PP 177: Give Up Stress, Not Hope

If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you know that I’m a mom of five and if you haven’t been listening, well now you know.

What you may not know, however, is that until my husband and I met, I was a mom of two. And it wasn’t until the end of 2011, actually, even before we were engaged, that my husband had a crazy and huge idea of having a child together.

We each had two children from previous relationships or marriages, and we wanted one of our own that wouldn’t have to go back and forth to different parent houses and would be able to stay in a house of love full time.

At the end of 2011, my husband proposed, and it wasn’t long after that, that we found out that we were pregnant. Unfortunately, at the first ultrasound, however, we found out that what we thought was a real pregnancy was actually just my body playing tricks on me. While there was an embryonic sac in my uterus, it was actually empty, although it was still growing as if a normal pregnancy were occurring.

The Monday before we got married at the end of March 2012, I unfortunately had to go through a DNC. So, as you may imagine, on the day of our wedding, I was in quite a bit of pain. However, we were full of hope, and we decided to keep on trying. We weren’t giving up.

Give Up Stress, Not Hope

Unfortunately, 2012 saw three more miscarriages in addition to that first, and after the fourth at the end of September, I decided that was enough. I wasn’t going to put my body or my emotional health through any more stress. We love the children that we had, and we were just going to enjoy what we had already and remember how blessed we already were.

Around that same time, I started the Sutton companies and I was working that job full time while also working a full time job outside of the home because we had decided that we weren’t going to actively try to have more children. I was pushing myself really hard in my full time job and in my business, often staying up until two or 3am to make sure that my clients are happy.

Amazingly, just two months into my small business, I had enough clients that I was able to quit my day job. So, I gave my notice just after Thanksgiving in 2012.

Well, wouldn’t you know, just that very week, we found out I was pregnant again. This may sound bad, but my heart sank because I really did not want to go through another miscarriage. I decided, however, that I was going to embrace the joy.

I finished my time with my full time job to my highest capability and continued to grow my business. In January of 2012. I left my full time job, and, amazingly, I was still pregnant and the baby was doing well.

Give Up Stress, Not Hope

Well, 10 days late. in August of 2013, our daughter Nevaeh was born. As is the case for almost all good things in my life, good things come to those who wait. My husband, Dave, and I have often thought about the fact that perhaps it was just not in God’s timing for me to get pregnant those first four times. I didn’t enjoy my job. It was a lot of stress on me emotionally and physically. And I wouldn’t have gotten paid for any of the time I had to take off of work because I was in a contract position. There would have been no maternity leave. And the struggle of having to pay for daycare would have been a little bit more than we could have handled at that time.

Luckily, that was something that we didn’t need to worry about when I became self employed. So, now let’s fast forward about nine months after Nevaeh was born.

We had moved into our house, which was the perfect size for the three kids that we already had living with us, and we had decided that our family was complete. I had made an appointment with my doctor to make that thought official. However, God had other plans once again.

After the initial bloodwork, we were called in. And following an ultrasound, Dave was told to sit down. The ultrasound tech told us, “Well, you can’t stop having babies yet because you’re pregnant. And you’re not just pregnant with one, but you’re pregnant with two.“

In January of 2015, our twins, Davey and Zelda were born. And, on a side note, the kitchen was officially closed on that day. There will be no more surprises unless God has an extremely huge sense of humor. I have no doubt that he does have, but I do pray that he shares that sense of humor with somebody else.

I have no doubt that by giving up on the stress of the daytime job, and that by giving up on the other stresses of life, that we were able to manifest and able to pray our baby into being even though we had given up hope on her.

If there’s something that you are really praying for in your life, I don’t want you to give up hope, but I do want you to give up stressing about it. Stress does not speed us up on our track to success, whether it be in our relationships, or on having babies, building our businesses, becoming a better athlete, or trying to lose weight. For that sake, stress doesn’t help in any aspect of our lives and often it just slows us down.

So if you’re stressing today, give up stress. Keep the hope. Keep moving forward.

Now with all that said, go forth and have a positive and productive day.