They diagnosed the pregnancy as ectopic on June 10, but it wasn't until July 2 that the amount of pregnancy hormone in my blood was low enough to count as negative. Still measurable, just not high enough to show up anywhere other than a blood test. Which meant that for most of June I experienced symptoms that otherwise would've sent my heart racing in excitement at the possibility; signs that would've had me reaching for a home pregnancy test; and the cruelest part is that for most of June, the test would've come back positive.

I lost her day by day, minute by minute.

Sometimes as I'm falling asleep, I go back to that day and imagine what it would've been like if we'd seen something on the ultrasound. Instead of the tech searching and searching and my grip on A's hand getting tighter and tighter, what if we'd seen a little sac with a little bean baby inside it?

Instead she was hidden away, betrayed by my body that couldn't give her a safe place to grow. Instead, I lost her, the little invisible life that took with her a piece of mine.

When we were driving home from the hospital, after the pregnancy was officially starting to end, my husband patted my hand and said, "This one just wasn't meant to live down here with us." And when I hear those words again in my head, I want to fold in on myself.

But at the same time, I feel so incredibly blessed that even for a little while, I got to be someone's mother.

A friend who also had an ectopic -- and who has struggled with great loss and challenge on her road to parenthood -- said that while it is no balm now, many many infertiles never even get a positive beta. So as strange as it seems, I feel lucky to have had that experience.

That Friday afternoon, as we drove away from the hospital totally in shock and grinning and laughing and exclaiming, "This is impossible!" and calling our parents to tell them my surgery had been canceled (and why), it was such a moment. We went to breakfast (as I hadn't eaten anything or had anything to drink since the night before), and then came back to house and took the dogs out to the lake. I waded into the water, and turned back to my husband and said, "I'm pregnant." Just to say it, so amazing. "I'll remember this day forever," I told him. And I will.

The pregnancy was ectopic. Today I am 6 weeks, 2 days. It's the most pregnant I've ever been, or maybe ever will be.

We'll be okay.

So here is what happened.

On Friday, we got to the hospital a little early (7 a.m.), but they started the check in anyway. I felt pretty calm. Got my wristband and signed some forms and then went into a waiting room with Aaron. Got called back and went with a nurse/aide who weighed me, had me pee in a cup and then told me to take everything off and put it in a bag, put on a gown and wait on a gurney.

A woman came in and took some blood, and then a nurse came in and started asking questions. (Allergies, what surgery was I having, etc etc.) They bring A. in to wait with me, and by this time it's about 8 a.m.

The nurse comes back in with a look on her face, sits next to me and says, we need to take more blood because something came back on one of your labs.

She then says, "Your urine test came back positive for pregnancy."

I said, "That's impossible!" She said they were going to take more blood, and to just wait and see and to just "sit on it" and to not let anyone start my IV. So they take more blood and we wait for 30-45 minutes. The anesthesiologist comes and we chat about what he's going to do and I ask questions (they use brain monitors to make sure you're not aware, only hospital in the Cities to use them, so win for them). He says, "What lab are we waiting on? Could you be pregnant?" Ha ha, no, I tell him.

Finally about 9 a.m. my doctor comes in and says, "What's going on?" "You tell me!!," I told her.

I told her my last period date, and she and I are both looking at each other like, "What?!" The nurse comes back in smiling, holding a piece of a paper and says, "This is for your scrapbook!"

I am crying, Aaron is crying. My doctor says, "You're going to make me cry!" I keep asking if the tests could be wrong. "Was it your urine?" my doctor asks. Yes. "Was it your blood?" Yes. "Then you're pregnant."

My doctor says, "At this point, I've canceled your surgery," She tells me that she is going to call her office and have them work me in for an ultrasound and blood work on Monday. They send us home.

On Monday, June 8, we went in for another blood draw and ultrasound. They couldn't see anything on the ultrasound, but my HCG levels have gone up since Friday. However, they haven't doubled, which is what they would normally look for.

So I am going back tomorrow for another blood draw.

