Category Archives: Uncategorized

One miraculous week

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I thought about splitting this blogpost into two entries or even three but after some careful musing, I decided to cram it all into one so that maybe you can get the same overwhelmed, amazed-at-the-suddenly-rapid-progress feeling I have experienced this past week or so.

I got back from my trip to Washington last Saturday and spent the weekend more or less passed out from exhaustion on my bed, not even able to muster up the energy to notice if any work had been done around the house. And even when I had gotten a little bit of energy back, I couldn’t see much difference than before my trip.  Still no kitchen to speak of, no functioning bathroom and of course, no windows, although some progress had been made there. And of course there was unpacking to do, laundry to be washed, grocery shopping to catch up on- when momma leaves for a week, there is always plenty of catching up to do. 

But I was wrong in my first surmise.  Things had been done around the house.  Plans had been made, parts been ordered and delivery dates for certain, important appliances had been set.  Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know and not without a lot of preliminary work, I am sure.  And so, somehow, this week decided to be the week where several things fell into place and allowed us to take a big jump forward in settling in.

Monday morning, the hubby told me that I should probably start cleaning out the trailer and moving everything that hadn’t been moved yet up to the house.  I was reticent to do so, since it seemed like tempting fate to presume that we might be finally be done with the trailer at last. Surely something would come up to hinder progress yet again, I thought, and if there were actually any real wood anywhere in the trailer, I would have been knocking it every few minutes as I scrubbed windows, emptied out cupboards and bleached the minuscule shower curtain.  Would it be possible, really, to say farewell so soon to my least favorite bathroom and kitchen in the world? While I pondered these questions, work really was going forward on better ones. It was usually late at night, after the poor, exhausted hubby got home from work, but slowly the bathroom went from looking like this 


To this




Of course, this is a temporary fix for the bathroom.  (And when I say temporary, I mean it will probably stay this way for the next ten years or so) We planned on tiling the majority of it, but tile in such large quantities started to add up rather alarmingly, so we had to settle for this hideous looking green, gooey, waterproof membrane rolled onto the walls and floor.

But it looks better on the walls than in the bucket, it does the job it needs to and I would take this bathroom over the trailer one every day.  My babies inaugurated the room by bathing in it tonight and I won’t tell you how excited I am for my shower tomorrow morning lest you think me ridiculous.

And then, there is my kitchen.  This is also going to be a temporary fix until we can save up enough money for cabinetry etc., but it is more than passable for the time being. What we had set up before (to try and avoid running down to the trailer and back and forth for every meal) was really atrocious- a lopsided old table with a microwave, a toaster oven and coffee making supplies piled pell mell on top.  This is what it looked like after I had been gone for a week. Don’t look, mother.

This side of the kitchen is where my good countertops and kitchen sink will eventually go, so I decided to get rid of the awful table and get creative using the other side of the kitchen for the time being.  But in order to move my kitchen stuff out of the trailer and out of storage and into circulation again, I needed some kind of shelving. I have a nice pantry but no built in shelves and not a lot in reserve to be purchasing shelving.  Luckily, my basement and porch are brimming over with scrap wood and even a few odd bits of furniture that came with the house. 

This particular hutch had been sitting on my porch for at least a dozen years- seriously.  It was unbelievably filthy and I wasn’t sure it was even salvageable, but I thought I might as well try.

I didn’t take any photos of the in between stages, but after a ton of sanding and painting and patchwork and a tasteful yard or two of fabric to cover up the less fixable areas, the  boys and I succeeded in shoving it into the pantry where it fit perfectly and I had something quite usable.  


That, along with my favorite technique of stacking board and bricks to make shelves, and my pantry was in business.  It’s a cute little room, but rather difficult to get a good picture of.

I did something similar with another old hutch,although this one was in much better shape and hadn’t been sitting outside for the last decade.  I just spruced it up with a cute piece of fabric and now my “red” collection is housed there.  

I like red and decided it would be my accent color, which was easy to do since most everything I already owned in my kitchen was red.  


This was the other side of the kitchen- a blank canvas, if you will.

I had a few more random pieces of shelving (one of which definitely needed to be covered with a tasteful curtain), a good solid piece of wooden countertop and my trusty old kitchen island that I rearranged twenty times over until I found an arrangement that worked and would give me at least some counter space.

As soon as I had finished that, my beautiful, fifty dollar Craig’s list fridge was delivered and finally filled that space that has been mocking me with its emptiness for so long.  Oh the delight!

And then, this morning, best of all mornings, some dear people delivered a stove- a completely free gift that, like so many items now in our house, were apparently just looking for a good home. So this is my “temporary” kitchen. 

We are very, very blessed.



It seemed fitting, somehow, that the first meal I cooked in this room should involve bacon.


So now, everything we need to function in our house has been installed- errrrr, everything but the kitchen sink. That’s still in a box. But she’s a beaut, no?

And of course, the windows and the heat and air and a hundred other little things that would allow us to call this place finished. But oh, we are so much closer to that goal than we were even a week ago. 

 We are looking at a hooootttt summer ahead of us but we are facing it with hope, joy, thankfulness and a fully functioning bathroom.

What a difference a year makes

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So a year and a day ago I posted this.  I was just rereading it, remembering as if  it were only yesterday what it was like having just moved into the trailer and then getting attacked by that awful stomach bug. And even thou we aren’t technically done using the trailer and a stomach bug today would still be just as unwelcome as ever, I am amazed at how far we have come from that bleak and miserable birthday.  

