Reflections on Dreams and Goals: February 2023

 

            It is the last day of February already, and we have had a jam-packed month! I wanted to share how I did with the goals I laid out at the beginning of the month.

ONE. Though this move could not be accused of being my best (aka prettiest) packing AT ALL, I did get the packing done, and a week ahead of schedule, at that! It was markedly harder to pack while working than it was to pack while having the free time I’ve enjoyed in previous moves, we got it done. I am thankful for how it all went, even if it wasn’t picture-perfect. I’m also thankful that the Lord provided an abundance of boxes so we could get everything packed for the move! I actually prayed for Him to multiply them in our garage so we would have enough. He must have because we did!

TWO. Another goal I had for this month was to work on a couple of personal writing projects. I didn’t get as much done on either one as I would have liked, but I feel like I have a fairly good excuse for that. I did work on both, though, and I celebrate that!

THREE. I have right around a month left before I speak at my first retreat for 2023. Even while I was preparing to move, I kept reading through my retreat sessions and feel good about where the preparation stands right now! I’ll have some finishing touches to tend to before retreat weekend, but I am thankful for how far along I am in the process right now. I’ve continued to learn from it as I prepare, which has been meaningful to me.

FOUR. You already read about it, but we did have a good and memorable Valentine’s Day! We cooked together at home (which we love doing) and exchanged gifts, too! And then we moved four days later. No biggie, right?

FIVE. We moved! You’ve read about it already, so I won’t belabor this point, but I will once again mention how grateful I am to have this behind us and the lake in front of us. It is as glorious as I thought it might be.

SIX. I completed a second week of online training in grant proposal writing. This one was far more intimidating than the first, because it was all about federal grants, and that is next-level in the world of grant proposals. I am grateful to have this second week of training behind me! (All my trainings were on Pacific time, and I’ve learned that trying to live a regular life in Eastern time while working in Pacific time is not a great fit for me.)

My goals this month were pretty all-consuming of my time, but I did squeeze in a handful of other things along the way!

·       *   I finished our tenth anniversary scrapbook, so now I am just stalking the sale page to see when I can order it.

·       *   I received a message from a friend asking about the potential of going to speak at her church for a women’s event later this year. That reminded me that in all the chaos of our changes in recent months, I’d done a very poor job updating my website with upcoming events and previous pictures. So I took an evening to get that a bit more current, and I feel much better about it now!

·       *    We hosted our friends for one final party in our Bluffton house before we move. I told Ryan later that I was proud of how far I’ve come in my hosting. To invite friends over to a partially packed and mostly undecorated house was a big step for me! To be able to put together a decent party in the middle of a move was a big step for me!

·       *   We went to see some of the kids from our church compete in a Bible quizzing meet. I was SO PROUD of them for how well they did, and it was fun to see them demonstrate all the knowledge of the Bible they have packed into their minds in the past months of study!

·       *   We managed to (mostly) keep up with our workouts and I kept up with reading (at least a little bit) every single day and stayed current with my Bible study, even with all the busyness! I finished reading Devotedly and started on my next book in my reading challenge. And a note about the workouts: we actually didn’t miss a single day until moving day. We decided to take off the week after we moved because we didn’t have any floor space in the house to work out. We got right back on track again starting yesterday.

Love at First Sight

 

            It’s been 26 weeks since we first stepped into this lake home of ours. It surprised even me when I counted that out just now. It’s come a long way in 26 weeks, and most of that is in great thanks to Ryan, who sacrificed hundreds of hours and an enormous amount of blood, sweat, and tears to transform it into the lovely place it is now.

            I am itching to show you proper transformation pictures, but we’re still working to finish unpacking, and we haven’t hung anything on the walls just yet. So it’s not ready for its “after” pictures today, because it's not looking as spiffy as it will in just a little bit. But I thought I might show you what we saw when we first walked through the house!

