Today.

It's still pitch dark outside, and my entire household sleeps.
This is exactly the way I like to start my days.

I am finding that as my children grow and as our days become busier (and louder), I am a much nicer and more patient Mommy if I can start the day at least an hour before the rest of them.

These few moments of silence center me and help me start the day out right.
The best days are when exercise, shower, and time with the Lord are all under my belt before the first hoolie lifts his head from the pillow.

The spirit is willing but the flesh is very weak, and many days this doesn't happen. But that's my goal anyway. It's always good to have goals, right?

Happy Monday.
It's a good day to slow and see the sacred.
Today is fresh, and the week is brand new.
And today is a good day for a post of simple randoms while I wait for my coffee to brew.

This here blog of mine is rather random in and of itself, now that I think about it. I don't really have a platform for anything, awareness I'm trying to create, or any audience in particular that I'm writing to...other than my three little boys, really. I know of maybe twelve people who may pop in and out of these posts here and there, but other than that, it's a pretty nebulous little spot over here where I'm writing down random tidbits to print off for my boys to have some day.

This is for them, really.

Their Mama's journey of life, love, and her pursuit of family, Jesus, and joy.
I want them to see that the random bit of nothings that I so often write about - are really what makes up all of our lives. It's all of the little things - the seemingly mundane and the ordinary - that makes up our own unique definition of family and how we lived out life over here in our little corner of the world.

I want them to see my heart, my struggles, and my love for them and for our story.
These pages are just a tiny, abbreviated nutshell of me, - they live with me, they know the whole - but they are still me nonetheless.

So, with that on my mind - these are the little things that I'm thinking about and loving on this day:

:: This cat. Oh my word. We are in love with him. He is curled up on my lap while I'm typing, and his little purr is one of my most favorite sounds in the entire world. Had he been a shelter kitten, I would have never even given him a second glance. He's long and scrawny and really not much to look at. But he is so perfect for our family. He's like a ragdoll little puppy. He lets all three of the boys lug him all over - even Ransom carries him under his arm like a football - and he's just happy to tag along and be a part of the family.

He also has this spaztic quality about him where out of the blue, he'll attack - but I find that kind of hilarious. He either spazzes or he sprawls. He's not normal, but neither are we. And thus, a perfect fit for our family.

:: Kev turned thirty-five last week, and to celebrate I surprised all of the boys with an overnight in the big city two hours away. It was SO much fun. We swam in the pool, the boys jumped on the beds, we watched tons of fun shows, and we just vegged as a family. The boys both made birthday banners for their daddy - each expressing their individual little personalities. One footloose and fancy free, and the other systematic and structured. Both were quite proud of their creations.

:: These boys. As of late I am finding them to be bottomless pits. I cannot keep them fed and full, and I'm finding this slightly overwhelming. I am also finding them to be exceptionally loud. And filthy. Sometimes, after they're in bed for the night, I find myself staring into space and wondering what that crazy noise is in my ears. And then I realize --- it's the silence. It's deafening!

They're messy, they're dirty, they're loud, and some days they make me crazy and I wonder if I'm going to lose my mind. But sometimes, I'm bossy, and I'm not patient, and I make them eat their squash, so I'm sure that I make them equally crazy, as well. We're stuck with each other - for better or for worse. And they know I love them with everything in me, and I know the same goes for them, as well. They are my life, and I embrace them - apple cores, filth, bedlam, over the top loudness, and all.

:: This man. We have a depth of friendship and love that I can't describe. He was scheduled for surgery this week, and at the very last minute, we bowed out and have decided to go an alternative route for healing with specific food and diet. We're not sure if this will even work, but we've decided to try all of our options before going under the knife. We're rebels like that. So, this will mean a pretty drastic life change for us. We would appreciate your prayers as we navigate this next chapter.

The night before he was scheduled to go into the hospital, we went on a hot date. Grampy and Grammy had the boys, so we decided to milk it for all that it was worth and have ourselves a night on the town since we were kidless. Being the rockin' date that I am, I decided to talk about what I would do should he not make it through the procedure. Have you ever had those conversations with your spouse? This was a basic surgery, but I wanted to know a few things, just in case...you know. I'm a good time like that. It was kind of a sobering conversation, which was interspersed with silliness and immaturity, but one that I won't forget, either.

If I ever did remarry, I pity the poor man already. Kev and I had a h-e-double-hockey-stick of a time during our dating years. They were rough, to put things delicately. We worked through some massive baggage from both of our pasts -- but we got through it. And by God's grace, I'm on this journey with my very best friend. I couldn't imagine walking it with anyone else, and the Lord knows I'd ruin the boys if they didn't have their father's presence in their lives. We have these conversations often - God and I.

Well, I guess on that happy note, I'm off to conquer the world. My middlest hoolie is awake and asking for a snack, and I hear my baby playing trucks in his crib. Time to crank out a new day.