There is so much value in looking back over a year, not only seeing how far God has brought you, but realizing that all miseries must come to an end sometime, whether it’s a 24 hour illness or a difficult living situation or you name it.  Of course, it is also helpful to remember the bright spots in the dark times- a helpful sister, loving children, unexpected humor in the midst of it all. It reminds me that most of life is like that- a mixed bag of struggle and joy and hilarity.

This last week, I did something crazy and jumped on an airplane with my baby girl to come and see my folks out in Washington. It was about as spontaneous a thing as I have ever done- the boys were done with school, my church job wrapped up for the season, and something told me I needed to go see my daddy before he wouldn’t know me any more.  And grandma needed to see her granddaughter as well.  

It’s always painful, heading back home, knowing that things are difficult and knowing there isn’t really a lot you can do to help.  But daddy recognized me immediately.  He was so surprised and excited- he couldn’t quite remember my name, nor even how to give me a hug, but he knew me just the same.  There is pain in life, but it often makes the joys just that much sweeter. 

I came out ostensibly to be a help, but taking a breather from my own crazy life has been more helpful for myself than I imagined. My family surprised me with a little birthday trip to one of my favorite places and we spent a few days just quietly looking at the waves.   I had some rare, sweet, one on one time with my daughter


And she has gotten that special time with grandma and cousins I crave for my children so often.


Then, this morning, not only did I not wake up miserably sick, but the gloomy forecast that had been predicted for my entire stay decided not to go through with it and instead, blinded us all with a glory of sunshine.


My jet lagged baby decided to sleep until almost seven AM, which may not seem like much but it sure beats four.


And even though it was mostly shrouded in a haze, my favorite mountain managed to pop out and say hello.


I’d say it made for a pretty good day.  

I’ve been spoiled, really.  Life may have thrown me a few curveballs and will probably continue to do so, but it’s a heck of a lot easier to take a brave swing at them when your fellow team members are an unbelievably fabulous group of sisters, parents, husband, children and friends. 

Who could ask for a better gift than that? 

The half way house

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I’m not really sure what would be considered the half way point on this monumental house project of ours. Was it way back when we restructured the whole thing, gave it a new frame and floor plan? Was it when we spent two months digging out a full basement just so we could jack the whole building up a few inches and put some proper feet under it? Was it before the first or after the second complete wiring of the house? 

The hubby says, on average, that the half way point for most home construction is the sheetrock. Of course, I don’t think that average really counts for our house considering all of the special, extra and unexpected things that came with it, but it is true that a myriad of tiny things still need to be tackled now that the sheetrock has been installed.  

Obviously, there is the painting- lots and lots of painting- priming and cutting in and spraying and rolling and the backbreaking labor that results in 4,000 (4,000!!!) square feet of colored walls and ceilings. But we are nearing the end of that.   

 There is all the extra wiring that now needs to be done- the outlets and light switches and smoke alarms, not to mention (we counted twice, thinking we must be mistaken) the seventy-two (SEVENTY-TWO!) light fixtures that need installation. To be perfectly frank, at this juncture, we are nowhere near being able to afford real light fixtures in numbers that large so if you ever come a visiting in the future, you will probably be greeted with the sight of a lot of naked light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. We’re taking baby steps here, folks.

But naked or not, we finally got them all installed and today, for the first time ever, instead of searching for a plug at the end of a bewildering tangle of extension cords crisscrossing the house, you can now flip a switch and get some light in return. And you can’t imagine the wonder of a plug in an outlet! Don’t get me started on the marvel of outlets! These are exciting things folks. 

Even more exciting are the two bedrooms. For all intents and purposes, the house is still a construction zone. We are still functioning with one toilet and no other running water. There is no kitchen of any description unless you count the recess in the wall where my fridge will someday go. But last night, Oh Joy! we ditched the trailer for the night and slept in a couple of upstairs bedrooms we had been pushing to get ready.  

    My craft room and my girlie’s room were the first rooms we had painted and we got to thinking that maybe, if we could put a few finishing touches to them, we might just make them habitable. This meant dealing with the floors first, which were really in terrible condition.  

They are original hardwood, but after much consideration, we decided they were too damaged to try and restore. So this meant me and my palm sander got down on our knees and tried to remove as much of the ancient rubbly mess, sheetrock mud and paint residue as possible.    

   
Then lots of shop-vacuuming and damp-mopping and finally, several coats of a good floor paint.  

   
   
Then, there was a little trim to put up and we even managed a few doors.    

    

Eventually, we want the entire upstairs carpeted, but since that isn’t really in the budget right now either, we found some nice carpet remnants and had the edges bound, just to make the floors a little comfier.  (And please disregard the plastic where the windows should be. Be patient. I imagine we might just get those durn windows finished sometime this century.)     
   

But windows aside, some generous folks donated a few used beds to our cause so that by the end of a very exhausting day, we were thankfully able to collapse onto something comfortable.

   
   So now, although I nearly despaired many times along the way, I can finally say, nearly nine years (NINE!) to the day after we purchased this place, we are sleeping in it. 

Of course, we aren’t technically living in it yet. We are still going to be in limbo for a while, trudging back and forth from trailer to house for our water supply and a place to cook our meals. We are now working hard on completing one of the four (FOUR!) bathrooms and the kitchen will be after that, although it might just be a hot plate and a sink for a while. 

All that to say, I think we can safely say that we are past the half way point now, although I’m not sure we will ever be able to call this place truly finished. But isn’t that true of most things in life? What good would heaven be otherwise? 

For today we are grateful- grateful no longer to be seven people sleeping in a thirty foot camper- grateful for a couple of rooms that (when the door is shutting out the rest of the house) actually look mostly completed- grateful for so much support and help from family and loved ones and grateful for a light at the end of the tunnel. (and a light at the end of a switch.)

