The Abundant LIfe

As I go through my MotherWise study for what seems like the 40th time, I continue to learn new things about submission and trusting my husband.  When he does crazy things or buys what seems to me to be maybe not the wisest choice, I have learned to sit back and watch what happens.

Two years ago he purchased two huge wine presses, broken I might add.  It seemed nuts to me at the time.  I knew he could fix it, but the question to me was WHEN?  He has no time for that kind of thing.  On top of it all, they just sat ugly on our property for these last two years.  I HATE cluttered yards, but our's was becoming the junky yard on the street.  I had to keep quiet, though I did mention it a couple of times, of course (still learning to keep my mouth quiet).

At some point he kept parts in the barn, but those parts were slowly covered with hay as the summer came and went.  Then the horses moved into the barn in the winter and more hay and manure was added.  You couldn't even see the parts really as the hay was everywhere.  But then as spring came and the vines were needing work, we hired our team that we've now used since last year, our miracle "Tommy".  The thing about Tommy is that he likes to get paid and there's just never enough extra money to pay him.  It's always a miracle when it works out.  This is when the presses suddenly were exactly what we needed.

We all went into the barn on the weekend and with our rakes, shovels and the skid steer, we moved that hay as much as we could out the back door of the barn (great compost for the garden) and uncovered the parts from the presses.  They are made of pure steel which a couple of years ago was worth something, but is worth even more now.  We rented a trailer and loaded them up and took them off the the scrap yard - I was impressed with how much money they earned - more than we had paid for them.  Every thing and everyone was paid for and then some and I just sat back once again grateful for the bank account that was in our barn.  I don't know how my husband does it and I don't even think that he plans it, but I think what happens is that I trust him, I try not to nag and God takes that baby amount of faithfulness and then performs the miracle.  The best part is that it means our property is slowly getting cleaned up and the presses are at least partly gone, so it's all good!

Recently I've been wishing I could do more speaking - I don't know why.  I really enjoy it.  I feel so happy when I can speak to a group of women, in particular, that need encouragement, but all the homeschool conferences have been cancelled so there hasn't been the same opportunities that I used to get.  Until two days ago.  I got the funniest call from my bff cousin.  She asked if I could speak at the upcoming conference which is being put on last minute in May.  I figured she wanted me to be one of the workshop speakers again.  It also happened to be taking place on the day I was hosting a shower for my daughter with another daughter so I said no, of course.  But Stephanie was relentless.  She said, "We want you as one of the keynote speakers!  If you speak first there's enough time for you to be back in time for the shower!"  I laughed literally out loud for so long.  Keynote speaker - that's funny.  Trying to get back for a shower?  Even funnier.  But guess what - I'm doing it.  Why?  Because she wants me to speak on something I love talking about and to the exact crowd who needs to hear it.  I had just been telling the women in the Bible study to find out what your gifts are and then to use them - within the limits of not impacting your family - oh the irony.  So I went to all the girls in the house and my husband and explained how I would love to do this, they just need to finish the set up the morning of and we'll do all the prep the week before.  Everyone gave me the thumbs up so I'm going to run to the conference, speak and then run home.  Should be a crazy morning, but (and I know this is just me), but that's a perfect day for me.  I've been up already at night writing the talk in my head.  I'm praying it will be exactly what God wants me to say and that it will be just the encouragement the women need to hear.

So it isn't dull around here, quite the opposite - but the verse that pops in my head is "He came that they might have life and have it ABUNDANTLY!"

The 8 Week Challenge and the Results

I just finished an 8 week program with a group of people, some I knew, like my sisters, and others I met online through another friend.  We all wanted to eat healthier, maybe even lose an inch or two (wedding coming up?) and for me, I added a physical fitness element to it.  I even paid a small fee in order to force myself to stick with it.  At the end of it all, I did lose a few pounds, but when you're exercising alongside eating healthy, the scale doesn't always tell the truth because muscle weighs more than fat.....in total, I lost 12.5 inches over all, so I was surprised by that.  I don't look very different, but I know I am on a way better trajectory for the long haul.  I started the exercise program 9 weeks ago and, to my shock, I didn't miss a day.  I've never done that much exercise in my life in a row.  It's been a great discipline and I know I want to keep it up even though the program is officially over.

Throughout the whole 8 weeks, as I denied myself certain things, I considered it a fast.  A fast of sleep (I was up EARLY every morning - 5x a week), a fast of certain things I loved and as I ate in a new way consistently, I prayed.  Then my husband joined in on his own plan which actually involved a full day fast, so I thought, why not do that as well and we did that together just last week.  I'm always amazed how God works when we seek Him in this way.

