Sad but thankful goodbyes...

We said "good-bye" to our home of 15 years this evening with a prayer of thankfulness and for blessings to the new family. We walked through each room and talked about our memories. It amazes me how much life was lived there. Joe led us and it was good for all our hearts. We talked about the many colors Emily's bedroom had been painted, the time her friend Shelby ran straight into the sliding glass doors... times spent with friends and family... the kitchen stove where we found a 18 month old Nate asleep one night... memories of our dog Bella... if I closed my eyes and listened, I'm sure the walls could talk and I'm sure I heard the faint echos of my newborn babies cries...
This is the longest Joe or I have lived in any one home...at any one address in our whole lives. Of course, this is the only corner of the world the kids have ever called home.

We all cried until we got about 20 minutes away, to Pinebluff, actually.

For the moment we can be found in a rental house... we'll keep looking as more houses come on the market-- the right one must just not be ready yet!

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Lesson 599

Nothing really prepares you for this level of change. There are days it feels as if a part of my heart has been ripped from my chest. I am walking around wounded, unwhole, and incomplete. There are moments that my breath is taken and the sobbing begins before the second hand has time to move. In the post office mailing care packages, standing in the checkout line buying Halloween candy, when a song comes on Pandora that she would have belted out singing, when I spot the dusty piano, when I realize this is the first sports season, ever, that she wasn’t there to see her brother score a goal, when I walk by her bedroom and see all the bits and pieces of the life she left behind, as I plan our first ever big family trip without her, as I think about navigating the holidays and know they will be different from now on. There are days I just want to go back to the moment she was born and do every single second over again, but I’m quickly reminded that’s not the way this works. There ...

A Lesson in Lunch Meat

Today, I stood at the deli counter at our local Walmart. When the lady finally came over, I was sure I’d misheard the lady behind the counter. It was mid-afternoon and she told me she was closed, couldn’t cut me any meat because she was cleaning up before she left and they are short staffed. I was too tired to be at The Walmart. I felt like someone had just stole my balloon. I stood there in literal shock, I just wanted Nate’s 2 pounds of deli meat. My mind started spinning and I wasn’t thinking very clearly. I just needed for Nate to be able to make 59 Dagwood sandwiches next week. He doesn’t eat at school. He runs and has soccer practice. He needs to be able to think and do pages of Pre-calculus homework and study for Chemistry . I just wanted meat and to go home. Where is this all going to end? The whole world is short staffed. I thought of my coworkers and I, we worked short staffed and overbooked this week as did many. I was tired. It was a...

My Ebenezers

I love the hymn "Come thou Fount", it's one of my very favorites. Every time we sing this song as a church family or our own family worship, I am overcome with emotion as I ponder the words of the hymn. I often have to stop singing. However, I'm disappointed when some editors of hymnals have changed the words: "Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I'm come and I hope by thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home". Ebenezer is a big word and can leave some puzzled in it's meaning, we don't often use it in conversation. It's worth recovering. The line from the third verse "Let that grace now, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee" is often changed as well. Fetter is a “chain/shackle usually around the ankle to hold a prisoner”. To be shackled to Him by His grace, what a beautiful picture... Ebenezer is a Hebrew word for "stone of help". In 1 Samuel 7:12, after being saved from an attack by the LORD...

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