Journey

Now blows the wind of change today just as the seasons pass;
And in my heart I tremble as the promise comes as last.
And yet I know that life is never just or right or true;
But I will cling incessantly to Him, He gets me through.

He's real and never failing, He's a diamond in the rough;
A standard for my vision and the hope in whom I trust.
He holds me as I tremble and speaks gently in the night;
Surrounds me with His kindness, pours His blessing as I fight.

Promises of courage never give much relief;
Until I've found my safety in the deep and safe reprieve.
It's ever climbing onward, ever looking to the end;
Up the mountains, down the valleys, with me journey, faithful friend.

Newness

Something about going home spawns growth. I see it most in my children, they always come home from Nana's saying new words or walking or potty trained... This time it's me. My journey there and back has given me a grasp on my world, or rather, a perspective that I have been scrambling to grasp and had yet to find. Sitting at the kitchen table with my parents turned the light on. It is the gravity of going back to the beginning- returning to my roots. I feel like I can see a little more clearly in order to remedy the "treading water forever" feelings.

I needed to find my footing on my own. And then I needed to come home because I can no longer find completion apart from Dale. He's my anchor. And then I needed to be with my family here, in the body of Christ. I need to worship with my brothers and sisters and eat with them and laugh with them. That's the air... In Christ I have life, and in that I have family and community and abundance. I have everything in the world, a deep resounding joy even if I'm teary, because I have found my place in the universe and it's right here. So thank You, Father, for sending us down the road least likely.

Changes

I was just telling a friend that even my dog is different. I feel like we've been here so long, but it's only been a couple of weeks; it just feels like we're settled. At the same time, we are not. So I'm scoffing at our poor little Scoo and saying he's whiny and clingy... In the meantime I was reading something that I wrote from Smalltown USA six weeks ago, and frankly, I'm not the same. It's strange. I feel like myself, I think I look like myself- except that I'm awake during the day and I *usually* sleep at night. But somehow, I'm not myself. My writing is not the same. My responses are not the same. I am have not become completely acclimated to our new life here. It's understandable. It's so new.

But one thing is real. One thing is the same, it's still true. God is here. He is here, and He is very real. I can never escape His watchful eye. His thoughts of me are endless. And that, my friends, is quite reassuring. I have always had this sort of made up idea of what "freedom" is. We sing about being free and having freedom. In my studies I have discovered that freedom is soul regeneration from death to life and in that not carrying dead weight through this life. But more than that, freedom is in God's sovereignty. Freedom is in belonging to Someone. And in all of that, all He wants from me is me.

I read an article about this hurried mother and her children that brings this into perspective. She was dragging her little one in to the day care provider's home so that she could get to work, but the little girl insisted on picking up a rock to give to the mother and one for her pocket. Her mother thanked her and cast it aside as they rushed up on the porch and into the house. As they entered, the care taker was also given a rock which she gratefully accepted and pocketed. The mother apologized and offered to take it out with her as she left, but the woman refused and lead the mother to the back porch where she watched as the woman dropped the little rock into a tub full of other rocks. She explained that while children are young, everything they have is given to them. They are given all of their clothes, their food, even the papers they color on are given by adults. So in order to give something away with sincerity, they find things that no one owns and offer them as gifts. She said she never refused a gift from a child. The woman set in her heart to do the same from that day on.

On a grander scale, everything I have is God's and so to give Him me, while it's sometimes a meager offering of weakness and poverty, He receives gladly because it's all He wants from me. It takes all the pressure off; it's makes living peaceably and with sincerity a sweet offering to Him and from Him. My life is His, all that I have have is His, everything else is peripheral.

2 Corinthians 2:14 But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him.

Sunshine and fallen leaves

Life moves pretty fast sometimes. I keep wondering when I'll wake up and think, "Self, how did I get here?" Letting the days go by... I want to run. It's the lacking element in my day. I want to put on my running shoes and hit the road fast. It's just that the weight of this new burden overwhelms my body and when I sit down my eyes start to close, so I'm hesitant to expend energy on something that, at this point, is trivial. I want to save it all up. The reality is that if I were running, I'd be tapping the surplus tank and I'd have more at the end of the day. Isn't that weird? You sit all day and you're tired. You work out and you add hours to your day... Who knew?

