Title: God Chose ME To Carry THREE
Authors: Lisa Frances Penn and Aaron Madison Penn
Genre: Non-Fiction, Faith-Based
Where to Buy: Click Here To Purchase NOW!!!!!
Dedication:
I have never done a dedication on a blog post/book review before. Mostly because I wasn't sure if people did that. Then I decided I didn't care what other people do. So, I dedicate this blog post/book review to the following people:
1. To my 12 angels. I will see you again someday.
2. To my beloved, late friend and brother of the author, Todd Christopher Jones. Without Todd, I wouldn't have met Lisa. All things come together for those who love the Lord. The Lord took you home but gave me Lisa. You are still missed my CAPA brother.
3. To the author herself, Lisa Frances Penn. The feat of being able to read your beautiful book finally settled the question long in my mind that I can read about such miracles without being in pain over my own losses. If you didn't write the book, I may have never known. Thank you so much for writing it and sharing this part of your life with me.
Review:
Imagine for a moment that you are a 40 year old woman and you have no children. Imagine you want children badly. Now imagine that you're concerned about having a condition in your reproductive system because your mother had it. Imagine having an ultrasound to check for that condition and you find out that you are not only PREGNANT, but that you are having TRIPLETS. No fertility drugs, SPONTANEOUSLY CONCEIVED TRIPLETS!
Now, imagine you're a man with a wife and your wife believes that she's got a reproductive condition that her mother had. Imagine that your wife is having an ultrasound to check for the condition so she can have it treated, if it can be treated at all. And because your wife is a NURSE, you have no reason to think she's wrong. Now imagine your wife comes home from that appointment and tells you she's pregnant. With TRIPLETS!
You have just received a fraction of a glimpse of what it's like to be Lisa Frances Penn and her husband, Aaron Madison Penn.
"God Chose ME To Carry Three" is the non-fiction story of The Penn's journey through learning about Lisa's spontaneously conceived triplet pregnancy, the duration of the extremely rough pregnancy itself, and what life is like raising identical triplets.
In the interest of full disclosure, from January 2000 to December 2004, I personally went through fertility treatment and conceived a number of pregnancies. All were at least triplets. All of the pregnancies were lost. So, I have a total of 12 angels waiting for me in Heaven.
So why in the world would I accept an invitation to read and review THIS book? Well, to see how I would feel reading about The Penns and Lisa's experience in particular. I also said "yes" to this book because when I met Lisa at her brother's funeral (he was a beloved classmate of mine) and subsequently got to know her on Facebook, I wanted to be a part of sharing this wonderful story with the world.
So, how did I feel reading this book? For starters, I was once again assured that God DOES still work miracles today. The day you doubt THAT, then read this book. There's no way one can doubt God and His ability to perform a miracle after reading this book. My own losses never really became an issue while reading this book. I didn't feel badly for ME. Faith restored, mission accomplished.
At certain times I felt badly for Lisa. Even though my pregnancies were all high-risk and Lisa and I have that in common, my experience still was not the same. After my first pregnancy failed, I was on bed rest immediately with all of the other pregnancies as soon as the tests came back positive. Lisa's bed rest experience was nothing like mine. She actually made it to having to be on bed rest in the hospital for months.
What was it like to be taken into the world of Mrs. Penn as she went through this journey, primarily left on her own by all of her doctors and nurses, with only her hard-working husband to support her emotionally? For starters, my head spun reading about it. There was a point closer to the beginning of her hospitalized bed rest where I kept finding myself in disbelief. The nurses who cared for Lisa, upon finding out she was a nurse herself, didn't tell her anything. I kept wondering things like "why didn't she push harder?" or "why not seek out a patient advocate inside the hospital?" And then my thoughts flipped. Maybe it was because I'm a nurse as well. But I began to wonder, "what the heck were these nurses thinking?" or "what was wrong with these nurses?" A woman stuck on bed rest, in a hospital during the winter, who can't even get out of bed to go to the bathroom while pregnant with triplets, has to be going NUTS. The hormones alone would make her brain more scrambled than the eggs on a Denny's Grand Slam Breakfast. Would she be thinking about pushing harder? Probably not. She's thinking about the three babies in her belly, right?
Who should consider not reading this book? If you are a primary infertile woman who is still going through treatment, this may not be for you. If you've been through a lot of pregnancy loss and you haven't moved forward, may not be for you. Overall, if you're a female who hasn't dealt with your own inability to conceive and/or your losses, then this isn't for you. I felt I was far enough past my own losses to read this book and I was happy to find out I was right.
Now, if you do fit into any of these categories and you think you might enjoy reading a true story of someone else's good fortune, this book is definitely for you. There are those who fit into these categories who feel that reading about others having success in this area whether via spontaneous conception or, by assisted reproductive techniques (ART), makes them feel more positive. They receive a positive outlook and some feel better overall. So if you can read this type of book in order to build your own self-confidence, especially when the trying becomes difficult to handle, I would highly recommend that you read this book. It will emotionally uplift your spirit.
For everybody else, this is one of those non-fiction books that reads like a fiction novel. The story has suspense, it has some scary parts too. It's got joy. And, it's got some pain. It will most certainly get YOU. Once I got started, my picky self only stopped reading because the need to sleep won out. The only thing I wanted to see more of in the book early on was more of Aaron's point of view. However, the further I got, the more I felt that Lisa carried these three miracles and the amount that is Aaron's point of view was actually just right.
"God Chose ME to Carry THREE" is every bit as exciting as any good fiction novel. The story just happens to be true.
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