Is your refrigerator running?

You'd better go catch it! hee hee

And can I borrow it?

'Cause mine's not running. I've just transferred the frozen foods that were beginning to thaw into the chest freezer, but now I don't know what to do with the milk and eggs and cheese.

Two weeks ago, the drier broke. Rob's dad pronounced it DOA. But when I stopped at the bank to get rolls of quarters for the Wash Shed Coin Laundry, my dear friend who works at the bank said that she had a drier in her garage that we could have. We put it in this week, and now the family has clean socks and underwear!

Two weeks ago, the dishwasher stopped working. It wouldn't fill with water. For no reason at all. And for no reason at all, it started working again that same day.

Last week, the hot water heater kept tripping the circuit breaker...on the Saturday before Easter, when we were expecting multitudes of company and needed to fill a HUGE tank for the baptisms. Great, I thought. After we baptize these kids, they're going to get pneumonia and send them off to heaven much sooner than we would like. Then as mysteriously as it stopped working, it started working again. We're holding our breath a little, waiting for it to go out again. We turn on the hot water knob, and it's a sweet surprise when the water begins to warm.

And today, the refrigerator. Not panicking. God has provided for the rest of our appliance degenerations. (Really, which one is next? I'm almost afraid to ask!) But God has sweetly provided each time. I'm seriously curious with what I'm going to do with the milk and eggs. I'm about to make the children some scrambled eggs now for a late dinner.

I'll let you know what happens next.

Catching up...Easter, Baptisms, Pathway

I LOVE Easter. Love it.

Some of what I love about it:

::Heartfelt reflections the weeks preceding Easter on the price Jesus paid, simply because he could not bear to be separated from the likes of me.

::The joy, joy, joy Jesus' resurrection brings, taking Christianity far from a set of beliefs and values to a relationship with a LIVING, powerful, loving God whose good and perfect plans for us are more wonderful than we can possibly imagine, not just in heaven but here on earth as well.

::Can you really keep from smiling when you sing, "I serve a risen Savior, He's in the world today; I know that He is living whatever men may say! I see His hand of mercy, I hear His voice of cheer; and just the time I need Him, He's always near! He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today! He walks with me and talks with me along life's narrow way! He lives! He lives, salvation to impart! You ask me how I know He lives: He lives within my heart!" (I'm smiling now, just typing the lyrics!)

::A full church, knowing in my heart that God's Word never comes back empty.

::Family dinner. (If you have never tried Rob's mom's ham, you have never really had ham. There is nothing like it. It's amazing.)

::Finding lost eggs two days after the egg hunt.

::Sweet-faced children dressed up in clothes that reflect the hope of Easter and the promise of spring.

::Okay, I have to say it: chocolate candies wrapped in pastels! (A good mother would never let her children consume the amount of candy that found it's way into my house on Easter...I'll make the sacrifice and help them out!)

This Easter was extra special and poignant for our family. We held a baptism service at Pathway, and Caleb and Gabriel were both baptized! It was so thrilling to watch, and even more so for Rob to be the one baptizing his precious sons, as well as five other precious children.

We hosted lots and lots of family: all three sets of parents and three siblings and their families were here to celebrate the boys' baptisms and Easter with us. We had a wonderful time with everyone. They made it so special for us. (And the ladies were such a HUGE help to me as I ran about like a loony.)

Also, it was our last Sunday at Pathway. How difficult it was to know that Rob was preaching his last sermon as their pastor, that I was leading corporate worship, possibly for the last time ever, that we were worshiping together with these people whom we love the last time. We still are struggling to wrap our hearts and minds around the changes that God is bringing.

We're not sure where we're going this Sunday morning. It'll be a surprise...

We're not sure what we're going to do this summer. It'll be a surprise....

We're not sure how God is going to provide until Rob's new job with the Navy starts. It'll be a surprise...

We're not sure when Rob is going to leave...June (probably not)...July (I hope, I hope, I hope)...or September (likely). it'll be a surprise, too.

I'm learning that I need to like surprises...or live in constant worry. I don't like the alternative, and I truly trust the Giver of the surprises, the Great Surpriser Himself. What an exciting place to be!

Big Plans and Big Feet

For Lily's third birthday, my brother Josh and his wife Lana bought her a cute Barbie doll, all decked out for the beach in her fairly conservative bathing suit, wrap and big, beach feet. Honestly, her feet look HUGE compared to her unshapely stick legs. She can't even wear tiny Barbie sandals, but must resign herself to slipping undaintily into Ken's footwear. Poor dear. Despite her perfectly manicured toenails, she'll never make it as a foot model. I'm sure behind her pasted-on smile she's devastated and buries her big flippers in the sand the moment she hits the beach.

Okay, enough about Barbie's surprisingly big feet. I think it's great that little miss perfect has a body flaw...and this is coming from a gal who grew up HATING my big, Fred Flinstone feet. I loved going barefooted--I still do!--but as a teen I would keep my feet crammed into hot shoes in mixed company out of embarrassment. Now...I don't care who sees my big bare feet. (I'm a little less self-conscious now.)