Speaking of weird, is it November 8th and 74 degrees outside? We played in the leaves yesterday and it was just amazing. The kids had a ball! It's one of my treasured fall favorites that I thought we'd miss by having the cold creep in before we got to it. Unfortunately all our raking was in vain as each child laid claim to his own pile and some refused to bag theirs. While the neighbors all around are working like busy beavers to blow and rake to keep their yards in tact, we are in a constant blizzard of leaves. And frankly, it's not a big deal to me. Someday my life will afford me the pleasure of a neat and tidy yard full of love and attention. Not right now.

So here's to you, overzealous leaf blower guy... thumbs up from this side of the fence. And to you sandysendbigpresent- no thinking on this one.

And then there is life

We have officially been here a week and it feels like it's been a year. One of the great things about true friends is that they don't stop when the miles separate you or the busyness separates you. We were sitting in the living room yesterday with someone I thought I'd never see again. It's been four years since the last time, and all the sudden it felt like it had only been days. God has mended this gap of time that drew us away from here, only to patch us back in.

I know we're different, we've grow up... but we're still who we are and that's what I love about life in Christ. He gives You an identity that you're proud to wear. Because under it all, I know that I'm nothing. I have nothing to offer except the ugliness that I was born into this life with. But in Christ there is no end to the well of resources because I draw from Him. It's satisfying and I love it. He is my hope, and my joy, and the reason I sing, and apart from Him there is no life.

So let me live, Sweet Jesus, in the shadow of Your wings. And when You soar, pick me up and take me to the heights. And when you dip into the valley of the shadow of death, hold me close and banish fear. For You are the life that I live.

Lover of My Soul

Oh that my weakness would wither away... to be strengthened by You, to be given to You. Oh that my cowardly shallowness fade, to be striven in You, to be living in You. For my lostness is found when I lose me in You. And my hopelessness mounds when I stray far from You. I'm a fool to be down when my life comes from You. Make me live, make me laugh, make me love, all for You.

St. Cyprian to Donatus

This seems a cheerful world, Donatus, when I view it from this fair garden under the shadow of these vines. But if I climbed some great mountain and looked out over the wide lands, you know very well what I would see; brigands on the high road, pirates on the seas, in the amphitheaters men murdered to please the applauding crowds, under all roofs, misery and selfishness. It really is a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world.

Yet, in the midst of it, I have found a quiet and holy people. They have discovered a joy which is a thousand times better than any pleasure of this sinful life. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They have overcome the world. These people, Donatus, are Christians... and I am one of them.

*Gordan MacDonald, Forging a Realworld Faith

Every year we hold our breath for October to come. It's our favorite time of year. We love buying pumpkins and carving them and baking pumpkin bread... I hold out all year to make it even though I could eat it every morning for breakfast, so that it's really special when the first day of fall comes and we step outside to go to the library and it's too cold to go without jackets. I love it. It's the grand entrance of the most wonderful time of the year.

This year we anticipated a big move far away to live amongst people that didn't know us and a church that would take months to embrace us if they chose to. But for whatever reason, God in His infinite wisdom led us down a path that seems almost too good to be true. We already have a life there with friends and family and a home and hope for the body of Christ. It's close to home and it's home at the same time.

Right now I'm just holding the reigns steady, trying to do what we do everyday until I can start the moving process. We carved this pumpkin Monday and it was full of fruit flies and rot this morning so we had to chuck it. But I look forward to carving a new one the christen our front porch as soon as we're settled.

Sometimes I have dreams that I'll be living my normal life in my normal house and then I'll open a closet door only to discover another wing on my house that I've never seen and it is spectacular. That's how I feel about the house we are moving in to. I've seen the outside but only the inside from peering through the windows. Then last night Dale informed me of an additional bedroom that I was unaware of. I had that same exhilerating feeling when he told me.

