We're Getting There!

I was just talking to one of my friends over lunch about the depth to which we can and can't see progress when we are in the middle of an undertaking. Often times, we can't. We're shoulder deep in the mess of life thinking nothing is moving forward, nothing is getting where it needs to go, meanwhile not realizing we are slowly (or even sometimes swiftly) being moved along by a current.

I have been overwhelmed in very sense of the word in the last week and a half. I have had moments of sadness, joy, discovery, suprise, hope, disappointment, all laced with a deep exhaustion. We are just plum tired. And there are days where I feel like we've got nothing to show for it.

And then I look at these...



And I look at the layers of paint under my fingernails that still won't come off after multiple showers.

And I see the boxes filling and piling up.

And Cliff and I fall asleep easily in a room in an apartment that's becoming more barren as the days wear on.

And then I know that all of this is worth it.

Even when plans change and people don't come through and the weather makes a turn for the not so great and the days are long and there's an unexpected leak or the paint dries too quickly or the molding nicks the wall or your feet and back are killing you or you're just not getting enough sleep, it's all too good and too much of a blessing to NOT see the joy in this process.

I can't even imagine what a new mother feels like, but I think this might be the closest I'll get until that day comes.

Home Purchases & Other Things

Well, we did it.

We closed on the house this morning and we're the proud owners of a couple of tiny keys, a ranch home, and a nice little mortgage. But gosh, this is so great. I'm just giddy everytime I think about it, really. Our sellers, you know, those people who used to own our house, will be out tomorrow so it's not ours to sleep in just yet (though with the keys, wouldn't it be funny if we did show up tonight?) but I'm working on trying to convince Cliff that we should bring up sleeping bags, order a pizza, and stay there tomorrow night... you know... just for the simple beauty of it all!

Because while we'd love to be there tomorrow, there's some work we'd like to do and since we've got time to do it, we might as well. We'll be putting up new crown molding and painting, namely. Cliff's parents will be coming in to help over the next week or so and we've got just a little bit of work ahead of us, but it's going to be great.

Speaking of painting, we've made our final decisions on colors and here's what we've settled on:



It's a funky pallette with a few "random" choices, but if you could see these colors up close and the layout of the house you'll see how it works. You never can tell what something truly looks like from a computer screen (every heard of monitor calibration). Who wouldn't want to do laundry in a room as bright and cheery as that anyways (and let me tell you this is one heck of a laundry room... it'll double as storage and pantry as well)? And when an extended family member has NINE GALLONS of Benjamin Moore paint in shades of colors you were already looking at, you make it work!

And finally, if you'd like to get one of the "We've Moved!!" postcards I'm designing and have never received a Christmas Card from us (I'm telling you, we send one to everyone in our mailing list), send me your address in an e-mail and I'll try to get one to you!

Spring Break / And Other Things

This would have been my first working Spring Break (because unlike faculty, university staff are still on the clock). But along with Cliff, I was asked to "chaperon" for one of the university-sponsored trips going out this next week with a group of students.

Of all places that the trip would be going, with the objective of working with Habitat to build houses, Cleveland (TN, of course) was selected and the team was in need of somewhere to stay. Steve, our friend, Sunday school classmate, and fellow Belmont staffer (RD in Kennedy), was on a mission to find a host. Enter Cliff and the cabin, me as the much-needed female leader presence on a trip made up of a majority of girls, and the fortune of Cliff getting mission-week at Lampo and me getting "mission-week" if approved to help lead a Spring Break trip.

So that's where we'll be Monday, after and early-bird flight out of Norfolk, a quick pit-stop by the apartment to switch out luggage, and the drive to Cleveland.

I have needed all of this so much. The flight. The trip home. Playing games together and cuddling with the cats. And we've only just gotten here and started what I've been calling a sort of 9-day "hiatus." The plan didn't start out that way, but the Lord had something else in mind.

And the prospects of a stay at the cabin, the sole objective of standing outside with a hammer in my hand and building, building relationships with students outside my "realm of normal work," serving, and a night and day in the Smokies just blow me away (again) with God's timing.

So I will get back to nursing my cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee and patiently waiting for Mom's breakfast pizza to finish cooling so we can all partake. Hope you all have a beautiful Saturday!

p.s. The weather here is about the same as what it's supposed to be back home today, so you Middle-Tennessee folks better get out and PLAY, because we most definitely will be!

Out of the Depths

We are never more in touch with life than when life is painful, never more in touch with hope than we are then, if only the hope of another human presence to be with us and for us.

Being a good steward of your pain involves all those things, I think. It involves being alive to your life. It involves taking the risk of being open, of reaching out, of keeping in touch with the pain as well as the joy of what happens, because at no time more than at a painful time do we live out of the depths of who we are instead of out of the shallows. There is no guarantee that we will find a pearl in the depths, that our pain will have a happy end, or even any end at all, but at least we stand a chance of finding in those depths who we most deeply and humanly are and who others are. ... What is perhaps most precious about pain is that if it doesn't destroy us, it can confer on us a humanity that needs no words to tell of it and that can help others become human even as they can help us. - Frederick Buechner

(from "Adolescence and the Stewardship of Pain" in Secrets in the Dark)