Story of my Life

Wednesday morning we got crackin' right away so we could be done with school and ready to leave by noon. We went and drove a couple of vans, having narrowed our possibilities down to a Honda Odyssey or a Toyota Sienna. Last time I liked the Honda best, this time I liked the Toyota best. That means I no longer have a preference. :-) I've just been praying for God's will and for Him to give James the right answer--on whether to keep our current van, or trade it in for a longer lasting one. He was feeling more and more confident about upgrading, but the prices just weren't working out for us on Wednesday.

So we switched to houses. :-) We had a list of about 8 super cheap houses to drive by. The goal is to find the perfect setting, then fix up the hunk-o-junk sitting on it. No such luck, of course. I love this part of moving. It's so fun to look at houses and consider all of the possibilities, especially when you're in no great rush so there's no pressure. By the end of the day we had marked everything off the list except for one house, and it's a "probably not" like all the others we've seen so far. And we're cool with that. And we feel like we're learning more all the time about the areas we'd like to live in. And those we'd really NOT like to live in. :-)

We had VLB service that night and Brother Chris Parker had asked a few of us speak about a time or times in our lives when we've experienced fear. Dalton shared how he was scared when he put a fuse ear when he was younger and couldn't get it out. Sister Kristal shared several instances of God healing her and Brother Will, miraculously sparing their lives. And I shared about the fear I experienced a few years ago. The fears I have struggled with have always seemed to involve my kids. What if I died and wasn't around to teach them and train them to love God and The Church of God? Or what if they were taken away from me because we homeschool or something like that--and placed in a sinner's home where there would be no godly influences? The times when the devil has been able to trouble me with fear have always been fearing for my kids' souls if I couldn't be in their lives to help direct them. During those horribly miserable times (there is nothing more agonizing than living with fear in your heart--it is sooooo not of God!) I found victory in prayer, in confessing the fears, and in the Word of God. He reminded me of my favorite verse, Psalm 127:1, "Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." No matter how hard I try to raise them right, I can't save my kids' souls anyway. I do my best, but ultimately I have to trust GOD to build this house and keep watch over this city. And I remember so clearly when I had struggled for months with an awful fear and dread of the unknown and the thought of my children being taken away. One night in prayer God spoke to me so plainly just as He did to the disciples, "In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." I remember how the words just flooded my soul and washed every trace of fear away and the amazing peace and joy and freedom that I hadn't felt in so long--oh, it was wonderful!

After service we all waited for a very long time for the pastor/overseer conference to end (ha!), and then we went to Burger King with the Cox family. It was great. We so enjoy being with them and visiting. And the kids think Dalton and Madison are pretty great. Well... the boys think Dalton is great and Katie thinks Madison is great. I hope it stays that way. Ha!

Yesterday we worked on school and house stuff. I went down to the basement and dug through our boxes until I found a tablecloth. I had shortened the Powell's table by one leaf the day before. They have an amazingly long table and I love it, but I don't want the kids leaning on it way out at the ends and thought it would be safer if it was a little shorter. I also decided it would be safer to keep it covered at all times after our little mishap a couple of weeks ago. I'll explain sometime, but not until we've had a chance to talk to Sister Powell about it first! Ha! Anyway, now Sister Powell's dining room has a definite splash of color with my red, orange, yellow, green, brown tablecloth. Ha! Everything in her house is so neutral and subtil and soft. She's a classy lady. Seems like the longer we live here the more of my stuff I get out and mix in with hers. It's going to be a jumbled mess whenever we do move out--there's no way I'll find all of our stuff and there's a good chance I'll accidentally take some of hers, not remembering who's is who's! But the tablecloth, well, I'm pretty sure it would be hard to forget it was mine and not hers. ;-)

James was out running errands all day long yesterday... and came home with a new van! We are now the proud owners of a light blue '07 Honda Odyssey. It's a year older than our other van, but has lower mileage and (we're trusting!) will last much, much longer. It hadn't been here a whole 10 minutes before being christened with a Church flag sticker. :-)

Joe had a real hankerin' for his favorite dinner last night (tostada casserole) so I told him he could make it. Joe's not real good at thinking just yet (ha!) so I stuck around to help him out and give directions. He did great and the casserole turned out perfect. No left-overs from last night. They always scarf that meal down. Then, due to our gloriously cool weather, I had a sudden urge to make gingerbread. In May! How weird is that?! I had two jars of molasses in the cabinet and it was driving me nuts (don't know why--just seems like it's a one-jar item), so I made a very autumn-ish dessert. (And now I'm down to one jar of molasses and am very happy. Ha!) I used to wait to make certain food items until the proper time of year. The "proper" time of year isn't going to last nearly long enough for my taste here in Alabama, so I'm going to capitalize on any cool days we get, regardless of the date. :-) The gingerbread turned out GREAT, by the way. Especially when you warm it and put whipped cream on top. :-)

Today we had devotions and school, of course, then I grabbed a roll of paper towels, a rag, a sponge, a pitcher of soapy water, a flat blade, a screwdriver, Goo Gone, some spray cleaner, and some needle-nose pliers. Time to scrub up the new van and remove every trace of grime belonging to someone other than my own family. It's not like the van was nasty or anything--it's a nice vehicle--but it's amazing what all is left behind when "they" clean it, including a deeply hidden straw wrapper, a piece of a pretzel, and a half-melted crayon. I worked for an hour or more and now the van even smells nice and clean and new. ~Aaaaahhhhh~ I love that. Now is where we go through the "new vehicle" stage, not allowing the kids to eat or drink anything in it and fretting over putting miles on it. It's a miserable stage to go through when you get a new car, but it seems to last a much shorter length of time than it used to. It was horrible when we got our first van. I thought James wanted to put it in a glass box and just look at it, but never use it. Ha! This is by far the nicest van we've ever had so that might prolong the worrying-about-the-new-car stage a little bit, but I'm guessing we'll be comfortable in it within the month. ;-)

We came in and had lunch, then I got busy giving the downstairs bathroom a good scrubbing, baseboards and all. ~Aaaaahhhh~ I've had lots of cleaning satisfaction today. :-) In fact, I've decided to get the kids involved in my efforts to maintain a wood floor. So I threw some pizzas in the oven (been a while since we'd enjoyed a pizza party together!) and then gave everybody a job. Joe was the picker-upper, finding and putting away anything on the floor. I followed him with the vacuum cleaner. Sam followed me with the spray bottle of Mop~n~Glow, and Katie followed him mopping up everything he was spraying. It was great and we had the whole downstairs completely finished in 15 minutes. :-)

The kids enjoyed their pizza party and are now asleep. At least I hope they're asleep since we'll be leaving relatively early in the morning. Jeremy Wallace's grandmother passed away on Wednesday and we'll be going to the funeral tomorrow. I feel so bad for that family. They have been through sooooooo much in the past year, just one thing after another. If you think of it, please say a prayer for all of them. They could surely use some extra strength and comfort from the Lord about now.

That's about it for me. I need to make sure everybody has dress clothes ready to wear tomorrow (ah, yes--I got all of the laundry done today too! Yeah!), then I'm going to map some more houses to drive by. I really should've kept count from the beginning of how many we've checked out. We're gonna be settin' some records, I'm sure. :-) Like I said though, it's so much fun to look. Much better than actually moving in and getting to work. Ha!