Blessings

My back hurts, my arms hurt, my legs hurt, and my feet hurt, but all in all, I'm a happy individual today. My house is clean, my floor is done, and Christmas can finally begin! I haven't blogged in over two weeks, and there are so many random ideas I've wanted to address, but I've been pondering on how to do that. Well, I've realized that all in all, these are things that I am just thankful for...so we will address them all that way!

1. Let's start with my car, Mithral Rae. Even though we did have to shell out a couple of hundred dollars to get the sensors fixed, she is at least working again, quite nicely, and seems to not have any inclinations towards randomly quitting her job in the middle of the road! We are going to find a way to get the more general repairs done on her sometime in the next few months; she’s been such a good car over the last ten years, I hate to give her up!

2. Thanksgiving was one of the best Thanksgivings we have had in several years. We drove down about ten hours to Texas to spend it with Chris' aunt and uncle and their four vivacious children. We had a lovely time with delicious food, drives around the city (which I love!), cuddling kids, expressions of thankfulness (including a surprise announcement from Chris' aunt about kidlet number five coming in June!), and just a general relaxing, cozy, thankful! Thanksgiving. We were both in desperate need of escaping Springfield (and our house) for awhile, and to be able to do so with loving and accepting people was wonderful.

3. Dishwasher updates. Upon returning to Springfield, we found our kitchen floor was almost completely done being tiled, and indeed, as I write this, not only is our kitchen floor completely done, but this weekend we finished redoing the dining room floor, putting in dividers, and (this is the reason for the sore muscles) completely cleaning up the disgusting dirtiness that my home had turned into! (I spent 6.5 hours just doing the cleaning. Keep in mind, our kitchen, dining room, and living have been one big jumbled mess for over four weeks, and, as with any construction project, dust has been getting everywhere. Add into that the fact that I’ve been sick, we’ve been out of town, and it’s really difficult to keep a clean house when nothing is in its right place and it’s constantly getting dustier because of grout, tile, sawdust, etc).

Our home is now sparkly clean, ready to be decorated for Christmas, and the kitchen/dining room actually look better with the tile in the kitchen than they did before all this happened!

One of the most amazing parts of all this is how faithful God is in taking care of our needs. When we were first debating on how to fix our floor from the great dishwasher flood, we decided we would have to tile the kitchen floor rather than simply replacing the laminate because the particular brand of laminate we originally used in flooring was - of course – discontinued. And, while we did have some extra boxes of laminate left-over from when we original put the laminate in the house, we were going to be just short in being able to redo both the kitchen and dining room.

Dreading the cost of tile (and losing our beautiful floor), Chris and I went out hunting. We finally found what we wanted and brought it home only to decide it really wasn’t right. At that moment, my dear brother dropped off a whole bunch of tiles at our house that go beautifully with our kitchen and were given to him (boxes and boxes and boxes) by a hardware store because most of the boxes had chipped pieces in them. Cobble them together - and we had enough to redo our kitchen. So, even counting what we paid my brother to do the tiling on the floor (a topic both of us were completely clueless about), all in all it cost us maybe $250 to fix all of the mess. Plus a few weeks of frustration - but hey - considering what we thinking it could cost...it's a blessing. God really does take care of our every need - large and small.

4. Tied directly in with the idea of a clean home is another cleansing concept. For the last three months, Chris and I have been embroiled in a nasty, sad, and at time rather pathetic situation with his immediate family. This has been a long time building (years literally) and involves some odd issues. While I won’t get into details about any of that here, the basic upshot is that – as far as we can tell – his family is no longer talking to him (us) and they seem to have no inclination to try to work through any of what has happened – and indeed, seem to have moved on in their lives to the point where we really don’t know if they will ever have an interest in reforming any kind of relationship with us again.

Obviously, this is a hard place for anybody to be. Acceptance by the people who are your family is a basic desire of any person, no matter how good or bad their parents may be. It’s the reason one can find children who’s parents abuse them who will stand up for their parents.

There is so much involved in all of this mess that I really don’t feel comfortable discussing it in such a public forum as this. However, the result from our end has been three very emotionally frustrating and even depressing months. In getting to this point of realizing that we may or may not ever have a healthy relationship with his family, we have spent many hours processing and analyzing and – vital of all – praying. We have finally hit the point where we have to move on – with or without them. We have to put our lives back together again. It is sad that things are the way they are, but we can’t spend the rest of our lives wondering if they will ever turn into reasonable, caring people.