Someday when Lily's older, I'll share with her about the ancient Chinese custom of foot binding. Shortly after bringing Lily home, I read a novel by Lisa See, Snow Flower and Secret Fan, that details the process of foot-binding. In ancient times, Chinese mothers forced their very young daughters to undergo the horrific reshaping of their feet lest they never find a good marriage match. Apparently, a good family--meaning wealthy or politically important--would never consider allowing their son to marry a woman unless she had bound feet. Foot-binding was actually outlawed in China in 1911, though it continued until 1949 when under communist rule China became "The People's Republic of China." Some one million women still have the deformed "lotus flower" feet. Here's a picture of an 86-year-old woman with her foot, deformed for the sake of beauty. Notice her other foot in a shoe that is probably no more than four or five inches long. (Photo courtesy of Yahoo news.)



So, hurray for big feet, I say! Spread your toes wide and wiggle them proudly!

A funny story about the Barbie doll...

Caleb found it in my hide-away place about six months ago, and he BEGGED me to let Lily open it. Oh, I forgot to tell you: even though Lily received the doll as a gift almost a year and a half ago, I just recently let her open it. I really wasn't ready for all the Barbie accessories and getting her undressed and redressed and, "Mom, I need help!" every time Barbie decided to change her outfit. I'm not exactly one of those anti-Barbie moms. (Maybe you are? Maybe I should be? Any dialog on this?) Even though I scoff at her unrealistic proportions, I don't think she ever had a negative effect on my self-image, and I don't think she will for Lily either. She's not real. I'm more concerned about magazine covers and teen pop stars making Lily feel like she's not __________ enough or that she's too _______________. You can fill in the blanks with all the self-image flaws that young girls concoct.

So Caleb found the Barbie doll. "When can Lily open this?" he asked a million and one times.

"I don't know," I responded a million times, and then "Stop asking me!" one time.

I never thought to ask him why it was so important to him, but when I finally allowed Lily to open her Barbie, Caleb let out a cheerful whoop and cried, "Finally John can get married!!!!!" (He never liked the name G.I. Joe, and so he named his big army action figure John.) He ran into his room, dug out poor, lovesick John, who was forced to wait a year and a half (how many years is that in Barbie-years?) to marry his true love. And Caleb doesn't like the name "Barbie" either and convinced Lily to rename her doll Selena. "It's such a beautiful name," he said.

So John and Selena got married that lovely winter day. Caleb and Lily played wedding all day long.

When Caleb was very small, he loved to play "family." He wanted three spoons so he could have a mommy, a daddy, and a little boy. He wanted to have three teddy bears, three blocks, three....everything. Even now, his sense of family and his own role in it stretches beyond that of most eight-year-olds. Just this week he told me that he can't wait to be a father someday, and he told me of a certain song he heard on the radio that he wants to share with his first baby. I don't know any other boys his age who look so far ahead into their own futures as husbands and parents, especially with such longing the way Caleb does. I know that God is preparing him to be an amazing family man. Somewhere out there, some little girl is going to be one very blessed wife and mother...even if she does have big feet.

A Stranger at the Door

Last week, on a Sunday afternoon, our neighbor called. This wonderful neighbor and his wife are a tremendous blessing to us, and one of our biggest sorrows about having to move is leaving them. Neighbors like these come but once in a lifetime. On that afternoon, a repairman was working on our neighbor's furnace. For some reason, God laid it on our friend's heart to share with him that the family next door--that's us--had a heat pump that had not worked for two years and we were using a wood stove to heat our home. And God then moved in this repairman's heart to say, "Well, since I'm already out here, maybe I could go over and take a look at it."

So we got a phone call from our neighbor asking us if it would be okay for his repairman to stop by and take a look. I was kind of confused, because 1.) If we could afford to have it fixed ($7000), we would have done that a long time ago, and 2.) We had already had it diagnosed, by the company that installed it, no less, and we were told that it was beyond repair. We wondered if our neighbor, who has been so very generous to us in the past, offered secretly to the repairman to pay for a service call to us. We agreed to have him swing by, hoping it wasn't a waste.

He was a young guy, about our age, and he was here for about an hour, looking at not only our geothermal system in the basement, but our forced air furnace in the scuttle. I was doing the calculations in my head, just in case our neighbor had made no payment arrangement with him. From top to bottom, he said that our system was not installed properly at all. In fact he said that we had a secondary electric heat source that was not even hooked up. He left, promising to come back in a few days.

Thursday night, the night of our ladies Bible study and the very same day we listed our house with Cressy & Everett, he showed up at our door unexpectedly. He apologized for simply popping up, but he was in the neighborhood and he wanted to keep his promise. (How uncommon, sadly.) I was busy with the children and feeding them dinner and getting ready for Bible study and trying to get them all packed up for AWANA club. During the Bible study prayer, we prayed for our furnace, regarding which, believe me, we have offered many prayers to the Lord, especially in that first winter without heat. But now we are facing a different dilemma: trying to quickly sell a house without a functioning heat system. Well, that very day, that stranger at the door spent three hours connecting our furnace to an electric heat source that was present but improperly installed, and which the very same company that installed it failed to fix for us so that we would at least have some heat.

He finished while I was out in the church, and when I came back home, I asked, "Was he able get heat?" Rob motioned for me to stand under a register. Warm air was pouring out of that register for the first time in two years!

I asked Rob, "Did he give us a bill?" (As the family budgeter, I was adding in my head: two visits, plus diagnostic fees, plus any parts he had to use, plus over four hours of labor...gulp.)

"No," Rob said. As he was leaving, Rob told him to send us the bill, but he said that when he heard about our situation, he felt bad about it. He was happy to have helped us, and he was glad to have learned a little bit more about geothermal heating systems. Plus he was able to use some parts from the non-functioning component to properly hook up the electric component, so he didn't use any new parts. Have a good day.

