Jennifer Saake

Every Sunday morning finds my alarm going off 1-3 hours earlier than it does on any other day of the week. My health  demands much sleep, but my heart so craves speaking Life and Truth to the Bride of Christ, that Carolyn and I guard of our weekly book workshopping hour fiercely and have found Sunday mornings before church, to be the best consistent fit for both of our schedules. So Carolyn greets me at her door at 7am every Sunday. As you get ready for church each week, would you please pray for us? Putting on your makeup, lay before the LORD our earnest desire to for clean hearts and sharp minds to clearly discern areas where the church is being led astray, not being legalistic in our confrontation of lies, but also not being complacent concerning deception. Fixing your hair, please join us as we continually pray to keep soft hearts, that we not become judgmental, and that God would guard us from deception and open our eyes to where we ourselves have been led astray.  We both have ex

I've given you a bit of a feel for who I am  (and how to pronounce my name), talking of my childhood , health , writing , interstate move just before COVID hit, and infertility and loss journey to motherhood.  It is your turn. Please tell me a thing or three about yourself in the comments!  If you have any questions for me, or suggestions about what you would like to read about on this blog, please share. My books:   Please  enjoy  a free pdf version of the introduction, my personal infertility / loss story, and the first chapter of  Hannah's Hope  at  www.hannahshopebook.com/media/HannahHopeChapter1.pd Visit me: main social media page - https://www. facebook.com/HarvestingHope Specialty pages:     infertility / loss page - https://www.facebook.com/ HannahsHopeBook     stroke - https://www.facebook.com/ StrokieGal     current book project on church deception - https://www.facebook.com /DeceptionUnmasked Pinterest -  @InfertilityMom Twitter -  @InfertilityMom Instagram -  @In

While  my main social page is  HarvestingHope  on Facebook ,  with specialty Facebook pages for  DeceptionUnmasked  ,  HannahsHopeBook ,  and    StrokieGal / Stroke Of Grace ,  I tend to use @InfertilityMom as my identification almost everywhere else  (including LinkedIn, GoodReads, and several others, though I'm still HannahsHope  on the Hannah's Prayer Community Forums message boards). Since I'm not able to regularly keep up with all the platforms, the places beyond FB that you are most likely to find me actively participating are  on  Twitter ,   Pinterest , and  Instagram . I'm still trying to figure out Parler and  MeWe  (where I somehow managed to register simply as jennifersaake), so feel free to follow me there, just know that I'm unsure how to use those two yet. The overarching theme of all my writing has been  Harvesting Hope from Heartache , how we can find hope during our deepest seasons of pain or loss, because God is our strength.  A concept I love is

My name is  Jennifer  because my mom watched a movie and found the heroine's name, one she hadn't heard before, to be  "pretty and exotic" .  There were 6  Jennifer s in my circa 1970s first  grade class.  I guess all of our moms must have watched that same movie. Our family pronounces   Saake   as sounding like the two short words   " say "  (utter words) and   " key "   (unlock tool).  For all the doctor's receptionists who struggle to know how to pronounce our last name (no, it does not sound like a Japanese fermented drink), don't worry, we don't even all agree - my social media  "name twin" says that her last name "rhymes with wacky," even though our written names are both  Jennifer Saake , spelled exactly alike. Before he gave me his last name ("say"-"key"), Rick and his family told me that  Saake  is  Finnish . Apparently, any time a name has  a doubled identical  vowel that gives the "

Are you specifically looking for my stroke story?  If you want to start directly there, jump down about 6 paragraphs. Look for the bolded line about October, 2011, then back up one paragraph for a little more context. I've lived with   myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS)  since my teens. I am not cured, but thankfully my illness is (current as of  early 2021)  well-managed with rest, routine, and medication .  Having lived through decades of remissions and relapses, sometimes being so sick that it feels like the act of breathing is more demanding than I can muster, I've spent seasons whimpering in bed without the strength to even roll over.  Even on "good days" ME/CFS is to just "being tired" what a hurricane is to a shower of sprinkles. Think of a time when you had a nasty case of the flu with aches, fatigue so severe you couldn't think straight, system dysregulation like unanticipated blood pressure drops and chills and fevers. 

400 days ago, our lives changed with the official declaration of "pandemic". It's been a long haul for us all, starting with toilet paper shortages and isolation, and continuing with many of us loosing jobs or transitioning to work and school from home, via video calls.  Some churches eventually re-opened, while others continue to follow orders to stay apart. :( We have "mask fatigue" both from the wearing and from the lack of seeing human faces. Touch is a hard commodity to find! If you have lost a loved one, I ache for you. Please feel free to memorialize their name in the comments. I have been praying generally for those impacted, but would love to pray for you by name. Visit me: main author page - https://www. facebook.com/HarvestingHope Specialty pages:     infertility / loss page - https://www.facebook.com/ HannahsHopeBook     stroke - https://www.facebook.com/ StrokieGal     current book project on church deception - https://www.facebook.com /DeceptionUnm

Any updates to this post will be found at  JenniferSaake.blogspot.com/p/hannahs.html From 1992-2006, Rick and I prayed for children. We spent more than a decade seriously entrenched in the daily struggles of infertility, demanding costly emotional, medical, and financial investments. We opened our hearts to thirteen children we longed to parent. We grieved ten babies we did not get to raise (miscarriages and adoption losses). We've experienced the indescribable joy of parenting three living miracles. Since 1996, I've participated in a variety of online forums and platforms, first using pseudonyms related to  Hannah , then  over the past two decades, as  @InfertilityMom . I  founded  Hannah's Prayer Ministries  in 1994 , and authored   Hannah's Hope: Seeking God's Heart in the Midst of Infertility, Miscarriage, and Adoption Loss  in 2005. Please  enjoy  a free pdf version of the book introduction, my personal infertility / loss story, and the first chapter of  Hannah