Dear Baby Boy

I am anxious to meet you...

to smell you...

to see you...

to know your name...

to show you off to your big brothers and sister...

to count your fingers...

and your toes...

to kiss you all over...

to love again...
























Soon, my baby boy. Oh so very soon...

Last Days

It hit me yesterday.

As I was opening baby shower gifts and holding tiny blue clothes in my hands. It finally hit me. Hard.

Baby boy is on his way and will be here very soon.

How soon, we don't know for sure. D-day is 4 weeks from now. But my babies have always been 1 -2 weeks old by the time that day finally rolled around.

It was strange as reality crept up the back of me and landed on top of my head. I think it messed up my hair just a bit, because I felt a little disheveled.

I had been tired that morning after not sleeping well the night before. It's funny how he's already keeping me up nights. I fully anticipated a lengthy nap that afternoon.

But as soon as I got home, the nap was no longer needed. Instead what was needed was baby clothes washed and sorted, thank you notes written, and the kitchen de-cluttered.

Nesting has begun. And just in time too. I've been worried that it just wouldn't happen because of my extreme lack of energy.

I am excited and anxious and can't wait to meet him. To know what his name will be. To see who he looks like. To experience labor in a very different way.

God will provide what we need as we need it. So I'm not worried. But trusting does take work.

So in these last days, we are working hard at trusting, waiting patiently and finally washing baby clothes!

Happy Birthday to my Man

We have celebrated many birthdays together over the almost 10 years of marriage

and the 5 years of dating before.

Never have I known what to get you. You'd think by this time I'd be better at it... 

So sorry that I'm not.

But even though I've never been good at gift giving, I hope you know how

much I love you and how thankful for you that I am.

God has brought us so far and has done such a beautiful work in our marriage.

I am thankful for your hard work and faithfulness to us. Thanks for not quitting.
I am so thankful for the way you provide for us, the stress you endure, all you have accomplished. You make me so proud. So very proud.

I love your sense of humor and the fact that I get you, when not many

others do. You make me laugh every single day.
I love that I learn more about you each day.

I love to hear your thoughts, to know what you are thinking.
You teach me so much.
I love your courage. You aren't afraid to do what needs to be done. Or say what needs to be said to stand up for grace and righteousness. You challenge me.

I LOVE that we are having another of us. I can't wait to see what he looks like.

I love that our boys look like you, walk like you, talk like you and love what you love.

Thanks for loving our kids. For changing diapers, for putting them to bed, for getting up the million times it take to make sure they are still in bed! For disciplining and talking with them.
For praying for them.

Thanks for making chocolate chip cookie bars and coffee every morning
and dinner sometimes when I can't. For doing our grocery shopping.

Thanks for hanging pictures and doing the things that matter to me, even if they don't matter to you. For telling me I'm beautiful when I feel like a beached whale.

Thanks babe, for loving me.

And for making me feel loved. You are the gift.
I love you.

Happy Birthday

Lost and Found

Do you lose things easily?

Some people are just more prone to losing things. Keys, wallets, cell phone, kids...

Generally speaking, I'm not one of those people. I'm pretty organized, therefore, I pretty much know where everything is. Now I will admit that every now and then, my memory lapses and I can't remember where I put something. But I know it's in a good place, I just have to remember where that place is!

So when we lost our cat Purrl during our move, I was truly devastated. I mean, this wasn't a set of keys or a box of decorations or even a photo album or two. It was our sweet kitty. And we had lost her.

She had gotten into the moving trailer at our previous house and without us knowing, rode all the way to the new house roaming around that big scary trailer! By the time she got to the new house (a 30-40 minute ride) she was beyond scared. She was spazzing. As soon as the door was lowered, she bolted. Never to be seen again.

When Dustin told me what happened, he knew I would take it hard. He took me into the bedroom (away from all of his cousins and brother!) and gently told me that something bad had happened to one of the cats. My first thought was that she had been killed. But then to my utter dismay I realized that this truly was far worse. She was alive, but lost.

She was alone, scared and had no idea where she was. And I had no idea where she was. I immediately began walking the neighborhood calling for her.

There was no trace of her. It seemed she had just vanished. We talked to neighbors, posted pictures but to no avail.

Our hearts where heavy. There were tears, nightmares and sleepless nights and many, many prayers.

After a couple of weeks I knew it was still possible to find her, but I began losing hope. Three weeks. Four weeks. I had finally accepted that we would never see her again. I imagined her with another family instead of the other possibilities. And I encouraged my kids to do the same.

