Last fall, I attended the Influence Conference. I heard Emily Freeman speak, and one of the things she said that stuck with me was, “Write about what makes you cry. Because your tears are tiny messengers from God.”

Gah. So true.

So throughout the months since then, when something has made me cry, I think of it a little differently.

On Sunday night, Ben Affleck won an Academy Award for Best Picture for Argo.

In his acceptance speech, he said, “I want to thank my wife who I don’t usually associate with Iran. I want to thank you for working on our marriage for 10 Christmases. It’s good. It is work but it’s the best kind of work and there’s no one I’d rather work with.”

I noticed on social media that some thought this meant that the Affleck-Garner marriage was in trouble.

Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck have been married since 2005 and have three children together. I think to acknowledge that marriage is work, and that they choose to work at it means the exact opposite of trouble.

Because marriage is work. And going into it without knowing that it’s work, will leave you disappointed and wondering what happened to the fairy tale you were expecting.

Why did it make me cry?

Because I thought of my own life. And the things we work on every single day.

We work through budget conversations. We work around busy schedules. We work on giving things up for the other person.

I love to blog, but there are days when I only get two or three hours of awake time with my husband. If blogging means that I can’t spend any time with Todd that day, then I don’t blog that day.

Many of our conversations involve trying to convince our three-year-old to stop talking so Mommy and Daddy can finish talking to each other. And sometimes we may not finish our own conversation until we’re lying in bed. And other times we never finish the conversation at all.

Many of our mornings begin with a small child walking into our bedroom and asking to climb in bed with us to watch cartoons.

We work through adjusting as we live with Todd’s grandmother and recognizing that marrying each other also means being committed to the other person’s family. It is love. It is work. It is worship.

These are not the events of a fairy tale. These are the events of a marriage. And it’s a marriage that we work on every single day. When we realize that our calendars have gotten the best of us and not enough time alone has taken away some of our focus on each other, we work to do something to change that.

Our marriage isn’t perfect. It is work.

But, to me, work is worship. I love my husband and I love our marriage. I love our family and what each member of our family means in our marriage. And without work, we’d be a mess.

We were meant to experience struggles. God promised us that we would struggle. Without those struggles, we’d forget our desperate need for Him.

There is mutual responsibility in marriage, and we have to work each day to live up to that responsibility. And that is when love flows freely. From respect and selflessness and patience and forgiveness.

All the really, really difficult things.

1 Corinthians 13:5

(Love) does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

So, that’s my big thank you to Ben Affleck for showing us, in a world of happily ever afters and immediate gratification, that it is normal to sacrifice things and a certain lifestyle for marriage. It is worth it to give up so many of our comforts for the sake of our marriage and for our children.

It’s what God calls us to do, and our obedience is worship.

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There’s a big announcement over on the Influence blog today about the Influence Conference 2013!

This is one of those posts that I don’t know how to write. I was trying to tell a friend the other day that it feels weird to not write about certain things because it makes me feel like I’m leaving something out of our story. And that’s what this blog is.

But I also don’t want to use my words and my space to be negative.

So over the post few weeks (and months, really) I’ve pouted a good bit, prayed a lot, and done my very best to just see the Lord’s plan in all of this disorder.

For those of you that may not know the full story, we sold our house and closed on it at the end of 2012 after 9 months of it being on the market.

It was bittersweet. And we never imagined that it take us a few months to decide to build a house, and then take us a while to even get started on the process.

But since we left our home, I’ve been fighting and trying to overcome this dry feeling. I’ve just felt uninspired. And almost limited.

2013 is already flying by, but in many ways it can feel like we’re just living in limbo. We’re dangling in this place in the in-between where we’re tip toeing around and trying to get settled in Todd’s grandmother’s house. We’re trying to make ourselves at home while being respectful of her space.

When I found out I was pregnant, I was so excited. I thought, “This sweet little blessing was God’s plan for us, and this is that big sign of hope that all of this uncertainty will sort itself out soon.”

The pregnancy did give us the nudge that we needed to commit to building a house. But we were heartbroken just a few days later when I began to miscarry.

Today, at Bible study, someone spoke a very powerful piece of TRUTH into me when she said (not directly to me, but it felt that way),

“Stop waiting for Jesus to do something spectacular, and just focus on the joy that can be found in the every day and the ordinary.”

It may be 2014 before we find ourselves settled into a home. It may be 2014 before we decide that we’re ready to try for another baby.

The joy is happening all around me every single day.

And my hope is not to be found in anything of this world. It’s in Jesus Christ alone. And He fills me up with joy.  He has blessed us with a beautiful family and a warm, comfortable home that we share with family.

It’s a daily decision for me to choose to be joyful in the midst of the heart ache and displacement. It’s clear that I have been just waiting on something spectacular to happen to perk us up a bit. And it’s not likely that it will happen that way. My fulfillment and hope can only come from One place if I hope for it to sustain me.