Saying Uncle (temporarily)

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Hello dear friends.  Thanks for sticking with this poor old blog.  Writing has been on the bottom of the list just now. 

  It’s been an encouraging few weeks, despite the pessimistic title of this post.  Work on the house has progressed steadily if slowly.  Our glorious white drywall is beginning to bloom with painted color and every weekend more and more work is being done on the long suffering windows.  

It’s a little eerie, wandering through the cold, echoing, empty spaces of that house.  Large sheets of plastic shroud the holes in the walls where the windows should be and they seem to whisper “just wait a little longer- just a little longer.”

I am willing to wait, but the wait has been cold- very cold.  After an abnormally warm December, January’s frosts hit us hard and I won’t lie to you- it’s been a little tough. The trailer was not built to weather the cold and the interior of the house has no defense against it. Seeing as we are hooked up to a hose for our water supply, there have been several days when the water has been kept a frozen prisoner in the spigot. 

“We can do this!” I have been telling myself. “Think of the pioneers! Or better yet, think of the Walmart down the street that sells water!”

  But when the toilet in the house froze solid, I began to lose my nerve a bit.  It’s kinda hard to watch your kiddos huddled in blankets over their schoolbooks and after all that, running to your sister’s house everyone someone ‘has to go’ can be a litttle wearing.  

I talked to the hubby. We talked to God and we asked him if he could help us find a way to get tolerably through the frigid month of February or at least help us avoid becoming victims of cabin fever induced insanity. 

The next evening we received an offer of a temporary house- a house sitting gig that would extend (you guessed it) through the month of February.  

I debated the question for a while.  After all, I don’t like to back down and we have stuck it out this long, I kinda hated to give up.  Fears of the work grinding to a halt or people breaking in to steal more of our stuff have also plagued me, but the offer seemed like a pretty clear sign.  And then there were my kids to think of.  

So starting Monday, we will say farewell to the trailer for a while.  At least the kids and I.  The hubby will be dividing his time between the two places to make sure things stay secure and so the work can go forward.   

There are definitely mixed feelings of relief and uncertainty floating around in my head, but I am choosing to look at it as simply a vacation.  Y’all can pray that I will use it as such and that come Spring, we will return to the work with renewed vigor and (God willing) an end in sight.

New Year, New House

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It was April of 2007 and I had just returned home from the hospital with our brand new second son. We were then renting an 800 square foot duplex with next to no yard and had begun toying with the idea of finding a bigger place since the toddler bed and crib pretty much maxed out our second bedroom and we wanted a place for our boys (and any other potential children) to run.

As my mother headed out the door to return home after helping me out for a week, she told me that she would be praying that we would be able to purchase a house soon.  I laughed a little at the idea.  We really weren’t in a position to do any such thing, but it was nice to dream.
Fast forward just a few weeks to when the hubby came home from work early one day, brimming with excitement.  He had something to show me, he said.  Something exciting.  I headed to the car, but he told me we could just walk so, curious, I loaded up the stroller with my two precious babies and we walked just a block and a half to…. what was it?
It must have been a house at some point- there was kind of a roof after all and some walls in the front, but creeping cautiously through the front door (hanging on one hinge) revealed not so much a house but a roost for what appeared to be all the pigeons of Georgia and Tennessee combined.
I stood there as the flapping of the agitated wings subsided and gaped at the rotted out floor, the caved in roof, the gutted walls filthy with who knows what kinds of filth and then to the inexplicable grin on the hubby’s face.
“What do you think, honey? Pretty great, huh? And we could get it for an absolute steal.  But there are several other people who wanna buy it so we would need to act fast.”
It took me a minute to comprehend that he was actually considering purchasing this place- that he thought he could make a home out of it for the wide-eyed toddler clinging to my leg and the tiny, fragile infant I was clutching in my arms.
I’m sure I managed some kind of a “honey, are you kidding me?” response but with the shock of his announcement and the post partum haze I was struggling with, I can’t remember.  What I do remember is him saying,
“I know it looks bad (there was probably an eyeroll from me here) but it’s a great piece of property and this house- it has really great bones.”

I don’t remember much that followed.  I do remember sitting in an office signing papers and shaking hands with the former owner who had given up trying to renovate the house and was practically giving it away. His look of intense relief seemed ominous to me somehow, as did his fervent “Good Luck with that,” as he hastened out the door.
But we were young, optimistic, the hubby had a good job with lots of potential and of course, he was talented enough to do anything.
Then came 2008. And as you all know if you have followed this blog at all, it went downhill fast from there.  But throughout all of our various attempts to complete our home, that phrase has cropped up over and over again from people who have come to help work or just to take a peek.
“Wow, you sure have your work cut out for you here- but this house has great bones.”
There have been times over the years where I have felt like screaming,
“Alright already! I know it has good bones, but I am sick of looking at bones! Can we pretty please put some meat on them?”
And then one day, after years of intense longing and impatience and despair, it happened.  The dried up bones were covered up, clothed, transformed into something that resembles a real, living house.  And it has happened so quickly that I’m still reeling- still struggling to grasp that this house might actually be a home to us.  But I’m slowly being convinced.

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20151230_142330~220151230_14231520151230_142350~2As I slowly adjust to the idea of living here, I can’t help but try to picture more fully what it will look like once it’s all done.  For instance, yesterday I just couldn’t stand seeing my dining room windows boarded up any more so I just went ahead and took the boards down. (Really, I just kicked them out.  I didn’t have a drill to remove the screws but the wood was so rotten that it just fell apart.)  It was enormously satisfying.  Of course I had to spend the rest of the day on a ladder covering up the holes I had made with plastic so the rain wouldn’t get in, but it was well worth the effort.20151230_143948I can’t describe how gloriously the whole house was flooded with light and how my imagination zoomed forward to many happy feasts in that dining room and kitchen.

