This is My Confidence

I've caclulated that on some days I am in a car up to three hours.  No wonder I'm not accomplishing all that I hope to each day.  Because I get so tired the second I get in a car, I now lie down for a few minutes, even if it's a 4 pm, to take the edge off before picking up my son at 7 pm.  It's the only way to survive!

We've now passed 9 years living in Niagara.  That has gone so fast I can hardly believe it.  We left the GTA (the suburbs) when my daughter was just 1.  She just had her 10th birthday.  I can't believe all that we've been through in those 9 years.  I can't believe all the people we've met, the places we've lived, the experiences we've had....mostly good, some not so good, but all have been used by God to mold us into the family He wants us to be.

I have to admit, I thought we'd be further along by now in our debt retirement.  It is hard not to feel disappointed by that and it can make me fall into that pit of discouragement if I'm not careful.  My husband reminds me all the time about the strides we've made, so I need to focus on that.  I didn't anticipate the needs of our older children and the financial impact they make on our lives and that is with them paying most of their way through life now that they have jobs.

I came across a song that is so moving and it describes my feelings exactly.  It is called "Do It Again", by Elevation Worship

Walking around these walls
I thought by now they'd fall
But You have never failed me yet
Waiting for change to come
Knowing the battle's won
For You have never failed me yet

Your promise still stands
Great is Your faithfulness, faithfulness
I'm still in Your hands
This is my confidence, You've never failed me yet

I know the night won't last
Your Word will come to pass
My heart will sing Your praise again
Jesus, You're still enough
Keep me within Your love
My heart will sing Your praise again

Your promise still stands
Great is Your faithfulness, faithfulness
I'm still in Your hands
This is my confidence, You never failed

Your promise still stands
Great is Your faithfulness, faithfulness
I'm still in Your hands
This is my confidence, You never failed me yet

The first two lines are what strike me the most....."Walking around these walls, I thought by now they'd fall".....that is it.  I thought my walls would be down by now and they aren't, not where I want them to be at least.  Yet, the next line reminds me quickly, "But you have never failed me yet".  This is so true.  I am not homeless, not without shelter or food.  I have clothes on my back, animals and crops in my fields, children in beds.....why am I so quick to see what I don't have?!

The song goes on, "I know the night won't last, Your Word will come to pass.....Jesus you're still enough".  His promise "still stands".  This song captures all I feel and if I put it on and turn up the volume I can barely get through it without tears.  I love it so much!

Last week when I was feeling somewhat overwhelmed by all my older kids' needs, out of the blue I got an email from someone I've only met once.  She's an older mom of 10 who has more than half of her kids married and I think only 4 at home.  We were on the large family panel at the recent homeschool conference.  She said my name had been on her mind for awhile and that she felt compelled to write me a note of encouragement.  These are some of her words to me, "You are a wife, a mother and above all a CHILD of GOD!  God is with you.  He is walking beside you holding your hand.  Remember He gave you the kids you have.  He doesn’t make mistakes. We do what we can when raising them, God takes it from there.  We can not make choices for them as they get older.  We must stand back and watch, praying God will send others into their lives that will help them and guide them in the Way they should go.  But this is hard... REALLY HARD! "

If that wasn't a message straight from God.  I couldn't believe it.  How did she know?  What made me come into her mind?  The song talks about God's faithfulness, how He never fails, how I'm still in His hands.....what a great reminder to me.  I immediately wrote her backing telling her the timeliness of her letter was perfect.  I'm sure she has no idea the impact it would have on me.  I've said it before, sometimes God just comes into our lives with "skin on".  He uses real people, letters, phone calls, texts to encourage us in our lower times.  This is not the first time this has happened to me.  Though the times where I feel down are not what I prefer, I'm always amazed how God meets me there and doesn't leave me there.

We had some of our old neighbours come over from the suburbs on the weekend.  As I showed them around the house and farm (they'd never been here before some of them), I was able to show them all the work we'd done.  It was a good reminder to me all that we had accomplished!  I know that we still have a long ways to go, but we have done a lot!  It is not the place we moved into, that is for sure.

They were hilarious....they wondered where I kept my clothes if I had no closets.  When I took them to the mudroom and showed them all the crates full of clothes, all their cell phones came out, snapping away, taking pictures of my "family crate closet".  It is picture worthy, I have to admit.  Then, when they saw my 10 kg of oatmeal and my 10 kg of brown sugar and whey powder and flax meal.......more pictures.  I guess they've never seen bulk food!  Most of them have one or no kids left at home.  To think I still have 8 kids all at home blows their minds away.  It explains the mess a lot and my need for bulk food and perhaps why we aren't making the great strides I hoped for!  Needless, to say, the wineries were not the great attraction, our crazy family was.  Very amusing to them, indeed.  

