A Gallon of Milk

I've been feeling READY to have this baby.  Well, I mean physically ready.  I can't say that my house or our baby stuff has been prepared but every night I go to bed praying, "Oh Lord, let him come tonight!"  It's been getting harder to wait as my little man is taking up every extra inch of space in my belly and then some!  But this week I was at the grocery store and the Lord put the waiting in perspective for me. 

I pulled out a gallon of 2% milk.  (And I could write a whole post on why I love American milk-you don't know how good it is until you try to drink dairy in non-dairy drinking countries like China)  Anyway, back to my ridiculously priced American milk...I pulled it out and noticed the date on it...August 8th.  It hit me that BY THE TIME THIS MILK EXPIRES I WILL MOST LIKELY BE HOLDING MY LITTLE MAN!!!  And how fast that seems to me.  I mean, a gallon of milk expires in NO TIME.  Somehow that comforted me...I'm pretty sure his rent contract will expire before my milk does...so the waiting now seems more doable! 

Actually last night I was up for a couple hours with contractions and was thinking we were making progress.  Emma Grace got up and was too excited to go back to bed, so she joined the festivities.  We washed our first load of baby clothes.  Yep, I waited til I thought I was in labor to do that.  AWESOME EA.  We packed bags.  We cleaned the house and we prayed.  I was actually really grateful to have her up with us.  It was fun to include her on what we thought would be an eventful night.  I remember Andy and I having a really good time of prayer right before I went into labor with Jack, so I thought it was neat to have EG join in with us this time...we had a good time but by 5 am the contractions had stopped and we headed back to bed. 

When I woke up this morning at 7:30 I was delighted to find that a cleaning fairy had visited my house last night and cleaned my whole house and gotten my stuff ready for the hospital! It was nice to wake up to a clean house for once.  Wish she could come more often.  

Now we really are ready...just need to drink a few more glasses of milk and get this show on the road! 

A work in progress

 All I can say about buying a foreclosure is "man man lai ba"...a great Chinese phrase that means take it slowly.  That's just the way it has to be when you purchase a piece of property that looks like a jungle and you have two monkeys living in your house that you have to take care of.  (soon to be three!)  A year into our house, and we are so close to being finished with the inside!  A few doors and some trim to paint and we we'll be done!The outside is a different story.  We're really just beginning! 

We now own things like loppers and chain saws and every one has their own pair of work gloves.

 (thanks to Patt and Paul for the gloves!-our kids love them-though Jack thought they were for changing poopy diapers since his preschool teacher wears blue gloves to change diapers in his class! hehe.  Maybe I will tell them they are and let him be my diaper changer once J gets here!) 

Anyway, back to the yard.  Many Saturday mornings, Andy and I (along with our monkeys) take another step at getting our yard in shape.  We hack and cut and pile and rake.  Eventually we'll plant grass and some other non-jungle looking plants!  But that might be a year or two out.  For now,. we're just trying to get all the over growth cleared.  Andy really enjoys the work and I enjoy seeing it start to take shape. 

ABIDE IN MY LOVE

There was a mirror I really wanted from Target.  It caught my eye a while back and I thought it would look perfect by our front door. But I just couldn't spend $24.95 on it, at least not at this junction in life when the expenses of settling into a new house and a new life in America continue to roll in.  Seriously, relocating is incredibly expensive.  And we are so blessed.  So abundantly blessed.  We have everything we need and much much MORE!   But anyway, back to the mirror.  I really liked it, but it just wasn't in our budget. So I passed it by.  Here's where the Lord gave me another object lesson....


You see, I  often function like an adopted orphan who can't receive love.   Have you ever seen a child who is incredibly loved but seems unable to receive that love? A child who thinks they are unloved is restless and insecure and often hurts others. I have been a lot like that.  For some reason, my heart has been hard both to God's love and to others as well.   There's a striving in me, that wants to earn love and can't just rest in the love already given to me.  I often pray, "God make me able to receive your love, and Andy's love and my parents' love for me."  Our hearts are bottomless when it comes to love and only the love of our Father can truly satisfy those parts of us.  It's the part that says, "Am I really significant?"  The answer is yes, because God has set his love upon us in Christ.  As my children's story book bible says, it's a "never stopping, never giving up, unbreakable, always and forever love."  And when we really taste this kind of love we are changed at the core.  This love brings joy and freedom and  rest and makes you want to run like a child into the arms of your Father.  But for some reason, like an adopted child, my heart at times is hard to this love.  In the last couple of years, this love has finally been able to reach me...I've tasted deeply of this love but so often I find myself back to functioning like an orphan.  I keep looking for something other than God's love to fill those places.  And I keep striving, working, working make myself feel lovable.  Because of Christ, I am not an orphan.  I have been adopted.  But I often live like one, forgetting that I have a Father who loves me lavishly.  

