#journalingbible

Y'all I am so excited and Amazon is such a tease.

Have you ever heard of a journaling Bible?  I had, but the only journaling Bibles I had seen involved simply writing in the margins and that's something I already do.  It wasn't all that exciting.

Then I realized folks were actually creating art in the margins of their Bibles with how hymns or verses moved them.

It's amazing.

Wha-bam! There you have it.

A journaling Bible has major room in the margins aka a notetaker's dream but not only is there room for notes but you can create masterpieces in those margins.  

I first discovered this through Valerie Wiener's Instagram:

Photo Credit Valerie Wieners Art

 Isn't that beautiful?

She led me to see other folks' Instagrams and Facebook feeds.

Photo Credit Shanna Noel

She is currently giving away a copy of :

Check out Shanna's blog to enter the giveaway, otherwise you can find Writing in the Margins at Amazon.

If you haven't seen my Instagram feed lately, I've been cramming it with giveaways. I apologize in advance and I promise to beautify it in the very near future :) I just really want to start the Erskine baby stock right this minute...I can't help it :P

Back to the Journaling Bible!

I also joined a Facebook Journaling Bible group which is filled to the brim with beautiful inspiration.

I joined and it felt like God was blessing me as soon as I hit that "join" button.

This picture was posted by the group moderator (and awesome artist) Shanna Noel shortly after I became a member of the group.  

The #travelingbible will basically be a gorgeous, inspiring Bible that will be carried across the globe.  

My favorite book in the Bible is Hebrews and I cannot wait to add some art in those margins :)

Speaking of which, as soon as I saw Valerie's gorgeous newsfeed filling with colorful margins, I did a total impulse buy and bought one.  It got lost in the mail (THE HORROR) but Amazon, being amazing as always, quickly resent a new one.  I'll hopefully have it this Tuesday and it will be perfect timing for my upgrade sequence to a crew commander.  Please pray over me and send me well wishes!

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Before You're Expecting

Before I dive into this post with a very suggestive picture, I'm not pregnant BUT the conversation is happening.  Yes, praise Jesus we are in the stage where this is actually a feasible idea.  I wanted to journal through my experience of what it's like in the "before you're expecting" stage.  Now I'm not quite ready to share when I believe we will be "ready" but I think sharing all of this is going to be fun for me and hopefully informative for other families out there who may end up reading this.

If you know me at all, I have a fever...a baby fever.

It's bad y'all. I think I have wanted to have a baby with Ryan since the moment we got married.  It has been such a joy that now, at 3.5 years of marriage, we are legitimately having these conversations about planning our family.  

I can remember the moment Ryan asking me my thoughts on having a baby at X time.  You should have seen this gal's face, I was beaming from ear to ear.  Finally! Ryan was finally on the same mental wavelength as me.  Having studied reproductive rights and my interest in becoming a doula, I have a lot of baby books.  Color me weird at having all of these "baby books" in stock, but I am completely baffled as to how people can do so much research into purchasing something like a computer but don't know their rights when having a baby.  *Jumps off soap box*

Soooo I'm readily willing and excited to share my journey of researching products, trying things out, and educating myself on all things pregnancy, baby, and labor-related.  

Without looking at Air Force policies with Tricare, my birth plan involves having a doula, a midwife, and a water birth.  That would be a most ideal situation.  However, the other aspect of our family's plan is making sure that our military healthcare plan will cover it.  So my ideal plan may end up being in a hospital or where ever I'm covered.  If you've had any experience with pregnancy and the military, feel free to comment below! I'm all ears!

I recently went to my base gyno to have an overall check-up and she was this wonderfully pregnant captain.  It was so much fun being able to finally be excited and she was a bundle of energy herself.  It's great to finally be able to start asking these questions and figure out when my IUD can be taken out, etc.

For awhile I was incredibly reluctant to ever get pregnant while in this career field but then I started realizing that I needed to take care of myself and my family's needs and desires.  In the past year, I have volunteered for base/military everything and although I do a great job and am reliable, I started feeling overworked.  I was putting together great projects despite having limited resources and a lack of support, and the end result didn't satisfy me.  It started to feel very unfulfilling and I largely think it was because work without a lot of appreciation being sent your way is taxing. Being busy was my way of boosting my career and calming down the baby fever.  

After this happened several times where projects would come and go, and I just felt exhausted, I started taking mental notes of resolutions.  They included transitioning a lot of this energy into off base projects and volunteering or working off base.  Every volunteer opportunity that I've done in the community here has been amazing and so rewarding.  I feel that people are 100% committed and you're not working with folks who are voluntold.  These thoughts and ideas kept circulating and when Ryan brought up having a baby, I realized that I'm going to not only limit my base activities, but finally choose projects and volunteer opps that I can be fully committed to because being pregnant is a lot of work unto itself.

Writing this has been so therapeutic.  Now I only request your prayers and well wishes as our little family embarks on this journey :) 

  

If you liked this post, share it with others! If you feel particularly moved by it, leave a comment because I love feedback and discussion. Social media links are provided below and thanks for reading!