A LampPost Flickering

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 di...

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.

...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 pastor...

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 ch...

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...