Tuesday, January 17, 2006

my pancake looks like jesus

heard this morning at breakfast while i was scrounging the boxes for scarves for pink and buck to wear at recess (because yes, here in the great white north children are tough - they go outside for recess when it's REALLY, REALLY COLD!):

pink: hey mom look, my pancake looks like jesus.

mom: DON'T EAT IT! (thinking we'll sell it on ebay like the grilled cheese holy mother that went for $1000's...)

pink: why - all i said was 'my pancake is in pieces'

liam and i laughed about our new careers as 'fry chefs' trying to recreate grilled cheese sandwiches with famous people on them... "hey, this one looks a tiny bit like ghandi??? how much do you think we can get for him?"

i think the 'no income' yet thing is getting to me... please pray that we can get our printer working properly so we are able to get the resumes out (and about) and generate some income. every time the furnace kicks on (and it's set really low) the specter of re-filling this oil tank looms at me.

could you also pray for us to be able to scrounge a kitchen table and chairs? we were unable to fit any chairs (or my mom's antique oak pedestal table) into the moving van and we're eating on folding chairs at a conference style table we were able to shove into the truck as an 'alternative'.

that was probably the hardest part of the move - we left so much. i can live without it, or live with replacements. i'm easy to please, but i am grieving the loss of things like a freezer, table and chairs, dressers and bookshelves. 26' trucks should just hold a lot more than they do! and we didn't even bring any appliances. i honestly don't need anything fancy as replacements - it's just hard to get organized when there isn't a dresser to put clothes into.

i keep beating myself up about grieving material possessions - i really try to hold things with open hands - it's just hard to give myself permission to be sad about junk, which most of it was - it was just my junk - most of it picked from the side of a curb and re-invented and re-used - but it worked well for us and allowed us levels of organization that we've never had. i had our home running like a well-oiled machine before we had to start packing for the move. something that has never happened in our lives before.

i think that is probably what is driving this emotion - fear - fear that organizational level will be lost to us if we don't get on top of it soon. fear of debt, that the big black hole we were able to climb out of would suck us back in again... fear that we were mistaken, that we were as insane as everyone in our last location (see i didn't use community) thought we were/are... fear that we'll have to eat our savings and not be able to do school for both of us like we've planned... fear, fear, fear... yucky, looming fear.

this is only a temporary stop on our re-settling. 6 months until we get to do it all over again. this time though we're praying that it can be a short hop to a place of stability and length - i don't know how god is going to work all of this out - but i know that he will. he didn't move us up here to bankrupt us, or to jerk us around.

elizabeth at beloved beginner blogged months ago about her parents creating 'ebenezers' from rocks their friends provided to help them remember all the way the lord had brought them as her mother bravely fights through a season of cancer. i remember the place we were in our story, just finding out about the 'sabbatical' time we were entering and the great amounts of fear we had about 'next'. i went outside to the garden and got myself a beautiful rock and wrote

"Thus far the Lord has helped us." (1 Samuel 7:12)

on the front of it and set it next to liam's bedside as a gift. we both used that rock as a touchstone during the 5 months prior to the move. I can't find it in amongst the boxes or i'd take a picture to post with this - but i know it's here - i know that even though my kitchen table and chairs are still in pennsylvania, that rock, our ebenezer has made it with us.

thus far...

thus far...

thus far...

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