Last night, on the final day of the 8 weeks, my son comes home from work and told us that a colleague he works with shared how she's sad to see him leave Marineland this summer (because he needs a job in a medical field) and then, out of the blue she just casually mentions, "You should talk to my sister.  She works with pre-med students getting them jobs so they can get into medical school.  It's what she does for a living....."  PARDON????  How long has she worked with my son and not mentioned that?  How have we not known this?  Why now?  Why do we suddenly find out this KEY information?????  It basically sounded like she could make it a shoe-in for him to get into medical school!  AND on top of this, just in the last two weeks, the Ontario government said that it plans on opening up 450 spots in Ontario med schools, so maybe, just maybe this is his year!  I just can't help but wonder is there a connection?  It makes no sense otherwise.  I've seen this so many times when we've sought God in this specific way, He seems to open doors that otherwise stay shut.  So we keep praying that God will use this new and amazing opportunity in my son's life.....He is now studying like crazy for the 3rd time for this MCAT.  He also went to a get-together with a bunch of med students who found out he was applying again and they said that is just the norm - you keep applying, 3x is just how long it takes.  At that same party he ran into a guy who worked at the same hospital in Angola and even knew Dr. Foster!  So many bizarre enouragements for him lately to stay the course.

I've also been praying really specifically about work for my husband....In the last few weeks he's had several unusual opportunities that he's currently exploring that are TOTALLY out of the blue.  There's just no explaining it and so now we are in a waiting game to see which way the Lord leads.  As we keep seeking Him we are excited to see which way things go.

We are at the 10 weeks and counting mark for the wedding now.  Lots has to happen before the big day.  We need warm weather to move ahead on outdoor things, but in the meantime we're getting lots done on things that we can work on.  Yesterday we cleared out the upper barn of all the old hay.  That might seem like an odd thing to do, not wedding related at all, yet hidden behind all the hay is steel.  Steel can be taken in for $$$$$.  So by taking it in, it makes us cash and at the same time helps us clean out the barn, so it's all good.  For my husband he was thrilled that we took that on - it had been hanging over his head on his to-do list, but it was hard to find time.  Now it's done.

I also basically finished a HUGE declutter on the house.  Nearly every room got an overhaul.  No one will be able to tell because clutter is often hidden behind doors, but I took out so many bags of things, it's unbelievable.  I was planning on selling a lot of homeschool books, but then, smart me took them to the basement just for a week of storage until I could have people come by and in the meantime our sump pump stopped working which led to a flood and boom - all the books got soaked.  So no more selling, just throwing out!  Oh well, that's easier anyway.  Sump pump is now fixed, but of all the times to go....

We also managed to finally finish a room for my 15 year old - how we now have a 6 bedroom house in our small little farmhouse is mind boggling to me, but that's what we have!  I lost a lot of storage by giving him his own room, but we felt it was important to him.  So all my coats now have no home except on a staircase going to the basement, but it has worked.  I felt like God gave me an amazing idea even to do that.  I even managed to get a small amount of plants started, nothing like last year, but some are on the way.  By building him his own room he took my greenhouse space, so it's not ideal, but he's been willing to share space with the plants for now.  That was a huge part of my prayers during these 8 weeks, too - that we would get him in there, and it happened!

On top of all that, we somehow managed to get 23 quail (now 22 - one didn't make it).  I'm always praying for ways to keep my children engaged, excited and off computers.  Quail?  Really?  Why quail?  But for some reason this came to my husband and my 9 year old jumped on board.  We now have stinky quail chicks in the house and they will be laying eggs in literally 7 weeks.  Hard to believe.  We're buying an incubator and selling eggs and quail meat supposedly as well.  How this happened is also beyond me, but I also see that as an unusual answer to prayer.

My children's relationships and friendships have been an interesting matter of prayer, too, and I've seen God work and move in these 8 weeks in such amazing ways, bringing people into their lives, moving within the relationships themselves and always always drawing my children closer to the Lord as a result.  I was also really specifically praying for work for them and two of them got jobs in such miraculous ways that were also "out of the blue" as I keep saying....WOW, when I write it all down, it's amazing to see how God has worked!

As I prayed for my sisters, I also saw miracles in their lives with their husbands and their work as well as connections with my kids.  It was 8 weeks of just watching for God and seeing Him show up everyday.

I even managed to make more connections with women at church including a young single girl who longs to be married.  I told her about fasting and she jumped on board with the 40 days before Easter.  She's hard core and is committed to praying for herself, her family and so many other things.  I'm excited to see what God is going to do in her life!

So, the way I see it, God helped me unclutter my home, my body, took down walls in my children's lives, and is making a way in the wilderness for my husband, this young lady....incredible!..the Christian life is really so exciting.  The 8 weeks might be over, but we will see what the next 8 hold!  I can't even begin to imagine!