            We shake our heads and smile when we think about it now, because we remember melting into puddles of goo when we first saw the space. And then we changed just about everything and wondered why we were so smitten with what we saw!

            Enjoy the befores...and I would love to know any guesses you have about what we changed!

            This room has a whole long story behind it, but it ended up becoming our dining room! 

I hardly recognize this bathroom now! 

A bedroom!!

And another!

A kitchen with a gorgeous desk in the corner:

We saw a beautiful living room in this:

And ohhhhh...the transformation that has taken place here!

    

            Could you have done it? Could you have had a vision for this place? Can you guess anything we've done? I'm so very excited to put the finishing touches on it so I can show you how it has blossomed into a cozy home!

    

            By the way...this is what sealed it for us. Cosmetic changes take labor, but they're much more fixable than a view. This view was worth it all.

Sunday Sentiments: Gratitude Even in Grieving

 

I told you last Sunday that I would spend part of my afternoon watching a livestream of a funeral for the infant son of some friends of ours. It was during that funeral that Ryan told me he had just received a phone call that his cousin’s baby boy was also stillborn that very day. She was just a couple of weeks from her due date. How is it possible to learn about one baby boy’s death in the middle of a funeral for another one?

            We’ve been praying for Ryan’s cousins and the whole extended family all week long, and yesterday we drove to Indianapolis for the funeral.

            I sat on a couch to the side of the full room, listening to the minister’s words, but not really paying attention. My focus was on the tiny baby at the front of the room.

            I rested my chin in my hands and stared at the little blue cap over his head. I thought about the life he didn’t live in the way his family dreamed he would, and I thought about the life he’s living in Heaven instead.

            If you’ve been reading here long, you know this subject is tender to my heart since it touched our family 35 years ago this year. (How is it possible that it has been that long?) I remembered another funeral in another place, where another tiny baby stretched in the littlest casket, and I cried until I couldn’t breathe.

            Answers don’t exist for hurt like this. There are only questions and longings. I stood before a grieving family yesterday and told them I knew full well I couldn’t say anything of worth, because it all falls flat in light of grief.

            But even in the grief, my heart was grateful. Boaz was here – even for a brief moment. His life and story matter, just as my nephew’s life and story matter. I’m grateful I was able to see his face and sit with his parents in their goodbye.

            Our hearts are heavy, yet hopeful. Grateful for the hope of Heaven.  

Saturday Suggestions

 

Today was supposed to be our moving day. How grateful I am that we moved last week instead and are one week further into settling than we knew we would be!

It has been a wild week of unpacking, getting rid of things that no longer fit our life, figuring out how to best place everything, and asking over and over, “Have you seen….?”

So while we continue to navigate the piles over here, I invite you to take a look at some of these fun things I found!

ONE.

Last Sunday I wrote about remembering those we loved who have passed away. We’ve lost another from our family this week. He was just a baby, and it is heartbreaking - as all losses are. We all remember our loved ones in different ways, and I’m always looking for meaningful opportunities to actively remember those I love. I found some great ideas in this article. (I didn’t love ALL of them, but the majority were great, I thought.) If you have said goodbye to a loved one and want to remember his or her life, maybe you’ll find an idea here!

TWO. 

Perhaps I’ve shared this link before, but since I wrote about our travel dreams this week, I thought I’d share it today! This is my inspirationfor the trips I’d love for us to take someday. It’s a 3-to-4-year plan for us. Oh what fun things we can see along the way! (If you had to pick just one of these routes, what would you pick? I haven’t been able to narrow it down to ONE.)

THREE. 

When Ryan and I found our lake home, we didn’t talk about it too much for quite a while. We found that if we tried, people seemed stuck on the fact that we were moving again so quickly. But one day I dared to share our news with one of our former teachers. She said, “Oh, I think it’s wonderful! How many people would have driven by and said, ‘Maybe someday?’ and you chose to make it happen now!” I loved her perspective and permission. While Ryan and I desperately want to make sure the dreams we chase align with what God wants us to do with our lives, we also believe that too many of us miss out on good things in life because we are afraid to dream with God. The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson is a book I read years ago that helped me learn how to pray specifically over my dreams. The book isn’t new, but I appreciated its message!