For a while recently, I had reached this point in my time as a mother where I was in this quiet little place. Hayes was this sweet, content toddler. And when Hudson reached 3.5 years old, we turned a corner. There was peace and cooperation.

And then as Hayes’s speech therapy caught on, we added a little more noise to the home. Okay, a lot of noise.

But the noise is in the form of sweet, intentional words from Hayes that we prayed for and waited on for months. In fact, Hudson can’t help but do his cute little grin every time Hayes attempts to say a new word. He’s not making fun of him. He’s just so surprised and thinks it’s about as cute as I do. (Which is pretty stinking cute.)

His new favorite word is “Mommy.” Sweet, right?

Yes, it’s sweet. But there’s a little problem. “Mommy!” isn’t as sweet when it’s screamed in rapid succession. (Imagine Stewie Griffin in that ad they used to show on TBS all the time.)

I know deep in my heart that I will survive the toddler years again, but every time I hear Hayes start shouting “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” I doubt myself. Especially at 6:30 p.m. when we are counting down the seconds for Daddy to walk in the door.

I know that Hayes just wants my attention and that’s the way he thinks he needs to get it. But it hurts everyone’s ears and it makes my shoulders tense up. And when we put Hayes to bed at night, I realize that I can slowly relax my shoulders and bring them away from my ears.

I absolutely love that his favorite word is “Mommy.” And if his favorite word was “Daddy” and he screamed that all day, I know that we’d all be on edge just the same. Coming unglued bit by bit.

Thank goodness my husband is a “together” man. Because I do not have it all together.

But you know what? In a year, I will have to look back on this post to even remember that Hayes did that. And then I’ll laugh about it. And I will physically ache for my 21 month old baby boy who loves to laugh and run and try to jump and bounce while he shouts for his Mommy to look at him and so he can say, “Hewwooo, Mommy” or “peek-boo, Mommy!”

My sweet Hayes who falls asleep in the car on the way home from school and nuzzles his head into my shoulder as we walk into the house. And before I can lie him down in his crib, he’ll look at me and give me the sleepiest grin.

My sweet Hayes who used to be so content and never made a peep, is now showing us so many answers to prayers with his words and his voice and his crazy wild man activity.

It’s this place where I am so afraid to wish away the small things that bring headaches because time will take the sweet smells and funny giggles with it.

Back when we sold our house and were telling our friends that we were moving in with Nana, I can’t even count how many times we heard people say, “At least you’re not pregnant.”

And we’d just laugh. Because it was true. We were moving our family of four and our two dogs in with Todd’s 90 year old grandmother. Adding another family member to that mix would surely put us in the category of “wearing out our welcome.”

Then just about three weeks ago, I took a pregnancy test, and it was positive.

I was almost two weeks late, and Todd and I had been joking about how we should just wait for me to take a pregnancy test. So we put it off  for as long as we could, but I had this major pull one day when I drove past the CVS. So I ran in, grabbed a test, and brought it home.

I waited for Todd to come home and told him that I’d bought a test.

You see, we had talked about having a third child, but we always said that we’d try when we got ourselves settled into a house. At this point we hadn’t even made the decision to build a house.

So we decided that I’d take the test when the boys went to bed. We held each other and prayed that no matter the result (although we both already knew in our gut) we thanked God for trusting us to take care of the wonderful children we’ve been given and praised Him for the possibility of another. That no matter how scared we might be in that moment, we were just so thankful.

I went to take the test and within about five seconds the two little lines indicating a positive test showed up. I walked out and showed Todd. He laughed and I cried.

We decided that due to our living circumstances, we should keep the pregnancy a secret for as long as possible. I got online and used a due date calculator to determine that I was already nearly seven weeks along.

I called the doctor the next day to schedule an appointment to come in around nine weeks.

And then that night things changed. As quickly as they began. At first I thought it might just be no big deal, but then it was undeniably a very big deal.

I went to the doctor for blood work, because it was still too early to detect a heart beat in an ultrasound. I had to wait two days to come back for more blood work to see if my hormone levels were doubling or going down. And then I had to wait over a long weekend for the results.

After the first appointment, I broke down and called my mom. I had held it together and tried to convince myself that it was nothing and it was no big deal up to that point. But as soon as I heard her voice, I lost it and just sobbed into the phone. And I probably just let myself cry for a good fifteen minutes.

And then the following Monday, it was confirmed that I had a miscarriage. It was early and no procedures were needed.

But it was heart breaking.

The feeling of loss has overwhelmed me. This is my little person and Todd’s little person. This is my boys’ brother or sister. I saw the life and the love and the future, and it was real.

My rowdy boys kept me very busy and kept my mind off of everything that week. It was about as painless as it could be.

So we’ve been drawing nearer and nearer to the Lord. I’m very sad and still very, very busy being a mother and a wife. Todd and I have praised Him in this trial. Because we have to look at everything and every hardship as an advantage to the Kingdom. We have to consider it joy, though I still cry when I think of it. I’m considering it joy.

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Thank you for letting me share this piece of our story with you.