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So the challenge for 2015 is going to be increased patience.  The mere fact that it looks so much more like a house intensifies my desire to escape the confines of the trailer and to move in immediately.  But alas, it is still far from inhabitable.  There are still no windows, no bathrooms, no electricity, no heat, no kitchen. Everything needs painting and trimming- the floor is a dusty expanse of plywood.  And the hubby still has a day job.

In spite of all this, I’ve never before faced a New Year that has so much potential for excitement and change and, well, newness of every kind.  Your prayers and support have meant so much to us during this time and we humbly ask that they would continue as we push forwards through this last leg of the journey.

We are now looking at Easter as a possible goal for moving in which would bring our trailer adventure to a full year. But one thing we have learned- you never know what a year (or a month, or even a week) might bring.  So overall, we pray that we would live one day of this New Year a time, stepping out in the belief that God holds us and all things in his merciful hands.

 

So what’s the hold up?

Posted in Daily happenings, fixer upper, home fundraiser, Uncategorized by

After several months of pondering and pontificating about life’s hard questions, it’s about time that I blogged about something a little more concrete.  Some generous friends made it possible for the hubby and I to get away from our current situation for a night and thanks to that and this glorious and invigorating fall weather, we are heading back to the fray, strengthened and refreshed.

Here’s a quick update on the house.  Work parties have continued to arrive every Saturday and we have succeeded in redoing the electrical and are moving on to the list of small things that need to be done before sheetrock can be installed.

This, as you might imagine, after a summer of getting almost nothing done,  has been incredibly encouraging.

We have people constantly asking for details about the work that is going forward, wanting to know if there is anything they can help with and almost always concluding with some kind of a remark about how exciting it is to be close to doing sheetrock, since then, the end will be in sight.  And to this last  remark I always have to say yes and no.  The sheetrock is a huge step, yes, and will do wonders for boosting morale around here, but there is one other rather large project remaining that seems to be often overlooked in our calculations. And that project is…..

..the windows.

This big old house has a ton of windows, which is exciting as they will add much light and beauty to the finished project, but they are, as of yet, still to be made.

“Made?” you might ask.  “Why don’t you just purchase them like any other red-blooded American?”

“Good question,” I would respond. But there are a variety of reasons why we are making and not buying them. (and by we, I mean Steve, who is not an American) then reasons are these.

Our house was built in two parts- the front part of it is good deal younger but the back part of it was so old and in such terrible shape when we bought it that we pretty much had to start from scratch on it.

This means that we still have most of the original windows from the front part of the house, but most of them are in terrible need of refurbishment.  This I have been trying to do very (very) slowly all summer and the process looks something like this.

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Here’s a window freshly removed from it’s old place.  Looks nice, eh? I’ll be honest with you- there have been many times that I have doubted we could ever make anything remotely nice out of these eyesores.  The first step, obviously, is to remove the old glass and save what remnants that we can.

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As you can see, we’ve salvaged quite a lot.  The next step is the scraping- not a job that I delight much in, I must admit.

 

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Sometimes the windows fall apart when you remove the glass, so we get to scrape each little individual cross piece.  Tons of fun, and makes quite a lovely mess.

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Here’s just a portion of the windows. Some are done being scraped, some haven’t been begun and some have been carted away by kindly friends (ie saints) to their own homes where they work on them through the week.

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Eventually, we get them down to their bare bones and there they wait to be painted, have missing parts restored, get their hardware cleaned up and then, of course, get reglazed and reglassed.  Quite a process.

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I can’t wait until these are put back in their proper places of dormer and wall.  Not only will they be beautiful, but they will help keep out the cold, which is beginning to be a bit of a nuisance.

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So those are the windows in the front.  The windows in the back have no originals to be refurbished and so, in order to comply with the code in our area for maintaining historical accuracy, we either have to pay someone to make them, or make them ourselves

Currently, they are just big holes, boarded up.

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The hubby made a good start on the frames years ago, before everything fell apart, but as you can see, we still have a long way to go.

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So long story short, the windows are what might just be holding us up for a while.  We are trying to get around the problem, but there really isn’t any way except to slog right through it to the other side.  As I said, we have people who are stepping up to help with the scraping and the sanding and even the building and we are so grateful.

But several of you have asked for a more specific thing you can help with and all I can say is, there’s an awful lot of wood and glass still to be purchased to make these windows a reality.  Any little bit would help! Thanks!

 

Shining like stars

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It’s ten fifteen on a Saturday night.  I am sitting in bed but I can still hear the ringing of a hammer up at the house.  The hubby is motivated.  It’s been a long time, I think, since he has felt that way towards our house.

Over the past four weeks, we have had a work crew show up at our house every Saturday morning.  Some of the crew have known what they were doing, others have jumped right in and learned.

I, in the pessimism that has clouded my thinking for a long time concerning this home, half expected people to show up the first week, take one look and never come back again.  But people keep coming- and new faces every week. Their wives have given up their own honey-do lists so that their husbands can help with mine. They have braved the torrential rain and missed Saturday football. They have brought meals and toolbelts and laughter and the lighter work of many hands. And they tell me they will be back next week. I’m starting to believe them.

I went up to the house earlier tonight to check on the hubby and see if he needed anything and had a very genuine, deja vu kind of moment.  He was putting some of the finishing touches on the fresh wiring that our volunteers have helped us thread all over our big old barn of a house and I suddenly remembered him, many years ago, doing this exact same thing, the first time around.