FOUR. 

I do wish I would have found this article before we moved! We did use a number of these tips and hacks, but there are several more I absolutely would have used if I’d known them. Shrink wrap for the win on this move. It saved us SO MUCH TIME and SO MANY BOXES!

FIVE. 

I told you earlier this week that both of us are weeding out clothes so we can fit into the reach-in closet we now share. I know sometimes it can be hard to know what to get rid of when you’re trying to downsize your wardrobe. Here’s a guide if you need some ideas! I also wanted to weed out enough that I’d have some room left to add things in later. I want to get a few things I don’t own now!

SIX. 

Learning to be creative with small amounts of space has been a fun classroom for me over the past couple of years. I mentioned yesterday that I learn a lot from the ApartmentTherapy website, and here is an example of a home tour that offers a lot of joy and creativity with a fairly small footprint! (Our house isn't even close to this small, but I still love what they did with the space!

Have a great Saturday, friends!

Celebrating Purposeful Spaces

 

            When we lived at WillowBridge, our support couple had a very small apartment within the building so they could have a home-away-from-home when they covered for our days off. While I don’t know the square footage of the apartment, it was a true tiny home. It had a large-ish living space, a full bath, and one bedroom with a closet that you could technically walk in, but it wasn’t a true “walk-in” closet.

            The apartment was cute as a button but did, admittedly, present challenges to both couples we worked with in our time there. It was hard to figure out how to make such a small space truly feel like home.

            That was when I first found and became fascinated by the Apartment Therapy website. It has tons of ideas for making really small spaces function on the regular. (Most apartments featured on the site are in large cities and can sometimes be as small as 200-300 square feet. It regularly blew my mind and challenged me to learn the art of making every single space work as hard as it can to serve a purpose.

            I’ve also learned that living in regular-to-larger spaces hampers the ability to succeed at this endeavor. If you don’t have to make a space work hard, you probably won’t. But when working with a smaller space, creative juices start to flow – sometimes out of sheer desperation.

            When we moved here to the lake, I knew our bedroom would be a big challenge. It’s not super tiny, but it’s one of the smaller rooms we’ve lived in. And the part that would create the biggest challenge? Storing our clothes.

            We left a decent-sized walk-in closet for a shared reach-in closet. In order to help our efforts, we did purchase a storage system that gave us a little more to work with than a single shelf and long pole – which is what it had when we arrived.

            We do have a dresser that used to belong to my grandma, and we do keep it on our room. But it was crafted before the days of tracks on drawers, so opening and closing those drawers is a muscle-wielding, screech-producing experience that no one wants to do early in the morning or late at night. We decided to continue using those drawers to store things we don’t need to access all that often.

            Our bed has shelf storage in the headboard and drawers in the footboard. And our side tables have 8 small baskets each that have served both of us primarily as endless junk drawers for the years we’ve owned them.

            My goal when we came here was to pare down the amount of clothing I own, and make all of it fit with room to spare.

            It was a tall order, but I was determined!

            I worked for two evenings to weed out clothing I never wear (or shouldn’t wear) and nearly cried with delight when I saw how much space was left for Ryan’s clothing. And the thing that made me the happiest was knowing that every single one of those bedside table drawers now hold something useful. Not one junk drawer remains.

            I learned this week – for the first time – that there is intense joy to be found in owning less and creating purpose in the spaces you have. I think it might become one of the biggest lessons I learn from this different-sized space. I’m eager to see how it goes as we settle our other spaces. What things feel sweeter because they’re lighter and more purposeful?

            I used to tell my dad before he preached his sermons, “Remember. Less is more.” Now I’m learning it for myself.

Stories We'll Laugh About Someday...