But they just wouldn't let it go.

They were still praying. They still talked about her as if we would find her any minute. They still asked me to drive slowly through the neighborhood with the window down calling her name. So we did.

I felt silly. And I was really sad for them. They really just needed to put this behind them. We could always get another cat. But it wouldn't be Purrl, they said.

Then the craziest thing happened one morning last week. I answered a call-waiting call. I don't always answer these phone calls. I mean, usually I will just call you back.

But I answered because I saw that it was my neighbor. And I knew that she had taken on finding Purrl as her own personal mission.

The details are a little fuzzy, but the conversation went something like this:

Teresa - "I'm so glad you answered your phone! I think I see your cat!!"

Me - "What!?"

Teresa - "Yeah, Cady and I are on a walk and I think I see your cat!"

Me - "Where are you??"

Teresa - "Just around the corner from you."

Me - "I'll be there in a second!"

I hung up and jumped up from the couch (well, jump is now a relative word when you are 8 months pregnant, but you know what I mean).

I screamed for the kids. Grabbed my keys. Ran (another relative word) and got the cat carrier. Made sure we were all in the car and flew down to where Teresa and our cat was.

As I made the short drive I was praying that this would actually be her. What if it wasn't? What if my kids were once again disappointed? I was envisioning driving them back home slowly with tears of disappointment streaming down their sweet cheeks and me trying to explain that God sometimes answers with a "No" but that doesn't mean He doesn't care or love us and that for the rest of their lives they would be faced with situations like these, but we are still called to trust and believe that He is good and... Yeah, I can get carried away very easily.

I didn't have time to rehearse any more of my speech, because we were there. There was Teresa, her sweet Cady and she was pointing.

"There, under the van."

I looked and immediately knew, it was our Purrl. She was crouched underneath a van, she looked wary and scared. I walked very slowly up to her, talking my kitty talk. I knelt down in front of her and reached my hand out to her. She came right to me and began rubbing my leg. I was so happy she knew me. The kids, watching from the van, now ran to us. They were loud and excited and I tried to hush them so that they wouldn't scare Purrl. That was silly. How can you hush such celebration!

We put her in the cat carrier and quickly deposited her in the van. I turned and hugged Teresa and thanked her. There were tears streaming down my face. She began to cry some too. I turned and looked at my children, they were crying too. But these were tears of gratitude and thanksgiving and rejoicing! Not the tears of disappointment that I had braced myself for.

We cried all the way home and so did Purrl, poor thing.

I put her on the floor of the laundry room. I let her out to get familiar with her new surroundings. She immediately crawled up into my lap, put her paws on my shoulder and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed me, purring her loud purr. She remembered.

It's funny, my kids didn't seem all that surprised. They knew she would come back. It was just a matter of time.

So can you guess what God taught me through this?

I don't often lose the things that I have control over. But when I lose control, I often lose hope.



Watching the faith and expectancy of my kids challenged me to once again grab onto that child-like faith. I was worried that I would have to restore their faith in God if things didn't 'work out'. But that is such a grown up problem, isn't it? They just simply believe. They don't have preconceived notions of how God should work or how He should provide or how He should answer. They just keep praying, keep believing, keep expecting.

What a challenge for us all.

If I've Done it Once...

**This post was started  a few weeks ago, in the midst of packing/moving**

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, lately Dustin and I have been a little frustrated.

And that frustration has been directed at the three beautiful gifts God has given us.

Olivia

Deacon

& Levi

My frustration comes when I've packed a box and the next day it's not only been emptied, but spread out into every crack and crevice, under beds and in drawers, etc...

How?

WHY??

Frustration comes too when I back over the newly purchased (for Christmas) scooter that was left laying in the driveway behind the van. After we have told them and told them to make sure to put away their toys so that doesn't happen - again!

This was NOT a good mothering moment...

I throw the van into park, then my pregnant self out the door after I feel the crunch of scooter under my tire. I then stomp to the back of the van, pick up the bent scooter and very dramatically throw it into the center of the yard. I then stomp back to the driveway, pick up what's left of the wheel and fling that into the yard to join it's destroyed significant other!

And there were witnesses. Four of them to be exact. Yes, my 3 children and my much afraid sister-in-law whom I don't think had ever had the privilege of seeing THAT idiot side of me.

There was silence in the van when I returned. Silence on their parts at least. No, I'm not done fuming quite yet... yes, I will leave you to assume the worst of me.

