day 17.

Day 17 - A picture of something that has made a huge impact on your life recently.

duh. my sweet Emmaline :) She has completely changed my life!

godliness.

This has been an interesting semester and while, technically, I still have some more things to finish up, it is almost finished. Today was the last day of classes and I have three finals next week.

Just about there.

I have enjoyed my classes a lot more than I thought I was going to. Actually, this whole semester has turned out better than I thought it was going to. I was so unsure about even going back to school after having Emmaline. I was sad about leaving her all day (even if it was just with Patrick). I didn't know if I could handle being a Mom, keeping the house, and taking 15 hours. I wasn't sure how much more I had left to graduate, what requirements I needed to fulfill, what tests I needed to take, etc. I was scared about getting my work done but having enough time to spend with my daughter. I was worried about neglecting Patrick.

But honestly, everything has worked out really well. I am so grateful Patrick and I were able to stagger our schedules so that we could both go to school full time but Emmaline would always be home with one of us. I just could not do daycare. I am not in any way bashing it, by the way! I am just so uptight and anxious I literally don't think my health could stand me leaving her (as insane as that sounds... Did I just admit that for the world to see?) I trust Patrick with everything I have and I still get nervous leaving her. Hell, I worry about her when she's sitting right in front of me. So, this was the best way to ease me back into school.

My classes were challenging enough to keep my attention but not so hard I was drowning in work. I learned that if I take 18 hours in the Spring (eek!) and 2 Summer classes followed by my Fall semester of student teaching, I will be graduating a semester earlier than I thought I would be! So that's the plan for now.

One thing I noticed, which I don't know if it's a coincidence or forced, but a lot of what I learned this semester has really made me go home and think about my own life. One class in particular really got to me. I just finished up a Women and the Law class which deals, basically, with how the Constitution treats Women's Rights in the United States. We talked about a lot of things ranging from sexual harassment in the workplace, to domestic violence, to prostitution, to abortion. My professor would give us these statistics and then we would learn about real people and their real cases. And I always flashed back to my daughter.

I have a huge responsibility.

Because somewhere along the way, these poor women I was learning about, they got lost. Someone let them down. We learned about 11-year old prostitutes. I read cases of women who felt they had to perform sexual acts to keep their jobs. We had to learn the history and rationalization for abortion and why teenagers shouldn't have to tell their parents. Every day I heard story after story after story of just heartbreaking stuff that I was so lucky I never had to deal with in my life and I want to protect my daughter from as well. And I would get panicky because I've got to teach Emmaline today that she is worth something, that she is loved, that she is important and special and beautiful and God's special gift.

I guess I just wondered how that happens -- how these girls get forgotten. When I got home from class today and I saw my beautiful girl smiling up at me when I walked in the door, my heart just oozed with all the love I have for her. Every day it multiplies. I can't explain it. My mind couldn't compose an eloquent or articulate enough sentence for someone to understand how much that little girl means to me. And I just don't think I could ever stop feeling this way for her.

I want to be the best Mommy I can be to Emmaline. I really do. I just pray that what Patrick and I are doing is Right and Good because we have this huge job ahead of us to grow her into a Godly young woman. And, I don't know, you just look at this perfect baby who is sinless and innocent and you don't want anything bad to ever happen to her. I know I can't protect her from everything in the big bad world. But I want to do my best to prepare her for what's out there.

day 2

Where I would Like to be in 10 Years

Hmm. Graduated? That would be nice. Hopefully that will have happened and I will be working, successfully and happily, as a high school history teacher somewhere here in Tennessee. Maybe Williamson County? Hey, a girl can dream, right?

I will be the Mommy of a 10-year old Emmaline (WHAT?!) which absolutely blows my mind. I wonder what kind of little girl she is going to be. I can't wait to discover her little personality - all her likes, dislikes, fears, dreams... And we will hopefully have more children by then, too. And maybe we will finally get a little boy on the Womac side!

I hope that Patrick has gotten his law degree (if that's still what he wants to do by then) and he is working, successfully and happily, in some law firm. I hope he's making enough money that we don't have to worry and stress about money but not so much that it becomes too important.

I hope we have a house. I want Emmaline and any future Womac babies to have a yard and a swing set and sidewalks to ride their bikes. I want them to have their own little rooms that we decorate together.

I hope we are a happy family. I hope we are busy (ballet, soccer, homework, church, t-ball, piano, etc!) but organized. I hope we laugh a lot and love even more. I hope we always make time to play with our babies. I hope Patrick and I still have our date nights and hold hands.

I hope I am better at sewing and that my kids let me do crafts with them. I hope they won't be embarrassed if Mom wants to make their Halloween costumes because I really can't see myself forking over $35 for a cheap nylon costume that will only be used one night.

I hope we are active and involved in a church. I hope they have something for all of us - a good child's department, nursery, and adult Bible study classes. Maybe they will even have little activities we can bring the kids to like movie or park outings. I so look forward to my babies coming home with their glittery messes that they made for us in Sunday School.

But more than anything else, I hope we are a family still. I hope that I have done the best I can to raise good, honest, happy children. I hope that I have done everything I can to be faithful to Patrick and serve him as a wife as best I can. I just hope there is a lot of laughing and cuddling because I could never get tired of that.

big.

My baby is growing and it's... good, I guess. Good in that she is learning and developing and becoming a smart little girl. But bad because it makes me a little sad to know my little baby is fading.