Adjusting My Expectational Positioning System

I never purchase things online for myself, yet things always show up at our house that others have purchased....clothes, books, tools....box after box.  It seems so novel to me to do this and I think the reason I'm against it is because you always have to use a credit card.  I'm so afraid of credit cards so I avoid them.  But recently when the latest Ann Voskamp book was released, I decided I really wanted to have it and did the unthinkable - ordered it online.  What a concept!  I'm only a few pages in.  Literally every sentence is so rich.  It's almost too much at times, but what I'm taking away from it so far is great and she puts into words what has been my problem throughout my life - those darn expectations.  Expectations, in general, lead to suffering.  It's not wrong to have expectations, it's that our expectations, if they are what control us, will never be fully met.  Something will always go wrong and if we rely on our expectations then, inevitably, we will be disappointed.  The solution is really quite simple.  Trust God.  That's it.

She put it another way - we need to have an Expectational Positioning System, or the EPS, just like a GPS, downloaded into us.  Just like when we are lost en route somewhere or we take a wrong turn, the GPS quickly reroutes us.  When we are en route in life and things don't go as planned (nearly every day around here), we don't need to be lost, we just need to reroute.  If I was driving with my husband and he took a wrong turn, that doesn't suddenly mean he has left me - we are "lost" together.  In the same way, she says, we are never lost with God.  Just because life doesn't go as planned doesn't mean He has left us.  He promises that He will NEVER leave us or forsake us.  So we reroute.  And the key is DO THIS QUICKLY.  If the GPS waited and waited to get us back en route we would get more and more lost.  But, instead, what happens is that it immediately tries to get us back on track and it is relentless in its efforts to turn us around.  Turn here, turn HERE, TURN HERE!!!!  So it is with God and our life.  He says, "Go with the flow, go with THE FLOW, GO WITH THE FLOW!!!!"  But we stay lost, preferring to be disappointed, sad, in our pity party, figuring God has no idea what He's doing, assuming He's deaf, needs our help (oh the irony) and all the while He's just changed our course, brought a new thing into our life and just wishes we could see it right away.

One of the benefits of learning to adjust our EPS is to look for God in EVERYTHING and then to actually see Him.  He's everywhere!  My eyes have been opened to this and its been amazing.  I have had so many moments recently and if I were to count them they would be as many as the minutes in the day because I'm really starting to see God in everything.  One of the big ones recently was how we ended up hosting a young girl for a week that I had never met.  Her parents got covid and she needed a place to stay the week before her baptism so she wouldn't miss it.  My daughters knew her, but the rest of us didn't.  We have no room!  So she shared a bed with one of my girls, went to work during the day, came back late at night, debriefed a little here and there, and then left - it was virtually painless.  She came and went, but what came out of it was a connection with her parents that went to our church whom we had never met.  It didn't occur to me that it might have meant quite a lot to them that we had hosted their daughter and yet we got them lovely thank you note from them especially because she was getting baptized and because we had hosted her she was kept well and the significant day carried on as planned.  I see God in that just because He knows how I long to connect with people and keeps working it out so that it happens.  But it isn't always so major - yesterday was a regular day, but it sure started off in a funny way.  I felt like I was in National Geographic.  I was driving my daughter to her little nanny job (that's another answer to prayer) and on the way back home I saw two mourning doves on a fence.  They were literally doing a dance that you see in nature videos.  It was so cute, kissing each other on each side of the cheek over and over again.  I thought to myself, "I wonder if that's a courtship dance I'm seeing?"  Suddenly there was definitely love in the air and I thought to myself, "Wow!  What did I just witness!?"  It's hilarious, but I really felt like God allowed me to see their beautiful birdie love story and I honestly felt like I was the only person in the world to ever see how mourning doves dance.  It was literally two seconds out of my day, but because I'm looking for God in everything more and more, to me, it was God showing up in my day.  So easily missed, so easily overlooked.  It was so beautiful and I was so grateful I saw them.  The rest of my day unfolded in short conversations with my kids, my husband, friends, Bible Study....and I find myself more grateful as every day passes for how God shows up, opens my eyes to what He's doing, where He is.  He is in everything, even in a cup of tea, a cat against my leg, the rooster outside crowing.....that makes my life so full!

One more example - our horses.  They have to be the cutest things on the farm, but one of them got a minor infection in his hooves.  It could be deadly if he keeps walking on the wet grass, so we had to pen them up in the barn.  This could have been a major irritation, but now that we are memorizing James for the 2nd time, we decided to "count it all joy" and took the farrier's advice and quickly set up a pen for them.  There are so many reasons that we could have been bugged by this - it was going to take a lot of work, reorganizing of the barn, money for materials, physical effort, time away from other things.....but instead, once we got our head around it, we discovered we had all the materials, my husband was super creative and worked at it with the boys.  Within a few hours it was all done, "for free", and the horse should be fine.  It was bonus, too, because we had really wanted to do this with the wedding coming up, but when?  I love that God rerouted us and made us do it right away instead of the week of the wedding.  It's just God giving us the eyes to see these things.

I keep becoming a Christian, haha.  Every day God shows me where I need His sanctification and I love how He shows up in the little (and big) things daily, moment by moment.