God is in the House!

Two nights in a row of good sleep!  Sorry if that's just rubbing it in for those of you with young babies!

Ok, get this....you can look behind my fridge now AND my stove.  That's right.  I moved them (thought that was going to be a lot harder than it was....wasn't) and oh my....that explains why we have mice back there. I actually don't know why I haven't done that before.  I think in my head that once you put a fridge or a stove in, it's there for life.  Even if you spill something, oh well, I guess it'll just disappear!  I don't know about you, but there are certain places in the house I couldn't stand looking at, so I just avoided them.  One of those places was the sides of the fridge along the cupboards!  Every time I looked there, I wanted to burn the house down.  I could see years of accumulating dust and slime and I hated it, but I figured only cleaning ladies did places like that aaaannnd seeing as I don't have a cleaning lady......Well, I cannot tell you how much I LOVE looking at the sides of my fridge now and even the floor at the front end of each appliance....that had also been rather disgusting as the mop and vacuum can only reach so far!

Once again, the kids were on board, for the most part anyway.  As it was a warmer and sunnier day, I did give them a break or two to play, but we cleaned hard core until 3 pm!  Walls were washed, baseboards, stairs....even the rug was taken out and I'm steam cleaning it today.  I told you, this is hard core clean.  We're steam cleaning every piece of furniture, too, as it's been a while and the cats have made a few smells (did I mention they live outside now????)

Sure enough, the concept of character came up over and over, but instead of just yelling to clean the house, I really tried to explain how I was doing this for so many reasons - stewardship being number one, making our house clean so we can be more hospitable with much greater ease (I haven't been feeling much like having people over when I feel like my house is a pigsty), blessing my husband (he came in multiple times through the day telling me how happy he was about the house - he grew up in an immaculate home), teaching the character traits of perseverance just to mention one trait as it's been a long two days!  You get the idea.  We all feel a lot less mess under our feet and it makes people want to keep it this way.  Did children escape more than once?  Yes.  Did I have to call them back, multiple times?  Yes, but they usually came back....usually.  The little ones did a wall or two, or even a baseboard (with a toothbrush), but then I would turn around and they were gone!

In the Maxwell's book, Managers of Your Chores, which I mentioned early on in the blog, it talks about the training of the children and how we cannot assume that our children will just one day get married and know how to run a house, especially if our daughters stay home with their children.  My mom always had a list for us as we grew up each day on the kitchen table.  All of our names were on the list with a certain responsibility or chore for that day after school.  We had to do it as soon as we walked in the door.  We still joke as my mom used little abbreviations for living room (l.r.) and vacumming (vac.) or unloading the dishwasher (d.w.)and just the other day my brother asked me if I had "vacc'ed the L.R." or unloaded the "d.w." lately, just like when we grew up!  I howled!  But, all joking aside, it was a great way to model that we needed to pull our weight as well as learn to clean our own homes one day just on a smaller scale.  This is so critical for our children!  I know of many moms who wanted to "bless" their children and did everything for them, including all the cleaning, but that in fact does NOT bless them.  It makes their lives as parents much harder as they have NO idea how to keep their homes tidy and in order....no one taught them!

One neat thing happened during the day which was a small miracle.  We were busy cleaning and RM was busy finishing up programming a controller that he and a friend have been developing for a couple of years. He was supposed to be on his way around 9 am, but walked into the family room just before 9 am saying the controller had crashed....there was no way he was going to make his appointment.  He hated having to call the guy he was meeting to tell him he wouldn't make it.  He needed this controller to work!  I called the kids down in an emergency fashion, "EMERGENCY PRAYER MEETING!!  GET IN THE FAMILY ROOM NOW!!!!"  Kids came from all over the house and I explained Dad need us to pray right then and there that the controller would either get fixed or that God would intervene in some way.  Everyone prayed. RM's prayer was, "Lord, please don't let us be ashamed.  I don't think that is what you want."  After he prayed, my oldest son said, "Dad, do you believe in God?"  I thought it was a strange question.  "Yes." "Romans says, 'If you believe in God, then you will not be put to shame."  Wow.  Great verse.  Great encouragement, I thought, perhaps not what Paul was thinking when he wrote it, but it struck my son in a way that he thought of his Dad.  Off RM went to his office to call the guy he was meeting that he wouldn't be able to make it.  Then he was going to connect with his friend to see if they could get the controller working.  Not two minutes later, he walked back in, "CALL EVERYONE TO THE FAMILY ROOM!"  Down they came again!  "You'll never believe this.  I was picking up the phone to call the guy when suddenly he called me!  I was afraid he was calling to say, 'Where are you???!' but instead he said, 'There's been a problem with someone else not being able to come today to work with you.  It's not looking good to connect.  Could you make it tomorrow instead?'  'Uh, yeah, of course, tomorrow works GREAT!'"  We were in awe.  The fact HE called and RM didn't have to cancel was just like my son had said and how RM had prayed.  He was not ashamed. This guy has only cancelled one other time and that was another miracle when RM put his back out and wondered how he would finish the work for this man.  That time he also miraculously called and said, "We need you to put off coming in for a couple of weeks - would that work for you?"  "Yes!"  He didn't know RM would need two weeks to get his back in shape!  So this guy is completely being used by God to give us relief when we need it.  The one day delay had RM and his friend figure out the problem and so today he should be able to get it working on site.  A small miracle, yes, and easy to overlook as coincidence by anyone else looking in on our situation, but we know it wasn't.  The kids were able to be in on it, praise God and then get back to cleaning!

On a completely different note, Renaissance Man has two cars done and running now and hopes to have the 3rd finished soon.  We will be delivering one of them shortly to the guy who hired him to fix his Porsche and then we'll find out in the next day or two if we "trade up" for a skid steer.  Many answers to prayer along the way with the cars, too.  Really great to watch the boys' interest stay keen, even the 7 year old has been involved.

Early mornings are beautiful on the farm.  I love watching the sunrise hitting the outbuildings, glowing in a colour I can't even describe.  It's funny though, in the house, early mornings also used to make all the smudges show up on the floor!  I didn't like the early mornings on the farm then!  Now I'll be able to enjoy the early morning sunrises just a little bit more - hopefully my house will stay clean longer than a day!