At this point we are planning to be in town next weekend to clean and paint. I've never moved into a clean house with new paint. We've always done it after we got there. I am thrilled at the possibility of just having to put stuff away. God is so good to us. I can hardly believe it.

Sweet dreams and orange marmalade

Ironically, this time of year thousands of caterpillars are climbing up on branches and somehow encapsulating themselves in tiny cocoons where they will stay so that when the time is right they can wiggle through a tiny hole in the bundle and squeeze themselves out into a life of flight and freedom with new wings.

Such is our life... We've been preparing and working and pursuing a life that was not meant for us to live right now, only all the work we did is convertible. It's all beneficial to the door that God has opened wide before us. All the studying, weight loss, financial fixing, it all works for this new concept for our lives.

I perceive it like the little caterpillar; when he comes to life, his mission is to eat, eat, eat, to prepare for the time he will be imprisoned in that cocoon. Only for him it is not suffering, it's necessity for the task he was created to complete.

So here we are, full from the preparations we've been slaving over. In the coming months, we will have grown our wings and be learning to fly. But for the time being, I looking into the daunting task of cocooning; waiting, packing, moving, then reclamation my family to daily life, new life. It's a cocoon and I'm claustrophobic.

God has opened the door for us to take a secular job in Omaha in order to begin a community building project, the task of drawing scattered sheep back into the fold in order to live, work, play and run the race together. It seems almost too good to be true the way things have worked out. We will be moving the last weekend in October, potentially.

Thank you for praying and continuing to pray for my family. I cannot tell you the reassurance that I have every time someone prays for me or tells me they will be praying for us. It's my life line in times like this.

(Times when the marmalade keeps running out the turkey)

zzzing, zzziNG, ZZZINNNGGG!!!

Seems like as soon as you have it all figured out, all the balls fall out of your hands and you have to start all over again, picking up one at a time, toss-catch, toss-catch, now the next, toss-toss-catch-toss-catch, toss... and another- toss, now faster so the next one can get in, oops, woah! Here they come, and now I'm screaming at the Trebo for spilling water on the table at lunch. Wait, start again with just one. Put a load of laundry in. Now two, get the dishes cleaned up. Three, bathe the children and load up for the grocery store. Did Kennedy comb her hair? Jas has a bumpy pony tail. That'll work. Don't forget the salad toppins... alright. All going at the same time. House is clean. Dinner is in the oven. The groceries are put away. There are four conversations happening at the same time, all aimed at me and the phone is ringing. I have two hours until I have to be at work... Alright. A week from Thursday I'll call and set the date to switch the utilities. Put in my two weeks. Shut off the cell phones. Pack the toys. Set out towels and pack the bathroom. One week following pack the kitchen and the living room... Bedrooms last. Hoping Dale will be able to come home at least once in there sometime before we load the truck. Starting to feel the overwhelmingness in my body first- the rolling and churning in my guts. No, I'm not... it's ok. I'm excited. It's happy. Why am I crying? No no, it's good. Did I even turn my attention to my only Strength one time today? Yes. Whispered a prayer in the shower. Oh yeah. Settle. Settle. Settle! BLAST these wretched tears! I'm tired. Must be strong. Must stay focused. Do the next thing. WHICH ONE??? THERE ARE TOO MANY! TOO MANY!

Ever played Diner Dash? I did yesterday for 90 minutes. The only 90 minutes I had to nap before I went to work all night while the kids were sleeping and quiet. I was playing a game, trying to master something, one thing that was in my control. Ironically, I was out of control. 5 more minutes, no 15. Ok. 15. Now 30. Woops, an hour. It's my vice. Sucks me in and burns up precious time. Weird, I know. Gotta have one. At least it doesn't give me cancer or heart disease, right?

I needed to write something to settle me so that I can sleep now for a few hours before Dale leaves for work. You are my friend. Pray for me. I'm a little overwhelmed today.