Can you believe how good God is???? Who has ever heard of a furnace repair person who is a total stranger feeling bad for a family who has a broken furnace? Everybody he sees needs some help with their furnace; that's why he has a job! For him to give us four hours of his personal time, time away from his wife and three kids on a Thursday evening, knowing that he wasn't going to be financially compensated for his time completely astounds me. God simply put us on his heart, and I don't think he knows why he felt the need to help us--but we know.

We learned from our neighbor that he was going to be working on his furnace again that following Sunday, so I made a batch of our favorite cookies and took them over, along with a note telling him how grateful we were for his generous gift. You know what? We are almost out of wood. We do not have enough to get through the rest of these cold Michigan winter days and very cool Michigan spring nights. We will be able to keep the kids warm...simply with the turn of a dial!

We feel so loved by God!

God is shining an oil lamp at our feet and illuminating just the next step for us. We don't need to see the entire path to take each lighted step with confidence, because we know Who it is that leads us. He can be trusted. (Thanks, Jeny, for your thoughts on this on your blog!)

"Gabriel is transforming...

"...into a seven-year-old!"

That's what the Transformers birthday party invitations Gabe and I made said, putting Gabe into a full-faced grin with each card he worked on. Together we designed them and printed them out, and he decorated them with Transformers stickers.

On Friday, I baked a scrumptious cake, chocolate-chocolate chip and blew up some balloons and ordered some pizza. Only three of his little buddies were able to show up, but he didn't care. He had a blast just the same, as did all the rest of our crew. I'm really not that great at organizing and hosting a blow-out kids party. And even though I'm going to post a couple of pictures of the party, please don't look too closely at the cake. I wish I had my dear friend Jeny's talent of crafting magical birthday cakes that really are too pretty to eat! I just slapped on some icing and arranged a Transformers toy on top, and that was all Gabe wanted...and about all I could really handle this week in the cake-decorating department. And party games? Well, the kids and I "transformed" long skinny balloons into swords and hats. And we "transformed" some styrofoam parts into flying airplanes and launched them about the house. (The planes came disassembled...3/$1!) And then after present time, we pulled out the boys' bucket of Transformers and they played and transformed machines into robots and back again while watching an episode of "Transformers, Roll Out!" as they waited for the parents to pick them up. I'd say it was a successful party, even with the pitiful...but delicious, if I must say so myself...birthday cake. (It went perfect with a cup of hot coffee the next morning!)

Some of you may not remember, but when Gabriel was born seven years ago, he made his entrance in the world three weeks early and as fast as a race car. His lungs were filled with fluid, and he spent the first week of his life in the NICU. That first day, the doctor told me that Gabe's recovery expectancy was about 50/50. I was so much in shock and I totally didn't believe him. Rob called our pastor, Pastor Jeff Hossler...we miss them!!!...and he immediately started the church's prayer chain. A few hours later a neonatal specialist burst into my recovery room and was so excited she was out of breath. "It's like he's a completely different baby! His lungs are clearing and he's out of the woods!" God had worked a miracle in my sweet little baby boy's life. Gabe still had to work a little more fluid out of his lungs, and then he had to learn to eat and breath at the same time. He was born on a Saturday, and he was not allowed to eat until the following Wednesday! We weren't able to hold him for the first four days of his life. Then he fought off a raging case of jaundice that nearly required a complete transfusion of his body's entire blood volume. But exactly one week after his birth, to the very hour actually, we were rolling out of the hospital to our home with a healthy, albeit goldenrod yellow, baby boy. What a gift from God is our little boy!

Gabe, hours old, fighting for his life.













Caleb LOVES his new baby brother, who is only 9 days old here.












I'm totally in love...again! (No, I'm not choking him; I'm burping him! His cheeks were just so chubby they sprawled out everywhere. Oh, how I loved to kiss those sweet jowls. Maybe I kissed him too much, which explains why I have to chase him down for kisses now!)




















Seven years later...





Happy Birthday, buddy!

A Cook-"In"

The kids begged me last weekend to let them have a cook-"in," so we rigged some wire hangers and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows for s'mores over the fire in our woodburner. Rob and I weren't quite feeling up to hot dogs with our sensitive systems, but we had just as much fun as the kids watching them make and eat their rustic dinner.

Could I live off the grid? Sometimes I feel like we could, especially with the wood-burning stove providing our only heat source here during this most turbulent winter. Sometimes when I'm out tromping through the drifts to throw a bale of hay to the horse and then off to the woodshed to carry a couple of armloads of wood to fill the wood box in the living room, I think, what would be the big deal of having to go out just one more time to hand pump a couple buckets of water to heat on the wood stove for cooking and bathing...I think we could probably do it!

But...I do look forward to the day when all I have to do is turn a little dial, and I can trust that all the children will be warm for the evening. Once taken-for-granted, such conveniences seem almost luxurious now!

Maybe someday we'll throw out our modern conveniences--ooh, I'm not sure how happy I would be without internet!--and cooking over the woodburning stove in the winter will be the norm and not the exception! Probably not anytime soon...

Two Cuties

I just had to share this picture of my youngest two with you. Church was about to start, and I was trying to get all four kids and all the materials I needed for the science project we were doing in children's church out the door. I glanced at everyone and marked off my mental checklist: 8 feet, 8 shoes all on the correct feet--check. Hair combed--check. Faces cleaned from breakfast--check. Acceptable church clothes--check. And that's when I took a second glace at Seth and Lily, put down all the children's church supplies and got my camera. They were simply too delectable not to capture on film. Caleb and Gabe looked cute too, but they were already out the door before I returned with the camera.