 

There are two things I’m profoundly grateful for when it storms.

The first is that somehow, in the grand scheme of random pet choices, we landed two pets who are completely unimpressed by storms. They don’t cry. They don’t whine. They don’t whimper. They seem a bit bored by them, truthfully.

            The second is that both of them use litter boxes, so rainy days don’t mean muddy paws and wet fur smells.

            We awakened to Matlock-like storms yesterday (if you watch the show, you get it), and I stretched out in bed thinking how grateful I was about those two things.

            Therein ended my feelings of goodwill toward yesterday.

            Ryan and I got up and ready – and I had to wear a workout shirt for my day of real work, because we still don’t have the clothing thing figured out yet, and a workout shirt was what I could find.

            “Figuring out the clothing thing” means that we both have to sort through our existing wardrobes and pare down significantly. In comparison to others on the planet, I really don’t feel like we have a lot of clothes, but we have more to put in the closet than the closet space can hold. We are going from a normal-sized walk-in closet to a shared reach-in closet. Things will have to go.

            A couple of nights ago, I went through the hanging clothes and cut out almost half of what I own. I probably should go through it one more time – and I have other stacks to purge as well. Once we do that, we can stock the closet and the drawers, and we hope everything will be much easier to navigate.

            After we were ready for the day, a gentleman came to do an installation for us. Moving always means installing new things, so we’re in the week of such visitors gracing our home. He talked to us for a long time, and during a lull, Ryan walked into our bedroom.

            He called out to me, “Can you bring me some pots?”

            WHAT?!

            Turns out all that rain brought about a leak in the roof. You know…the roof the inspector said was in great shape?

            We actually knew it wasn’t – but not until after we purchased the house. We were over here working one day last fall during a terrible windstorm. We found shingles flying off, and when Ryan went up to see what he could do, he said the roof was definitely in need of a replacement. Soon…but we didn’t know it would be this soon.

            I tried and failed to have kind thoughts toward the inspector as all my cooking pots migrated to the bedroom.

            Ryan went to the garage to get our tarp to place it over the offending area, but we’ve owned it so long and used it so much, it’s full of holes – like the roof, I guess.

            He went to the hardware store and found a new, affordable tarp, so now we’re “those people” on the lake. The ones with bricks holding down a tarp. Hello there, new neighbors!!

            It was during a conversation between the installation man and Ryan (who was strategically placing the pots) that I heard our zip code mentioned and realized immediately that the 200-some address update announcements I sent out yesterday most definitely had the wrong zip code. When you have to learn four zip codes in as many years, you’re bound to mess one up. What a time I picked to do so!

            So there, I sat, huddled in the corner to work, watching rain fall into the lake, listening to fans whir in the bedroom, and thinking about zip codes.

            But for all the madness that fell into one solid hour of a day, we did have some blessings.

·     *   Ryan was home to contend with the leak. (As if I have a clue about leaking roofs!)

·     *  The hardware store had a tarp in our price range and in stock.

·     *  We found the leak before it ruined anything we owned.

·     *  It didn’t leak during any of the four months we were not living here to find it in time.

·     *  I didn’t print and mail 200-some incorrect address updates.

·     *  Our pets don’t hate storms.

And thus, we have come full-circle.

Movin' Right Along

 

Contrary to the way it may appear, we actually don’t love moving regularly. This one, especially, was a surprise. We never imagined finding this place at all, and we definitely never imagined the time frame of this move. But it has happened, and we’re grateful for all it represents. And the move itself was a rapid-fire blessing.

            Our original plans were to move throughout the week this week (as in right now). Ryan has this week off work, so he planned to drive tiny truckloads back and forth throughout the week, and then we hoped that this coming weekend, we could round up some help to finish moving the big stuff.