I remember I was big pregnant with our third boy and we were spending many late nights at the house with our other two children who were sleeping in playpens covered with blankets to keep out the sawdust.  I remember watching my husband then, just as I watched him tonight,  twisting all that shiny thin copper in his capable (but much younger) hands, screwing on the little plastic caps that my once baby boys always thought were candy and tucking the ends neatly into the little blue electrical boxes as we talked about what it would be like for our little guys to grow up in that house. I remember sitting and watching, with my swollen feet propped up on a stack of two by fours while I dreamed big and optimistic.

The baby that was making my feet swell on that long ago day just turned seven last week. He is now old enough to help his daddy work on the house we thought we would bring him home to from the hospital. And as I tucked him into his little bed on the floor of the trailer the other night he said,

“You know how I have been having a lot of nightmares lately mom? Well last night, I had such a good dream!  I dreamt that I woke up in our big house and it was all finished and all my brothers and me had our own beds and we each had a really nice room of our own and a dresser to put all of our own stuff in.  And everything was painted so pretty- a nice blue.  I came downstairs and you were in the kitchen (there was actually a kitchen!) and you were making muffins again- blueberry I think. And you were just making them for us and not for everyone at church! And everything was just so nice and it wasn’t raining anymore.  Wasn’t that a nice dream, mom?

Wait- mom? Are you crying?”

Of course I was crying.  Wouldn’t you over such a pathetic little speech?  But they weren’t all tears of sadness.  There were tears of hope and joy mixed in.  The fact is,  we’ve grown a little in wisdom since we last really dreamed about this house being a home. (at least I hope so)  Our youthful optimism has been replaced by a more cautious assurance, founded less upon the certainty of ultimate success and more on the knowledge that God will provide for us, no matter the outcome.  We have had to let go of that naive frame of mind that declares, “All will go according to our own plans. All we have to do is put in the work.” and now, one of the most common phrases our boys hear every day is, “If God wills that we ever move into our house, we will do such and such.”

And as humbling as it is for mommy and daddy, instead of being born into the lovely and comfortable home we dreamed of for them and never knowing anything different, our children are seeing first hand what it is like to be the recipients of God’s provision through the hands of his generous people.  They are coming to understand, as we struggle through days in a difficult living situation,  that they are loved and cared for, not simply by their parents, but by a much wider circle of people- a much larger family and a much greater Father.

We live in a dark and difficult world and my children have witnessed more of that fact than I ever would have wanted them to at such a young age. But then, without that darkness, they would never have been able to see how brightly the love of God can shine through it.

And neither would I.

Thank you.

Bricks and stones may break my bones

Posted in Daily happenings, fixer upper, Home and Garden, House project, money pit, Uncategorized by

One of the wonderful things about this big old house of ours is the big old yard that comes with it. As aforementioned, it has already become the frequent scene of frolics and boyish larks- fort building and bike riding, sleeping in tents and eating al fresco meals, and even a few good water fights, early in the season as it is.

But delightful as finally having some property has been, it also has had its challenges. Now you might be thinking,

“Here’s the part where she starts complaining about all the extra mowing and trimming a big yard entails,” and you would be partially correct.
There certainly is a good deal more mowing to be done, and like any good southern yard that has been ignored for many years, it has done its best to return to nature by winding itself up in poison ivy and kudzu and a dozen other nameless and sinister vines and shrubs. But I like to mow, and trimming the hedges is a job I don’t mind too much- at least in the spring.
However, aside from the usual maintenance, I believe our yard is unique- unique in that over the years, it has become a kind of storage unit for the hubby’s many house project leftovers.
I sometimes wonder how so much stuff has ended up heaped in odd and assorted piles all over my yard and a mental image always pops up in my head in response to my wonderings. It’s usually a conversation between two imaginary men who work for my husband and goes something like,

“Hey man, so that job is finished. What do you think we should do with all this extra (fill in- lumber, brick, cinder block, sheetrock, etc.)?”
“Heck, I don’t know,” replies the other.
“I know, let’s stick it in the bosses back yard!” says the first guy.
“Yah, that’s a great idea,” agrees the second. “It’s not like they’re ever actually gonna live there anyway.”
And then they proceed to leave behind whatever was in the truck and drive away, laughing maniacally.

Of course, this scene is purely imaginary since we don’t actually own a truck and my poor van is usually commandeered for the purpose whenever Steve needs to haul something. But I’m pretty sure the van would never have been able to transport the enormous stacks of cinderblock that are sitting in our driveway or the piles on piles of lumber sitting in varying states of decay throughout my lawn. But there they are. Or I should say, there they were. Because a week and a half ago, I decided to tackle the yard.

There’s not a whole lot that can be done to the interior of the house right now since Steve is so insanely busy at work, so I wanted a project to keep my mind off all that wasn’t getting done inside. So I started in on the wood. A few years ago, we cut down several large trees in the yard and cut them into big logs, hoping to be able to use them in our wood stove at some future date. These logs had since become a moldering heap of mostly rotting wood, infested with every kind of creepy crawly creature imaginable.
So, armed with long sleeves and very thick gloves, I began the process of sorting through the remains, fishing out what wood was salvageable, squealing girlishly when a particularly leggy insect scurried into view and then tossing the rest onto a compost heap where they could finish the job of returning to whence they came.
And then it was on to transferring big stacks of two by fours to their new home under the house and the shoveling and removing heaps of sand and then burning old cedar shingles and siding in a rusty burn barrel.
I worked diligently, going to bed each night with aching muscles and a sense of accomplishment, but all the while ignoring the worst pile of all- the mammoth pile of bricks and stones. The bricks were the remains of chimneys from inside our house and several other places, the stones were all the big rocks that had been removed when we had dug out our enormous basement a few years ago. We hope to put them to future use in building walls, columns, etc.
I kept putting it off, hoping that somehow, magically it would disappear, or maybe those imaginary workers would come take it and leave it in someone else’s back yard.
Of course, I didn’t have to move that pile. I could have left it in the middle of my nice big lawn, all overgrown as it was with vines and a miniature forest growing out of the top. I could have waited until the hubby had time, which would probably be in about ten years- or could have called up all my girlfriends and said,

“Hey! Come for a playdate with your kids and we can all move bricks!”