Then there is DQ who so willingly goes outside to pack up the shed and the yard only to find his tools and various camping items have been dispersed across the yard, up in the tree house, left out in the yard and woods and rain for who knows how long.

And when he goes to use the drill finds that that must have been one of the items left out in the rain, therefore is no longer in working order. And he is left to use a good old fashioned screw driver to take apart cabinets and dismantle them from walls.

We have been quite the disgruntled set of parents.

We were venting about such the other day and as we were talking I was reminded of a passage in Romans 8.

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear,

but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we

cry, "Abba, Father."

The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.

Now if we are children, then we are heirs - heirs of God and

co-heirs with Christ... (vs. 15-17)

God calls us His children. I'm sure there are many reasons for this. He is the Father. We have been given a spirit of sonship, adopted, we are His heirs... But I think the main reason is because, well, we act like children!

We tear apart what's been put together, carelessly throwing aside the important and disregarding the holiness of God and all that He calls us to. We try to fix, but instead of fixing, we just make a bigger mess. We are demanding, we whine and complain, and are ungrateful. We run ahead or lag behind. We push and we pull wanting to move faster. We are impatient.

We as parents deal with these kinds of issues on a daily basis. And oh the frustration! But let us have eyes to see that we are no different.

And let us not miss an opportunity to be reminded of the love of our Father. I wish I could extend that love purely to my own children. But see, I am a child myself. I am learning right along side them. So how is it that I get so frustrated with them when I am guilty of the very same things? But oh how much deeper my sin goes... it's really not the same at all.

That brings an even bigger challenge. How can I, who has been made co-heirs with Christ, who has received so much grace from my Father - who tells us to call him Daddy - how can I then not show that same love and compassion and patience to my children? Their offenses being so trivial compared to mine...

I pray that as I continue to learn these lessons, my children will be spared the vision of Mom loosing it and throwing the scooter pieces across the yard. Hopefully instead they will leave my home with a deep sense of the way THE Father casts our sins into the depths of the sea and remembers them no more. That no matter what the offense, His grace and love transcends them all.

Now hopefully I can put their unpacking skills to good use when we move into the new house!

(Which we did and are loving by the way. I can't wait to start on THAT post!)

I Called Him Fat Man

Today I want to write about my brother just a bit.

You see, it's his birthday tomorrow and birthdays always trigger memories for me. About the person who is having the birthday. And about what they mean to me.

I am trying to get better at writing these down. Maybe one day all my family will have a birthday post... maybe.

I was 3 when Hunter was born. I don't remember much about that time. What I do remember mostly comes from pictures. So I remember he was fat. Very fat. And we called him Fat Man (as in Bat Man). We'd even sing the "Na na Na na Na na Na na Na na Na na Na na Na na .... Fat Man!" theme song to go with it. He loved it.

We played a lot together growing up. I remember always loving him. We would play Sunday School and line our stuffed animals up and tell them about Jesus. We would sing songs that we made up and record them on cassettes. We would play in the woods - A LOT. We built tree forts and dug deep holes (deep as in 6ft. deep) and played war and swung from rope swings. So much so that I wanted to be a marine when I grew up or a police woman, either one.

When we moved out to Seabrook, we loved the dirt roads and never wore shoes. We crabbed and fished and even almost got stranded in a canoe when our anchor didn't quite reach the bottom when we stopped to eat a sandwich. We played man hunt with friends and roller bladed and rode bikes and always, played in the woods.

I remember being really scared once. Hunt was around 7 or 8 and he got hit in the head with a baseball bat at baseball practice. I held his glove tight while I waited for him to come home from the hospital. I couldn't put it down because I was so scared. What would happen if he didn't come home? But he did.

He scared me another time when he fell from about 30 feet up in a tree when the rope snapped. He landed on his back and the wind was knocked out of him. And the wind was knocked out of me. And then I started screaming and ran to the house to get help and I don't remember but all I could scream was, "Hunter's DEAD!!" At least that's what they tell me. But he wasn't.

And then he just made me mad when my boyfriend (now husband) would come over to see ME and would end up goofing off with Hunter instead. I loved going to youth group Friday nights because Hunter couldn't come with us. But then he became old enough and he started coming too.

By then I didn't mind so much. Because I still just really loved him.

Then I remember he started hanging out with this girl. And I remember feeling so relieved because I just wasn't sure who he'd end up with. Especially after hearing all of our growing up years that he wanted to get married in his truck and live in the woods. I was a bit worried.


