I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine.

Colby and I at Tiff and Bri's wedding.



Colby and I at Unlce Fred's Cabin last 4th or July, our first together!

RECAP!

I realize that there are many birth stories that I have not shared on my blog yet!

To be honest, this last season that God has just now been showing Colby and I the end of, has been wild. He has taken us through a valley, covered in a blanket of jungle, and surrounded by snow covered mountains. Make sense right? Ya. That’s how it’s been. Its been a season of sadness and joy, extreme highs like getting engaged to my soul mate, and extreme lows… feeling that the next time I would ever even get to be in the presence of birth, would be a long, long time. I cried…feeling this calling, what I thought…slip away from my hands and die. I thought that because Colby had placed a ring on my finger, a ring that symbolized our promise of love to each other, a promise to grow old together, have our own babies, live, love and learn together, serve Jesus together, to give our lives completely to each other, that I had to choose one or the other. Little did I know…and little do I still know.

Oh the sweet feeling I get when I look down at my finger and see our promise of love! I would never have it any other way. And I will forever cherish this season that I have gotten to meet Colby, fall in love with him and realize that we could not live without each other. And if the Lord did ask me to choose between one or the other, my love for Colby FAR outweighs the other, no question. Colby prayed with me and supported me through this process of how and when and what God wanted to make out of this. I leaned on him like crazy. Sometimes I feel like I put him through hell, and yet to me he was heaven on earth. With all the questions and doubts and reaching out I tried to do, but never really got anywhere, yet still he was there. And there he stayed…a solid rock, comforting and reassuring me always, that God is in control…wait on Him. Colby has been Jesus to me in countless ways. And I know not just to me, but a lot of others too. I can’t even put down in writing how freakishly blessed I am to have him as my soon-to-be husband. Sometimes I look at him now and all I can think is, ‘seriously Lord? This is him? I get to keep him? Oooohhh myyyy…’
However my heart longed. Longed for Jesus to use my hands again. To feel tears run down my cheeks again, from watching a man and woman see their daughter or son for the first time. I know that this is something that I have seen a lot of young men and woman struggle with….they feel as if they have their “calling”, then fall in love and everything changes. They don’t know how to balance the two…what if my partner doesn’t feel called to this? How do the both of us stay in the Lord’s will when we feel called to different things? I know I still feel that God is asking me to open up clinics around the world, what if this isn’t something Colby feels called to? How do I submit and respect my husband but still live in nothing but complete obedience to the Lord and what He is had called me to do?
Even though Colby is completely surrendered to the Lord and would go anywhere and do anything for Him and for me…I still wondered… ‘Would it be fair for Colby to feel that he is just following me around the world? I do not want this, Lord.’ I cried out day and night. Lord, How can I do both??? Show me.

Well, lets just say, He wrapped the answer in a box, put a huge red bow on it and threw in on my doorstep…

Addressed:
“To: You (you know who you are)”
“Love: Your Papa God who loves you.”

That’s when I met the two midwives who would take me under their wings, full of wisdom, patience and love. And who would teach me everything they know. That’s when the births started coming…one right after another….

Hello again to all my loved ones!! Well, as most of you know, the Lord has released me from the Phillippines and I am now back in sunny Cali for the time being! After weeks of discerning, talking to mentors, praying with Colby, and crying myself totaly dry, the lord spoke to me one night while I was laying in my bunk bed in Davao and said " My daughter Tiara, I release you now. Go to Colby." and the very next morning, I told the directer that I would finish up the semester then I would be leaving Davao. The transition back to the States was all of heartbreaking, relieving, and an overdose of anticipation all at the same time, not knowing what the Lord was and is going to make of this life, that belongs to Him...next! I have come home to be with Colby so that when and where the lord calls us next, we will follow.... Together!! I know that He gave us the option whether to finish school in Davao and be apart, doing ministry and living separate lives, or, we could decide to take a different route, a complete leap of blind, deaf faith and JUMP! Head first. In a lot of ways I fight off feeling the sense of "moving backwards" being back in the U.S, but I know that it's no true, I know that God is faithful and if He put Colby and I together in the way and time in which He did, and if being apart for 5 months only made us stronger and more secure of who we are as a couple in Him, then it's a simple choice... Serve Him together, or apart. And we chose together! SO... My midwifery route has taken a different route all together, starting with nursing school! But I am not worried about it anymore, it is all in His hands and Im not speaking metaphoricaly! It is literly in His hands and I know that if He has called me to be a widwife... Then all I gotta do is be simply faithful and obedient in the next step!

With THAT said!!....On to the new stuff! A few months after jumping a few flights across the world back home and landing in colbys driveway in a forex shipping box ( I jumped out when he came walking from his house to look at the box thinking it was gifts that I had sent him, considering he wasn't expecting me for another week! I thought I almost killed the man I love by giving him a full blown hert attack because I scared him so badly)... Colby and I were engaged on March 31st, a windy, sunny day... the day after my 23rd bday!!! On top of a wild flowerd covered hill in Peters Canyon, a place where we spent a lot of time hiking and talking ( and kissing) before I had left for Davao. It was the amazing!! He secretly put the ring in my wallet and blind folded me the entire drive there!! After He proposed anD I answered " of course!!" we decided on having a march wedding in 2011!!

My first Delivery! Baby Boy!

