As of 11:30 a.m. today, we’ve had 49 Expecting books donated (454 total)! Woo to the hoo hoo hoo! (Click here for details of how to get involved.)

I just wanted to share a cool idea with y’all. Many of you have heard me talk about my friend Miss Margaret (and some of you knew her too). She was 84 when she went to be with Jesus last month and is one of my all-time favorite people. She was darling and petite with the hugest heart you can imagine. She loved Jesus with everything in her and loved people like nobody’s business. Margaret was one of my biggest cheerleaders. If I wrote something or was selling something or donating something or hoping to spread the word about something, she was all over it.

Last year she donated some Expecting books and then delivered a box to her local pregnancy center for me.

Yesterday, her son Scott sent me a tweet about his mama that made me cry. Expecting Campaign Take Two just isn’t the same without her.

But then Scott and his sister Gail did something that made my heart sing. They’re each donating 10 Expecting books to pregnancy centers in memory of their mom. I’m going to write a little note in the books, and 20 precious women somewhere are going to be blessed by Miss Margaret even after she’s gone to live with Jesus.

I’ll tell you right now she’s beaming so big that her eyes are all crinkly. You should have seen her smile.

And then my sweet friend Christina (she and Margaret were super-tight) donated a book and is going to make up a beautiful care package in Margaret’s memory and deliver it to the pregnancy center that meant so much to her.

I just feel so blessed I could burst.

I don’t think I mentioned that there’s a To/From page in the book. I usually write “To: A special mama-to-be” and then the donor’s name on the From line. Then I sign my own name at the bottom with a Scripture reference.

If you’d like to donate the book in honor/memory of someone special, I can absolutely write that in the book for you. Last year my friends Amy and Billy donated books in memory of their sweet baby girl Abigail who went to be with Jesus before she was born. Another friend donated books in honor of her little (now big) boy who could’ve very easily been aborted, but she chose life. Another friend donated books in memory of the baby she did abort, and is sooooo thankful for God’s forgiveness and grace in her life.

And I just have to share an excerpt from a message Christina sent me tonight after she donated a book via paypal. “Ok, so I paid $10 on paypal but it sure looked like I was buying Gabe and naming my own price. I sure hope I did it right.”

Yes, it will look like you’re purchasing my husband. But I promise the moolah will go toward an Expecting book.

And I wrote this post last night and never posted it (did I mention my hot 27-hour birthday date with my husband? thanks, Mom and Dad!). I know now why I waited until this morning, because I just saw this comment from Christina that makes me want to jump up and down praising Jesus:

I’m going to put together a whole basket of goodies that a pregnant mommy would want and donate it in memory of Margaret. This is a wonderful idea. You know, my mom was 14 when she got pregnant for me, my grandma scheduled an appointment to “take care of it” and my mom refused. Praise the Lord for that! Now, at 50 years old she has 3 daughters and 11 grandchildren, 14 gifts from above that may never had happened had she been abortion minded! God is amazing, thank you for being so willing to do His work!

Praise the Lord indeed. Wowzers.

Let’s help some other young and/or hurting mamas make the hard choice to give their babies life. Click here to donate $10 for a book. Or contact me if you’d rather write a check. THANK YOU, friends!!

In case you didn’t get the me!-me!-memo, I’m turning 35 on Halloween. And I’ve started this birthday tradition. I sat here for the longest time tonight, wondering how to start this post. It means a lot to me, and I don’t want to mess it up. I just spent some time on my bedroom floor asking God to give me words, but.

Sometimes I wish he would just log into WordPress and write important blog posts himself. I don’t want to get in the way.

My heart is aching tonight for some women (and girls) right here where I live. They’re carrying tiny little babies in their wombs, but they aren’t celebrating with their husbands and friends about it.

They’re scared out of their ever-loving minds. And with good reason.

I get prayer requests (via e-mail) every week or so from the Pregnancy Decision Health Center here in Columbus. Girls and women who have called or come in to their office seeking help. No names or specifics but enough details to give shape to my prayers.

A single mom of 3 who is 9 weeks pregnant and not sure of the father of the baby.

A 14-year-old girl who is 18 weeks pregnant. Her mother has scheduled an abortion, but the girl doesn’t want to go through with it.

A 12-year-old girl whose 17-year-old boyfriend called in “to get this situation taken care of.”