"The work we do is only our love for Jesus in action." ~ Mother Teresa
May whatever we do today - be for Jesus. Wild and free.
******************
2021. Four boys sleeping - house quiet and still
2022. Smudge purring on my lap - keeping me company and making me warm.
2023. A new week - fresh start.
2024. coffee brewing.
2025. Blessed to be a blessing today.

Have the Funeral - Part II

"Unforgiveness is like drinking the poison and expecting the other person to die." - Dr. MacDonald.

Its literal term is "to cut."
And that's exactly what it does. It cuts our insides to shreds. It is its own whip.
It's like acid on our hearts.

Bitterness destroys everyone in its path, and it forever shatters relationships.
It is the decision to perpetually review the offense - over and over again.
Heavy, heavy stuff.

We are messy. We do stupid things. We hurt others, and we are deeply hurt.
But time heals nothing. The cancer remains, and the tumor grows if we do nothing.
If we wait for the offender to make the wrong right - we could be waiting forever.
And we never move on, until we choose to forgive.

Forgiveness is the process of releasing and beginning the healing.

It is NOT enabling - we don't have to help the offender do it again.
It does not require rescuing them from the consequences of their sin.
And it does not require risk or even trust again. We do not have to visit or hang out with the offender.

It is just this: they don't owe us, we don't try to get even, we're not focused on their failure. We're just trying to move past.

The crisis: Name the person. Name the pain.
I choose to forgive so and so for such and such.

And then the process:
Don't bring it up again. To the person. To your friends. Or to yourself.
This is the hard part - the taking into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ - and the retraining and renewal of the mind.

And when we mess up - which we will...we go back to the crisis.
"I choose to forgive so and so for such and such."

This is the Heavenly way.
The Biblical way.
The Kingdom way which makes no earthly sense.

But this is what sets us free.
Have the funeral.

Ephesians 4:31,32 - "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you."

Have the Funeral - Part I.

Kev and I have been listening to an amazing teaching series by Dr. James MacDonald.
It's called "Have the Funeral - God's Plan for Your Past."

It's a two part series where he compares forgiveness to funerals.
The first part is entitled "The Wake - Viewing Unforgiveness the Way God Does;"
and Part Two is called "The Burial - Making Forgiveness Final."

At funerals, there are two important things that we do.
We grieve and we leave.
There is a crisis and there is a process of grieving that takes place.

When we are injured - when we get wounded, there's the crisis.
The hurt, the pain, the broken dream, the loss, the "what will never be" crisis happens. And just like at a funeral, we need to view it, and we need to grieve it. What should have, could have, and would have been has got to be let go of if we are to ever move forward.

If healing is to ever take place - we must begin the process of forgiving - We must do an inventory of the injury and the wounding...and then we need to make a conscious choice to gather all that hurt up and have the funeral.

Sounds easy. Sounds like a simple two step process. Sounds like a "that's easy for you to say, but you have no idea what's happened to me in my life" kind of a story.

It's not.
But Jesus had much to say about forgiveness and it would behoove me to listen - Matthew 18; Mark 11:25; Luke 6:37; the Lord's Prayer...

The harsh reality of it all is that many people will never be able to repair the damage that they have done to us. They are not going to be able to fix the hurt that they have done - and sadly, they may never even care or seek to try. Some may have no idea the amount of pain that they have ever even caused.

"Don't expect the people who need to be forgiven to properly calculate what they owe."

So, the pastor's challenge to us is not to hold our death grips on the only verse in scripture that qualifies "IF the person repents...THEN I will forgive," but to read all of the many other verses that call for immediate, unilateral forgiveness - regardless of how the offender acts. The debt has to be paid - there was injury that has taken place.

But forgiveness releases that person from their debt. We absorb it. We cover it. We decide to release the person from the obligation that resulted from the injury.

Time does not heal all wounds. Only forgiveness does.

And forgiving people are FORGIVEN people.
If we forgive, we will be forgiven.
The Lord's prayer is prayed - "Forgive us - like we forgive others."
Pretty heavy when you think about it...
I will be forgiven the way that I forgive.

John 13:17 - "If you know these things...happy are you if you DO them."
Much easier said than done, though.
Knowing the right thing to do is only half the battle.

The fact of the matter is that if we profess to know and love Christ, then we need to become "professional forgivers." By this ALL men will know you are My disciples if you have LOVE for one another. Forgiveness is the litmus test of the love that we pretend to profess. Others are watching to see how we live out in relationship to others what we profess.

It's all banking on - can we extend the forgiveness that we say we have received?
Are we really different?
If we only need Christ's forgiveness for ourselves but can't extend it to others - how real is this Christianity that we profess?

Hard, messy, painful, reality....
Harsh truth to digest.

