first trimester trial

I know you all are thinking: "she is only in her first trimester and is already complaining?? This lady doesn't know what is coming for her."

I feel the same way you do, so I'm glad we are on the same page.

First trimester has been a season for me. Oh yeah, by the way I'm pregnant! Which Brandon and I could not be more thrilled about and YES, WE WERE TRYING to have a baby. More brave people ask us if we were trying and less brave people are all thinking it, right? Anyways, my first trimester came along with an increase in laziness and a decrease in discipline. Going to work was, and still is at times, extremely difficult because I cannot wake myself up throughout most of the day. And when I got home from work I would feel even more tired and had no energy to cook or clean our little one bedroom apartment. Yes, I did find myself asking, "How in the world am I going to have energy for a baby?"

Giving grace to myself is not easy for me. I hate lying around but that's all I seemed to want to do these past couple months. I don't like to make excuses and symptoms of pregnancy seemed to be just that...excuses. Despite the food I ate or the rest I got, I had no control over how much energy I had. There never became a secret remedy to my tiredness, rather I simply have transitioned to second trimester. Throughout this time I see how God was pruning the "control roots" in my heart. Pregnancy was affecting my everyday demeanor and I couldn't control it.

I was and have been reminded over these past months that what I do does not earn my salvation. As much as I hated being lazy, it did not effect Jesus' blood that has covered my sins because God is faithful when I am not. Resting in His grace and faithfulness can be hard to accept in a world that says you must give to receive. It is hard-wired in me that I must "do something" in order to be worthy! But God's word clearly says that He has done everything and by God's grace he has allowed me to believe that he truly has done everything through Jesus Christ. Now let me live in a way that is at rest even when I have no control over how my body feels, so that I may show the freedom and peace God gives us when we accept the gift of His everlasting, unconditional salvation.

"For all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.This was to show God's righteousness, because in His divine forbearance he had passed over former sins." Romans 3:23-25

"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no ones may boast." Ephesians 2:8-9