We don't know what's going to happen, or if this pregnancy is viable, but I felt like I didn't want to keep it a secret, because why would we? And no matter what happens, God is good and He is sovereign and He works all things for good.

We have experienced a miracle, and I praise Him for it!

I told Melissa that I felt a little like Abraham. I didn't want to have that surgery, and even that morning, laying on that gurney, I had the urge to flee. But I felt like it was the path and the option presented to me, and I was going to be obedient and follow through. And as my Isaac laid on the alter, and I had the knife in my hand, God stepped in and sent me home. I got up off the pre-operating gurney, put my clothes back on, and walked out of that hospital, uncut and with the knowledge of a new life inside me.

No matter what happens THAT is a miracle.

Thank you so much for all of your prayers, and all of your thoughts and well wishes. It is humbling to have so many amazing friends, and I'm going to be selfish and ask for your continued prayers. All three of us can use them.

My paternal grandmother’s baby sister never had children, and there is no one to ask if that was by choice or circumstance. Two of my maternal grandmother’s sisters never had children either, though one of them gave birth to a still baby girl when she was in her late 30s. I found a picture once, of my great-grandmother holding her little baby granddaughter, the baby my Aunt Mary wanted so desperately, but never got to raise.

It seems strange to think of something like infertility being hereditary, but perhaps in some ways it is.

Tomorrow I go in for a procedure that if it goes as planned will give us a 50/50 chance of conceiving. If it goes badly, it will remove all hope of pregnancy, of biological children.

I am trying to prepare myself for the worst, while my heart clings to the best. But how do you prepare yourself for the possibility that the thing you want so badly will be suddenly — and with the finalist finality — impossible?

Jesus said that in every life, trouble will come. He spoke the truth, didn’t he?

Sometimes I am overwhelmed by my blessings. Though after tomorrow I won’t be able to say this, as of today I have never spent even one minute as a patient in a hospital. I’ve never broken a bone or been in an accident. I even have all four of my wisdom teeth.

I have a man who loves me, cares for me, provides for me; who makes me laugh on a daily basis. We worry about money — who doesn’t in America in 2009? — but we are not at risk of losing our jobs or our home.

I have been given more — much more — than I deserve.

But the biggest gift I’ve been given is the one that I deserved the least. Thank you God for loving me. For saving me. For sending Your son to die in my place so that I may be with You forever.

In church on Sunday the worship leader read a list of names for our savior — Chosen One, Wonderful Counselor, Emmanuel — before we sang “Your Name.” And when he read the name “Redeemer,” tears filled my eyes.

Redeemer, Redeemer, Redeemer. Is there any name sweeter?

So no matter what happens tomorrow — no matter the outcome — my heart still beats for Jesus. Nothing matters without Him, and all the glory, all the fame, all the honor, belongs to Him.

Take my life and let it be, Consecrated Lord, to Thee. Take my will and make it Thine, it shall be no longer mine. Take my heart, it is Thine own, it shall by thy royal throne.
- "Take My Life and Let it Be"

This is the time of year when Scout doesn't want to come inside; why would she? Right now she and the Bulldogs are sunning themselves on the porch. The bullies are laying on their sides, looking like pigs ready to roast at a luau.

Summer is around the corner. (I know this because I've already seen a few giant mosquitoes.) Every day the grass gets greener, and it amazes me how life comes back. What was once frozen, dormant, cold and hard, springs forth greener and more vibrant than I remember it. Life comes back again and again and again.

One year ago today we pulled into our driveway very late at night, newly married and with dogs in the backseat. I spent the next month unpacking and cleaning (so much cleaning) and organizing, and made this house our home.

They say that the first year of marriage is the hardest, and this is perhaps a turn of phrase that single people don't understand. I didn't, really.

And while yes, every adventure is new, it's difficult to blend 30+ years of habits and stuff and expectations. I thought I might go a little bit bananas those first few months, trying to figure out how to keep clean a house that is inhabited by four dogs and a man. It felt like such an impossible task. But now I have my routine down, and I gave up the ghost on keeping the kitchen floor truly clean. (A large mat by the sliding door has helped, but really. We have four dogs. Who was I kidding?)