We took Emmaline to the park because I've been dying to get her into a swing. Patrick really dragged his feet about the whole thing because he (and I quote) "doesn't like parks." Who doesn't like parks? haha. Anyway, I talked him into it and we ended up having a really great time. The park is on the site of an old Union fort from the Civil War so in addition to the playground (and lots of other nice amenities, I might add) they have some awesome trails through the woods with signs and artifacts from the war. Um, yes! Patrick and I took Em in her stroller for a long, brisk walk and it was so much fun. Sweet baby even fell asleep during her ride.

Anyway, I got some video of Em in her first swing ride! She wasn't so sure at first but then she kinda warmed up to it.

life.

I know this is much, much heavier than any post I have ever written. But for some reason, I just feel compelled to write about this. It's something that is currently bothering me, has bothered me for some time, and writing generally has a way of sorting my feelings out for me and helping me feel a little better when I'm upset.

I am currently in a Women and the Law class which, unbeknownst to me when I signed up for it, is really a lot like a feminist class. It's ok though because it is my first political science class that has really dealt with specific laws, cases, and rulings. I like being presented a case, real or fictional, and deciding what the Supreme Court did or should have decided. It's fun to me to try and figure out what parts of a case are important and how to best apply a law.

Sometimes, though, it can get annoying when the ardent feminists in the class spout off about how some situation is "evidence of a patriarchal society" or how men won't be happy until we're all pregnant, uneducated and stuck at home, or some other nonsense. I do get where they are coming from. I mean, women were the last group of people in America to be given citizenship status and the right to vote. Think about it; black people, who at one point weren't even considered human but rather property, were given the right to vote a full 60 years before women. The Supreme Court of the United States actually had rulings that stated blacks could not be considered "free" if they had lived in a free state and then moved to a slave state because they were property and property could not have rights! Seriously! And they were eventually given many rights before women. So, yes, I do think women have been greatly disenfranchised throughout our history. But I am also the type of woman who is not unhappy about staying home and keeping a house while my husband provides for us. This doesn't bother me. I'm not against my chair being pulled out or the door being held open for me.

To each their own. Feminism, to me, is having the right and ability to choose what works best for you as a woman.

Anyway, I promise I am getting to my point...

I am tired of being pulled into a movement I do not stand for. I am tired of being spoken for when I have my own voice and my own opinion on the matter. I am talking about abortion and how this, somehow, has been twisted in a "women's rights" issue. I know that if someone is pro-choice, there is very little, if anything, I could say to change their mind or sway their opinion. I wish I could say I didn't care but that just isn't so. I deeply, deeply wish I could find a way to change people's hearts and get them to understand the issue the way I do. It is to a point where I feel physical pain thinking about this cause. It literally hurts me. I think the worst part about the whole thing is each side so passionately believes that he is right and correct. It is damn near impossible for me to even try and get my mind to attempt to rationalize abortion. Sometimes the best way to speak to someone is to imagine yourself as them - get into their frame of mind. I just literally cannot even try to understand how a person could be ok with abortion. I can't understand. It's like when you try to imagine what could motivate someone to molest a child or commit cannibalism; it is so far removed from anything I feel, think, or believe that I cannot switch gears.

I know essentially the issue at hand is whether one believes life begins at conception, birth, or somewhere in between. If this could be established, it would not matter what type of rights a woman believes she has because we could say, "Sorry, too bad. It's a human already." Women's rights would be null, void, inconsequential. But for some reason, with all the technology, brain power, reason, and understanding we have, we cannot come up with a definition for life that we all agree on. Laughable. This is, again, where I struggle to even comprehend my opponents' views. I have always considered life as originating at conception. This was only further validated upon becoming pregnant and successfully carrying and delivering a beautiful baby girl. I was not but 6 weeks and 5 days pregnant when I first saw my baby on a scan (of which 2 weeks the embryo was not even present in the womb yet; the intricacies of calculating a pregnancy). So, my baby had been in my womb for a mere (and approximate) 4 weeks and 5 days. I saw her heartbeat. Can you grasp that? I saw her (a human!) heart (a vital organ for living!) beat (it's working and functioning!).

There are different types of abortions that can be performed. One such type is called an aspiration. It can be performed up until week 16 of the pregnancy. I had an ultrasound scan in week 16 of my pregnancy performed by my best friend. I was lucky, because without her scanning me, I would have had to have waited another month to find out the sex of my baby. During my hour and a half scan, my best friend spent the entire time analyzing every part of my baby you could think of. We counted her toes and her fingers. We followed the arteries in her heart and looked at her spinal cord and where it met the brain. She looked at openings in the baby's brain and whether there was liquid in the bladder. And when I went home that night, Patrick and I felt our sweet baby girl move. If I had wanted to, for any reason (or no reason at all) I could have ended it right then... all in the name of "women's' rights."

My baby, by the way, is a girl. Should I have decided on abortion, what does this say about her rights as a future woman?

I sincerely do not want to offend anyone and I certainly don't want to argue with anyone. I am not so shallow as to think most women go into this decision flippantly and without pain (though too many do). I guess my heart is just torn at what this means for me. I chose to have my baby. But what about all the other children out there who weren't so lucky to have a Mom who could, or would, choose to give birth to them? What can I do to change this? How can I help? How can I make a difference? How can I appease and pacify the hurt this causes to so many people?