40 Days of prayer, and God speaks...

...and this is where he is leading.

To the Navy.

Rob is working right now to become a full time chaplain in the US Navy. It's a lot to digest, I know, and the path that God used to get us to this point is not a straight one, but obscured and full of blinding curves and huge boulders and tree roots and mud puddles. But here we are.

And both of us feel a release from the current ministry at which we are serving, which is only by God's hand, because we both have said that we would like to stay here and serve for life if that is what God chose. It is, however, not what God is choosing.

We will be putting our house on the market in the next couple of weeks. Please pray that God would bring a buyer, and soon. That would be a miracle in this slow market.

Our families and our church have been wonderfully and most confirmingly supportive, and they are even excited for us.

Should everything go as planned, Rob will enter the Navy as an officer (because of his post-graduate work and pastoral experience) and he will leave for 13 weeks of officer indoctrination and chaplaincy training. We plan to be out of our house by then--June, and the kids and I will put our household in storage, and then live for a few weeks here and there with family in both IN and OH. Maybe even MO. It will be a long time for us to be without our husband and father, but it must be done, and we will make the best of it and I think the kids will actually enjoy the adventure of it all.

Next up on our agenda:

Rob must complete a 6-hour physical with a military doctor. (I can't even imagine what kind of poking and proding will be going on for 6 hours.) Then he must complete a physical fitness test where he has to run, do sit-ups and do push-ups, all within prescribed time limits. After that, the Navy will fly him to Wash. DC where he will receive his rank from congress. In May, he will take the oath of office, and in the middle of June, he will leave for Rhode Island for training. Oh, and he is missing about 5 post-grad hours, so he took a Feb class at Bethel, and he is taking one in March as well. Sometime in the midst of all that he will also meet before the board of the National Association of Evangelicals to receive his chaplaincy license. Oh, and sell a house and pack up a church and pack up a house and prepare to be gone for a long time. And still not know exacly where we will be commissioned. We should know before he leaves for training. We actually get to pick our top three locations, and they will TRY to match us up with one of those three. No guarantees, of course, it is the military.

I feel like we are preparing go to the mission field. We're both excited and up for the call. We feel a distinct sense of peace about this decision and opportunity, and that it could only have come from God, because we would not have chosen this on our own. But when every other door has closed...sometimes God leads that way. And now that we have been walking in that direction for several weeks, we are thankful that God is the one in charge and not us, because we feel that this is what God has been preparing us for all along.

Please continue to pray for us: finances and provision, our Pathway church family who is undecided about what they will do, the selling of our house, the packing up of our family, and that God will put us exactly where he wants us. God bless!!!

Gotcha Forever!

Two years! How they have zipped right on by.

Two years since the day I first looked into her deep, mysterious eyes.
Who is this child who is now my daughter? I remember gazing at each of
my newborn sons whom I had carried from their first heatbeat inside me
until I was searching their faces with my own eyes and thinking the same
thing. Who are you? How I long to know who this little person is and
what he loves and what he will someday become. But with Lily I wondered
in addition to that, How can I make up for all the time that we were not
together?

Two years since I first felt her warm hand in my own, and my heart
nearly burst with love for her. The same joy I felt when I gave birth to
and held my sons coursed through me when I placed my new 2-year-old
daughter on my lap and promised to keep her safe and close to my heart
for the rest of my life, and beyond.

And I store those first sweet memories of her deep in my heart. Today
I've pulled them out one by one and relived them and cherished them so.

In two short months, Lily will have been my daughter longer than she was
an orphan. I will celebrate with her then, too!

Someday, after Jesus comes back and takes us from the only life we've
know into our real home, the home we were created for, there will come a
time when we will have lived in Heaven longer than we have lived on
earth. That will be a day for celebration as well!

Lily has been counting down the days to "Got You Day" as she says, and
then she always adds, "And it's Chinese New Year!" Very cute. We gave
her some little gifts that we had purchased in China for this very day,
and I also made her a toddler version of her lifebook, that tells her
all about her life in China--or what little we know of it--and how she
came to be a part of our family. It's no secret to her, but to put it in
writing and to discuss with her all we know about her birth parents and
her visible special need and her abandonment was very difficult for me.
Laced thoughout the story is God's plan and provision in a less than
perfect world. She really loves the book, even though she really doesn't
want to spend too much time looking at the picures of herself before her
lip repair or even talking about her birth parents and then foster
parents. She wants to get right to the pictures and the story of us
going to China "all the way across the big, blue ocean" to get her.
That's my favorite part, too, but I worry about her tender little heart
that has gone though more sorrow and loss than most of us will ever
experience.

Still, she is a strong and resilient little girl, braver than I am. I
couldn't be more proud of her, and I love her more than she'll ever
understand until her own children are placed in her arms.

Here are some pictures celebrating Lily!



This was taken in China when Lily was about 17 months old, about 9 months before we were allowed to travel. However, we weren't given this picture of her until after we traveled. I didn't have ANY pictures of her amazing smile the whole time we waited and waited and waited. I can't tell you how much I would have loved to have this picture during the wait, just so that I could know that she was not terribly unhappy. Wasn't she so, so cute and fun?


My first time holding my new daughter. She's not sure what to think!