            But we saw that the weather for this past Saturday was supposed to be as ideal as February gets in Indiana. Sunny, no precipitation, and while not WARM, not bitterly cold, either. We hated to risk waiting, in case the planned weekend turned out to be a weather fail. Plus, if we moved earlier, Ryan could use his time off to finish cleaning/repairing the house we left and settling in here at the new house, too. It felt like a better use of time all the way around.

            And so it was that two weeks before our planned move, we moved UP the move date by a week. (That feels like a tongue twister.) We rushed to finish packing, and I took a day off work last Friday to do the last packing push. Ryan came home and helped, and by midnight, when we fell on the couch to sleep (because the bed was in the garage), I couldn’t fall asleep because my feet and legs ached from all the standing and box-carrying.

            We were up early Saturday morning to get ready and await our helpers. When we moved out of WillowBridge, our former coworker, Tim, came one Saturday for a few hours to help Ryan move the big things I absolutely could not help with, thanks to my lack of upper body strength. Other than that, we moved everything entirely on our own. Just the two of us. Every box. Every other piece of furniture – all of it. We loaded it and unloaded it ourselves. It took days to transport it all, and we were exhausted by the end of it.

            This time, we had TWELVE PEOPLE come over to help load and unload. I had tears in my eyes from the gratitude of it all. They came with pickup trucks and trailers (enclosed and open) and in an hour and fifteen minutes, they had everything carted out of the garage and house and secured in trailers. (We had carried everything we could to the garage, trying to be as prepared as possible.) We provided donuts, snacks, coffee, and water, and they stayed energized enough to load!

            We drove to the lake and they started unloading. Some had to leave sooner than others, so unloading took a little longer, but we got it done before dinner! Our friend Julie stayed with me to help unload boxes of kitchen things into cabinets, and Jonathan went with Ryan to help swap out some appliances with the previous house. My mom provided pizza for everyone for lunch, and we kept snacking on it throughout the afternoon.

            For Lexi’s mental and physical safety, we boarded her for the weekend. I did not want to risk her escaping through any one of a dozen doors propped open throughout the move, and I knew the whole idea of so many people and boxes and pieces of furniture milling about overwhelmed her. When we arrived to drop her off, her trainer walked through, and Lexi lost her mind with joy. She was so excited to see her and ran right to her. (She did give me an obligatory hug goodbye, but mostly she was excited to see Mackenzie and go visit whatever friends were behind the door.)

            One of the families that came to help us move brought their preteen daughter, and she fell in absolute love with Braeya. The Two of them played in a bedroom throughout the move, and Braeya was thrilled.

            Speaking of Braeya, she transitioned beautifully to the new house. She has explored it at length, loves it, and has made her little nest on our bed, which is where she spends most of her time anymore. She was able to be here before we brought Lexi back home, so that helped give her some quietness in which to explore and acclimate.

            Lexi came home a day later and spent the first hour being a hound dog on a mission, sniffing every square inch of floor space. She’s currently sacked out in her bed beside my desk. Exploration is exhausting work. We know it will take her some time to figure it all out, but we think she will adore lake livin’.

            “Movin’ right along” has now moved into “unpacking for days,” so if you need us, that’s where we’ll be. It’s kind of like Christmas, truthfully. We’re finding all kinds of treasures we forgot we owned!

The Dream Came True

 

Late last December, I told you about a storyline God was writing for us that shocked both of us when it began to come to pass. Throughout our entire marriage, we have dreamed of living on the water, but I confess my own faith was so small that I never imagined it would become a reality.

            I remember when I was still working at WBCL, and Ryan and I were trying to find work for him so we could move to Fort Wayne, we found a house we loved, and it was on a pond. We prayed so fervently for God to open that door, and for reasons we will never know, He did not open it. But in the course of those prayers, I remember asking Him to let us have a water view. I even told him a drainage ditch would work!

            (That dream came true at WillowBridge, but the water was so low in the ditch, it was hard to see.)

