My Temporary Home

It’s funny how the biggest blessings in our lives can sometimes not seem like blessings at all. It is winter, my least favorite season living in my temporary home. Building a fire everyday is NOT fun, just in case you ever wondered, it’s really not. It’s not fun when your husband hurts his ankle and can no longer push the wheelbarrow to the wood pile in the barn and fill it with the various kinds of wood needed to build and sustain fire (It’s also not fun because he is in pain and can’t play soccer or basketball and coach and what not, but this is about me:). I’m not really a fan of this, but this house is my blessing. If I did not live in this house we could not have all gone to Hawaii earlier this year, we could not go to Haiti this summer, I would not own my lovely Land Rover, or be able to support World Vision the way that we are able to, and most of all my kids would not attend the school that they attend. I had prayed and asked the Lord to help us send our kids to private school, I did not specify any conditions such as living in a home whose primary source of heat is a woodstove, and so this temporary and unusual situation is really an answered prayer….isn’t that funny? I love my children and I love what they receive from their school. I love that they are receiving a Christian education and I love that they have teachers who truly love them and pray for them but most of all I love their friends. Friendship is one of God’s greatest gifts….ha!! I sound like a greeting card. But it is true, I love the friends that God has placed in the lives of my children. And the funny thing about this blessing, that I sometimes think is a curse of a house, is that God has blessed us, Shane and I, with incredible friendships. Every Thursday this summer 5 families from the school would come over and play sand volleyball until it is too dark to see, and then we move to our backyard and have dinner together and laugh and talk and eat and have a great time. I mean really who has a sand volleyball court in their front yard? Who would have thought that God would use this house to bring me and my kids friends. I was thinking about my girlfriends and how great and different they all are and how we all complement each other and have different strengths and weaknesses and what a gift they are and how blessed I am to live in this temporary home. We were supposed to be here one year, and here we are 3 and a half years later. Thank You Lord, for humbling me here, blessing me here, letting my girl scout roots be used here, for reminding me to look at my life through Your eyes and to see the blessings in what I think is the curse. And thank You that oak will last all night long if I pull the dampers out and use my tetris skills to load up the fireplace, I really love that!!