I could cry. And sometimes I do. And I pray. And I wish I could do more. And I know that “Hey, sorry you’re pregnant, but here’s a book” is not going to make everything better for these girls and women. But I’ve got to believe that God is going to use my loaves and fishes to make a bigger impact than I know.

And with all of you chipping in, I just feel buoyed and encouraged, like maybe, just maybe, we can make a difference.

The president of PDHC is running in a Marathon for Life this Saturday. He’s asking people to donate $1 per mile toward PDHC, and I did that tonight. Maybe you’d rather not donate a book, but you’d like to donate some money straight to your local pregnancy center.

That would be awesome.

He also shared that every Tuesday at noon, he quietly prays outside an abortion clinic here in town for about an hour. He said that sometimes people join him, sometimes they don’t, but he’s never alone. He can physically feel God’s hand on him while he paces back and forth on the sidewalk praying. This abortion clinic is so close to my house. I think I might try to gather enough courage to join him sometime.

I know how “offensive” some pro-lifers can be/seem. I know the line about “why are we so fired up about abortion yet don’t care about the thousands of kiddos starving to death every day?”

I personally don’t think we have to choose between the two. Whether we want to admit it or not, most of us honestly have enough resources to help quite a variety of people. And ALL of them matter to God. And if you can absolutely, positively not afford to give a cent, you can pray. And pray and pray and pray.

So, here’s what I’m asking you to do:

1. Give $10 toward a copy of Expecting for a pregnant woman in need of HOPE. (Donate via paypal or contact me about writing a check.) OR

2. Give $5, and I will pair you up with another $5 donor to give a book. (Again, paypal or check.) OR

3. Buy several copies of Expecting from Amazon (for $10.19) and deliver them to your local pregnancy center yourself. (and please tell me about it!) OR

4. Buy a copy of Expecting for yourself and pray each week for a pregnant woman in poverty in a 3rd world country (I’m working on getting names of women in Haiti and possibly Kenya. This makes me so happy.)

5. Give some $ (any amount) to a person or organization that God has laid on your heart. And do it TODAY.

and 2 more things:

Leave a comment and share what you did so we can be encouraged AND tell one or two (or 500) people to pop on over here and get involved too.

Thank you, friends, for making my 35th birthday the best one ever! (no, it’s not until Sunday–I’m just making it strrrrrrrrretch this year!) Love you much!

No, not collecting money yet–just ideas! And information! My b-day is 9 days away, but since it’s on a Sunday, I’ll probably do the Expecting Campaign on Thursday or Friday of next week.

A little background (here we go…) if you’re new here. Last year on my birthday, I asked my sweet friends, family and blog readers to pretty please, if they felt so inclined, to donate a copy of my book Expecting to a crisis pregnancy center to be given to a mama-to-be that could use some hope and encouragement.

As of my last count, you crazy givers have donated 405 books to 31 pregnancy centers in 11 states and 4 foreign countries.

Wowzers, people.

Things will be a little different this year. I hate to do this, but instead of $5 a book, it’s going to be $10 (there, Amy, I did it–are you happy?). I set the cost at $5 last time, thinking it would encourage more people to give. I didn’t realize what an amazing response we’d get, and since the books cost me about $8.50 each + paypal fees + shipping, I ended up spending waaaay more out of my pocket than we could afford.

But God is faithful, and we got caught up (and several of you helped out–bless you!), and we’re ready to roll again.

A couple weeks ago, I asked for contact information for pregnancy centers in your hometown (or that you have some sort of personal connection to). Praise the Lord, I now have names and addresses for centers in Tennessee, Arizona, Florida, South Carolina, New Mexico, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky–all new states we haven’t sent any books to yet!

I’d love to collect more centers and then just pray for book donations to fill up a box to send to each of them!

And several of you have e-mailed me with some really cool ideas. One gal wants to get her Sunday School class on board and see if they can donate some books to a pregnancy center they already support. One gal wants to get her MOPS group to donate books as part of their Valentine’s Day project in February. One church already bought a box of 40 books to share with two pregnancy centers near them. One friend suggested sharing some with the pregnant women at the YWCA Homeless Shelter where she and her Life Group serve breakfast once a month.

I can’t tell you how exciting this brainstorming is to me!

And I thought of something else for those of you who are interested. Expecting is only $10.19 on Amazon right now, so let’s say you bought three. You’d qualify for free shipping, and you could take them to your local pregnancy center yourself and cut out the middle woman (me). That would save all kinds of time and hassle of getting them shipped from the publisher to me to the pregnancy center.

