Mourning

So I realize now, a little late I guess, that this entire year will be a year of firsts. Mostly what that means for my traditional heavy heart is that for each season and holiday, I need to mourn what was, and replace it with what is.

Things continue to catch me off guard.

For example, Candy canes. I love having candy canes in the house to give to guests when they come over. My kids loved them! I won't have them in the house anymore because it feels a little cruel.

My husband grew up eating cream puffs on the morning of Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was fun to complain about how much work they were, but it also became our tradition.

Ginger bread houses. So fun to make and lick your fingers free of the icing that drizzles on your hands instead of staying on the house. Plus that candy that fell on the floor totally fall into the five second rule.

Christmas cookies, Christmas cookies, Christmas cookies. I know there are cookies we can eat, but there are special cookies that you grow up with, that when a cookie tray doesn't have them, you have a little void in your heart.

Then there are the Christmas cookie exchange parties. Why would I go and bring home a plate of cookies we can't eat?

We handled Halloween and for the first time, I didn't add five pounds to my healthy frame. I thought, we can do this. This is getting easier.

But the truth is, I have 32 years of history under my belt. I have 32 years of habits, patterns, traditions, expectations, and desires.

If I can acknowledge that each season will have a piece of mourning to it, I think it might be easier to handle. I need to allow myself the experience of letting it go so that I can embrace what it is now. And the truth is, the way it is now is SO much better for us.

Truth be told, almost none of the things listed above are good for you, and there are alternatives to almost each of them. But before I could just go to the store and buy whatever I needed. Now its a different story.

We have the opportunity to rewrite history. To create new habits and patterns and traditions, and hopefully the mourning will pass. And I will have less weight and guilt over food after these holidays which would be a first in forever!

Our new Boiler!

I have a thousand things I want to write about. Not really sure why it is that you read this blog, so not sure what to share.

I will say that a lot of things have been happening around here. Progress with Noah, progress with the house, progress in my faith, and all sorts of crafting progress and cooking progress. (I was able to bake fresh bread again for the first time in seven months! I was up to making bread at least once a week, and then nothing. It felt good, and I'll post more about that later.)

This month we have been focusing on what we are thankful for. Creating a heart of Thanksgiving in remembering that God is the giver of all good things.

Yes I have much to be thankful for, but I'm not gonna lie, there is a huge thing that I can't let go of.

Our new boiler.

My family has been on energy assistance for the last couple of years. We are a one income family where our income hasn't changed in four years but the size of our family has. Our home was built in 1920 and we still had the original boiler. In the last couple years we have had some issues with the pilot light going out and it having a hard time starting after the summer months, but all the boiler men said the same thing, "Steam boilers last forever."

Paul and I know that we don't want to live in this house forever. We still dream of our red brick farm house with land to run around on, a barn for art and music and a garden big enough to support us. We hope this isn't the place we end up, but try to find the contentment to survive without disappointment.

Understanding the way the economy is, we both kind of knew that replacing the boiler was going to be a must to sell the house. Why would someone buy our home looking at this beast knowing they would need to replace it, when they can find a house very similar to ours, or five, with better updates.

We had gotten an estimate before and knew that to replace the original boiler, it would cost over $7,000, and potentially $10,000. There was NO way we could do this, and yet, we knew we should start saving.

Then, after the tornado, I was chatting with a neighbor and we were talking about window's and government programs and the updates on our homes, etc. She mentioned they had just gotten their furnace replaced through energy assistance. Two weeks later, they had a repair man out, and she sent him to my house. After that it only took a few consultations, a couple months and due to a leak on the boiler, they replaced it!

We got our boiler replaced! It was this side conversation that happened because of the tornado and now Paul and I look at this HUGE gift. A $10,000 repair to our home. Our old boiler worked at 20% efficiency and our new one functions at 80%.

Here is our old boiler. Scary right?


Here is all the space we gained when they hauled it out! It was a very big exciting day.


Here is our new boiler doing amazing work to heat our house! Lots of piping coming out which kind of makes it look like its going to brew beer but, hey, it's new and shiny and new. Did I say new?


So, almost every day, my heart swells to full capacity. Something I only dreamed of happening has happened. Something that helps my little family right now, (our heating bills in the winter for an old house with drafty windows and antique boiler was reaching $400 per month!) and will help us drastically when we are ready to sell. (Maybe its a sign of being old that I dreamt of getting a new boiler!)

Anyway, I don't want to live on assistance, but this year we have needed it and I feel so blessed by the ways that is giving us a foot up in our situation. I know you aren't really supposed to talk about money, not in real figures, but I had to in truth so that the weight of this gift would be truly felt. It's huge!

Mmmmm....I am sitting on my comfy couch, snuggled up and drinking a warm beverage while my new boiler keeps my kids warm as they sleep.

We have been blessed indeed.

The telling truth of our ups and downs

Two weeks ago I shared with you some words that God had given to me in my prayer and journal time. I was thankful to see where my weakness was and where sin stilled remained that I didn’t see before. It may sound strange, but I felt so stagnant in my faith that even this was movement. I was finally reaching, searching, wanting, asking for more. Revealing these things allowed me to lay down more of my stuff and see into my bad habits and coping methods to stress and chaos.

This last year has been a tough one for me. Only now am I able to start dissecting all of it. All lot of wisdom can come from hindsight. After my incredible weekend a few weeks ago, I felt revived, and humbled at the moments God gave me. I came home and had an onslaught of tasks, cranky kids, schedules to be managed, commitments to be met, bills to be paid, contractors coming and not coming to work, a new boiler getting put in, and more weekend retreats to prepare for. I didn’t share all that I had experienced with my family because coming home felt like getting down to business.