In light of this, I think one of the main things God has been calling me to spend my energy on recently is to ABIDE in HIS LOVE.  Not to do more, but to abide.  I like to think of it has hiding or basking in his love or just crawling into his lap and sitting there.  One of my prayers recently has been, "God, I know you love me.  It's true.  Help me to abide in your love."  That's what Jesus tells us to do. "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.  Abide in my love."  So I've been trying to abide in his love.  I memorize and meditate on scriptures about his heart for me. I find myself drawn back to the same passages of scripture that tell me of his love for me. (Psalm 103!!)  When I am soaring high with accomplishments for the day, I try to remind myself God does not love me more for these things.  When I am feeling low with failures of the day, I preach preach preach to myself that his love is set on me, no matter what I do or don't do.  And ultimately, it's the work of the Holy Spirit to help me abide in his love.  To help me receive it.   Like God promises in Zephaniah, He is "quieting me with his love".  A well loved child is secure and rests, there is no striving...their heart has been quieted.  God's spirit is at work quieting my heart. .  

That's where the mirror comes in.  You see, my relationship with my family is often a reflection of my relationship with God.  As my heart has often been hard to his love, it's the same with theirs.  So I have been trying to "think more" on the ways in which they  show love for me as well.  Trying to abide in their love.  It's a small earthly picture of the process I am going through with Jesus. 

Around the time this desire to abide in his love started to form in my heart, I saw that mirror I mentioned.  And also around the same time, my mom unexpectedly sent me a check for....you guessed it....25 dollars.  I knew almost immediately that I wanted to buy the mirror that cost 24.95.  And then it hit me.  The mirror I wanted to buy was in the shape of a sunshine. And my mom has always called me her sunshine.  ALWAYS.  So I knew that buying the mirror would me a reminder of her love for me.  First of all, a reminder that she generously gave me money to buy something for myself...A very real reminder of her heart for me.  She loves me "this much"...that she would generously give of her own money to bless me.  And the fact that the mirror was in the shape of a sunshine is a constant reminder of her view of me.  She delights in me, and I bring joy and brightness into her life.  So it's a reminder of both her heart for me and her view of me.  A tangible, hanging on the wall, every day reminder of her love for me.  Buying that mirror was my way of abiding in her love. 

And God wants me to do the same with him.  He wants me to plaster his love all over my life so that I am reminded day in and day out of his never stopping, never giving up, unbreakable, always and forever love.  His heart is for me and he gives me good gifts to show it.  The best of those is his son, given to live a perfect life and die an agonizing death in payment for my sin so that I can call him Daddy.  And when I look at that gift each and every day, I am reminded that he loved me "this much!"  and I am reminded of his view of me.  He sees me as his beloved child.  In Christ, I am his sunshine, and he truly delights in me.

The reminder of my mom's love is one I could not afford on my own.  She has loved me from the moment she knew me and she delights to give me reminders of that love...but I could not afford that reminder.  It came unexpectedly, and on her own initiative and it hangs there shooting arrows at my heart each day, saying, "I love you this much!"  And God's ultimate reminder of his love for me, the cross, came at great cost to himself.  You see, he "loved me and gave himself up for me."  The cross is both the payment and the reminder all wrapped into one. 

What's amazing to me is that as this process of enjoying (abiding in) his love for me happens, the natural response is praise.  And those are the two reasons we were created...to enjoy God and glorify him.  As I enjoy him (abide), I want to praise him for his love and kindness shown to me!  Thank you God that you loved me "this much!!"    Ephesians says that God saved us and set his love on us, " in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus."  His heart is so good and he wants to put his kindness on display so we can see it and enjoy it.  And I as I abide in his kindness, I become a worshipper.  

