God is Good

WOW, I had such an awesome weekend! It's taken me a couple of days to finally blog, but I had an incredible weekend with All You Who Hope and LifeHopes. It was so great to meet these wonderful women of God. I was so blessed by their presence and I am glad that we are friends in real life now, in addition to being blog-buddies. :)

These blogs have been an incredible source of comfort and encouragement for me. They truly have been a gift from God because no one else really understands what we're going through. I only wish that we all lived closer and could get together regularly. AYWH, LH and I literally talked the entire time we were together. It was wonderful! I stayed up way past my bedtime (which is a struggle for me since I'm such an early bird) - but I couldn't help it. We had so much to say! We talked about carrying our cross of infertility and striving to do God's will. Of course we discussed surgeries and charts and mucus (who doesn't???) AYWH and LH are both incredible women of faith and they inspire me to persevere in hope. Oh, and LH's husband P is awesome! He was so kind to indulge all our girl-talk and he joined right in with all the great conversations.

The reason for the trip was to attend the "Ignited by Truth" conference. I was so impressed with everything - the speakers were amazing and tons of people attended! I didn't think there were this many Catholics in the South. ;) I'm not sure how many were local and how many had traveled, but overall it seemed to be a huge success.

The big draw for us was Immaculee Ilibagiza. The three of us read her amazing book, "Left to Tell" and we were excited to hear her speak. We were not disappointed. Her deep faith is both simple and profound. It's truly a miracle that she is alive and she shared countless stories about God's presence in her life. We were so inspired! One new thing I learned was about the Marian apparitions in Kibeho, Rwanda. I had no idea that the Blessed Mother had appeared here. It happened in the 1980s and has been officially approved by the Church. After the talk I immediately bought Immaculee's book about these apparitions. AYWH and I stood in line for quite awhile to get her signature. It was so worth it!



We spent a couple of minutes chatting with her. We told her how much we loved her first book and how much hope she had given us. We told her that we were struggling with infertility and she told us that she would pray for us. She said to pray to Mary and she will make it happen. She said that if God gave us these desires, then He would not disappoint us. Immaculee also told us about all the healings involving pregnancy that had occured in Kibeho. Seriously, can you believe that?? She invited us to join her in Rwanda in March (if we could afford it.) Too bad we can't make that trip. It would be so amazing to travel with her. We both bought rosaries from Kibeho - they are called the Seven Sorrows Rosary. Have you ever heard of this? Apparently it's a really old devotion that Mary asked the visionaries of Kibeho to spread. The rosary is made up of seven sets of seven beads and you mediate on the seven sorrows of Mary. I think I will make this one of my Lenten devotions this year. Immaculee explains how to pray it in the back of her book.

The rest of the speakers were great too. Tim Staples (from Catholic Answers) spoke twice. He is super dynamic and inspired everyone to be bold in our Catholic faith. AYWH and I had a chance to chat with him in person and we mostly talked politics. It was great to get to know him. Turns out that he and his wife struggled with infertility too. They are now parents to four childen!

Philip Rivers also spoke - he is the starting quarterback for the San Diego Chargers. I had no idea that he was such a strong Catholic! He and his wife have been married since his freshman year of college and they have four kids. He spoke about living out his faith while playing in the NFL. He said that when he first got drafted he wondered how he was going to make it to Mass since he would be playing on Sundays. Thankfully the team brings a priest along with them and he says Mass in the hotel before every game (home and away.) Pretty cool!

The weekend was truly amazing!