Hiatus and Back Again

Hiatus - a break or pause in the continuity of action, speech, writing, etc. -The New Lexicon Webster's Dictionary of the English Language

I've been on Hiatus. I hope to be back now - at least every once in awhile.

Okay, let's get caught up:

The most exciting news (most of you know it by now) is that we are expecting baby # 6. A boy. Due around September 16th, 2011.

This is beauty for ashes as I miscarried last year on the 16th of September and God has graciously granted us a new life at the same time one year later. And NO we did not plan this baby or time the baby so that he would be born in September - we were not trying to have a baby at all we stopped "trying" and planning after #3 (but that is a whole other post).

Other happenings - Bess (5) broke her leg in a freak accident. She has been in a purple cast for about eight weeks now. We are hoping that she will get it off this Friday. She has been a real trooper and hasn't complained about it at all and we have been amazed watching her manage to get around by herself. She has been in a walking cast for about the last four weeks so that has helped. She is our first child to break anything. 

The last few weeks have been crazy with mechanical failures and other household disasters occuring. About two weeks ago the toilet in our half bath, which has a tendency to get clogged, overflowed again. (This occurred a day or so after our trip to a high risk pregnancy specialist to find out if our sweet boy had Downs Syndrome -he does not - and later that night a trip to the ER to calm my crazy heart. I had a SVT attack.) Caleb was the one to notice the water on the floor in the front hallway (outside of the bathroom) and his cool comment was, "Mom, there is water on floor" no emotion. Understatement of the year! It was a flood! All the way out of the bathroom to the front door and into the laundry room.  It was one of the biggest, grossest messes I've cleaned up in awhile. And I still don't own a real mop! At first I was completely bewildered as to how to clean up the mess, but God is good and cleared my crazed mind long enough for me to remember that we own a wet/dry vac. What a blessing! My amazing husband with the help of our oldest child spent all of Saturday morning unclogging the toilet. What a job. And so disgusting. I'm so proud of both of them. This is the man who used to know nothing about home repairs and now fixes everything. He has been homeschooling himself. Hee, hee. Praise the Lord for the internet!

Later, on the toilet night, as I was tucking the children in they all asked me why all these terrible things were happening to us and I had a chance to share that these things were not terrible, not even if our sweet baby had been diagnosed with Downs Syndrome, just inconvenient and unpleasant. Terrible is a death or something life threatening or worse - and even then there is good somewhere unseen in the mess. Our toilet overflowing was just a disgusting inconvenience. I was also able to tell them that God hasn't promised that our lives will be good/easy all the time. I told them that we should expect trouble because it will come and it is in those times that we have the greatest opportunity for growth and to glorify God through our attitudes and actions. I tried to explain that during the hard times we either grow closer to God or we turn away from Him.  It is a choice. And our response - to an overflowing toilet or worse - either glorifies God or not. I realized as I was talking to the children that over the last few years my own perspective and responses to the good and bad that happens in life has changed. I now see or try to see everything as from the hand of God for my good - even when it seems to the world and possibly to myself as the opposite. This is rarely easy but I try to always choose to see God's hand in a thing - His good and loving hand.

A sweet friend who recently lost a baby called the loss bittersweet. I smiled a sad smile when I read her words. My heart understood perfectly. Bittersweet was "my" word. I used to use it a lot. It is a word that I believe describes much of life. And I've come to beieve that, oddly enough, it is in the midst of the bitter that either the sweetness of joy is found or bitterness takes over. Choose joy.