Our first Gotcha Day, 2007. She was wearing the same sweater she wore in the very first picture I saw of her. I was thrilled that the orphanage sent her to us in it. What a keepsake! I've seen many pictures of children from Dongguan orphanage in these exact sweaters; they must have LOTS of them!


Sweet, spicy Lily on Gotcha Day 2008. She is such a precious little girl, and I'm humbled that God chose us to parent this amazing child of His.


Lily looking at her new lifebook, with help from Caleb and Gabriel. See the cute little Chinese doll? We bought it in China at a little shop as a set, a boy and a girl, clothed in traditional Chinese silks. She loves them! She loves anything Chinese and gets so excited when she hears about The Great Wall or when she sees another Chinese child at the grocery store. Last week, we saw an Hispanic family, and there were two little girls not much older than Lily. She exclaimed loudly (she does nothing quietly, by the way), "Mom, they're from China like me!" I told her, "No, honey. They're not from China." She literally said, "Huh?" Like, "Watchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?" I was trying not to laugh, and trying to push the cart down a different aisle, but I'm sure her voice carried. Then she asked, "Where?" I said, "They're from Dowagiac." She again said, "Huh?" We're still working on the whole thing about America being a melting pot. For her, anyone with dark hair and eyes must be from China. I'm thrilled, however, that she is so proud of her heritage. It is definitely what we want for her.

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

or Lots of blessings and prosperity to you! Happy Chinese New Year!

Normally I like to cook and have a special CNY meal for the family, but nobody in this house has his or her appetite right now. We have all been so sick. I can't remember ever having been this far under the weather. I had a fever and cough for about a week and a half, and in the midst of it, I lost my voice. I still haven't found it yet. Then all the kids had fevers and coughs and felt miserable for about five days. I took everybody to the doctor, but alas, it's a virus, and we just have to work our way through the misery. Lily has an ear and sinus infection, so she is on an antibiotic for that, but it doesn't touch the main symptoms.

Blah. I can't tell you how many unheavenly hours of cartoons these kids have consumed in the past week. I only have the energy to do about a third of a project at a time before I want to collapse. And Rob finally succombed to it, but he was also the first to get better. He even preached on Sunday with a fever.

So, I think we'll all celebrate Chinese New Year, which in reality last about 14 days, next week. Maybe we'll make some paper lanterns today.

Oh, and Rob and I have only nine more days to go on our fast. Then we'll ease back into the eating world with rice and simple veggies. My brain tells me a bucket of fried chicken would be heavenly, but I know my stomach would go into shock and send everything right back out. I guess the chicken can wait!

sweet conversations

Caleb: "You know what Jesus is working on right now?" Big sigh, eyes sparkling. This is coming out of nowhere.

Me: "What's he working on, Caleb?"

Caleb: "He's making houses made of..." dramatic pause "... PURE GOLD! And all the streets are made of the best gold! And we get to be there!" His voice is trembling with excitement and anticipation, as if it were Christmas Eve all over again. "And then, there's this book with everyone's name in it! Except for people who don't love God," said with a downcast face, which soon brightens. "And maybe we'll get to see our own names written in it!"

I don't have any pictures of this moment to show you, and it doesn't matter, because there's no way any earthly camera could have captured that look of love and anticipation from this child of the King. He was literally glowing, more radiantly than the purest of gold. His mind is so often fixed heavenward.

***

Lily, as we're driving past a lake on the way to her speech class: "Mom, that lake is all icey!"

Me: "Yes, Lily, it's so cold outside, the lake froze up!"

Lily: "We need to get a humpback whale to break up all the ice with his tail!" (I'm guessing she's watched an episode too many of "Go, Diego, Go," whose animal friends often come to the rescue.)

Me: "That's a great idea, Lily, except we don't have any humpback whales in Michigan."

Lily: "We can go to China and get one!" (That would be quite the interesting plane ride home...)

***

Seth, trying to coax me to sit on the couch with him and turn on the cartoons: "Mom, you come with me, please? Mom, you come to the couch? See, I kiss your hand." Then he kisses my hand. Big pause, as he considers his next offer. "See, I zerbert your other hand." And he lays on a bumpy one. He squeezes my hands and smiles at me, looking deep into my eyes. Yes, of course I sat on the couch with him and watched cartoons. He was a very content little boy, snuggled in the crook of his mommy's arm, and I felt drunk with love as his warm, sweet body pressed up next to me. It doesn't take much to buy off this fool-in-love mommy.

***

I hate to not have a Gabriel-conversation to share with you, but I honestly can't think of anything he and I have talked about the past couple of days! (Cue pangs of guilt.) It's just been the normal day to day stuff, like, "Mom, what's for dinner?"..."What else?"..."How many bites do I have to eat to get a snack?"..."Can I just have a sandwich instead?" This morning, I did make him some scrambled eggs for breakfast, and I scored a "Your the best mom in the world!" complete with a tilt of the head, sweet up-turn of the lips, and dreamy eyes. Ladies, the way to this boy's heart goes straight through his stomach...IF what you're serving meets his strict set of rules for his delicate, picky-as-all-get-out palate: no sauce, no green seasonings, nothing not completely identifiable, no more than one food group per dish, no two items touching or occupying similar space, no vegetable except for raw carrots and celery or cooked corn, no calling meat of any category anything other than "meat, hamburger or chicken", no crusts, and unless it's a fruit, use lots of pepper. Simple!

40 Fast::Days 11-17

Today is Day 17. The past week has flown by, not really from busy-ness, although there is always that, but from lots of decisions and praying and more decisions. The worst part is that we are in a bit of a flux, and some of the decisions are not ours to make, so we must wait to even let anyone know "Here's what God is doing."