And so, for both of us, restoring the physical peace of our home from the chaos and mess that has overtaken it, can be seen as a symbolic representation of what we are doing with our emotional and mental selves.

So where does the thankfulness come in?I am thankful to be married to a man who is willing to give up a lot of important things in order to not only become a better man but to develop his own faith and beliefs. I am thankful for his humility and willingness to be honest about his own life.

I am thankful that we have not had to walk through all this alone, but that we have had friends who have been willing to pray with us and put up with our rather chaotic emotions for several months.

I am thankful that God has so clearly demonstrated to us – over and over again – the last few months how much control He has over our lives and that He is always taking care of things – no matter how bad or how frustrating.

And, I am thankful that, somehow, in all of this, I know that everything will be okay in the end. Maybe not what we would ideally want, but God will be with us and we will be okay.

Severe lack of blogging

And sadly, for at least a few more days, while I have multiple things bursting out of me dying to be written...I probably won't have time. However, until that time comes...listen to this entertaining song instead!

And the fun just doesn't stop

OK, so I'm really not that negative of a person. Slightly on the pessimistic side at times, especially when I'm tired or feeling overwhelmed, but really...not that negative as a general rule. However, this craziness has got to stop. I literally can trace for the last three months week by week the non-stop disasters that have been following us. Basically, something happens, we get about one week (two on a really big thing) to settle into it, figure out what to do, yadda, yadda...and then something else comes up.

• Crazy family issues (this is a non-stop stressor that anytime everything else is being quiet likes to crop up and be irritating - or just crop up and be irritating when it wants to!)
• Myrte (who, btw, is not doing so well - I'm still completely out of her life - but she's gone straight back into all sorts of fun things)
• Food Poisoining
• Poison Ivy
• Dishwasher disaster (and thereby, ripping up my kitchen floor disaster - which is still a mess, although scheduled for fixing asap)
• Strep Throat (feeling somewhat better, but I was way to tired this morning after doing a little bit of housework)

And the most recent...my beautiful, faithful, beloved car of ten years - who incidentally goes by the name of Mithral Rae - don't ask - it was just one of those phases I went through where everything had to have a name. For example - my old laptop's name was Freddy. OK, so maybe it wasn't just a phase - I guess I did name our new, current laptop Leo! Anyhoo...Mithral Rae has suddenly decided she's tired of being faithful and has started this new thing of suddenly dying. Which, when one is driving down the middle of a busy road, can be a very disconcerting never mind dangerous concept!

Now, she did this a couple times to me a few weeks ago, so we sent her to the shop, and they proceeded to charge us $60 to tell us they couldn't find anything wrong with her. However, I was not comfortable driving a car eight miles to and from work every day on very busy roads when I knew (despite the non-diagnosis) that she was being tempermental and obstinant. So, Chris and I switched cars (his drive is much shorter to work and on back-streets primarily). Well, he had only one problem with her in a couple of weeks...until yesterday...when she proceeded to die three (?) times in the span of about half an hour or so...including while he was driving down the middle of the road.

So, Mithral Rae is now in the shop...

Since writing the above, I have received a phone call from the car shop. The particular issue is - as far as they can tell - one that should only cost a couple of hundred of dollars to fix. However, Mithral Rae has also been shaking a lot lately and have some odd rattlings, gurglings, etc. Now, you have to keep in mind, she's ten years old and has a LOT of miles on her (about three trips back and forth between Washingston State and Missiouri never mind tons of other trips). So, while she was in the shop. Chris asked for them to check out her other cranky issues. Apparently nothing major is wrong, but it's a lot of little things that need replacing, tightening, aligning, etc to keep her healthy and running more smoothly. The entire bill, if we decide to have everything fixed that needs fixing, will run a little over $1000.

And so now we face that huge question of to pour the money into her or not. She is only technically worth about $600 book value any more. However, she's a great car that we have not had to pour a ton of money into over the last few years. If she will last for several years more (which she really should given that there's nothing seriously wrong with her, just bits and bobs that need some help, and she's primarily only driven in town now because she's getting a little old for huge long road trips)...is it worth it?

GAH! I hate decisions like this! And amounts of money like this! If it's not one thing, it's another!

God bless us every one!