In this I watched as I let my soul become the stomping grounds to a major spiritual war. Godly things were revealed to me. I could see and hear and understand and was willing to make these small changes in my life because I knew that they would be good for me. I was ready to trust God in the deeper places of my heart and relationships.

When we are poised for spiritual growth, when we are taking risks in our lives and hearts to trust God to be enough for us and we say yes to him, I do believe we need to be aware of the enemy who is striving for our soul. These moments of growth, these moments in our lives, relationships, and ministry where godly things are happening, set the stage for the enemy to attack. Satan does not want growth. The father of lies does not want truth in our ears and hearts. He has no hold on us when we trust the Father, and so he will fight to keep us locked in.

I allowed that to happen to myself for the couple weeks after my incredible weekend. I didn’t see it then, but I see it for what is was now.

This weekend surpassed my weekend previously. I am aware now though of what lies ahead of me when returning home, and instead of turning into my old bad habits of coping with life, I will choose as much as possible to pray, to fight, and to read scripture to pour into my heart the wisdom of God.

It’s hard to do that in the daily grind of life, so if you could, please offer a prayer for me and all those that were at the district gathering in Indy this weekend. My greatest desire is that those high school students would find the courage to fight off temptation and grab hold of all that God has for them.

Thankful Tree

So when you look around craft sites or pinterest you will discover dozens of beautiful, artsy, decorative, mature ways to help your children discover being thankful for the month of Nov.

Well, every year, we as a family usually just write what we are thankful for on a leaf that I previously cut out and then we hang them from our fireplace. On Dec. 1 we usually take them down and then I keep them in a box to look at the next year. We put them in a jar and then read them the next Nov.

I always liked this idea until I realized I had to not only cut out leaves but then also hang string, cut string and tie up each leaf. It seemed really high maintenance to me all of a sudden.

This year I decided to cut out a tree with branches and then we can just tape up the leaves after we discuss what we want to thank God for that day. I am trying to find ways to streamline my life more each day and only do the important things, whether they be big or small.

Well, here is our tree.



As you can see it's not just a tree anymore. What I love about my kids is how much they LOVE arts and crafts. When we were preparing for the Thankful leaves again this year, the kids decided they wanted to help "create the scene". So while I cut out the trunk of the tree, the kids were busy cutting out the grass, the sun, the clouds and moon and stars. Every tree should have have these things around them right?



I would like to point out the absolutely perfect star at the top. Yea, that is my best work. The boys called it our wishing star because it was pefect. Maybe I should make a career out of this.


After we cut everything out, Little just ripped a bunch of paper and threw it all over the floor, but she was trying to be helpful, we went to work tapping everything up. This is also part of the project that I let the boys do. It was their idea, so they can put the stuff wherever they wanted. In the meantime, I read about five different verses on being thankful and this is the one they choose.



"So then just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, being rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith you were taught and overflowing with Thankfulness." Col. 2:6-7

They told me the reason they picked this verse was because,

"It says rooted and trees have roots!"
"It says faith is taught and you teach us!"
"We are being thankful and the verse to be thankful."
"We have Jesus in our hearts."

It was fun to have this moment with my kids. I LOVE beautiful and artsy and creative projects. Martha Stewart even.

But my kids got to make this make project with me. It wasn't me who took time to do it in the evening and then presented to them. We did it as a family and got the chance to talk about our faith and giving thanks to God in the midst of family fun.

So, it's not very pretty to the outside world, but its beautiful to me. Our Thankful tree.



(What I love the most is that on the second day, Big was thankful that all our friends in Haiti were safe after the earthquake. That reached down and grabbed my heart.)

Cheers to all of us learning to give God thanks in all situations, good and bad.

Living in extreme's

It's funny, this weekend revealed to me how much my life is lived in extremes.

I left a house partly under construction, toys and laundry and dishes brimming. My kids were loudly playing batman and the regular chaos was well underway. I arrived to a pristine upper class hotel that was quiet, clean, and WAY too quiet.

I have over 100 hundred questions hurled at me a minute in my house. My daughter trying to keep up, just keeps yelling, "Mama, mama, mama! Um.... Mama, mama, mama! Um...." I sat in the car in complete silence for five hours while I drove to WI. (OK, I drove in silence for awhile, but then had hours of listening to a book on CD without engaging with anyone. I talked to no one and no one needed me for FIVE HOURS!)

I can't get my kids to listen to a word I say it feels most days. At the event I went to this weekend, I had a kid come up to me and tell me he wrote down one of my quotes and it still hangs on his wall to help inspire him. Crazy right!?

I wear my sweats most days dreaming of a shower. I put on jewelery and took a half hour shower while away each day.

There are bars on most of the window's of the stores and apartment building's where I live. Boards grace people's window's, mattress lie around in the alley, and there is graffiti scattered throughout. I arrived downtown Appleton to this gorgeous hotel that I could never afford on my own. Most of the time I don't feel I belong in either place.

It felt like whip lash this weekend. Everything about my time away this weekend was different than my normal life, but speaking is part of my life.

Loud to quiet.
Unappreciated to overly praised.
Unseen to the center of the spotlight.
Scrubby to dolled up.
Craving peace and quiet to needing noise.
Feeling claustrophobic to feeling lonely.

I wish there was some way to find a balance to these extremes of my life, but in the meantime, I will just try to cherish each place I find myself, knowing that it won't be there for long and will change again soon.