I can say this: sometimes God closes every single door around you. You try all the handles. One by one, you get the same result: locked. You're starting to sweat and feel hopeless, helpless, trapped. Finally you're standing before the last door. You reach out a trembling hand, and somewhat to your surprise, and somewhat at your expectation--it is after all the last door, and God never abandons you to nowhere and nothingness--the handle turns. You are scared at what you might find behind that door, but when you turn back to look at all the locked doors behind you, you know that God has used those dead ends to lead you to this very door. This is your door. You open it, and it leads to another door, also unlocked, and another and another. But before you burst through each doorway into something completely new and a little terrifying, you must test this against His word and pray and continue to seek Him. It's not about that door, but about Him already waiting for you on the other side, beckoning you. And in the midst of seeking, you realize that perhaps these are the doors, if given total free choice, you would have chosen all along. And so you walk through hesitantly. And until another door closes and locks, you continue through the maze.

This is where Rob and I are. We don't feel like we can openly share with everyone where we think God might be leading us, until we've made sure none of the doors standing in front of us are locked.

My Scripture reading from last night spoke of the time when the disciples were out on a boat by themselves and a sudden storm came up. Jesus was off by himself praying. In the midst of their terror, they spotted Jesus walking toward them on top of the water. At first they thought it was ghost. Not only was the storm overtaking them, but now they're going to be ravaged by an evil spirit, so they thought. But Jesus said, "It is I. Don't be afraid." The very thing they were so afraid of turned out to be their only hope and best friend. That's when Peter joined Jesus on top of the water, and as he looked at his circumstance, you know, squalling waves and wind, he began to fear again and started to sink. Jesus had mercy on him, reached down and saved him, then climbed aboard the boat and rebuked the storm into nonexistence. It wasn't long before all this happened that the disciples had encountered another storm, but that time, Jesus was on the boat with them, sleeping. They cried out to him as he was physically right there, and Jesus calmed the storm. I've often wondered why this happened again. The same 12 guys, the same rickety boat, the same type of deadly storm. But this time Jesus wasn't there. Yet, he still protected them from the storm. He knew exactly where they were and that they were having trouble. (Surely from he could see the storm clouds brewing overhead...)and he still rescued them, showing even more of his power as he walked on top of the water.

Jesus was taking their faith from a faith in what they could see, to a faith in what they could not see. Was Jesus any less present during the second storm?

These stormy times here are similar for me. I haven't been able to feel his presence and direction. I've felt lost and tired and overcome by waves of hardship. But Jesus has never been absent. The storms do not come as a surprise to him.

And I think I see him in the distance, walking towards us.

40-Day Fast::Days 4 thru 10

Last week was really hard. But I guess if this were easy, it wouldn't be of that much worth to the Lord, and I want this sacrifice to be a costly gift to him.

Physically: we're doing just fine. In just the past two days I've found myself having more energy and not feel so whipped. The mornings are a little sluggish, though, and it takes me a longer to get going. I now have to remind myself to drink my water and mealtime cup of juice. Today, I forgot to drink anything until after 2:00 p.m.

Spiritually: we're growing and deepening. We see God's mercies every day all around us. Personally, I feel really close to Jesus throughout the day, like he's following me around, whispering guidance and love into my ear throughout the day. I know he's always with us, but his presence beside me is sometimes palpable. You know how you feel when your spouse is home from work early and your normal routine feels different or perhaps must now become different? How just having him in the house, even if he's hanging out in the office the whole time and you're not even talking, makes your home feel complete and your heart content? It's like that.

Rob and I have had some really intimate prayer times together. My prayers always seem weak and feeble bumped up next to his amazing ones that brim with eloquence, Scripture and faith. But I know God doesn't mind. "The only way to fail in prayer is to not show up." (From "Prayer" by Philip Yancey, I forget the page number.)

And today God has let in a tiny beam of light from a slightly cracked-open door. Ours? We pray on, with our trembling hands on the doorknob.

Chinese Orphan Video

You might want to grab a handful of tissues.

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40 Day Fast::Day 3

Today I spent a lot of time searching. Not just searching for the remote control (Caleb is a complete remote hog!) or where Seth may have stashed Rob's lawnmower key...the only one we have.

The search is based on this reflecting question: Are there dark spots in my heart that may be keeping God from answering my prayers?

I asked God today to reveal my sins, even the teeniest of them, so that I could confess them to him and repent. Um, let's just say that God wasn't silent today. There's a lot of chaff in my life! Impatience, un-gentleness, laziness, worldliness, dishonesty...I could go on, and God DID go on, but this is awfully public and painfully personal.

I can't tell you that God is gripping us punitively by the shoulder because of these, but I can say with certainty that it doesn't matter how small the sin is, it keeps us away from God. Sure, I know when I'm being rebellious, and at the end of the day, I do feel sorry for whatever it is, yelling at one of the kids or choosing not to do something I know would be a blessing to my family just because I don't feel like it or watching a television show that dishonors God, and I do confess these to God. But I seem to be just as impatient or lazy or worldly the next day. Am I abusing God's grace???? God, please forgive me!!! I know that I can't be perfect, but I also know that I can make a better effort in many areas of my life.

Thank-you, God for the sacrifice of Jesus. I know that when you look at me, you see a daughter redeemed. But you are calling me to a deeper life...and I wanna go!