Add on to those first trials my grief, such grieving. I lost my precious grandmother. My heart was broken by death and loss and such intense homesickness for a placed I'd only lived six years. Sometimes I don't know how I made it.

Winter is dark. One day it's summer, and suddenly the next it is briefly fall and the sun is setting just after lunch, it seems. And the weather is to-the-bone cold; cold like I never knew existed outside storybooks about Santa and penguin movies in Antarctica. But I survived winter, and the natives give credit to anyone who does, whether it's someone's first or forty-first tundra season. I am proud of this surviving.

But it's over now. The ice is off the lake. Boats are out of storage, and restaurant patios are open. My yard is green again. Our windows are up and my feet are bare.

I survived. I'm at home.

This weekend is fishing opener in Minnesota, which means my husband has been on a lake already about three times, chasing after that state record Walleye. Fishing opener trumps all else, so I imagine future Mother's Days will be much of the same. And that is just fine.

I was e-mailing with a friend yesterday, and she said she was wishing us a happy mother's day to our future mother selves, and I appreciated the sentiment so much. Sometimes I already feel like someone's mother that I have to remember that I am, in fact, not.

I've had three newborn sessions so far in my little fledgling photography business, and there is just nothing like the chance to scoop up a brand new baby and cuddle him close to you cheek, and shush him to sleep. Their brand new moms are often surprised by my confidence and ability to do so, since I am, after all, no one's mother.

Several years ago I read an ugly, sarcastic comment on one of those "slam book" sites about how they just couldn't wait to read about my infertility struggles in a few years. For whatever reason that comment has stuck with me, both because I longed so badly for it to not be a forewarning, while most of me knew that it was.

This has been a challenging year for me. God has really been working me over. Why was it so easy for me to trust in Him when it came to my singleness? (Okay, easy isn't the right word, but I got there, confident in his timing and plan.) But this feels so much different.

It is very difficult to articulate my feelings on the topic, because I feel wholly of two hearts on the matter. One part of me wants to feel anger and rage at the sky that I can't just get pregnant the way it was designed to happen. I mean, why can't I? Why me? Wasn't this intense longing for children placed in my heart by God? Why would He not grant it as easily to me as He grants it to millions? As easily as He grants it to people who do not even WANT it?

It is extremely difficult for me to read comments from mothers complaining about their children or pregnancy, though in some microcosmic way I get it. My dogs drive me bananas, but I still love them. I get it in that sense, I suppose, but to whine about a miracle... that I do not understand. Especially when I would give up everything to experience it. Everything.

My brother and sister-in-law are expecting again, and the day they found out the baby is a girl, the day that my sister-in-law sent an e-mail saying that the face in the ultrasound looks like me, I sat in my car and cried and cried. And they were nothing but tears of joy, because I feel like God is giving me this niece as a balm. Here here, He is saying. Here is a baby, though not a daughter, a baby who you will love, who will share Josephine's legacy. Here.

And this Easter, I got to cuddle and photograph a toddler boy who has eyes and cheeks and a grin like my husband's, and I have to ask Him, is this to tide us over or is this going to be it?

But my other heart is stoic about the matter. This is how it will be for us, and that is okay. Why NOT me? Why do I deserve something just because I desire it? I deserve nothing but death. I deserve nothing.

And so I cling to the promise that He works all things for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

"I know that You are for me. I know that You will never forsake me in my weaknesses. I know that You have come down, even if to write upon my heart. To remind of who You are." - You Are For Me, Kari Jobe

So I will walk this path that He has set before us, and I will accept it and I will not stomp my feet and cry why me, no matter how badly I want to, because why me, God? Why would you save me? Why would you love me? I am a liar, a wretch, a whore. And yet You saved me and made me Your bride.

"You have already won the battle, and You're got great plans for me, though I can't always see." - "Free to Be Me," Francesca Battistelli

But it's close enough for me.

