reminders of how slowly time was passing. Every minute seemed like an eternity and few words were spoken because everything we had to say to each other rang hollow and dull.
After a few hours, my doctor came in with the results from the test. My baby’s lungs were mature enough that he could survive on his own. It was best for baby and me if I went ahead and delivered.
I was terrified! I was not ready to have this baby! I didn’t even have his nursery ready yet; I didn’t even have our hospital bag ready… nothing!
The whole time the doctor was out, I just knew that he would come in to say that the baby wasn’t ready so I would just go home for another week. I kept thinking that I didn’t even feel like I had high blood pressure. I felt fine. I wasn’t ready to deliver.
However, the doctor returned and let me know that it would be in the best interest of my baby and me that we deliver as soon as we could. We would make whatever arrangements we could in the next few hours, but this baby was coming whether we liked it or not.
The plan was set to deliver the next day. I would be induced at 6:00 a.m.
The next morning on February 13, 2010, everything went as planned. At 9:00 a.m., my doctor broke my water, and at 12:39 p.m., I delivered Colt Wesden Gregg. He weighed six pounds and nine ounces and was 19.5 inches long. He was the most beautiful thing I could have ever imagined. It took all I had to let someone else hold him. I never wanted to let him go. We had worked so hard to bring him into the world; I wanted to hold him forever.
I quit my stressful job to stay at home with Colt and the lack of stress helped us to become pregnant again. Six months after having Colt, we became pregnant. There were a couple of times we would get a scare about the progress of the pregnancy, but when I went in for an ultrasound, everything was fine.
We rode this rollercoaster of fear and relief over and over. The second child is said to be easier to have, but in reality, it was all the same. These two pregnancies were so similar that it was scary. The best part was that I didn’t have to go to work in that office anymore.
Jordan would keep Colt while I went to all my doctor appointments, so he and Jordan grew very close. Colt loved riding on the tractor, or even working on the pump truck. He would just ride along in the car seat and stare at his daddy. Every afternoon Jordan would come home and spend time with Colt and Cason while I cooked dinner.
It’s funny how our roles reversed by this time, but I can look back on it and know that it was the time we spent together that helped us build such loving relationships. I loved watching him play with his boys. I could tell that he was the kind of father that my boys needed and I was sure that this next child would love his daddy just as much as these two did.
On June 2, 2011, we were blessed again with another little boy, Cotton Lee Gregg. I had been able to go full term with no major complications, and our family seemed complete.
I was on cloud nine, having my boys and getting to be a stay-at-home mother too. Having children fifteen months apart is hard. They were like twins, but they were always just out of sync. Colt and Cotton were constantly at different stages in life. I was trying to potty train Colt and Cotton was into everything. I ran around like crazy trying to keep up with them, but we had a great time. We played and laughed and loved the time we had together.
As they grew, I couldn’t help but sit and stare at Colt and Cotton. They were like two peas in a pod. They became best friends. Colt and Cotton did everything together, while Cason, our oldest, was at school. Always laughing and playing, they got into everything. Once Cotton learned to crawl, he would follow Colt everywhere. Cotton loved when Colt played peek-a-boo with him. It was easy to see that these two would have a special kind of friendship.
Running through the house and around a laundry basket was their favorite pastime. It didn’t seem to matter what the game was, they loved to play it together. They loved to giggle and make silly games out of everything they saw. As a mother, there is nothing more beautiful than the sound of your kids having a good time. I tried to cherish each moment we had, because one day those moments would be gone.
God Knocked; I Answered
Growing up in a loving home, I never questioned what was right or wrong, but I never really had a basis for establishing right and wrong other than what my parents told me. I knew that I needed to do what I was told, but I had no spiritual basis for determining what I should do when I got older. It’s not that I never went to church; it’s just that we did it so little growing up that I never learned why people go to church. We went to my grandmother’s church a couple of times, but all I could really remember from there was that the service was so long and the people were so old.
So when we got settled into our new home, before Cotton was born, I found it very odd that I started feeling so unsettled by the fact that we didn’t go to church. My home was exactly what I wanted and I loved my husband and sons very much, but there was always something missing. Being newly married and new homeowners brought with it some discussions, arguments, and even fights about money, life, and love. We struggled to express ourselves to each other and even to know why such a little thing could turn into such a major fight.
The uneasiness that we felt seemed to be a constant in our lives and it seemed like I couldn’t do anything right. I thought maybe the reason why I felt the need for a church was because it could help get my life in order. I had in my mind a picture of what church people looked like. I thought that maybe I could be around some of these people and their goodness could rub off on me somehow. I thought that if I could see how they lived, I might be able to live life like they did. Then, the arguments would stop. Then, maybe, I would feel complete.
I thought that the act of going to church could help us to be more of a family. I thought that maybe we might be able to be a part of a group of people who could help us be more together and at least look like we knew what we were doing, now that we were married. It might be that I was confused as to what a church really was, but I knew they had something I wanted.
So, we decided to go church shopping.
I say, “shopping” because that’s what I thought. We’ll take a look at a church, and if we don’t like it, we’ll go to a different one the next week. It’ll be like shoe shopping and I love shoe shopping!
Jordan and I had gone to his grandmother’s church a couple of times, but that was more to keep her company than it was about being at church. To be honest, I didn’t even know how I felt about wanting to go to church because I had no intention on sitting in a church and learning about how many times a week I was screwing up my life by not obeying the rules. Even though I wanted to be in the church and learn from what the church had to offer, I didn’t want to sit close enough to these perfect Christians that they could see how much my life was messed up. But the more I pushed the thought away, the stronger it became.
Jordan took the lead in the shopping, which I was unusually grateful for, and took all my church goals in mind as he picked our first church. My church list was a lot like my house list. The requests I had were:
•It had to be a smaller church
•We would only go for the morning service
•That service could only be one hour
•It had to be close to the house
I wanted to go to church; I didn’t want to live there. I wanted as much of the church life as I could get without having to put much of myself into the process. I didn’t really want my church attendance to change how I acted, or what I did; I really just wanted to improve the lives we already had.
Taking all my requests to heart, Jordan located a few churches in the nearby town of Ropesville. It was the closest town to our house, so it made sense that it was where we started looking, but the surprising thing was, for a town of a little over four hundred people, there were a lot of churches and they each had their own names. I didn’t really question that I wanted to go to a Christian church, but I had no idea what “flavor” of church I wanted.
The thought of choosing the wrong church scared me even more than