Jesus forgive us for trashing your Name - for muddying the waters for others to see.
More to come.....

Final Harvest.

My sweet neighbor, Lew, came over today and helped me take care of the remnants of my sad little garden and get it ready to be tucked in for winter.

With the help of my two littlest ones, we dug up the carrots, onions, and potatoes; removed the black plastic; pulled the corn stalks; picked cucumber and tomato plant remnants, and did a final rock picking to get ready for the rototiller.

The day was beautiful, the company was sweet, and it was nice to have one final time in the garden getting our hands dirty.

Bountifully blessed, we are indeed.

And now we dream of next year...

Weekends...

"We are merely moving shadows, and all our busy rushing ends in nothing." ~ Psalm 39:6

Weekends are for pausing the busy rushing.

Taking a break.

Stopping to breathe.

Time with family.

Time at home.

Stop the rushing.
Live the present.
"Wherever you are, be all there." ~ Elisabeth Elliott.

Fun in the County

I love going HOME to my roots.
My childhood was simple, and our fun was cheap.

We didn't have a t.v. for most of my growing up years, we were taught to use our imaginations to make up our own fun, and we learned rather quickly to never state that we were bored - because there was always a behemoth sized garden that either needed weeding or harvesting if one could never find anything to do.

Many of our family vacations were also spent here at the Quint Hunting Resort:

I assure you, there was no cable, no internet, no video games, and no texting on cell phones that ever took place here!

There WERE however, ginormous spiders in the outhouse, skunks that came up through the floorboards in the middle of the night while we were all in bed, some seriously scary bedtime stories accompanied by fathers and uncles who rigged booby traps in the middle of the night to terrify us, mattress rides through the mud, pond water for drinking, bonfires as big as the camp, and midnight spook walks where all of us kids were left alone in the woods to find our way back by ourselves.

My childhood was rich.
And it's the kind of childhood that I want to replicate for my own kids.
And besides - they're boys. They'll appreciate these sorts of things even more than I do....

So, anyway, we ALL love going up HOME.
And we all love the kind of good, clean, cheap "County" fun that takes place up there.

It involves:

:: Time away as a family. A break from life to play, reconnect, and just be. I especially love watching big Daddies with their little boys out in nature.

:: Playing in the leaves. Mom and Dad have a rockin' yard with tons of leaves for raking up and jumping into. I also really, really love the smell of the leaves on the ground. When I don't think about all that could be living under and around everything, I don't mind taking a running leap myself, once in awhile.

:: Grammies who celebrate each and every child and grandchild - complete with cake, decorations, and presents.

:: 4-wheeler rides. Every day. Sometimes more than once. Or twice. This is seriously, one of my most favorite things to do of all time. In the Fall, with the leaves changing, and all the boysies stoked about the possiblity of seeing a bird or a buck makes everything that much more fun and exciting. I just love every single thing about it...the trails, the conversation, being outside, not having to exert myself physically in any way, and every single one of my babies being lulled to sleep on one of these things.

:: Four-wheeling pit stops. On our day trips, we always park our Beverly Hillbilly contraption somewhere in the boondocks, and we have ourselves a little smorgasbord of funky deliciousness. Dad always has canned sardines or oysters, sharp cheese, crackers, and snacks of some sort; and Mom always packs treats, hotdogs for roasting, and all sorts of fun little snacks for everyone. Good times. And it is the ONLY time that I ever eat canned oysters and sardines. But somehow, it just seems like the right thing to do on these trips.

:: See that little itty bitty white building kind of in the middle of this pic? That's my sweet, little church where I was born and raised. There's something pretty special about taking my babies back to my roots where all of the older people in that building remember me when I was a baby.

:: Adventures with Mom. She and I always try to carve out a tiny little bit of alone time - just she and I - when we all go up North. On this particular trip, we kicked it for the afternoon for a winterberry quest to fill up all of her sap buckets and outside containers. Always a good time. The boots were pointless, as the best berries were at thigh level. Dad was gracious with the small ponds that I brought home inside his boots.

:: Little boys who live outside. The two go hand in hand.

:: And crazy times with Dad. Sometimes we catch and release...or catch and dispose of critters. Sometimes we go on nighttime moose calls. Sometimes we go on nighttime four-wheeling adventures to terrify Mom. And sometimes we go on hunting excursions where we're fairly certain that he is intentionally trying to get us lost. But no matter the adventure, it's crazy and it's always fun. And I especially love when certain aspects of my childhood are replicated for my own children to love and remember.

Yes, fun in the County.
There's nothing much like it.

Hunting...

...my way.

I grew up in a family of hunters who are all at various degrees of hardcore.

The men in my life absolutely love hunting season, and they are not impressed if someone decides to get married or if someone chooses to die on one of those four Saturdays in the fall that they could be out in the woods.