Even just a year later, you start to forget a lot of the little things. Last night we were talking about the day, and I couldn't remember if I sat with my family at the restaurant before or after I worked out. Or what exactly happened with the Chick-fil-a party platter mix up (only remembering that there was one, and that it was truly the only thing to go "wrong" all day).

A year later you remember the moments. Waiting with the bridesmaids, my dad and Adam before the processional, and how we all had to eat Adam's crackers so that he wouldn't try to carry the baggie down the aisle with him. How Michael took his stuffed puppy with him, and handed it to one our guests halfway down the aisle. How my dad whispered in my ear, "Good luck honey," as he hugged me after giving me away. And how that was the only moment I truly thought I might lose it.

It was a fun, wonderful, amazing day that I can't believe is already a year behind us.

But as all married people know, a marriage is so much more than a wedding. Everyone tells you that, but when you're a bride, it's all you can do to think about the honeymoon after the wedding, you're so consumed with details and to-do lists.

I had no idea what this year would have in store for me. The deaths and this job and how difficult it has been acclimating to a new climate and culture. (It's definitely a different culture!)

There is so much more to say, and I plan to say it. But for now, I just want to remember.

Getting ready:

First glance:

I loved my bouquet so very much:

That boot camp paid off:

Aaron waiting at the end of the aisle:

This picture is so special to me. I'm so glad my uncle was right there with his camera!

On the beach:

The end of the reception ended up being a karaoke fest. If there is a microphone anywhere, Roger will end up with it. Be warned.

I'll never forget it.

(All photos by Todd Pellowe.)

But last night I read something from one of the Compassion India Bloggers, Pete Wilson, that stopped me cold:

"Today more than 26,500 children will die of preventable causes related to their poverty. And guess what? It will happen again tomorrow… and the next day… and the next. Around 10 million children will be dead in the course of a year."

Today, as we fret and fear the unknown. Today, as we wipe down our desks with Clorox wipes and wash our hands for the umpteenth time, 26,500 children will die from disease and illness that we in the developed world no longer consider. Malaria from mosquito bites. Dysentery from dirty water. Starvation.

26,500. It puts it into perspective, doesn't it?

Sponsor a child from India today. You won't notice the $1 a day it will cost you, but that child will notice it, I promise.

The selfish part of me wishes I were going with them. But the rest of me is just glad they're going.

Aaron and I watched Slumdog Millionaire last weekend -- and while I liked it and could see why it won Best Picture -- it didn't affect me the way I know it did many. I wonder if that's because a lot of Americans were previously unaware of the plight of many Indian children. I don't know; that's just my guess.

India is never far from my thoughts, or far from my heart. I think of my sweet cousins often and I feel humbled to know them. I think of the children we sponsor, and I feel humbled that God would allow me the opportunity to build a relationship with someone so far away; with someone with whom I likely will never meet this side of heaven.

The kind of poverty depicted in Slumdog Millionaire is real. Orphans are real. And they deserve rescue. And not the rescue of the West or the rescue of man. But rescue by the Son of Man, who is the king of ALL the nations. He is the God of India as much as he is the God of me.

I would like to go to here now.

It is supposedly "spring" here, but I woke up to fresh snow on the ground, so I'm not buying it.

Today I would like to be on a beach, specifically this one.

When Sarah was pregnant with MB, we wrote out potential names on our office dry erase board, and she would come in each day with reports from her husband, even once bringing in his index card of suggestions. (You might have to know Sarah's husband to know how funny some of these were, but let's just say he really liked Serenity.)

I am in that child-birthing phase of life, where someone I know has been expecting since 2004, at least. So it's a much-discussed topic.

Many many years ago -- before I was even out of high school I believe -- I reserved the name Josephine for any future daughters. My family humored me, and to my surprise, no one has used it. My brother and his wife discussed Jo as a middle name when they were pregnant with Michael, but as many of my cousins have Jo as a middle name that didn't really count as "using" the name. (They are currently expecting again, though we don't yet know the baby's sex, or if Jo is even still on the middle name table.)