So these days, I'm staying close to the cross, his best gift and looking there to see his heart for me.  I'm praying that God's spirit will make his love flood my heart in ways I have never known before.  I'm coming back over and over to scriptures that speak of his love...and each time I glance at that mirror, I want to be reminded to look at the cross and abide.  

The best hour of the summer...

Hasn't happened yet.  That will come when our J-man makes his way into this world.  We are ALL getting really eager to meet him...only three and a half weeks til my due date.  I'm pretty much "over" being pregnant this time around.    The couple of times we were in our house during they day, I could barely move and breathe.  I think the heat was just too much for my body to handle. That put me over the edge in terms of being uncomfortable and I starting praying last week that he would come early. Andy thought it was unwise to pray for such a thing...his reasoning... AC being out and our house being a complete wreck and having only three pieces of clothing for our new babe.  But I was miserable and the hospital is air conditioned and they give the Mom and Dad a massage! (you can see how logically I was thinking!) 

EG and Jack are getting really excited to meet J, especially as we've been pulling out baby stuff.  They've been using Peanut as the stand-in til J arrives! 

Anyway, he hasn't come yet which will be the best hour of our summer, but we DID just had the SECOND best hour of our summer yesterday! Within the same hour Emma Grace got her cast off AND we got a new AC unit!  If not for the heat in our house, I would have been the one manning the installation of the AC unit but instead I took EG to the air conditioned doctor's office.  I don't do well with bones and scars and such.  AC units are more "my thing."  But she and I both survived and I was able to look at her foot with only a little trepidation. 

The good news...Our house is back down in the 70's and Grapes has movement in her toes (and a pretty mean scar)!!!! She has a brace/boot that she can wear as she adjusts to walking again, but we took it off today to let her try walking without it and she's doing well.  Her little leg is TINY and one of her toes looks curled to me...but the doctor thinks it's OK.  This Momma Bear will be keeping a close eye on that toe.  We just had our post-cast Mani Pedi to celebrate being able to see and use all 20 digits! 

She's currently walking around the house in one pink flip flop and one aqua one.  Guess she felt like wearing mix matched today was a good transition step to getting back to the whole "pair of shoes" thing. 

                       We are so thankful that's she OK and also so glad to be back in our house!  

I think he's happy to be home and see his stuff again!  Jack spent an hour in his room creating this...

You can tell this kid spent some time in China.  Check out the traffic jam he created...only in China! 

 This summer has been totally different than what we planned, but trying to trust God with each side road he leads us down.  




 

Do you want the bad news or the good news first?

The bad news...our AC is still out.  Here's what we found out today...Though the AC guy came last Monday and put a claim in that day to our warranty company for a new unit, the warranty company didn't get around to approving the claim for a new AC unit until Thursday.  So the order for a new unit didn't go in til then.  And the wait for the new unit to come in is supposed to be 2-5 days (from Thursday) and then they have to install it...which means it might still be a few days.  We're going on day 11 wtih no AC.   That is the bad news.

The good news...We stayed a week at our friends' while they were out of town and our neighbors are hosting us now.  We stayed the first two nights at home and then we were back at home last night...not fun, but doable.  We were happy to move over to our neighbors' when they offered today! 

We're all ready to be back to normal and get into our house, but we're really grateful for people reaching out to us in the meantime! 

Holding his own at the craft table

 I told Andy this week that converting our china cabinet into a craft cabinet was one of the best decisions we've ever made.  Seriously, Emma Grace has spent hours over the past year gluing and cutting and stickering and creating.   Everything, except a few contraband items like glitter and scissors, are readily accessible when her creative juices start to flow.  (which these days is pretty much all day-she's working on an art collection and currently has about 100 original pieces in a big brown grocery sack.  I pretty sure it's worth more than everything at the Louvre combined!) Our only liability in the whole craft cabinet set up has been this little guy.

Well, until now!  A few months ago this little guy could wreck our neatly organized craft drawers in no time and his version of coloring took about ten seconds and was mostly on the table.  Who needs paper when you have a nice big table to color on?