So, because of where I was raised and the family that I was raised into, I have taken Hunter's Safety, I'm a pretty good aim with a gun, I have helped cut up and package several deer, and nothing much makes me squeamish.

Even Mom has taken Hunter's Safety. I think it's a rule to be married to one of the Quint men...I'll have to check the rule book on that one. But, I'm not really sure how much she retained from her classes. We took them together, and the entire time, she was busy trying to feed everyone around her fistfuls of peanut M&Ms...

Anyway...

Although I love the meat, and although shooting a deer is one of the items on my bucket list of what I want to accomplish before I die, I've just never really gotten into the spirit of hunting because of one tiny little detail.

I really, really, really, really, really hate being cold.
That's like the world's worst torture for me.

But, a balmy October weekend, during the "almost peak of fall foliage," on a bunch of borrowed four-wheelers with my family? Now, that's my definition of the perfect hunting scenario.

We ride a little, we walk a little, we check our trail cams, we ride a little more, we snack a lot, and we ride and we ride and we ride.

Yep. I could really get into this.

Two.

My Ransom Malachi.

"God's messenger of Hope & Deliverance."

My longest labor.
My baby for whom I had to work the hardest.

My most contented newborn.
My strongest willed toddler.

My youngest.
My baby.

My truck loving, puppy toting, squishy faced, dimple cheeked, grumpy little boy joy.

You are two.
Amazing.

Happy birthday, my Love.

These Fall Days.

We woke up to a frost this morning. It begins.

The squash and the pumkins coming in at night, footy p.j.'s, flannel sheets, and cozy evenings by the fireside. The days are still weird - some are warm enough to still wear shorts - if you're active like my boys; but if the wind kicks up, we find ourselves back inside fishing for our hoodies.

We bought our house at this time of year two years ago, so when fall starts to creep back in, I find myself really nostalgic with memories. Hugely pregnant, racing against time for all of the paperwork to go through, all the while praying that everything would just work out, and my Mama thinking we were crazy doing all of this so close to my due date.

God was gracious. With the help of dear friends and family, on the afternoon of October 9, we moved in to our sweet little home. Before crashing for the night, my kitchen was set up, our bedroom was organized, and paint was chosen for the walls. Just before falling asleep, I looked over at Kev and said: "If the baby comes tonight, I am perfectly happy."

And he came the next morning!
Whew. Close one.
What gifts.

That first morning here, with my two big boys snuggled in close to us and my baby inside letting me know that it was time, I remember looking out my bedroom window and seeing trees and leaves and a beautiful lawn for my kids to play on. I remember the four of us all in bed together whispering excitedly so as not to wake Grampy and Grammy downstairs, about how excited we were that this place was "ours" and "look at the tree tops!" and "Can we go outside to play right now?"

It hasn't gotten old yet. I still love waking up and seeing the trees, having the boys run outside first thing in the morning to jump on the swingset, hearing my chickens when they lay their eggs, and having this room to stretch our legs.

(I also love friends who come for tea....)

Things to hold loosely, for sure.
But things to not take for granted, either.

So, this Fall season I love, anyway.
But this week in particular - I especially love.

Home and family. Two of my favorite things.

***************
1986. Fall days of sun and breeze.
1987. Remembering this week two years ago.
1988. Friends who come for visits.
1989. Little boys who run wild and free.
1990. HOME and family.
1991. Pumkins and Squash
1992. Stars and bittersweet.
1993. Footy p.j.'s and cozy fires.
1994. Extra blankets; more cups of tea and coffee.
1995. Sweet fall baby jackets and hoodies.
1996. A baby, who became a toddler, who will very very soon be two.
1997. Leaves turning red.
1998. Crocs replaced by wellies and warmer shoes.
1999. All things apple and pumkin.
2000. The little things of life.

While They Are Sleeping...

"Arise, cry out in the night, as the watches of night begin; pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to Him for the lives of your children." ~ Lamentations 2:19 (NIV)

My Mom bought me the sweetest little book entitled While They Are Sleeping written by Anne Arkins & Gary Harrell. It's essentially a little prayer guide that goes through twelve specific character traits that you pray about for your children.

This week it's kindness. I am praying specifically for:

~ Them loving not only with words but with actions and with truth. (1 John 3:16-18)
~ Sensitivity to see ways they can meet the needs of others.
~ Tender hearts toward others.
~ Gentle answers instead of harsh words. (Proverbs 15:1)
~ Help in not holding too tightly to their own possessions.
~ Help in treating others the way they would like to be treated. (Luke 6:31)
~ The ability to extend undeserved kindness.
~ Sensitivity to the Holy Spirit and ability to resolve conflicts in God honoring ways.
~ Selflessness, gratefulness, humility, and awareness.

"In the very truest sense, intercession is love on its knees." ~ Dick Eastman

Jesus, might I show my children Your love in the very truest sense.....

Happy Saturday!