            Living on an actual lake seemed out of reach for us and were it not for a little fishing lake in a tiny town, it would still be financially out of reach for us. Lake properties in Indiana are outside our budget. But this one was a sweet little gift we are so happy we stumbled upon.

(Photo from the day we first saw the house.)

            And now we’re here.

            I have so many stories, and eventually some before and after pictures to share. Right now, we have pockets of space that are livable and pockets that are a disaster. We both find it difficult to feel settled until everything has found a home, so we really are working hard to get everything put away, but we also want to recognize that it doesn’t have to be done in a day – or so we tell ourselves.

            Sunday evening, we sat down on the couch (which we put together for the express purpose of being able to rest) and looked out over the water. Feet up, blankets on, water rippling with the tiniest whitecaps, we breathed for the first time in several days. We dared not look behind us or to the side, where boxes sat in piles, but if we just looked straight ahead, we saw nothing but beauty. I’m sure there is a spiritual lesson buried in there, but I’ll allow you to draw your own conclusion on that.

            To wake up in the morning and see the sunrise over the water…to see it slide down over the other end of the lake at night…this is a gift.

(Photo from last night.)

            I have been working to figure out the best way to share the stories of the move with you, and I’m not entirely sure how to approach it. The after pictures are indeed going to take a little time, but I’ll try to send along some stories for the meantime.

But while I figure out all of that, I just want to say I’m so profoundly grateful for the way it has all come about. I’m grateful we found the place at all. I’m grateful we were able to afford it. I’m grateful we were able to renovate it to make it our own. I’m grateful we were able to move early. I’m grateful for this view out my desk-space window. So much gratitude.

            Dreams really do come true! 

Travel Dreams: Means of Travel

 

            Last month I shared with you about the lure of the world cruise and how it has (so far) given me the only deep desire for world travel that I’ve ever had. My heart is still largely drawn to this country in which I live and all the many rich things it has to offer from sea to sea and border to border.

            We have absolutely no clue what God has ahead for us. Perhaps we will settle in at the lake and stay there always, except for small trips close to home. But perhaps we will get to see some of our travel dreams come true in miraculous ways. (And for some of them to come true, it would indeed take a miracle.)

            One of the things I declared during 2022 was that I would devote time in the months to come to designing trips I hope we can take someday. In the traveling we have done, small though it may be, I have recognized multiple times that planning way in advance always turns out to be a blessing. I plan early and nearly roll my eyes at the ridiculousness of the early preparation, and then something happens, and I realize if I hadn’t done it then, I would have run out of time to do it at all.

            So I shall use my time here and now to plan for someday. If the trips come to fruition, it will be a blessing to be ready. If they don’t, I will have learned more about our country and its offerings and landscapes just from preparing, and time spent learning is never wasted.

            One of the things I have spent a decent amount of time researching is the best type of travel vehicle for our someday travels. Our dreams would take us on multi-week trips, so having a true home-away-from-home matters profoundly to us. We’ve learned much from our travels in Abby over the last few months, and here is what I’ve determined would work best for us. (I reserve the right to change my mind if I find better options!)

·         If we are going to travel across the country, we most certainly want to take an RV. Having the ability to safely transport our own food and use our own bathroom at any moment matters greatly to us. Being able to travel without packing and unpacking a suitcase every night matters to us. Having a place that is consistent in a season of daily change matters to us.

·         I’ve done endless hours of research on different sizes of RVs, campers, and truck campers. I’ve concluded that for us and for the type of travel we hope to do, driving a small RV (about the size of Abby) is the perfect fit. Large RVs are tempting for having extra space to call home, but the cost of the rig and fuel don’t work for us, and some of the places we have high on our list don’t accommodate huge vehicles. Pulling a camper would work (and would give us a vehicle to drive around without uprooting the camper) but some of our destinations involve tight curves on roads – and towed campers wouldn’t work out well. Some of the newer truck campers are pretty fancy and bigger than you might think, but I fear they wouldn’t be large enough for longer trips. (At least for us.)

