Every week so much life happens. I still regret not writing more during the summer. We picked up my "blog book" last night. The kids absolutely love reading little snippets of our life and who knew I'd been writing for over 7 years. We read about my son's 8th birthday last night. That 8 year old is now 15. He's so big now. I didn't write about what we did for his 8th birthday, but I did reflect on his 5th in the post. The night of his 5th the cows we bought arrived. Ten years later we used all the manure from those cows to grow our garden. It was an amazing reflection to see how those cows would be used in our life without us knowing at that time. For his 15th birthday, no cows, just a day of trampolining and flipping with a couple friends. I'm in awe of his bizarre talent!
This week we are prepping for our the grape harvest. This will be way more intense than last year as this year we actually managed to save the grapes with netting, so we have 5 acres to bring in BY HAND. Needless to say we'll be calling all the contacts we've ever had to help.
We also spent the entire weekend prepping all the bins for the actual grapes to be pressed in as well as moving barrels around, cleaning and prepping the machinery and also getting everything ready for bottling. We are also bottling we hope any day now. We are waiting on one more approval on the red wine and then we order the labels and we will be selling wine. That'll be a big day when we sell the first case. Seven years ago when I was writing, I definitely did not see this day coming.
When we moved in to this place, we were still running an engineering business. We had so much stuff from all RM's contracts that we didn't take the time to go through it, so it all came into what we call "the shop". We've since gotten rid of so much stuff as he shut down his business and started at the college, but not everything was dealt with. Over the last few weekends, we have, or I should say, the older boys have, taken EVERYTHING out of the shop and moved it into the bottom of the barn, then swept up all the mess and remarkably mopped the floors over and over until it looks brand new. We are now moving in the vehicles that need to be fixed (yes, that's plural) and then the idea is we hope to actually fix them! They've been sitting around for months because you can't jack them up and work on them while they are on a gravel surface. Once they're in the shop, it'll be way easier to work on. None of them have anything serious. They are all "quick fixes", if that's possible with cars. This might not seem like a big deal, but it's a huge answer to prayer for me. When you have dumpy cars all over your property sitting there, you start to look like a junk yard. How I hate that. Getting things like this out of the way and cleaned up is a big deal. I always want things done fast and when I want, but what I've learned is to be patient and trust and hope. When you have as much going on as we do, you have to learn to wait. And as a Psalm says that I read recently, you have to wait - in silence - that means no complaining, no nagging. RM knows that I don't like the junky look. He hates it, too, but one man can only do so much, so I have waited and things are slowly, but surely getting better.
We have friends who have an amazing home and garden renovation business. The homes they renovate pretty much always end up in national decorating magazines, literally. If we get brave enough, we're considering asking them to come by our place and give us a master plan for our place. We could never hire them to coordinate the whole thing....we just want a plan that we could then do in phases. Those phases might just take another 25 years to complete, but you never know, maybe just a 5 year plan! Anyway, we'll see if we get our courage up to call them. Every minute on the phone is like talking to a lawyer, you get charged! So....don't know, can't say, want to hope.....ugh, I want them to come today!
I'm reading in Ruth right now. In just the first 5 verses, 3 men died. Three women were left with heartache. The book itself is only 4 chapters long. My niece's boyfriend broke up with her this week and she was left broken hearted. As I read those 5 verses I could almost feel the heartache of Naomi, Ruth and Orpah and it made me feel my niece's heartache. But as I kept thinking about it, I knew I wasn't really that sad because I knew the book ended on a happy note. Ruth meets Boaz and ends up being in the line of Christ. It was an amazing love story. So I made a video to my niece explaining to her how "she's just in chapter one" of her life, actually she's just in the first 5 verses of her life. There are 4 more chapters of her life to go! There will be a "Boaz" one day. Ruth didn't know who, how or when. None of us do. I am in maybe chapter 2 or 3 of my life. I've met my Boaz, thank the Lord. I still have lots of questions though as to how my life will go. But, I need to give myself the advice I gave my niece - trust God to write the chapters of your life. I don't need to worry or dread. I can be excited about what He's going to do in her life and what He'll do in mine. He wrote my love story and my life story. I'm excited to see what will happen next, for my niece and for myself and our family.
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