saturday morning

il dolce far niente

On this 30-something degree, sunny Montana evening, I'm sitting in front of my fireplace with a picture window to my right. I can see piles of melting snow out the window and just beyond that a very old farmhouse that remained as the new neighborhood development grew up around it. I hear cartoons in the background and my almost 2-year old daughter begging for chocolate. I don't know where she gets that from. My husband and I are planning on watching a movie on this Friday night after the kids are in bed. This is the first weekend in 4 or 5 weeks that we have the whole weekend to ourselves. Nothing scheduled. We can do whatever we want. And I think we won't do much. I think we are going to observe the sweetness of doing nothing.

back soon!

My lovely husband just got me a new computer for my birthday so I plan to be up and running soon again! Looking forward to continuing our story...

from there to here

When I reflect on my life as a married woman, I realize my husband and I have lived quite the life of provision from the Lord. In fact, I clearly see that the only way we were able to survive mentally, physically and financially throughout the last eight years, starting careers, changing careers, going to seminary, having kids, buying a house just to name a few, was solely upon the provision of the God we worship. Without Him giving us our every need, we wouldn't be where we are today.

It is an understatement to say our lives look very different now than what they did in the beginning. So where did we start? I was married to a man who wasn't sure if it was his lot in life to have kids, he felt an interest in theology but DID NOT want to pastor. Neither of us wanted to leave our beloved city, St. Louis, we were both moving forward in our careers, me as a caseworker and he as a financial guy. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment near family and the city, we were growing our community as a married couple, making friends and becoming active together in our church.

Where are we now? I'm a homemaker, raising my kids, doing what I can to serve in our church alongside my husband who is now a pastor of spiritual formation at a fast-growing country church in a small mountain city in Montana. We've gone from city slickers to small town folk, from a billion stores with infinite choices promising to fulfill any want or whim at your fingertips to a handful of local ones, from nice Midwesterners to bend-over-backwards, "whatever you need I can help" Westerners.

Though we got here to our surprise, it wasn't without our God shaping and molding our hearts, igniting our passions and fleshing out our gifts, leading us and teaching us, pruning and preparing us for the great adventure that lay ahead.

Though the path of Lord leading the church to us started in February of this year, our path of being led to them started much earlier...

trying to get back

Well, we made it. We've been living in the mountains for over a month. How I've longed many times to get back to blogging, but we are trying to figure out how to make my therapeutic personal time via blogging work. You see, we have the computer upstairs and I haven't figured out a way to blog during dear daughter's nap time without waking her. That's when I usually blogged before and it worked beautifully - the computer was far from her room before. We're trying to make something work. Hopefully I'll be back in full force soon. Just wanted to pop in and let you know what's going on. I have these grandiose ideas of writing out the whole story of how we ended up here... over the course of several weeks, of course. I hope those ideas become reality before I forget the whole story! Oh... and if you have any interest in commenting, I invite anyone who desires to do so. You just click on the "comments" section and you can leave one anonymously or you can click on "name/url" and put your name on it. I'm way out here in the mountains alone with the grizzlies and my husband and kids - words from other humans are highly encouraged! :-)

planning to return soon....

update

This is the road to the church where my husband will serve as director of ministry. You can't see the church from this picture, but it is right underneath the horseshoe break in the very cloudy morning...
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I am still here! I feel so cliche to say "we've been so busy," but its just the truth. We are trying to get our home sale-ready, we have been trying to iron out specific dates of moving, which include a long distance truck ride and plane tickets. We were looking for a home to move into, what moving company to go with, how to get the boxes we need to move, how to do the little projects around here to leave the place in good shape for the next person, my husband is graduating seminary this week, we are trying to spend time with friends and family as much as possible before we leave, we are grieving and celebrating simultaneously, AND on top of all that, we are just trying to figure out how to live normally in a very un-normal circumstance. I am not complaining at all, but its a lot of stuff, wouldn't you agree?!

So, my dear readers, I will be around as much as possible to write here, because I have missed those times of outlet and I look forward to their regular return. But for now, I will be more sporadic. Just know that I will pop in as I can, it may not be as regular as before, but know I will excitedly and more regularly return about mid June to early July. Please keep checking in - your time spent reading my jabber means more to me than you know! And, I can't wait to unfold and share the story of how God has done a mighty act in our family, launching us into the wonderful adventure of His calling upon our lives.

"For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." - Romans 11:29

Happy Mama's Day, Mama!

"Your love has changed my life." or "I can't live without your wisdom, so thank you for being you." or "You bring the light of life and love to all whom you encounter." While those things are certainly true of my mother, I cannot bring myself to purchase a card packed with such generalized cheese. There's so much about my mom that a card could never articulate. So I am dedicating this post to my wonderful mother. Let me tell you about her.

She is a strong woman, valuing truth and love. She is selfless and giving. She is long suffering with hurting people and has a gift of bringing healing to the soul. She is a nurturing comrade to my father. A caring and thoughtful in-law to my husband. A patient, loving teacher to my children. And she is all those things and more to me.

I love that when I look into my daughter's beautiful eyes and face, I see my mother. I love when I hear my son speak, I hear the teaching and influence of my mother. I love that she has left a legacy in me that I cherish and guard and I embrace the opportunity to pass it along to my children.

We're going to be moving far away soon. It will only change how easily we can live daily life among each other, as her influence not only runs through my veins but also runs deep into our family that adores her and calls her blessed. I love you, mom! We all love you! Happy Mother's Day. I'm thankful God gave me you.


my wonderful son and my beautiful mom