On the move once again...

We are finally ready to complete the final leg of our journey and move all of our belongings from the 'short term' rental in McHenry to our 'long term' rental in Spring Grove. While we never intended to be in this house for very long (and stayed in this house for longer than we intended :-) it was a good house to us. There are many things that I WON'T miss:

-The random wildlife in our fenced in backyard consisting of 1 groundhog, 2 cats, and 6 skunks
- The crazed ice cream truck that circles our neighborhood for hours, always around dinner time, yelling out "Hello!"
- The lack of air conditioning and very sticky nights
- Our neighbor's taste in cultural music, while enjoyable, was not so great at 1am
- Our washer and dryer, while adequate, heat the house and are so loud we have to yell to be heard
- Lack of space for, well, anything

Despite my grumblings, there certainly are things that I will miss about our pit-stop house.
-The fact that Amelia was always within my eye sight whether she was outside or across the house
- The great park and walking trail that were minutes away
- A precious friend who lives around the corner- truly a gift from God!
- The cozyness of being intimately together as a family no matter where we are in the house or what we are doing

We made some incredible memories here too...
-Amelia's first steps
-Big family dinners with the Schmidt family
-Nights spent singing and dancing to 'sons' in the family room
-Late night pizza
-Cramming as many possessions as humanly possible into our garage


More than anything, I will forever remember that this house is a symbol of God's provision. It fell into our laps at a time in our life when we didn't know where Jason was going to sleep from one night until the next. It enabled us to be together as a family, and allowed me to work from home. It became our haven in a very chaotic and turbulent time in our marriage and family. When we entered this home together, all was right with the world once again.

So, farewell Lillian Street. To the next owners... watch out for critters!

Our new house in Spring Grove, IL

Perfect Timing

I have never been very good at 'doing devotions'. I don't think I've ever made it all the way through a devotional without losing interest, and really struggle with setting aside a daily quiet time. So, Jason encouraged me to study a word or principle rather than go through a book. What he didn't tell me is that God would be giving me ample opportunities to put my studies into practice!

So, I decided to start by studying Mercy and Grace. During my quiet times I would do searches on www.crosswalk.com on these words, reading Bible studies and verses related to them. I would also just spend a lot of time in prayer meditating on the impact that these words have on my life and the areas of my life where I needed MORE mercy and grace. Oh goodness! If you are going to ask the Lord to teach you something, watch out! I was convicted multiple times a day of areas I needed to give more mercy and grace. From restraining myself for scolding Amelia for accidentally spilling her milk, to keeping my cool instead of biting Jason's head off for something that wasn't his fault (like Amelia's bedroom door handle locking on its own... locking her IN the bedroom and locking me OUT)I found "mercy-sightings" everywhere! Mostly, when I was about to become frustrated at someone or something, I was able to reflect on the mercy and grace that Christ has given to me, and remember that I am called to do the same to others.

If you have been following our moving (or lack thereof) saga, you can also guess that this has been a prime opportunity to practice mercy and grace. We are moving into a friend's home which we will rent from them, and we were supposed to move in when they moved out in May, then June, then mid-June, then definitely the first of July, then July 24th, then definitely July 29th, now hopefully August 3rd. Meanwhile, we have been living in a very small house with no air conditioning and all of our worldly possessions crammed in our garage. So God has given me lots of chances to practice (not always very successfully) mercy and grace. I'll admit, often times my anger has gotten the very best of me. Yet, Jason has reminded me that we are a witness to these friends and we may be the only Christ that they see. Therefore we are called to have integrity in our actions and have mercy towards them (as he pried the phone out of my hand so I wouldn't call them and give them a piece of my mind ;-) And, someone out there has been praying for me as well- I took the last delay very well and actually admitted that I felt peace and relief about it.

And, throughout this process we have been praying for the Lord's perfect timing... well apparently He and I don't agree. But, I need to rest in the fact that this move will work out perfectly and at the perfect time. In the meantime I am learning a lot about myself, what is truly important in life, and how far God has yet to go to change me! The next principle I'm going to study is Self Discipline. Since I have none, the only place to go is up :-)