But that brought me to think of my own kids.

“Now hang on,” I told myself. “You had all these kids for a reason, right? You just never knew until today that you brought them into the world so they could help you move the biggest pile of bricks on the planet.”

Inspired by these reflections, I gathered my big boys around me and, being the nice mother I am, offered them a penny for every brick that they moved from the middle of the lawn to the parking area where they would be hidden, neatly stacked and denuded of weeds, behind the cinder blocks.
They were actually thrilled with the idea. I’m not the kind of mom who remembers to give her kids an allowance, so any chance to earn money is usually jumped at. They set to work with a will. I was pretty sure that they were going to give up quickly. I mean, one brick doesn’t weigh much, but the stooping and picking up and trundling wheelbarrow load after wheelbarrow load across the yard gets old fast. But they kept at it.
James had been doing the math in his head, and told me exultantly that if he moved 100 bricks, he’d get a whole dollar. I smiled inwardly, thinking they would never get that far. But they did. And then they reached 200, then 300, then 4. By the time the sun was setting they were stacking their 800th brick and couldn’t wait to start the next day. I was amazed and also slightly alarmed. The brick pile, as I stared at it through the twilight, did not look noticeably diminished. And my wallet held two bucks and one quarter, but I couldn’t part with the quarter as it was sacred to the purpose of my Aldi shopping cart.

By the next afternoon I had four eager hands stretching towards me, demanding no less than fourteen dollars. Still being without cash, I asked them if they would accept a new lego set in exchange. Oh boy, wouldn’t they! But they would like it now please, mom.
I decided to oblige them, since they really had worked incredibly hard, and goodness knows, I hadn’t wanted to move those bricks myself.
So I loaded everyone up and drove the 20 minutes to Target, where we wandered the lego aisle for an unbelievable amount of time, considering how short the aisle was and how few sets they could actually get for fourteen dollars. At last they had whittled it down to two sets, and had reached a stalemate- two boys wanted one, two another. To my untrained eye, one set looked pretty much like the other (who knew there were so many differences to be found in lego helmets!) but the fighting grew so bitter that I was obliged to flip a coin.
We arrived back home, two boys exultant, the other two sniffling a bit in a disappointed way. But off they all went to build the new set. I figured their brick moving fervor was now passed and I sighed as I looked at the remaining pile, figuring we might be half way through. I set to work, thankful that they had at least moved 1,400 of the darn things.
But I must admit, I’m not as young as I once was and I only managed 100 before calling it quits for the night. As I unloaded the wheelbarrow, sorting the bricks into two separate stacks (one for the smooth interior bricks, the other for the rough exterior ones) I found myself chanting to myself ,
“Rough, smooth, rough smooth, take the rough with the smooth, take the rough with the smooth….”
Then I had to stop and laugh, thinking how glad I would be to take the smooth at some point. It’s been rough for a long time now.

The next morning was a Friday, and as I worked with the boys on their lessons, I tried to gear myself (and the boys) up to tackle the pile again. But before we could, a friend called asking if James’ best friend could come and play for the afternoon. I agreed, and resigned myself to the boys disappearing on their bikes for the day.
But as soon as he got here, the boys had him surrounded, making wild promises of ‘free’ legos if he helped move the stack of bricks.
“Boys,” I said uncertainly, “I don’t want to make your friend come over here just to work…”
But he interrupted with, “Are you kidding! Where are the bricks? Let’s go!”

Soon the bricks were flying again. After about the tenth load, I suddenly had the brilliant idea to back the old van up to the pile, open the hatch and fill it up with ten times the bricks that the wheelbarrow could hold. The boys were thrilled with this arrangement, and I soon found their little friend was a born foreman, directing the brick laying, keeping track of the numbers and announcing with authority when they had a big enough load. Then they all joyfully tumbled into the back of the van, perching on the bricks as we bumped down to the stacks, where they formed a line and handed them to me one by one, shouting, “Rough! Smooth! Rough! Smooth!” and laughing all the while.
It’s a true saying that many hands make light work, and by the end of that day, they had earned another lego set. I even took them out to dinner as an extra reward and let them have a big sleepover in a tent in the backyard. The next morning, I finished the negligible amount of bricks that were left (only about 400) while the boys played with their hard earned legos.
But after their friend had gone, I found myself staring disconsolately at the remaining pile of stones, almost as big as the bricks had been.

“Take the rough with the smooth,” I muttered, but as I bent down to pick up the first rock.

“Hey mom,” said my oldest, suddenly appearing at my elbow, “We’ll be glad to help you with the rocks. And don’t worry, we’ll only charge you half price.”