All this to say, I start my week off today full of hope.  The sun is shining, the breeze is beautiful.  I will be in the car again shortly, but now I'm starting to plan things we can do out the Niagara Falls way.  There are so many hikes and things to see out that way.  I'll also be planning yet another birthday tomorrow!  My rascally 7 year old turns 8!  I can't believe it.  He's the one that truly marks our Niagara experience as he never lived in the suburbs and truly grew up on the farm.  Total farm boy through and through and he's got the abs to prove it.  I'll probably have a discouraging thought try to enter my head today or one that tries to make me afraid, but I have found lyrics from that worship song (above) race around in my head and that is what sends the lies away and defeats the enemy.  This is my confidence....You've never failed me yet.

In a Fish House....For 3 Days

Though summer is not officially here....we are certainly acting like it and loving the weather.  Thanks to the greenhouse throwing out lots of flowers again, I was able to manage snagging a few on their way to the dump and planted our porch with the "throwouts".  Yeah!

I had hoped for a garden this year, but it isn't looking so good.  We are needing to focus on the house and even though it seems like an easy thing to dig up some dirt and put a few seeds in, it is not.  Every moment counts around here.  If, by some miracle, the garden does go in, I will be very happy, but each summer, I just let God decide if it will happen.  Surrender.  Even in my gardening.

This past week my son spent some time in the fish house.  This is one of the shifts he gets where he couldn't understand why he would be put there.  He wanted to be with the whales, not with the stinky fish, mixing up their food, pail after pail.  Talk about stinking like fish when we picked him up!  Get this, he was in the fish house THREE DAYS.    Sound familiar?  The belly of the whale department.  By the 3rd day, he was done and was glad to be back upstairs with the sun and the belugas.  But wait, he was called back in by another employee.  He had missed a few things that he needed to not overlook.   He wasn't in trouble.  He was unaware and they just wanted him to be aware.  But it still made him feel bad.

But this was when it occurred to me.  God was using the fish house, the worst job in the whole place to teach him another lesson.  The irony of it being 3 days, in the belly of the whale department was too crazy to not notice.  How I loved the picture!  He didn't, but I did!  He did, however, immediately realize that God was using the worst job to teach him another skill.  This week he's back in the fish house, but just for a day here or there (everyone has to take a day in the dreaded fish house).  He now goes in with his eyes open, wondering what he's supposed to be learning now, no longer dreading, but anticipating. 

This is what we all have to do.  We have to embrace the fish house we find ourselves in, the stinky place that no one wants to be in, but where God teaches all the lessons.  I love it.

Many years ago, I was in the fish house, in Barranquilla, Colombia, on the coast of South America.  I was teaching in an American private school far away from anything I knew.  It was my first year of teaching and I really stunk at it.  I had gone in with all these amazing ideas and the school just wanted me to follow their curriculum.  What was I thinking?  But teacher's college had taught me to be a free-thinker!  I was on the verge of losing my job.  It took me going home at Christmas that first year, meeting with all my former associate teachers and then heading back with a new plan to save my job, which I did.  I ended up with a glowing reference letter from the principal by the end of it all, but I sure had to go through a hard time in my own personal fish house in order to learn all the lessons God wanted me to learn.

My parents were praying their hearts out for me while I was gone.  This saved my life in more than one way.  I knew Colombia was a dangerous place, but I had no idea how dangerous.  They recently gave me a book to read called The Lord of Bellavista.  This talks about a prison in Medellin, which is a city I visited while I was there and how God transformed the prison from a place where 50 murders occurred a month (within the prison itself) to ZERO murders.  It is an incredible story.

I was there during the time of Pablo Escabar, the drug lord.  He was killed while I was there.  I remember seeing the picture of his bullet ridden body on the front page of the paper.  I knew I was in the middle of a historically interesting time.  The other teachers and I were careful when we went out, but looking back probably not careful enough.  The school where I was at had kidnappings regularly. The wealthy kids there had bodyguards.  Everyone knew someone who had been murdered.  I didn't want to live in fear, so I didn't, but I probably should have been more aware that I was a target, too.  The drug lords kidnapped for ransom money regularly.  I was so obviously a westerner that I could have easily been kidnapped.  This book made me realize how ignorant I was to what was going on all around me.  I'm kind of glad I didn't know the extent of it. 

It also made me realize how God was at work this whole time, too, behind the scenes, without me even knowing it.  I went to an alive church while I was there, all Spanish-speaking.  I got so good at Spanish that I could eventually hear a sermon and get something out of it!  I met with the pastor and people in the church regularly.  It was so great.  Their services were alive.  It made Canadian churches seem dead in comparison.  But again, reading the book, it made me see how much spiritual warfare was at play.  If God was moving in South America, Satan had to do something about it and in some cases, it seemed like he was winning.  Yet the book showed how, no, God was still in control and was using regular people to change that dark country.  It was such an encouragement to read how God could take these hardened criminals and then make them missionaries to other jails!  Wow.

