The Plans He Has For Us

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you…plans to prosper you and not to harm you. I know how most people read this verse, as a reassurance. A reassurance that nothing gets past God and that He has a good plan for His people. That He works everything for our good. And that’s true. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s true. But something occurred to me this morning. What if it also means that His plans are good for us. They are plans to prosper us and not to bring us to harm. So we should follow those plans. I’ve seen time and time again how when we step outside of His will, including the guardrails He sets up for us, it leads to pain and fruitless times. I’ve seen it in my own life and I’ve seen it in the lives of others. I’m not saying that if you follow God your life will be roses and sunshine. It won’t. I promise. There are examples in the Bible (Job for one, Paul for another) of the troubles that faithful people went through. And my family has been through plenty-during times we’ve been closely following God and times we haven’t. But when I am closely following God I have a strong tower. I have a “safe place”. My grandpa used to always say “just do what’s right”. And obviously, there are times when we just aren’t sure what that is (choosing between two jobs or to move or not move are examples) but many times we know what is right but we choose what is wrong. It rarely ends well.

What’s Your Story?

There’s a scene in Pretty Woman where a man is yelling “Welcome to Hollywood, what’s your dream…? Some dreams come true, some don’t but keep dreamin!’” Do you ever just want to know someone’s story? Whether it’s someone you see at the grocery store that looks sad, or even angry-do you wonder what brought them to that point, what makes them tick? What about when you see someone who is just so happy? Are they really, truly happy, or is it someone like Robin Williams? The tears of a clown, when no one’s around… When you come across someone who is considered by society to be less than…a drug addict, a prostitute, do you wonder what brought them there? No little girl wakes up on a happy morning in her bubble gum pink bedroom with Barbie’s and baby dolls and thinks she aspires to be a prostitute. Something broke somewhere. But what? No boy leaves his baseball game and thinks “I’ll probably just try some [meth]. Maybe become hooked and need to steal-even from my family.” I am a people watcher. Reading people. And sometimes feeling what they put off. (Not always, but often.) I’ve just started a part time job as a waitress in a small restaurant (first time to ever wait tables!) and sometimes I have a customer who seems very gruff. My goal is to make their day better. Not because I’ll get a tip. But because it’s what makes me tick. Often in this restaurant it’s an older person who seems just…unhappy. But if you listen (even eavesdrop??) you will often hear them tell a part of their story. These people have had a life. Some have very interesting stories. I pray daily that I will treat each and every customer as if she or he is the best tipper ever. (Whether they are or not isn’t my business.) What if we all do that? Treat people the best we possibly can. What if tou become one of the best parts of someone's story?

Launching

Launching your kids into adulthood is not an easy task.  Obviously, the practical things are important: finances, life skills like cleaning and time management. Do they know how to avoid pitfalls when they have complete freedom? All of that is super important, but what I’m talking about is the letting go. The emotional part. And sometimes the years leading up to that aren’t ideal. We were living “on the road” in a travel trailer. My (then) 17 year old daughter didn’t come with us. She was attending community college and working. If I’d we had made her come with us it would have stunted her. But staying without her family also wasn’t ideal. It caused a lot of pain for her. My (then) 15 year old son DID have to come with us. And leave behind a girlfriend, his friend group, etc. When he turned 16 we had to make some big decisions. He had opportunities to work come up (construction for good friends) and we decided to let him make an 8 hour drive alone. Across west Texas. If you’ve not been there…desert. Plus navigating San Antonio alone. At barely 16. That’s not how I would have imagined parenting at those ages. I’ve graduated and released 2 into the world. One is married with babies now-and has ended up close to us. And one lives 1000 miles away. I worry about him. I pray for him. A lot. He’s not mine to control. Nor do I want to. But that grown man was once my baby. I nursed him. I held him. I helped him through horrible episodes of croup. Then I let him go on scout camping trips. Then the driving alone across Texas. Then he did an amazing trip at 17 with his best friend. Try letting go on that one? But it was then or never. He left the same week as my 2 youngest went to camp-the youngest for the first time ever with no friends in the group of boys going. That week was huge for me. I guess a core memory. And I found out one of my closest friends criticized me and said it wasn’t normal to be that attached to your kids. Another core memory. I have 2 more to launch into this crazy world. Thankfully they are having more of a traditional life. And I hope the launch is more traditional. I let the now 16 year old drive where she needs to drive. I let out enough rope and pray it’s not enough for her to hang herself. My kids don’t deserve to have their growth and life stunted by any anxieties I might have. But it’s not easy. Have grace for those friends who are making huge strides in letting go. Just because I didn’t like it and I was a nervous mess, I did it anyways. I did it for my kids. And isn’t that the definition of bravery? Doing it scared?

On Aging

Has anyone else noticed that how we perceive and accept aging has changed over the last couple of generations? Hair color, anti-aging creams, surgeries, and younger fashion trends all seem to be the normal for women into their 50s and 60s now. We are expected to never age. 

While there's nothing wrong with taking good care of ourselves-including our appearance-I think we have to be real and have some level of acceptance that time marches on.

My hair has a lot of gray and no amount of brown hair dye is going to make me look like I'm 26. And I'm ok with that. Or I'm trying to be. Some days I'm really not. But I feel like there's no going back now. 

I faithfully use my "Oil of Old Lady" (aka Oil of Olay)-partly because I now live in the midwest where the humidity is not 96% and partly because of those fine lines I heard about on commercials for years. 

I exercise and try to watch what I eat. But I won't have my 18 year old body again. And I'm (mostly) ok with that. 

I haven't traded my jeans and shirts in for skirts and "blouses" or elastic waist pants (well, except for Yoga pants, and that's totally different). But those jeans with all the holes? And super low rise? Or, maybe worse, high rise? To accentuate that not-so-flat belly? No thanks. 