40 Day Fast::Day 2

I thought today would be harder than it is. Sure, we're a little hungry, but the pangs are certainly not unbearable. My heart breaks for those families all over the world, even here in the prosperous US of A who do not get enough to eat. I'm a grown-up, and I can handle this, but I would be beside myself if any of my children had to go hungry. How many mothers across the world have to look into big,hungry eyes and not be able to meet that basic need for their children? The Church needs to work harder to do something about that...I need to do something about that.

Part of my prayer time during this fast has included praying through some of the Psalms. One of today's was Psalm 61. I found great comfort in the words of lament that my own soul could not have expressed without help. "Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer. From the ends of the earth I call to you. I call as my heart grows faint; lead me to the rock that is higher than I. For you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the foe. I long to dwell in your tent forever and take refuge in the shelter of your wings." That is indeed my heart and my prayer today.

We've had a substantial amount of flooding in nearby areas this week. Last week we received around 16 inches of snow, and then the temperatures shot up to the 60's, melting the white mounds. Then several inches of rain fell. It's so bad that many schools were closed or delayed. Many, many roads are closed. Yesterday morning in a nearby town, a young mother and her five children attempted to cross a flooded road in her Chevy Tahoe (not a small vehicle) and was overcome by the current, which pulled her truck into seven feet of water. The children were all very young, ages three months to five years old. The mother was only able to save three of them; the two-year-old and the five-year-old drowned. My heart is so broken for her and her husband. Will she ever be able to forgive herself for her error in judgement? It's truly my worst Mother-Nightmare come true.

The next chapter of, "Incredible Moments With the Savior" talked about the royal official who approached Jesus to heal his dying child. The man was one of Herod's men, probably very wealthy, and he was probably used to using his wealth and his position to get whatever he wanted. But when his precious son fell ill, he could neither buy nor command health. I think he would have traded every last coin and given up his illustrious career to make his child well, to save him from dying. Then as a last ditch resort, he travels to where a homeless man named Jesus was teaching. He had heard rumors that Jesus had healed some people, and he didn't care that he was a Jew. The life of his child was at stake. Nothing else mattered. He was not above begging for help.

Of course Jesus healed the official's son. He sent him on his way, telling him that the child would live. On the way home, a servant met him and shared the amazing news that his little boy's fever had left...the same time Jesus had spoken to him the day before.

Today as I prayed for God's provision, I was reminded of the young mother who will never get to tuck two of her precious children into bed again. I thought about all the mothers whose children are going to bed hungry tonight, and how helpless they must feel. And I thought about the Roman official whose money could not buy him that which was most important to him.

We have four beautiful children who are healthy and smart and loving. I fed each of them three meals, plus snacks, plus "more juice, please" today. And I know that I will have enough to do the same tomorrow.

I gotta tell ya, I feel like the richest woman in the world right now!

40-Day Fast::Day 1

Today was a little hard, but not too bad. I had to stop myself from licking the strawberry jam off my fingers when I made the kids' lunch.

I must admit, I knew for sure that I was going to have a craving for Saylor's chicken ranch pizza during this journey, so yesterday, before the fast started, the kids and I went out for pizza for lunch. And I bought a little Christmas chocolate from the clearance aisle. Hey, I know what I was going to be thinking about, and I wanted to ward off temptation...by giving into it before it was wrong! :o) "To thine ownself be true," quips Polonius, Hamlet's older and wiser friend, who surely would have nodded his approval at the Ghiradelli squares.

I'm reading a book called, "Incredible Moments With the Savior: Learning to See" by Ken Gire. Today's encounter with Jesus revealed a bit of his compassion and self-sacrifice through the miracle of turning water into wine at the Canaan weding feast. Such an odd first public miracle, I used to think. But I see how perfect it was. The water jugs that Jesus commanded be filled with water were not meant to hold anything valuable. They just held water for the ceremonial washing of the guests feet. However, Jesus gave them new purpose by turning ordinary water into choice wine, the best of the best, in the same way that He came to give the Jewish law new purpose: not as a set of to-do's to get into God's favor, but to show our desperate need for Jesus and God's grace to forgive us for never being able to fully measure up.

Jesus can take this dull and ordinary vessel and give it a greater purpose! What hope!

More than that, Jesus' compassion for the wedding host, who would never have been able to live down the embarrassment of running out of wine before the end of the wedding celebration, far out-weighed his own personal cost of performing this miracle. Yes, there was a cost, for as soon as he did it, "Jesus crossed the Rubicon--that river of no return. The die was cast. The clock was wound. It would begin ticking down to the final hour of his destiny and set in motion the gears that would ultimately enmesh him and cost him his life. For the wine he provided at Cana would hasten the cup he would one day drink at the cross" (Gire 6).

Can you see how much he loves us???

I leave the end of day one feeling completely loved by God. (And only a little hungry.)

40-Day Fast::Prelude

Okay, it's been almost forever since I've talked to you. Sorry. Christmas really kicked my rear. I hope I can say that without sounding completely bah-humbug, because I'm not scroogey in the least. I love Christmas, truly, I do.

In fact, my tree is still up and lit. Yeah, I'll probably take it down sometime this week, but I don't think I was really able to enjoy it with my full schedule until after Christmas was finished. The mom for whose two children I babysit took last week off from work, so HURRAY, I actually got a bit of a break! The kids and I basically spent the whole week recovering from merry-making.