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Hope

Posted in Book, fixer upper, Home and Garden, home fundraiser, House project, Uncategorized by

Chapter 2

I would love to be able to say that our first week in our new situation went unexpectedly well- that all my worries and fears had proved groundless and that I went to bed every night encouraged and hopeful. But the arrival of an unprecedented amount of rain quenched our enthusiasm before we had hardly begun our work. It was rain in the truly southern style- drenching downpours that turned the lovely spring landscape into sodden rivers and our yard into a bog of clay. We slogged along as best we could for the first half of the week, but with the sudden and dreadful loss of my sister’s baby on Wednesday, all thoughts of our house were put on hold and the rest of the week was spent with her, visiting with family, cooking, cleaning and simply commiserating.
Saturday was the funeral- a slightly sunnier day, although the graveyard was still swampy from the recent floods. We said goodbye to my mother, who had flown in for a whirlwind 24 hour trip and then stumbled home to the trailer late Saturday night where I dimly registered, as I fell asleep, that we had church in the morning.
I woke up in plenty of time to get ready- it was difficult not to as the rain had begun to pour down and the thunder to rumble yet again. Feeling miserable, I crawled out of bed and grabbed the key to the house, reaching for a flashlight and an umbrella. But the umbrella had disappeared. There was nothing for it but to run. It wasn’t cold outside, but the drops of rain seemed to be as big as chicken eggs, so that by the time I reached the porch, I was completely drenched. I shoved the door open and lifted my lantern high, heading through the darkness to the bathroom. Halfway there, I stepped in an unexpected puddle of water. I groaned. Despite the boarded up windows, the house was leaking somewhere. Making a mental note to tell Steve, I completed my task and taking a deep breath, headed back through the rain, slipping and sliding through the mud as I tried to run, the hem of my pajama pants soon sticky with orange clay.

We were all so exhausted from the week’s events that it was no easy job getting everyone out of bed. I threw some bread in the toaster and tried to piece together some nice clothes for the boys since they had gotten their Sunday outfits dirty at the burial the day before. The rain continued to pour so hard that our driveway had become a stream, flowing out to join the river that an hour before had been the road behind our house. Once we were all dressed and fed, Steve and I watched the flooding outside.
“Do you think they will cancel church this morning?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” he replied. “Do you want to try and go?”
I hesitated, but then, imagining being stuck in the trailer all day and missing out on the fellowship I was craving, I said,
“Let’s go.”
We had managed to find our one wonky little umbrella- a child-sized Winnie the Pooh emblazoned thing that was completely bent out of shape, but it did little good. We were all pretty well soaked by the time we had crossed the few yards to the van.
Then, as we hastened to buckle carseats, Steve looked across at me and said,
“You remembered to lock up the house, right?”
My falling face was answer enough.
“Don’t worry about it, I’ll do it,” he replied as he wrestled with the stubborn buckles on the baby’s chair.
But seeing as I was already drenched and we were running late, I hopped out of my seat and ran. There was little point in tiptoeing through the puddles now. The water simply poured over the sides of my shoes.
When I got back to the van, dripping and panting, hastily applied mascara running down my face, I couldn’t blame my husband for laughing at his bedraggled wife. The whole week had been so awful, and now this. I had to laugh too. It was either that or cry, and I had cried enough that week.
We managed to get to the freeway, slowly making it through the waterlogged streets, and we were almost to church when I heard the hubby moan,
“Oh no, not again!”
“What?” I gasped, wondering what else could possibly have gone wrong.
He simply pointed in front of him where I saw the needle from the temperature gage on the van bobbing up into the dangerously hot zone. My heart sank as he pulled into the nearest gas station, stopped, rolled up his sleeves and popped the hood. He soon ascertained what he thought might be the problem, rectified it by pouring a full jug of coolant into the system, and started off again, fingers crossed. But by the time we limped into the church parking lot five minutes later, we were back in the danger zone.

I’m still glad we chose to go to church that day, as embarrassing as it was to show up looking like a drowned rat in a vehicle that was smoking around the edges. And even though the week’s events caused me to cry through most of the service, comfort was close at hand in the form of understanding hugs, smiles, and offers of help from fellow brothers and sisters. We managed to get the van home by means of a tow truck although it took two trips in smaller cars to get us all back to the trailer.
The rain had stopped by mid afternoon, all our visiting family members had flown back home, and it was time to start back where we had left off. The first step was to try and do something about our yard. After a week of slipping and falling through the mud on the way to the bathroom, we went to work with a will, Sunday though it was, to fix the problem. If an ox falling in a ditch qualifies for help on the Sabbath, surely we do too. And I was determined to have something prepared before the next rainfall, which was due that night. Thankfully the solution was near at hand- a long sheet of plastic and an enormous pile of gravel in the backyard, leftover from building a retaining wall a few years ago.
Even the boys joined in, struggling along with unwieldy half-filled shovels until the job was done- a straggling gravel walkway leading from the trailer to the house, giving a much needed foothold for whenever the yard should choose to become a river again.
We finished just as the sun was going down, and after a quick bite of dinner, decided we would all just go to bed, exhausted from the labor and the residual grief of the past several days.

We have managed to fall into a somewhat normal bedtime routine- the boys all bunking down in the ‘living room’ while her highness, princess Caroline sleeps in her royal pavilion. ( a sheet tucked in around her portable crib).
Christian, however, has continued to find excuses to be with us at night. Sunday night was no different. As I crawled into bed after brushing my teeth, I heard a scuffling and bumping from the cupboard above my head. Slightly alarmed, I reached up and pulled open the small door to be greeted by an impish face half hidden in his security blanket. Trying to be severe and failing utterly, I hauled him out of the cupboard and sent him back to his bed, ignoring his many protests.

