Today was my first ultrasound with Baby Gravener! I am SOOOOO incredibly excited I can’t even begin to explain it! When I first layed down on that table with Sean holding my hand I had this incredible sinking feeling and worry of something come over me. The nurse squirted that warm gel on my stomach and placed the probe and right away we saw this tiny little life actively moving all over the monitor! I filled up with tears almost instantly and my Man gave my hand a tight squeeze. We both had huge smiles on our faces right away as the nurse started pointing out what was what to Sean and I. The baby’s heartbeat was good and strong beating at 161 beats per minute! They gave me a due date of November 1, 2007, though I am still fairly certain of an October birth. They took a bunch of measurements and told me how strong and healthy not only the baby was, but how strong my body was handling things, was such a blessing beyond knowing! I was so overwhelmed with emotions I can’t even begin to put into words. My Mom was called into the room after about 15 minutes and she was able to see the baby doing backflips and twists quite literally all over the place - NO WONDER I FEEL this baby move so much! My Mom was sooo excited to see the baby and kept saying how beautiful the baby was already - I have to COMPLETELY Agree! The emotions from the day are just soooo overwhelmingly amazing!   Sean is very excited too - and I know it became so much more real to him to be able to see the baby moving around and that there really is a tiny precious life inside of me!  We are so happy and blessed to become a Daddy and Mommy to a little miracle given to us from God!  Just such a wonderful time for us!

Well….

I’m so excited because I am Pregnant and I am now further along then I have ever been with any other pregnancy I miscarried.

I’m loving the morning sickness I’ve experienced the past few weeks, which has caused a bit of a slow down for me. But I’m super thankful for every moment of it!

My blood levels are slightly low, so I’m on supplements to sustain the pregnancy and things are looking great!

Sean and I have simply gone through so many different things with this, and just praise God for His timing and His perfect love and grace in every step of our lives!

I’m just so excited and will be writing as we go along about the pregnancy I am sure!

I have not been writing consistently the past week…I have been so sick on these supplements that the Doctors put me on…it’s crazy!  But So worth it!

The Doctor put me on Prometrium as a means of maintaining steady levels for the baby to continue to grow.  On Monday I had an ultrasound and you could see the tiny stubs of baby arms and tiny stubs of baby legs growing! It was so cool!  I have two different due dates from two different Doctors - one says October 21st and the other Doctor says November 12th…so we will see when this baby decides that he/she is fully grown and ready to be born!

I’ve been incredibly sick this time, and overly tired, like I said, but with prayers and support, this baby will continue to grow into a beautiful baby that Sean and I will have the incredible blessing of being able to raise.

I’m thrilled to be this sick and have this blessing.  I’m also so thankful that God saw fit to give me a husband who not only allows me to rest, but wants me to stay home and sleep as much as I possibly can.  Sean is so supportive and I’m so thankful for this home business that we have that not only I can stay home, but so can he!

I was thinking about that a few weeks ago, even before I found out for sure things were going really well this pregnancy, when I was holding baby AJ and rocking him to sleep for a nap.  I was smiling thinking how wonderful it is going to be some day and how much a blessing it is that Sean and I will get to experience everything our baby does together.  Not only do we not have to put our baby into day care, we both get to take time to be able to just hold and love our family whenever we see fit and get our work done as it comes along.  It’s just such a blessing and a gift from God!

I know we couldn’t do it without God helping Sean with
href=”http://www.authoritysitepro.com”>AuthoritySitePro God just keeps opening the doors and Sean keeps fillin’ in the necessary work.

Anyway, I am actually going to go take a little nap now…and then later this afternoon, I plan to go into a little bit more on the subject of a Wealthy Woman.

I had the stunning realization the other day…

I am no longer Megan Elizabeth Good! I know that may sound crazy, I’ve been married now for almost 6 months and it truly has just started to hit me that I am no longer Megan Good, I am now Megan Gravener.  This little thing really hit me the other day when I started reading through my old journals and all the drama of my teenaged life and things that I was going through when I made the choice to walk away from God.
You see only a very short time ago I was really looking out to just live the way I wanted to live my life.  I believed in God, and I knew He was there “with me” but I really didn’t care too much about my Spiritual well being or what God was really asking of me.  Long story short, many things really fell apart in my life, you want to talk about the laws of attraction, it was in action for me BIG TIME, and I did not like it!

Not long before Sean and I decided we were going to get married, life really started to change.  Both Sean and my heart’s were touched and softened by God’s Holy Spirit and He grabbed us on new levels of awareness.  “What were we doing!?!?”  Life started turning around, and it was a process! (But I have to say now, I couldn’t be happier!)  There were things that I was asking forgiveness for, and still find myself doing, I’m not perfect, and I do sin everyday, though I am making conscious choices to choose God over myself and change my ways for blessings.  There were still things that got to me, I had people say already “that’s what you always do Megan”, or “yeah, you’ve said that before”.  Whatever those outside voices were telling me if it be I was attacking myself with them or an old friend was bringing it up…it really got me down.  I would get scared, oh yeah, I did say that before…but you know what I learned?
2 Corinthians 5:17″Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, old things have passed away; behold all things have become new.”