I was in the clinic at 10am on day shift. She walked in, young, smiling, pregnant and pleasantly active in labor! Glory was her name. She’s 18 years old and 40 weeks/ 6 days pregnant with her first child. She was having mild contractions lasting 50 seconds every 3 mins. I did my first IE (internal examination) on her and she was 8cm dilated, 90% effaced, 0 station, with a very posterior cervix. I could feel the BOW (bag of waters) buldging with each contraction, ready to break at any moment. I could feel the babies sutures from 9-3 o’clock. She breathed beautiful through her contractions while the babies heart beat stayed normal and consistent (136, 140, 130). Before I could take her vitals one last time, Glory wanted to push!! I had her lay down on the bed and checked to see where she was, and boom! Babies head and hair was visible! I threw on my gloves and we breathed and pushed together. We got her on the birth stool because she had a low pubic bone and this helped open up her pelvis. Her bana (husband) got behind her and supported her while she pushed. He was young, terrified out of his mind and shook more then she did. He kept looking at me while she would scream like “Ma’m is this normal?!?” haha! I kept reassuring him that this was all very normal, and to keep breathing! After a few pushes on the birth stool, the babies heart tones dropped dramatically. From 140’s to 80, 90, 70, 68! So while she pushed I rubbed the top of the babies head to stimulate him and at the same time applied perineal pressure so she would not tear. Right before the baby’s head was crowning, I moved her back into supine position on the bed where she pushed the baby’s head out nice and slowly…no tear!!J I checked for nuchal cord, and there was none! The baby natural restituted to the left, then I helped guide his tiny shoulders all the way out, gently maneuvering him up and down until all 5 lbs, 11oz of him was born!! A tiny new baby boy! Aw the glory of new life! He came out blue and floppy with mild caput on the crown of his head. He was not crying yet. After a few seconds of stimulation, a wonderful wailing cry burst forth from his lungs!! Praise you Lord! We gave him free flow oxygen and placed him on his mamas tummy, where she met him face to face with wide eyes in amazement of this tiny new life that was growing in her for 40 weeks and now she was seeing him!! He was a little small and malnourished looking, after assessing and examining him, we realized that he was an IUGR/SGA baby, but none the less healthy and adorable! All in all it was a beautiful birth! Thank you Lord!!

He Loves with an OUTRAGEOUS LOVE!

Kayla, Julie and I were sitting on the wall of the pier at Magsaysay Park one afternoon, dangling our feet over the edge of the water and talking pictures of some little kids playing in the water when this man approached me and asked us if we would be interested in buying any of his jewelry. He was selling a few pieces of jewelry, not much, just some pearl necklaces and earrings and some copper and silver bracelets. I wasn’t really interested in buying anything and said no thank you and then asked “Unsa imong naglan?” “what is your name?” to the man, and he told me “Salamat” which means thank you in Visayan! I saw something in his face, some little bit of hope rising up in him and it was so evident that the Holy Spirit was starting to speak. The man had the face of a servant, a gentle hearted servant and Jesus’ love was all over him. He was old, with deep wrinkles and missing teeth, and yet so beautiful and precious to the Lord. He looked as if he had lived a long, hard life, but did the best with what he was been given. He looked hungry and tired. I didn’t know his story of where he came from but I knew that he had to know that God loves him with an outrageous love. I really didn’t want to buy anything, I was running out of money and time and nothing of his really stood out to me, but it was so evident the desperation in his eyes. At this point, it wasn’t about the jewelry, or money, it was about love and something more, and he knew it, he knew we had something else that he wanted….not money…but, JESUS, the Name above all Names….JESUS!
So…after he half-heartedly talked me into buying a pair of pearls earrings and a few bracelets I asked him “Magampo ka?” if we could pray for him? He said “yes! Yes!” As if he had been waiting for it! Expecting it! So, laying a hand on his shoulder, he closed his eyes and the Spirit of God came down upon him…like a wave…it washed over him and Jesus touched him…. His love came pouring out, almost knocking the both of us over! And we stood there for a minute, basking in the Lord’s peace and in awe of what just happened. I opened my eyes to see what was happening. Salamat had his eyes closed and his hands open down by his waist. He looked like a little child, deep wrinkled and weary and yet like a little child, waiting to receive what his Papa God had to give him, and realizing at the same time that he deserved nothing. After a few more minutes, the man looked up and smiled and he had such light in his eyes!! He thanked us again and walked away, not sure what to do with what just happened! Haha! A few minutes later, we where piled back on the jeepney (bus) waiting to take off back home when the man came up to the window behind us and got our attention. I turned around and through the window, he handed me a pair of pearl earrings, beautiful pearl earrings, probably his best set, and he shook his hands as to pay him nothing in return. He was smiling ear to ear and wanting nothing in return for them! To him, the Lord had just changed his life, changed him by showing him His love for him, and Salamat knew he would never be the same. And even though he didn’t have much, just a few pieces of jewelry, yet he wanted to give back to the Lord his finest pair as a thank you to Him. He had NOTHING to give back to God and yet it was EVERYTHING! The man walked away, knowing he was loved. All of us drove home in the back of the jeepney in awe of Salamat’s gratefulness to the Lord. No wonder his name means ’Thank You!” Oh how the Lord delighted in this man! What an outrageously loving God we have!!!

I miss my monkey!

I love you Colby! I miss you!