I don't know if I could go back to Colombia now.  I'd be afraid in some ways.  However, it really is the most beautiful country and has so many amazing places I want to show my kids!  I guess for now I have to wait, but maybe one day.  Anyway, I'm grateful for the memories the book stirred up in me.  It reminded me of my hard time back in my early teaching career and also of how God used that time to shape me, to teach me utter dependence on Him, though I hated almost every moment of it.  He used the prayers of my parents to keep me safe, just as I pray for my own kids now.  I'm sure they wished they could have taken away the pain of my hard time, but being overseas made that impossible.  They only had prayer which was enough.  I was also kept safe because of their prayers, I'm sure.  I would like to take my kids out of their own hard times, but I know those hard times are what shape them.  They shaped me. 

I won't willingly walk into a fish house now.  They stink, but if God wants me or my kids to be in one, so be it.

To be continued

The amount of posts certainly reflects my new season of life.  And I thought babies were hard......

Our plate is full, but we realize, yes, we may have brought some of the busy-ness on ourselves, but what would be doing with our time otherwise?  Sitting around eating bon bons?  So, in a strange, backwards kind of way, I don't mind all the activity.  In fact, I would actually say I enjoy it.  I'm a person who needs something to look forward to.  If I admit it, then I actually need something to look forward to everyday.  When I have to drive my son to work, or we have art class, or one of them have a dentist appointment, I actually look forward to it!  When I ask myself, "Why is that and what is it about me that enjoys and looks forward to those things?"  I realize it is because that is how God has wired me - I like people, I like getting out, I like going new places and even the same old places, I look forward to conversations with others, and it is a chance for me to be alone sometimes in the car and even pray or listen to a sermon while I'm out....I'm good with all that!

A couple of funny things from yesterday.....RM and I were sitting at the table drinking coffee before he headed off to work and we kept hearing this thumping sound.  It was kind of a windy day, so we thought it was maybe a branch banging against the side of the house.  We had no idea and weren't really concerned, though it my mind I kept thinking, "What could that be?!"  He left and I forgot about it.  If the noise went on throughout the day, I didn't notice.

Later on that morning I was trying to get the kids to feed cats, do chores, deliver laundry....all the usual stuff, but my 7 year old, who is always about "not doing chores" and "inventing his own chores", said, "I'm going to fill up the bird feeder."  Not on the list, but fine.  But then I remembered the chickens had dumped the entire bin of bird feed the day before and there was none left for filling.  I said this over and over, but he wouldn't listen to me, adamant that he could fill it up with something anyway.  I walked away as steam was starting to come out of my ears.

When I saw him later, he said, "Mom!  Something funny happened!  I lifted the bin to fill up the bird feeder (it had been upside down when it tipped over) and a chicken walked out!  She had laid an egg!" 

Suddenly, it dawned on me....the noise we had heard had been a chicken stuck under the upside down bin!  She had been banging and banging trying to get out!  Poor thing!  When the bin fell off the bench, she had inadvertently gotten stuck, long enough to lay an egg!  So funny....

Then, last night, I had some last minute tidying before bed and I asked the younger 3 to help out.  They are doing waaaaay more than ever now that their older siblings are gone so much.  They aren't so keen on this.  Oh well.  I asked the 6 year old to pick up some shoes in the kitchen and to put them in the mudroom.  "Sure, Mom!"  He was so obedient and quick to listen, I was so happy!  But then I found out he only picked up his own shoes, no one else's.

I said to him, "You need to pick up these ones as well." 

"They're not mine!" 

"I know, " I told him, "but I'd like you to pick them up, too." 

"Fine!"  He grumpily picked them up.  Goodbye to the good attitude.

A couple of minutes later he came up to me and said (speaking of his 9 year old sister), "She does NOT appreciate it when I pick up her shoes!"

I had to cover my mouth in shock - NOT APPRECIATE?!!!  How does he know a big word like that?! 

So I asked him, "How do you know she doesn't appreciate it when you pick up her shoes?"  (smirking to myself, trying not to laugh out loud...)

In his most angry voice, "She doesn't say 'thank you'!" 

"Oh really!  Do you thank me when I do the laundry?  or make dinner? or.....or...or.....?" 

Now sheepish, "Uh...no...."

He got it.  I loved how his eyes lit up.  He realized maybe he wasn't the only one who isn't always appreciated.  However, I made sure my also-smirking 9 year old, went up to him and thanked him for putting her shoes away.  Lesson learned for all of us.  Be grateful, appreciate others.  Even a 6 year old needs a little appreciation around here!

I have been reading 4 books at once recently.  In the few moments I have before I go to bed exhausted, I try to read a little.  They are almost always books about real men and women and their true stories.....but more on this tomorrow.....kids are up....!