But recently Jack has really gotten into the whole craft thing and it's so fun to find him sitting at the table diligently working on some little creation.  This one is our current favorite. It's his 4th of July man.  (notice the stars and the balloons he's holding? LOTS OF BALLOONS for the 4th!)  Andy and I pretty much adore every person he draws these days, but this guy is just, well, awesome!!!  Can you find JAACK3???  He told me he messed up on the first A so he had to write another one. 

Jack is currently obsessed with his name.  He's started writing it, which is so fun.  When people ask him his name, he often says, " J A C K 3, that's me!"  So every time he writes his name, he always includes the 3.  I think he's gonna be pretty sad when he has to give up the "3, that's me" for a boring number 4.  He's so much into his name that he sings the Alphabet song like this..."J A C K L M N O P Q R S...."

This star struck momma is loving the newest addition to our craft scene! 

WHEN THE AC GOES OUT

Our AC went out and it was 90 degrees in our downstairs.  No telling what it was upstairs!  The first day we stayed out and about as much as possible.  The second day, we moved the party outside, since it was notably cooler on our shaded back patio.  We blew up the pool and ALL got in it.  We ate frozen grapes and pickles and pistachios for dinner, with iced koolaid of course.  Who wants to cook when it's that hot inside?  We played UNO and finally made our way inside about 9.  We all slept in our bedroom with 5 fans running.

When the AC people finally got around to us on day three of no AC, they informed us our entire unit needed to be replaced.  YIKES.  The good news?  We have a home warranty that our realtor bought FOR US!! Yep. We weren't going to get one and she kept insisting and finally she just wrote us a check and bought it for us herself. Thank you Carol.  She is persistent and  kind and generous and wise.  It expires in a couple weeks so we were incredibly grateful it broke when it did.   When I learned all this today I was reminded of how kind God was to us in the buying of our house.  From our big back yard at a price we could afford  to our amazing realtor from WV, God's kindness was seen in every step of the process.   And this is another reminder of his provision for us. We are getting a $3,000 AC unit almost for  free because of our home warranty that SOMEONE ELSE bought for us.  And all just a couple weeks before the warranty expires.  He is a provider. 

The bad news?  It will take a few days to order and install the new unit.  The good news?  We have great friends who are letting us stay at their place while they are gone.  Packing up our family and shutting down our house in 90+ heat today was almost more than my 8 month pregnant body could handle.  But now I'm sitting under an AC vent at our friends house, happily blogging. 

Happy Birthday to my Gardening Mentor

 One of my favorite people in the world celebrated his 77th Birthday yesterday.  When I called to wish him a happy birthday, I asked how old he was. "I'm 77...over half way there!"  He always says silly things like that!  Paw Paw I love you and I'm so thankful for you!


This year my Grandfather bought me 3 tiny tomato plants while he and my Gmaw were visiting us.  I was pretty sure I would kill them, but with his patient coaching, I actually have these pretty red things to show for my/his/God's work...

I've been enjoying tomato sandwiches, a NC fave and we've had some yummy salsa and a salad or two topped with them.  And of course, I sliced a few and just ate them with salt...I have so many memories of sitting on my grandparents couch late at night watching the 11 o'clock news and eating sliced tomatoes.  Yum.

And on top of enjoying the fruit of our labor, God really used these tomatoes to teach me a few things.  Paw Paw, I hope you enjoy a little view into how God used you and these tomatoes to teach me a few things over the past several months. Your gift to me ended up being so much more than you could've ever known...

I think I am officially entering the "toddler/preschool" stage of my walk with the Lord.  As I have been walking with him for 12ish years now, it seems I am may be progressing past the baby stage???  And we toddlers, well, we are pretty wobbly and though we've moved past just milk, we still need things cut up in small bites for us.  We still need a lot of hand holding.  We still need daily to be reminded to "trust and obey" (I'm constantly talking to my own preschoolers about this).  And we need lots of object lessons.  LOTS.  If  I were to list out the object lessons God has given me in the past few months, you too would agree I am firmly in the toddler/preschool phase of my relationship with him. I am just blown away at how God has been reaching into the mundane and ordinary of my life and teaching me such deep truths about himself.  From paintings I've prayed for (and then received) to Sheryl's visit teaching me lessons about his grace, the list just keeps growing. These tomato plants taught me quite the lesson as well-about parenting and about the perfect parent. 