I do have one bit of SAD news concerning Christmas: Seth erased every single one of my Christmas pictures from our digital camera! I was, and still am, devestated; but then again, I'm the ding dong who put off uploading them from the disk to our computer. Arg. I did get our family's present-time recorded on the video recorder, but it's a little hard to scrap book video. If only I had caught up with him and the camera two minutes earlier. Ah, well, nothing to be done about that now.

So, back to today's entry title.

Rob and I are at a crossroads in our ministry here in Dowagiac. When God moved us up here three and a half years ago, we knew that we would be taking a risk. Many factors contributed: the church was a realtively new church plant with few footholds in the community; they couldn't afford to pay our growing family a full-time salary, so Rob would need to keep his appraisal business; and they had no permanant meeting place. But God saw us through so many of those obstacles. We were excited about building a church from the ground up. In fact, in the year preceeding our move, we felt God pulling our hearts toward church-planting. This church was basically a restart. Secondly, Rob's business was still strong, and the flexibility of self-employment allowed for him to work full time in the minsitry uncompromisingly. And thirdly, we were able, with some help from the district, to finish the inside of the pole building on our property into a lovely church building, small but totally charming and completely adequate.

It would seem that God was clearing the path before us and the church, and we were so excited about what He might have planned for this ministry.

Fast-forward to today. We've spent three and a half years building friendships and connections and involving ourselves in the community, but don't have nearly as much to show for it as we would like. We have a couple of families that attend because of our seed-planting, but we've lost more families than we've gained, putting our church in an even more challenging situation, finacially and otherwise. It's hard to attract people to a small church! There's certainly no blending into the pews at Pathway! (Especially since we don't have pews...) Secondly, to say that the real estate market has plummeted would be a gross understatement. Every year that we've been here, Rob has done half the business of the year before. This year, he has taken on several other odd jobs, but the total income still does not make ends meet...and he's running in many different directions, making it seemingly impossible to meet all of the demands of family and ministry all the while trying to earn enough survive. So what's the point??? There's a lot riding on our shoulders, you know, carrying the mortgage that allows our church to have a meeting place.

So here we are. We've prayed. A lot. We've searched scriptures. We've sought wise counsel. God has been cryptically silent. We have got to have some answers and direction. God must intervene lest everything around us crumbles. Yet, through all this, neither of us feel released from this ministry. We're exhausted, yes. But both of us feel like God is not going to send us AWAY from this unless He's sending us TO something else. I hope the meaning of that comes across in my flat writing. We don't feel like he is going to send us away defeated. Neither of us is panicking, either. Last year, at this time, we were. And we're still here. God has strengthened our faith, so that today's desert journey has not scourched our souls to the point of despair.

I'm making myself, and my family, very vulnerable right now. Humility is about all we have left. All we want to do is make a difference in this community for Christ.

The year before we came to Pathway, Rob and I embarked on 40-Day fast. We both felt compelled to do this, to prepare our hearts for whatever ministry He was calling us to, to seek His direction whole-heartedly. I brought it up a few weeks ago, that maybe we should do another extended fast, and Rob had been thinking the same thing. There's nothing magical about a fast, certainly nothing formulaic about it. We don't serve a formulaic God. But for some reason, fasting does get God's attention, and it absolutely gets our attention.

We need God's hand of blessing! If He has moved it, we must move, too. If something...us or the enemy...is creating a wall between our family and God's blessing, we must remove that wall.

So, today is day 1 of our 40 day fast. I'm telling you all this so that:

::you can pray for us! We are completely desperate for the prayers of other believers.

::you can hold us accountable. It's a little harder to cheat if others know about it.

::I can share with you the way God is reaching out to sustain us and best of all speak to us.

Since we've done this before, we know a lot of what to expect. For example, the hardest days of the fast are days 2 thru 4. Your body is figuring out, hey, something's going on here...FEED ME! Lots of stomach cramps, crabbiness, weakness. After about the 4th day, your body has figured out that no amount of complaining is going to work, and so it stops asking for food. You really just stop getting hungry. We're also prepared to be FREEZING (our last fast also fell in January) as well as dealing with severely itchy and dry skin. At about day 38 or 39, the body starts to go into starvation, and you feel hunger again. It's important to listen to those cues and resume eating...slowly easing back into solid foods.

Those are just some of the physical aspects.

The spiritual rewards are great throughout. God really does speak. He really does want to be found by true seekers. I'll go into more about all this as I reflect on this daily.

Please don't worry about us. We are keeping completely hydrated. We are allowing ourselves to have some fruit and vegetable juice throughout the day, and we're taking vitamins.

I hope to walk away from this refreshed in my spirit from having spent so much intentional time with my Lord, and I pray that He will shed a light on this darkening path before us.

P.S. New Job Possibility

I wanted to update those of you who were thinking of me and praying for me during my impromptu job supervising a non-custodial parental visit.

The visit went really well. The dad was extremely emotional, and I struggled holding back tears of my own. It was upbeat and positive. And I'm actually going to be supervising a visit with the same family again this weekend.

Also, there is a possibility of more work like this for me in the future. It's rough, emotionally, but I think it will be good. I'm in contact with someone...

I prayed for him, the kids, and the mom throughout the whole visit.

I can't imagine that being a bad thing for a broken family...

Thanks for your prayers!!!

Snow Day

I'm thinking of you today, Jeny! I know that ground cover in December absolutely delights your heart. I'm putting on some Christmas music, heating up the tea kettle and thinking of you today!

Oh, and bundling up four little people for some outdoor play.