Chris looked at me and said "I wonder when God is going to give us our kids, but I don't really know what to say when people ask about it." Let's just face it, we've been married for three years and people are going to ask. Whether it's their business or not.

It was a little surreal hearing that come from Chris' mouth. My heart hurts for my husband, not just because we both want to have kids, but because he would be such a wonderful father. With faith like a child, we have faith for a child.

For now we have Charlie. I know it sounds dumb, but in a small way he helps to meet the need that both Chris and I have for a child. We really do love our Charlie dog and if we don't have a baby in the next 12 months, Chris said I could get a friend for Charlie. So maybe our family is growing...just not the way we expected it to. Here are some great pictures of our Chuck.



Charlie loves to take naps with us, especially on the couch.



Charlie loves to ride in the car! I think he likes having Chris and I in the same place a good amount of time. He fell asleep on my shoulder on the way to white sands.



White nose Charlie.






At the park.



This is such a funny picture to me because it is totally Charlie! He is with Tim and Alli in this one.

Updates

It has been a long time since I have sat down to blog, wow. But, such is life, right? I wonder what people did before blogs, internet social networking, and cell phones? It must have been a lonely time in the history of the world.

Well, I got a new job! Hooray! I am now the proud employee of Carmona's Salon and Day Spa. This isn't just any spa, this in an Aveda spa and I will be an Aveda adviser! I know, right?! I am so excited! I have wanted to work at Carmona's ever since I moved to Las Cruces and now it has come to pass. Today was my first day of training and I really enjoyed it! All of the people are super nice and my boss is a believer (I didn't even know that when I gave them my resume!). God has been really nice to me. I am blessed. Want to know the best part? Everyone that works there has to wear all black, so I never have to worry about what to wear in the morning or if my shoes match my outfit!

Charlie is as funny as ever and keeps Chris and I laughing. He has developed a habit of barking at us when we ignore his pleas to play fetch, but other than that, he is generally good (I am using the word "generally" in a very general way). We still like him, so that is pretty nice. I think it would be impossible not to like a being that is as cute and as little as Chuck, so that helps his case. He is pretty smart too! I am proud to report that I have successfully taught Charlie how to sit, lay down, and roll over. I would have taught him more tricks, but I ran out of tricks to teach him...I am not very creative when it comes to teaching a dog a trick.

Chris started playing soccer. I am pleased with this because he really needed a hobby. All he was doing on a daily and weekly basis was going to work, coming home, playing with Charlie, loving me, and then going to bed. I was bored with his daily routine!! As a result of his new found hobby, he mentioned that he would like to get some cleats. I immediately said, "Well, then lets go get some!" He then replied, "I can wait until my birthday" (his birthday is in OCTOBER! I couldn't even wait that long, and the cleats weren't for me!). I had to push him to even think about buying them sooner than months from now. I finally wore him down and he found a KILLER deal on some AWESOME cleats. I am so proud of him! He shopped a super sale and he scored. I like to think that I am rubbing off on him. Clearance is a heavenly word to me!

In true tight-wad form, I have developed a new passion of coupons. Those things are AMAZING! I have been under budget in our grocery category for 2 months in a row now! Couponing is kind of like searching for hidden treasure/shopping the clearance rack at your favorite store; it's just so satisfying. The best part about it is that my friend Tiffany is a couponer too, so we get to share awesome deals and great finds with each other.

Organization is the name of the game these days in the Sheehan household. I have been thinking of new ways to organize every thing! It probably doesn't help that I purchased a Martha Stewart book on getting organized. I have big plans for my kitchen, linen closet and guest room closet. I will post pictures as soon as I get things organized how I want them. I already did a few things in our kitchen, and it is looking a lot better! Now all I have to do is get Chris on the same page.

Chris' younger bother, Tim, and his girlfriend, Alli, came to visit us this past weekend. We had a great time with them! Alli is such a sweet girl. Because we had guests, we needed to show them around Las Cruses. We went to the farmers market, Coas Bookstore, Stahman's, and White Sands. It was a great time! I had fun being the hostess. Here are a few pictures from their visit, compliments of Alli's camera.

Strawberry Shortcake Cookies

Here is a WONDERFUL summer cookie recipe that I got from Martha Stewart Living Magazine. Yummo!

12 ounces strawberries, hulled and diced into 1/4 inch pieces (2 cups)
1 tsp fresh lemon juice
1/2 C. plus 1 Tbsp. granulated sugar
2 C. all purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. coarse salt
6 Tbsp. cold unsalted butter
2/3 C. heavy cream
sanding sugar, for sprinkling

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine strawberries, lemon juice, and 2 Tbsp. granulated sugar. Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and remaining 7 Tbsp. of granulated sugar in a large bowl. Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter, or rub with your fingers, until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in cream until dough starts to come together, then stir in strawberry mixture.

2. Using a 1 1/2 inch ice cream scoop or a tablespoon, drop dough onto baking sheet lined in parchment, spacing evenly apart. Sprinkle with sanding sugar, and bake until golden brown, 24-25 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack, and let cool. Cookies are best served immediately, but can be stored in an air tight container at room temperature for up to 1 day.

Enjoy!!! Bon appetit!