And when I'd try to get him to confess his love for this girl, he would deny it and tell me they were just friends. He was such a liar. I mean, they were just friends, but he really WAS madly in love with her! I knew this for sure when it was her birthday and he asked me what I thought he should get her. He hates buying people presents, I thought. Yep, a dead give-away.

That's me on the left with my arm raised, we were singing. Hunter comes next (see why I was worried), then there's Dustin, see why I loved him? And believe it or not, that's Ames with the short hair, see why he loved her?

And they did get married. But it wasn't in his truck. And I guess you could say they did live in the woods. So it seems he picked the right one.

But before the woods, he graduated from college. The first Marcy to graduate from college. And I was so proud. I wonder if I every really told him that. I was sad that I wasn't at his graduation. I remember having to be somewhere else out of town, but I was going to try and make it anyway, and then it started pouring rain and I had a nursing baby and it just didn't happen. But he had his girl and I knew he didn't need me.

I remember another moment when I was so proud. We were in Ukraine. It was my first trip there, the trip that captured my heart. We were a team of five and we went to do English camps with college students. Man it was fun. Our last Sunday there we traveled to the town of Litin. We gave our testimonies and then the guys were asked to preach. I remember looking over at Hunter, he was writing on a scrap piece of paper. I quickly realized, he was writing out his sermon. He should have known better, they always ask the guys to preach! He was nervous. And he did his nervous thing, he looked as if he was about to cry. But he wasn't. That's just his nervous look. I think I cried a little though. Just a little, as I listened to him preach. Somehow that scrap piece of paper ended up in my Bible and I kept it for a long time. In fact, I think it's still there.

I'm not sure why this picture is so blurry! But this was us, Ukraine 2006.

And then the woods.

I remember hearing it for the first time. That they were going to leave, him and his girl and that we wouldn't know where they were. That it was dangerous and he was taking his gun. For 6 long months I wouldn't see him or know where he was. He would be hiking. The Appalachian Trail. And I was scared again. Kinda like when he got hit in the head. Or fell out of that tree. I'm his big sister, it's my job to be scared a little. It's my job.

But it's my job to be proud too. And I was. So proud. This was so HIM! And I wished I was going too. Like I would have when we were kids.

I remember praying for them in the middle of the night, now nursing another little baby. That he would be safe and would come back home. What if he didn't come back home? But they did.

And life was normal after that. We had our families and now our little sister had a family of her own. And we had grown up and it was just a little bit weird but so good at the same time.

Then I was hearing the words again. They were leaving again, but this time to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. I was a little upset. Ok a lot upset. I wanted him here. I didn't want to have to be scared for him anymore. I wanted things to just be normal, safe. I mean who has a brother that hikes two stinkin' trails for 6 months at a time!!

I guess I do.

yes, he's wearing a skirt.

I told him I was mad. But of course I waited until the day they left. I know, such good timing. I didn't even give him a good good-bye hug. I felt hurt. And if I was being honest with myself I would have said that I didn't want to be left behind again.

A lot of words were spoken. But I remember him saying that we both had that adventurous spirit in us and it was ok for him to go. Just like it's ok for me to go when God calls me. So I had to let him go. And I did.

So I started to pray. This time it was during the day, no nursing babies this hike. But I wasn't as scared as I had been before. Because I had let him go. Finally. And if they didn't come back, it was because God would take them home. And I was strangely at peace with that. But they did come home, I mean to this earth-home. And again, I was so proud.

It's been 27 years that I've been a big sister. Mostly all fun. But some of it has been hard. Loving involves hurting sometimes. You know, like having a heart ache.

So thanks for putting up with this bossy big sister of yours for all these years. I like to think it's made you into a better man. So, your welcome, Amy!


Another reason why I love this guy -

And another -

Happy Birthday, I love you Buck.

Refuge

We are finding refuge this week.

For last week was a very long, difficult week.

We moved.

We lost a cat.

We buried the daughter of  dear friends.

We are finding refuge in a new home and in the arms of the Father.

We aren't claiming to understand. We aren't claiming to be strong. We aren't even pretending to be happy. We are sad, grieving and exhausted.

We plead with you to pray for our friends, who without any warning were forced to say good-bye to their sweet baby girl the very same day they said their first hello.

Once again, we are reeling.

And once again we are seeking refuge under the wings of the Father.

The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,
³my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation,
     my stronghold and my refuge,
my savior; you save me from violence.
⁴ I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised,
and I am saved from my enemies. 2 Samuel