See, I have no gardening knowledge WHATSOEVER.  So I just stayed close to my grandfather to make sure I didn't kill these things.  I asked the master gardener lots of questions. I mean lots.  How much to water. When to water. Show me how much water please.  How much sun should they get?  After he left, I kept calling him with more questions.  When to fertilize. How much.  When to transfer into bigger pots.  At some point it hit me that my little tomato plants were a lot like my children.  These plants were way more work than I would have ever imagined.  Much like parenting.  So worth it, but so much work.  And I, the novice gardener have NO idea what I am doing.  I must stay close to the master gardener and learn from him.  Much like in my parenting.  "You've come to far to let these plants die" my grandfather told me on one of our weekly coaching calls.  So much like parenting.  In these short 5 years, I have already invested so much in these little ones.  And I need to endure, and in the end my efforts will bear fruit.  I was reminded of a verse I often go to on hard days in parenting.  "Do not grow weary in doing good, for in due time you will reap a harvest, if you do not give up."  Oh Lord, give me strength to keep doing good to these little plants you have entrusted to me...and I don't mean the tomatoes.

The lessons kept coming.  These plants were costly. Really costly.  A lot like parenting.  Once they were  entrusted to my care, we started to have problems.  Major problems.  First it was the leaf footed stink bugs.  Then some kind of worms, then a calcium deficiency that was causing them to rot.  And I had to research (with my grandfather's help of course) each of these issues to find the proper solution.  Much like parenting.  Issues in my kids hearts spring up all the time and I am called to nurture them and guard them, giving them the right food for their souls and with God's strength, root out some of these issues I see plaguing them.  And each solution for my plants, be it fertilizer to provide more calcium or organic pesticide to rid them of bugs, cost me a pretty penny. I estimate that the bowl of salsa I served last week at our small group cost me about 25 dollars.  Much like parenting-it is costly.  To really invest in my children's needs and to diligently nuture, shape and guide their hearts is costing me my life.  Some days I honestly, selfishly don't want to give my life for them.  But it's worth it, so worth it.  They are worth it.    God is glorified when I lay down my life for them, like Christ did for me. 

And it was at this point I realized that the master gardener, my Father in heaven, knows exactly what my children need and he knows exactly what I need.  In this life, he is parenting me.  And he is gentle and attentive and diligent and faithful.  He cares for me perfectly.  My sin and my needs are more than I can ever solve on my own. But he faithfully remedies each of them, in his perfect wisdom and timing.   He knows when I need a refreshing drink of water and when I need protection from outside attack.  And he also knows, as I am learning, how to remedy my biggest problems, the sin on the inside...

I  got different opinions from different sources on what my plants needed.  "Its getting hot here, so you need to put them in shade.  Too much sun is bad for them"  But my plants had a fungus and I was told,  "You must expose them to full sun to get rid of the fungus."  WHAT?????   You see, the sun would in fact almost wither my little plants away, but it was the one thing they needed to get rid of their fungus.  Like the last two years of my life, God has been exposing Andy and I to some tremendous heat.  And it's felt at times that we would literally wither away under the heat..  But as I have reflected on my plants and on these last few years, I've realized that God was actually being incredibly wise and merciful with us.  Like the fungus in my tomatoes, there were some major sin/idolatry issues in our hearts that were eating us from the inside.  Our tomatoes plants were really unable to bear good fruit because of their fungus, and it took extreme measures to rid them of it.  It's been the same with us. These past two years have been incredibly trying for us but I can see that God has been ridding us of some very specific fungi that made us unable to bear fruit that really honored him.  And only under the extreme heat could this sin be burned away.    I am now so grateful for what he has allowed us to walk through.  He is my perfect parent and  like it says in John 15,  he wants me to bear lasting, good fruit in my life.

So parenting, like caring for my tomato plants, is hard work.  It costs me everything. And it cost him everything to parent me.  It cost him his life to bring me into his family.  And everyday he continues to give his all to grow me (his little fungus ridden plant)  into a plant that bears much fruit for his glory. 

I think we (Andy and I, and our little ones, Lord willing) will  make a tasty salsa when this thing is all said and done! 

Happy Birthday to my favorite earthly gardener, Otis Glenn Phillips!!!!