My grandmother was named for her father, Joseph, though he was called Red much of his life. My grandmother herself never really went by her full name either, for that matter. She was either Jodi or Jo (or Mom or Grandmother or MeMe!). I was an older child -- 8 or 9 maybe -- before I even realized my grandmother had a "real" name. I was never around anyone who used it! A. and I even have a secret nickname that we will likely use, rather than always calling her by her full name.

I think about my daughter Josephine sometimes, and I wonder if she will be like her great-grandmother. Will she be a hard-worker? A good cook? Will she like look like me, she who looks like her mother, who looks like her own mother? Will my Josephine even be blood related to me at all?

Today I found a site that tells you meanings of names, and I plugged in Josephine. It's funny that I've never looked it up before; the traditional meaning doesn’t matter as much when a name has such a personal history.

Josephine means “God will increase.” I can't imagine a more fitting meaning, for my grandmother's legacy increases daily. From seven children, she was blessed with 17 grandchildren. From those 17 grandchildren, she knew 31 great-grandchildren. (A number that continues to grow.) And from those 30 great-grandchildren, a dozen or so great-great-grandchildren, many of whom she met and held and loved.

And because of that legacy, God’s glory is increased as well. From one woman, generations of believers were birthed.

I miss my grandmother daily, and wonder if she knows how I long for another Josephine to bless my life. How long will I wait?

Having four dogs is not for the weak. They are demanding, and they shed, and they can be big pains in the you know what.

We hosted our small group on Friday night, and after everyone left Aaron said, "Well, I think we're gonna get left out of the rotation next time." The dogs were fine -- but they're dogs. It was really hard not to laugh when during serious discussions (and praying!) Eller is laying in the middle of the floor gnawing on a bone like it's the last bone on Earth. And Julie is sitting on someone's feet breathing her loud, annoying Bulldog breathing. They're a little... distracting.

But all that said, I wouldn't change it. They're our little family, and though we will never again have this many animals, we love 'em.

Anyway. I wrote the below in January 2007, just after Passion '07. It's on my heart again today:

And here I am at 30 with my full-time job and my mortgage payments and my consumer debt, and though God has shaped my heart to love mercy, to want to do justice, I am covered in middle class America, and I am a slave to my lenders.

But yet, I still dream of dirt roads in India. I dream of standing by a well and placing my hand on the arm of someone who was born believing they were literally Untouchable, and telling them that their Creator has invited them to drink from a LIVING well. That they are loved by the God of the sky, the God of the ocean, the God of the heavens. When I sleep, I smell curry. I hear the strings of the sitar. And I see the gorgeous, brown-eyed faces of the three children my family has adopted as our own.

My cousin Matt will venture to India this Spring to pick up their fourth child from a Delhi orphanage, where she has spent the first four years of her life, speaking only Hindi, cared for by petite Indian woman. And soon her father will come and get her - this man who looks nothing like her and speaks a language she can't understand. But he is her daddy and his love for her will cause him to fly to her country so that he may bring her home.

He is our Daddy and His love for us caused Him to nail His only son to a cross for sins we haven't even committed yet! Just to bring us home. That is the message for the world, for all the nations, for all the people. And in His great grace and glory He may allow me - me! - to share it.

That fall they opened up the building for hard hat tours. At the time it was just cement columns and metal beams. A roof and construction fencing. As my friends and I walked into what was to be the 3,000+ auditorium, we had to close our eyes to imagine what it would ultimately look like.

The big push for the new building was to create "empty chairs." We had run out of room in the grocery store, and were in need of empty chairs. Those empty chairs=people who needed to hear the story of God's grace and merciful love. So that day, on the hard hard tour, Jeff Henderson asked us all to think about who we wanted to see in those empty chairs. Our siblings? Coworkers? Friends? He challenged us to pray for those people, and as a physical symbol, to write their names on the cement columns that would soon be hidden behind dry wall and paint and lights and a sound system.

And so I did.

And on Sunday -- though it is almost three years later and I am now 1,500 miles away -- I got a text message from one of those names that simply said, "Thank you for writing my name on that wall. I love you."

And every time I think about it, I cry. God, You are so good. And I will praise You for eternity.