Last March, I got promoted to Gram! In September I had a hysterectomy-life changing in the best ways possible, but still feels like an "old lady" thing to say. In November, I celebrated what felt like a significant birthday to me. I turned 46. I guess it feels significant because I'm now closer to 50 than to 40. 🤯 Half of my nest is now empty and Harold and I are finding our now normal as a not-as-young married couple and changing parenting stages. Sometimes I am not really sure who I am or what I'm doing. I don't feel this old in my head (my back and knees sometimes remind me that I truly am though.) 

I just have to wonder if my grandma ever felt this way. Did she feel like she was supposed to pretend to be 10 or 20 years younger than she actually was? 

On Moving and Moving On

Moving is EASY. I know that’s probably not a statement most people who have moved would agree with but bear with me. Moving is easy...compared to making where you’ve moved a real home. I’m not talking about a house. We are working on that but it’s mostly within our control. Furniture, your things put away and pictures on the walls. It’s a work in progress but it’s also a labor of love and just takes time. But we choose when and how. We aren’t dependent on anyone else.

A view of our backyard on Halloween morning when fall dresses up as winter

The hard part is finding your place in the new community while recognizing that your old “community” has moved on. You aren’t on their radar any longer. Out of sight, out of mind. While that hurts, I do understand.

Meanwhile, your new community doesn’t have an empty spot just waiting for you and your family to fill. The loneliness is sometimes overwhelming between two worlds. Maybe more so as a homeschooling family. If there’s not a homeschool group nearby that just happens to be a this wonderful fit, you’re floundering. Kids don’t have friends and mom doesn’t have support. Field trips are not on the calendar...

We have made a couple of friends, and for that I’m thankful.

Sometimes when life gets “flip turned upside down”, it feels like it will never be right again. 

Old Walls

When we walked into our home we fell in love. Within minutes we knew, just knew, it was supposed to be our home. It’s over 100 years old. The original floor plan may not have included an indoor bathroom (I need to see if I can find out!). We knew it had imperfections. And we were fine with it!

But once you start painting. When all of the sellers “stuff” is out. When every little lump and bump and crooked corner is highlighted in its nakedness...I started to get a little sad or maybe frustrated. Every wall has a story of something someone else did over the last 100 years. These old plaster walls tell a story. A story of how the previous owners did or didn’t know what they were doing. 

This wall is where it is the most obvious. We repaired (with spackling) the worst of it but decided to leave it perfectly imperfect. It’s also still half painted. 

And it hit me. This is life. (I’ve spent hours and hours painting so I’ve had a LOT of time to think!)

The last five years have been probably the hardest in our marriage. No marriage is without conflict and a little strife but I always felt like we came as close as anyone to having a happy, fairly easy marriage. So, now we have some bumps. Some scars. From our own conflict as well as external factors. We are like those walls. We don’t look all smooth and straight like we might have 10 years ago (I don’t know if we did or not, but in my memory we were pretty stinking happy! I know memories sometimes delete the day to day trials and you tend to remember only the good) but I hope that we are stronger. I keep wanting us to be who we were 6-7 years ago. But I’m coming to realize we can’t. And imperfect is ok. (That’s really hard for a perfectionist to say!) I didn’t want bumps and lumps and proof that we didn’t know what we were doing to be part of our story. But here it is. And like this beautifully, imperfect house that we are making into our home, we need to care for it. We need some patching up and some paint. We need some extra time together. Time spent just on each other. Sometimes, with 3 kids still at home, that isn’t easy because they need us too! But it needs to be a priority. One thing we are doing is going away this weekend. Just the 2 of us. No kids, no paint, no brushes, no rollers. Just us. With the lumps. The cracks that have been mended. With the quirks and creaks. Hopefully we will discover new things about each other just like we are as we explore our home!

What do you do to keep your marriage alive and well? Or what do tounwish you had done? 

Now, back to painting. 

I Think I've Always Wanted a Home

From the time I was a little girl I loved books. All the books. And I loved for my mom or my grandma to read to me. In turn, because I had such a good memory of that, I loved to read to my kids. A favorite book for all 3 generations was 

So maybe it’s not weird that this book came to mind now that we are getting a home!

For over 2 years we've actually been "homeless". No, we weren't living in a cardboard box or under a bridge, but in a travel trailer. A nice one, but still...in the state of Texas it's legally considered "homeless" if you live in a travel trailer! 😱

During those 2 years of living in purgatory everyone's dream, I stayed alive by dreaming of a home. 

I always wanted us to build a little home. Nothing big or ostentatious. Just enough. (I'm done with tiny living but I've never wanted a large house.) I drew floor plans on graph paper, I searched Pinterest ad nauseum, I saved paint samples. I searched websites for companies that build shells.

I even went and visited said companies!!! And took a picture in front of what I wanted for my future home!

When it came down to it though, the last few years have just been too stressful to take on the stress of building.  We are tired. We just needed a home. So we started looking. And every house we found had something wrong. Something that just made me sad because my dream was slipping away. Location. No front porch. No chickens. A master bedroom that was not on the first floor (we want to be able to live in our home forever if we choose). We put an offer on a house. We gave up location, I gave up the front porch. And it needed work. A LOT of work. When our offer was accepted, I was sad. And stressed. Thankfully, the realtor caught how I was feeling and we got out of the offer (the seller hadn't responded within the correct time anyways). I'm so thankful!

The next day we looked at the house that is as close to our dream home as can be considering we didn't design it ourselves. It's in the cutest little town. It has a front porch. We can even have chickens! We could not be more excited. We are in the process of moving in and painting now! Not all of that is fun, but it’s worth it! I *know* I always want a home!

And