·         The biggest downside in Abby is the wet bath. It works fine for the kind of camping we do with her, but a long-term trip with a wet bath isn’t our dream come true. So finding a small RV with a shower separate from the rest of the bath is paramount.

·         Having storage to take things we might need over a longer haul is also important – and can be hard to find in a smaller RV.

·         Having space for Lexi (because we hope this happens in her lifetime!) is very important.

Currently, my favorite find for an RV that would work for our travel dreams is the Coachmen Cross Trail. Have you ever seen one? Let me tell you what I love about it.

·         The ones I love most are considered a Class C RV, but they’re small – about the same size as Abby.  

·         They have a dinette booth inside, which is something Ryan really loves. (Abby has a table that has to be put up and taken down each time, and he has mentioned he hopes in a future RV, we can have a permanent table.)

·         It has a shower that is separate from the rest of the bathroom and doesn’t look unbearably small!

·         My favorite part is that the bed is in the back, and it raises and lowers to be as tall or short as you like. If you raise it up high, all the area underneath it is a garage for storage. It can be accessed from the inside or the outside, making it a perfect way to arrange Lexi’s bed and also other things we would need to carry for the long haul!

·         The only drawbacks I can see from my research are: no slides (which Abby doesn’t have either, but it does make it nice if you’re living in it for a long stretch…gives you a little more room) and a smaller refrigerator/freezer. But if you’re on the go every day, stopping to stock up isn’t as difficult as if you’re out in the middle of nowhere for a long time!

By the time we get to our travel dreams, this RV might be completely out of date, and we’ll need to start over. But if we were to leave today, this would be our pick, I think! Cute as a button and full of everything we’d need!

Sunday Sentiments: Remembering

 

This week has been one of great emotion for me. We have some stories going on that I haven’t had a chance to tell you about yet, but they involve endings and goodbyes. Even when those are good things because of the beginnings and hellos they allow, they’re still hard. Goodbyes are bittersweet.

            We’re in the middle of some other big decisions that may mean more goodbyes, and sometimes I can’t even think about what that would look like in our everyday.

            We moved…and we did it a week early. The push to get packed ahead of schedule – while working – and moved into this place we’ve dreamed of for months was a gift shrouded in a goodbye.

            But beyond these petty-in-the-light-of-eternity goodbyes, this week was filled with other sorts of remembrances that were far more weighty and impactful.

            This week marked two years since Allen died unexpectedly. I sat at our dining room table (converted to my desk after we took apart the actual desk) Thursday morning and remembered that day two years ago.

            I remember how tired we were when we finally fell in bed that night and how the phone rang just as we were drifting off to sleep. I remember knowing – as soon as Ryan answered – that someone had died, but I couldn’t figure out who it might be. Allen wasn’t even on my mental list. I remember Ryan’s look of shock as he stared into our dark bedroom and whispered, “Rod said he thinks Allen died of a heart attack.”

            I remember the second call a few minutes later to confirm. I remember pacing our apartment, unsure of what to do or who to call. Who can you call at that hour? I called my mom. (I told her I was sorry to wake her, but it went with the mom territory. You lose your sleeping privileges when you have children, I’ve been told.) I remember Ryan calling his uncle – because he didn’t know who to call either.

            I remember Ryan going out early the next morning to run the snowblower at WillowBridge. He couldn’t just sit anymore. We’d been up all night, crying, praying, staring.

            In some ways, that long-and-short-all-at-once night seems years ago and in other ways, it seems that it can’t possibly be two whole years ago.

            And even as I was remembering Allen, I received a message from the mom of our neighbors when we lived in Marion. She wanted me to know they lost their sweet baby boy to stillbirth this week. They knew he was unlikely to live outside the womb, but they hoped anyway. This is the second baby boy they’ve lost to stillbirth, and it utterly breaks my heart.