He went to sleep quietly enough, but unfortunately that was not the last we were to hear from him that night. At 1:37 the following morning, I was awakened by an awful, gasping, choking noise interrupted by the occasional strangled scream. Behind that, I could hear James talking in a soothing voice and whacking someone on the back. It took me a minute to realize it was Christian and that something wasn’t right. I shook Steve awake as I jumped up, but Christian had already stumbled to our bed.
Steve picked him up, trying to figure out what was wrong, trying to calm down the boy who was writhing in his arms, struggling for air and turning blue in the face. My first thought was that he had somehow swallowed something and was choking, Steve wondered if he were having an allergic reaction. But after a few panic-filled minutes of trying to ascertain the problem and having no success, we got dressed and headed for the hospital, Steve flying through the streets and I in the back, holding up my baby’s head so he could get some air.
The streets were of course empty, as well as the Emergency room when we arrived, all three of us breathless to varying degrees. Within minutes, they had him hooked up to a breathing machine, and within a few more, were able to tell us that he was suffering from nothing more than a sudden and very severe case of croup. This surprised us both, seeing as he had never had any problems with respiratory illness before, and the severity and suddenness of the attack had taken us completely unaware.
But it was a relief as well, having such an obvious answer and the means to fix the problem quickly. They said they wanted to keep him for observation for a few hours, so needless to say we were exhausted when we were finally discharged and went back home. Christian was all right, but I went to sleep with a sense of foreboding, hearing the rain begin outside again and wondering just what the next day would bring.

But when we woke up (a little later than usual) it was to a morning so glorious that it felt as if the sun were brand new. The sky was so blue and free of clouds, the air so clean, with the oppressive, stormy mugginess gone. And optimism, in spite of everything that had happened, rose up in my heart.
Things seemed so inexplicably hopeful that aside from being thankful my youngest boy was all right, there was joy to be found even in the mundane tasks ahead of me- making breakfast, teaching school, taking out old windows and restoring them, mowing a yard and then keeping my baby from eating the grass- even walking up the gravel walk we had made the day before that now kept the residual mud at bay.

It felt like an unmerited gift, this peace that had descended in the face of trouble- a gift from God, granted no doubt on behalf of the many prayers that I know have been going up for me and my family of late. Goodness knows, my own prayers lately have been full of little more than despair and hopelessness.
And I realized, in a way I never have before, just how important those prayers are going to be if we are going to see this thing through- that though I have been so worried about the needed labor and money, it will all be given in vain if my faith is weak and I allow depression to creep in, sapping my energy and determination and putting limitations on what I think God can and can’t do.

And so we have pushed on in the strength that I now know only God can give. Progress has been small but it has been there. And Lord willing, tomorrow, the first work party begins.

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In the dark

Posted in Uncategorized by

I suspected the week was going to be difficult when I saw the clouds rolling in on Sunday night. I checked the forecast to confirm those suspicions, and sure enough, angry pictures of clouds and lightning met my eyes- seven days of storming.

This isn’t unusual for the time of year in this part of the country, but living in a trailer, we quickly discovered, makes bad weather more of a trial. (Just imagine the sound of water pouring on a piece of aluminum foil or thunder rolling around inside a tin can) The trailer is also inclined to be slightly leaky, so we prepared for the week with buckets and towels and wished we had a good stock of rubber boots to deal with the mud pit I knew our yard was about to become.

But things weren’t so bad. Yes it rained copiously, but the boys were enjoying it, tromping around outside with umbrellas and squealing in half- terrified delight when the thunder boomed too closely. I started some projects inside the house- scraping and stripping old windows that needed restoring, and the hubby got the toilet connected so we no longer needed to lug in buckets of water every time we wanted to use it. (It’s the little things, folks) Even Christian was adjusting to all the changes.
And the forecast wasn’t as bleak as promised. We had occasional interludes of sun between the floods, allowing the yard some time to dry and us some time to scrape the sticky southern clay off our shoes.

But then came the middle of the week. As we were preparing for the day’s work on Wednesday, we received a phone call- one of those phone calls that we never thought would come. My younger sister, my sister who has been through so many painful trials in her young life, was in the hospital. She had lost her baby.
It probably wasn’t the wisest thing I have ever done, leaving all my kids behind with daddy and tearing off to the hospital, half-blinded by tears, ignoring stop signs and missing three turns in my haste to get there, but there was nothing else to be done.

The rest of the day was a sort of surreal, out-of-body experience- a nightmarish deja- vu as I watched my sister and her husband walk the same path we did, almost nine years ago to the day. All through those long hours I sat with my mouth closed, knowing the futility of words in such a case, knowing no platitudes or comforting cliches would do anything to disperse the dense fog of confusion and pain that had descended on them. If you know their story, you know how painful such a turn of events must be.

This has been an enormous blow to my whole family, since the news of her pregnancy had come to us as a ray of hope in a very dark time. And yesterday, I must admit, I was angry- angrier than I have ever been with God. The rain outside was flooding the world, the inside of my house so dark with it’s boarded up windows that we could hardly see. I was so weary of the darkness, I went to one of the windows and wrenched off the board that was covering it, desperate for some light. But the water poured in and I was soon wrestling the sodden board back in place. And so I sat with my children in the dark, bitterly resigned to the fact that sometimes God calls us to be just that- confused children, sitting in darkness.

But moments of despair like these can’t last forever. I was soon forced to shake off my lethargy and go to the airport to pick up the first in a line of people who are coming to share this burden of grief with them. My sisters, my mother, other family members, and of course the body of Christ, fulfilling with zeal their call to mourn with those who mourn.
For to everything there is a season, and now, once again, is the season of mourning. Our hoped for season of joy is put off yet again. Tomorrow we bury my nephew Zion next to my daughter Hosanna and wait for a better day. Please pray for us.