Me and Swiss Family Robinson

I'm still thankful, just haven't written it.....I'll start off with that today....

1.  So glad I did my grocery shopping the day before the storm - there's no way I could have gotten out yesterday!
2.  Grateful for kids who test me - sometimes it brings out the worst, but I know I'll be so sad one day when they're gone.
3.  Grateful for health - I know that could change at any moment, so counting my blessings.
4.  It is getting lighter and lighter out at dinner time!  Spring is coming!
5.  Grateful for Swiss Family Robinson (except for all the smoochy parts!).

So, back to Swiss Family Robinson for a minute.  A story of a family who leaves their homeland and along the way, they meet tragedy in the form of a shipwreck leaving them stuck on a deserted island.  I'm sure you know the story. There is a scene between the husband and wife right at the beginning where they've just landed on the deserted island and you can see they are second guessing if they should have ever left Switzerland for a new colony.  What were they thinking?  If they'd only stayed back and lived a normal life! They had wanted to start a new life, a better life, for their boys, and then this disaster happens. I felt for them, especially the husband as he sat there in the sand, questioning everything.  His wife held him and reminded him it was going to be ok.  Somehow her words consoled him and within a few minutes he was excited again about the future.  Suddenly he realized they'd make it.  They'd find a way to get off the island. A ship would come.

This is my life - on a deserted island, with just my husband and my kids.  The one comment the father made resounded with me so much and I paraphrase as I'm not quite as good at memorizing ENTIRE lines from movies as my kids are, "Other fathers sit in their regular desk jobs and they find opportunities for their families.  They don't feel the need to pick up their family and go to a new colony."  He was really questioning if he'd made the right choice. He'd gone against mainstream life and now, there he was, stranded.  Great scene for me.  I loved it because that is just what we feel we've done.  By making the decision to get out of debt, in a rather radical way, we've kind of picked up our family, put them on a ship off to a new colony called No Debt Land, but along the way, we sometimes hit some major waves - fortunately for us, we aren't quite shipwrecked yet!  But once in awhile, it seems perhaps it would be easier to live life like we were before, finding opportunities in the old colony of Debt Land.

This is where the story becomes AWESOME!  As they start to get more comfortable on the desert island the older boys start to get a little more adventurous and ask their parents if they can do a little exploring.  The mother is adamantly against this, but then she is finally convinced as she realizes if they really do want their boys to one day get married and have families of their own, they better try to get off the island so they can get them some wives!  Off the boys go, sailing around the island, looking for a ship, or something, to get them home.  One night, thet're getting ready to head to bed and they start talking about how things have changed in their lives and again, I paraphrase as one boy says to the other, "Don't you think we've changed? Don't you see how we aren't afraid anymore of every little thing?  We're braver.  We're stronger. We're getting way better at risk taking?"  The other boy quickly agrees.  They like who they are becoming, especially when they look back to who they were only a few short months earlier.

See the parallels again?  I don't like living on a deserted island all the time when I see other families "enjoying life", supposedly problem-free, but then I see what's going on in my kids lives and the things they are being exposed to, like fixing the car, and how they are becoming stronger, less afraid, better at taking risks - actually all of us are getting better at this.  Then, I think - deserted island?  shipwrecks?  Bring it on!

But literally, right at that scene, I got a call from my sister.....a storm started to brew....will this be my shipwreck?  Read on.

I told my sister I would probably blog about this, so here I go, C!  She and my other sister are connecting this weekend.  (Do you hear rain?)  That doesn't sound like a big deal, but did I mention it was in Chicago! (Yup, that's definitely rain.  Perhaps a thunderstorm?)  How fun!  My one sister is flying down with her two girls to meet my other sister with her two girls and they are going off to spend the weekend in a hotel (for sure, a thunderstorm - waves are getting higher), enjoying all that Chicago has to offer, which for little girls is American Girl for tea in the big downtown Chicago location (I see rocks up ahead) - a fun time....for them.....I have girls, too, 3 in fact, who would all love a little getaway with their cousins, who wouldn't?  We could even swing it as we have points to cover all the flights!  But that wouldn't cover all the other expenses, the many countless expenses that are often hidden, but add up.....(Jagged rocks, huge rocks, I can only hope there is an island close by.)

Both sisters know this will be hard on me, but they know what we are up to and are very supportive.  Times are tight for all of us in different ways and at different times.  They get it.  We're all pretty close and really enjoy spending time together.  Normally I would hang up the phone and have a pity party, but I told her I now have over 50 posts written about God's faithfulness during shipwrecks - this is potentially another storm for me, it could turn into a shipwreck if I let it, but I just have to look back and see how many stories of being saved from a shipwreck I have, and then the storm calms......perhaps this is another time to wield the sword of the computer "pen" against my old enemy, discouragement.  So I do.  I write down what I'm grateful for and I realize I can be very happy for my two sisters and my four nieces, knowing God has a plan even for the little girl cousins and that for us, it just isn't now.  Do I sit on the beach and feel sad a little, yes. But I have a husband who sits by the fire with me, and we look up into the stars above our deserted island and see beauty, our family is with us, we have each other.....The Robinsons had to do this, too, on their beach - they could have all died in the shipwreck.  They could have never landed on a beach at all!  They had each other and going over their many blessings helped them to rest, even as it started to rain again.

I know this is another test for me (I haven't even told my girls yet as it would be a major test for them, too - they love their cousins!), but I will pass it!  They will pass it!  I'm determined (or debt-termined!).  Blessings are around the corner.

Have a great time, sistahs!  One day, one day, I'll be in a better place to do those types of things....in the meantime, I will sit on my desert island and enjoy my setting here.  I have all sorts of monkeys around me! The three year old monkey hasn't been up to as many antics as usual, so it's been quiet in my jungle!  Well, if you don't count covering his entire head in hair gel, coming down with a pocket knife hidden in his pants, (denying he's hiding anything), completely turning my family room upside down, putting his older brother under a huge couch pillow and then jumping on top of it, jumping from the top of the kitchen table like Tarzan and nearly breaking his ankle, grabbing spoonfuls of sugar for his oatmeal without me looking and making sure most of it spilled all over the counter (and this is all yesterday!)  Nope, it's been quiet.  How strange!  I'm sure he'll probably do something later on today.....just give him a few more minutes.....I should start a blog just about him......and I wonder why I'm getting grey hair????





















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