            So this afternoon, while surrounded by boxes that need unpacked but don’t really matter in this moment, I’ll be on our couch, watching little Benjamin’s memorial service and remembering the deep grief that comes with losing a child. Remembering my little nephew, Kirk. Remembering my bonus niece, Carol. Remembering Ryan’s little niece, Kaitlynn – even though I wasn’t part of the family when they said hello and goodbye to her, all in one breath.

            Remembering is hard, but it’s necessary. It’s what shapes us. The moments can be hard to relive, but we are who we are because we lived them in the first place.

            So today, I shall remember. I’ll remember the blessings that have come from the seasons we’ve said goodbye to this week. I’ll remember the impact of lives, long and short. I’ll remember with joy and with tears. I’ll remember with love.

Saturday Suggestions

 

Good morning, friends! Happy Saturday to you!! We are excited for this day, because for the most part, it is our moving day! We are thrilled to be able to take this next step in what has become a multi-month project. So while we’re exercising all the moving muscles, I hope you can enjoy reading from the comfort of your chair!

Today’s finds are a random smattering of things I’ve come upon this week, and I want to share them with you!

ONE. 

Last Sunday night, we hosted some friends for the big game, and I made this dessert dip that went over very well with everyone! It tastes a lot like cookie dough, and you can dip in it whatever you want. We used animal crackers, but you could use any kind of cookie or pretzel – or just a spoon! If football isn’t your thing, you could easily shape the dip into something else and use another color of sprinkles to accomplish the look! (Bonus: It was very easy to make and took very little time. So even if you’re not one who loves kitchen projects, this would come together quickly for you!)

TWO. 

I might be standing totally alone as the one person in the country not utterly wowed by the National Anthem performance last Sunday night. I appreciated that it was on key, but I wasn’t moved to tears (as I nearly always am by that song) so I must be broken somehow. But the next day I saw this video of the sign language version of the song, and it moved me. So poetic!

THREE. 

Earlier this week, I told you about the book I’m reading right now, called Devotedly. I mentioned that it has stirred in me a desire to read more of Elisabeth Elliot’s books! I’ve read (multiple times) and loved Passion and Purity. I have The Journals of Jim Elliot that I need to finish reading. And I’m pretty sure I read A Chance to Die back in college. It’s the story of Amy Carmichael, a missionary that Jim and Elisabeth admired and wanted to emulate. But there are many more books to read, and I found a list of themhere!

FOUR. 

To share a sports-related post is an unusual choice for me, and I acknowledge that! I read this article this week after seeing it shared on Facebook, and I wanted to share it with you for a specific reason. The article is about a high school student (in our home area) who just became the leading basketball scorer in his school’s history. His parents were in college with me and I worked with his grandma, so even though I don’t know him personally, I was interested in his story. What impressed and motivated me as I read was his drive to pursue his goals. You hear a lot about teens and young adults who are content to live on the lazy side, but this proves there are still driven young adults out there in this world. And perhaps I could stand to learn a bit from that kind of drive, too!

FIVE. 

With the increase in the price of…everything…Ryan and I have gotten away from our former practice of always having a pitcher of fresh flowers on the table. We started that little treat back in Kokomo and continued it throughout our time in Grabill, but right about the time we moved away from WillowBridge, prices were skyrocketing, and that was something we cut out. I’ve been trying to build a nice collection of faux flowers to use in random spots around the house to add color and such. It’s a much more cost-effective way to enjoy flowers when you don’t grow your own! I found this article just this week that gives great tips on choosing and arranging faux flowers so they look more realistic. She shares some great ideas – including IRONING them. I didn’t even know that was an option!! As we unpack and settle, I’ll be taking these tidbits into consideration!

SIX. 

I’m sure I’ve shared this Youtube clip somewhere along the way in my blogging career, but I’m sharing it again today. I wrote a few days ago about the hymn The Longer I Serve Him, and this little rendition is my favorite one of that song. It’s not the most polished, but the heart and trust behind it makes it the best, in my opinion.