Just make sure you let me know if you decide to do that, so I can add the books (and your center) to our Look-What-God-Did total.

Speaking of Look What God Did, THANK YOU a million bazillions for praying for my Sexual Purity Talk at a local Christian high school chapel today. Oh. My. Word. I prayed my eyeballs out over this one (and apparently, so did a bunch of you), and GOD did something REALLY, REALLY cool. I do want to blog about it, but honestly, it wiped me out and I need some recovery time.

It was just really, really special, and the kids (young adults) were great–all 350 of them + a bunch of teachers/staff. I didn’t tell them this, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never spoken to that many people before in my life.

So, thank you.

And please, any ideas you have for next week’s Expecting Campaign Take Two would be greatly appreciated! Have a great weekend!

I leave you with this:

I’m growing my hair out for the first time in forever, and I’m thinking of revisiting this look. What say you? (I apologize for the photo quality, but more clarity would just mean more embarrassment.)

It’s not what you think. I do NOT want another baby. At least not one for ME. I do, however, have very strong feelings about people I love who want babies having their prayers (and mine for them) answered. (run-on much?) So, it is with great excitement and pleasure that I announce that…

My sister Bethany and her hubby Stew are expecting Baby #2!! Woooooohoooooo!! If you know Bethy, you know that 18-month-old Isabelle Kate was a long time coming. We prayed for over 2 years for that little doll, and I’m so glad God chose to bring her little brother or sister along more quickly. Now we just pray for His protection for this little one in the womb.

Because of the nature of what I do (talk/write about sex & pregnancy), I get the honor of praying for lots of women who desperately want a baby. And it is such a thrill to hear from one of them that she’s finally pregnant!! (Sometimes I even get to keep secrets for a bit which is super fun.) And I love to share in their joy when they tell the world their amazing news.

If you and your hubby are trying to have a baby, I’d love to pray for you (you can e-mail me here). I don’t have some secret line to God, but I do have a real heart for women who want to be mamas.

And for women who are going to be mamas and aren’t equipped/prepared/excited to be. So many of you have given so generously to bless women in need at pregnancy centers around the world with a copy of this book. You can read more about The Expecting Campaign here. After Cambodia, I hope to get back in the swing of blessing some more mamas-to-be in that way.

Have a beautiful day, friends!

If you’ve been reading along for awhile, you’ve heard me talk about the Expecting Campaign many a time before. It never gets old to me, because God just keeps on working! Praise His Name!

If you’re here for the first time because you heard me chatting with 100.7 WEEC’s Ruth Book this afternoon, welcome!

For those of you who don’t live near my hometown Midwest cornfields (bless your hearts!), WEEC is a Christian radio station in Springfield, OH (about an hour NW of us here in Columbus). It was almost always playing on our radio at home growing up, and Mom and Dad were constantly listening to some Bible teaching program or another. Sad that I took that so much for granted as a kid.

My uncle Tracy (mom’s youngest brother) is the General Manager of the station, and Gabe has helped them out with their website for years. WEEC is listener-supported, and this week is their annual Sharathon.

If it’s not 1:00pm EST time yet as you read this, and you want to Listen Live to my interview with Ruth, you’re most welcome. I’ll be giving a shout-out to my sweet Grandma Joan who faithfully listens to WEEC in her room at the nursing home every waking minute (and probably many of her sleeping ones).

Ruth and I are chatting about Expecting, and I talk about all of you darling folks who have donated books to hurting unwed mamas at crisis pregnancy centers around the world. I haven’t taken an exact count lately, but I know we’re inching close to 400 books donated.

Just this month, the women I spoke to at a retreat in New Jersey donated 23 books. There’s a church in Ohio donating an entire box of 40 to 2-3 pregnancy centers in their area. An old friend from high school just donated 10. It blows me away.

And I’m not really sure how this came to be, but I was interviewed on Moody’s Midday Connection a few weeks ago, and the interview airs tomorrow (Friday) at 1:00 pm EST (12:00pm CST). I’m part of the Friday 4, so I’m not sure what time my segment will be up.

If you’re interested in donating one or more Expecting books ($8.00 per book) to an unwed expectant mother, click here. If you’d like to specify which clinic the book goes to, please let me know in the comments or e-mail me. If you prefer to pay by check, let me know, and I’ll give you my address. If you have questions or want more information, let me know.

Again, friends, THANK YOU. It’s such an honor to be a part of this cool thing God is doing. Praying you have an amazing day!