That has all passed away, it is no longer.  It is the choices I am making right now, the thoughts that I choose now to be new, the faith that I choose now is all new!  I am in Christ and I can say “thanks for reminding me what I was, but I am not that any longer! I am all new in Christ”

This verse got to me as I began confessing and basically forgiving myself for what God had already forgiven me for!

These are a few ways to start looking at your life now…to see where you were, and see now that you can be completely made whole and brand new in Christ.  He doesn’t want you to stay in the rut and repeating the cycle, He wants you to have success and break away.

Just like I had that realization the one day that I was now Megan Gravener, that the old ways of Megan Good no longer exist.  You can have those same moments by simply turning into Christ.  Changing your thought pattern, choosing God’s forgiveness and become a new person yourself…not just with a new name, like my little story, but with your renewed Spirit and Mind!

I found this and I decided to just go ahead a post it! This is the class address that I gave to Buxmont Christian’s Senior Class of 2001. It still really applies and is much of a reflection of my life in 2001 - many things have changed, but this very address had a very big part in getting a hold of my heart in turning my life back over to Christ all over again. To me it still gets a hold of my heart, takes me back and has those principles to remind me my dreams matter to God and yet His plans are huge for my life when I give it to Him!

“Throughout our lives we have all had teachers and mentors. We can remember that certain someone who has influenced our lives, encouraged us to move ahead, rebuked us when we’ve done wrong, and has been an example for us to follow. I feel incredibly blessed that God gave me loving parents, my teachers, who not only cared about my academic training, but they desired to raise me to love the Lord with all my heart, to seek His stillness for my life and to always wait on Him. Being still and waiting are two very difficult words to live by in an age where everything is at high speed. You want to read a book, get the condensed version for quicker readability or the audio version to listen in the car. Any type of information you need you just hop onto the Internet and everything you need is a click of a mouse a way. Need something to eat? Swing by McDonalds, and they’ll have your order ready in 90 seconds. Don’t forget about cell phones to make sure we are always in touch with friends and family in one touch. We get so caught up in this fast pace move ahead society that it is easy for us to lose focus of the will our Heavenly Father has for our lives.

Psalm 46:10 tell us “Be still and Know that I Am God”. There must be a peace found in His stillness that He requires us to be still in Him. Our Senior Class verse is Isaiah 40:31 “For they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and not faint.” How can we stay still and maintain the patience required of us when the world is so quickly moving around us? Many major life decisions are made with in the first seven years after leaving highschool. What is the best way to make these life choices we have?

My life verse has always been Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.” Many times we read God’s words and promises from the Bible, but so many times they really seem just like words to read for the moment. Many people have never taken the blessing of trials to teach us to trust in our Heavenly Father. Even though all of God’s words are meaningful, what life lessons have we applied to trusting them? In the past few years of life I have experienced many trials where I really had to put all my faith in Christ alone. Putting my full, unwavering faith in Christ, hasn’t and still isn’t always an easy thing for me to do. I’m the type of person who likes to have everything detailed and all figured out knowing exactly what I am supposed to do. Sometimes I wish God would just send me an e-mailing telling me what I am supposed to be doing at any given moment in any given decision, but He has already given me His word, He tells me to be still and wait on Him. The Bible really already has all the answers to anything life could possibly throw at you. In the words of Solomon, “there is nothing new under the sun”. During my times of trials, God has always brought me back to a point of realizing that I need to stop trying to take control of my life and simply trust Him. There have been plenty of times where I would tell myself ‘yeah Megan, your trusting God, things are fine’, but in my heart I knew that I wasn’t giving Him my all. The impatience in my heart was keeping me from being at peace with my loving and patient Savior. The Lord is still teaching me to stop trying to sit in the Pilot’s seat and let Him be Captain.

These past couple of years I’ve gone through many things that most people don’t go through in a lifetime. There where often times with no real answers in sight, and confusion as to what to really do. My parents constantly reminded me that my trials were a time to be still in the Lord and to take time to grow in Christ. I was so desperate for answers. God’s Word was my only true source of comfort when I decided to submit to Him and turn to His Word. I took courage found in Jeremiah 29:11-13 “For I know the plans I have for you says the Lord, plans of peace and not of evil, plans to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. Then you will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all of your heart.” Suddenly the Bible has a personal meaning to me again, it was no longer something I read because I wanted to be able to say, “of course I had my devotions today”. When I am weak, God’s Words help me to become stronger. Instead of worrying about my situation, I was reminded by Matthew 6:33-34 to take action and “seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own trouble.” The reason I am sharing this with you is to encourage you to seek God first in all that you do, to take actions towards waiting on Him and trusting Him with your all. We are so often to follow our hearts, to think positively and go for our dreams, while these things are really important, I want to encourage you to surrender your heart and your dreams to the Giver of ALL good things. Psalm 37:4-5 “Delight yourself in the Lord and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to God, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.” If we commit our ways to God, His will and desire for our lives, will become His desire. As Paul reminds us in Ephesians 3:20-21 “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us…to Him be the glory forever” When I think about my dreams, and the possibilities of what God already has planned for my life, it overwhelms me. God already has a bigger plan than I can even imagine, Once again the Words trust and stillness come into action.”