A Few New Things.....

November has brought with it many events in our lives that have caused me to step back from work a bit. I have needed to be a bit more present in our family and use those quiet hours to prepare. My husband just married some very special friends of ours, so we traveled back to MN for that and were able to visit our previous church and some friends there. It had been 8 years since we have been back. Time just goes by in a blink. The wedding was the highlight of our year! Nicole was one of our first students and she promised Matt back when she was in high school, that he could do her wedding! So 10 years later, with a friendship blessed by the Lord, Matt married Jay and Nicole with all hope and conviction that they were brought together by the Lord and that He would bless them and use them in a mighty way!

This was at the rehearsal for the wedding-such a fun time!!!Oh-and just a little side note-Nicole asked me to make the tree behind them for the wedding -such a fun project! Eventually-hopefully-I will make it into a quilt for them.The beautiful bride, one of my most precious friends!

This month also brought the loss of my Grandma. It was expected and in some ways even looked forward too because of the amount of pain she has been in consistently for years, but also brought a real sadness. Grandma knew the Lord as her Savior and it is a joy knowing she is with Jesus and out of such intense pain. I was not able to see her before she died, and there is a bit of a sting that I will not be able to see her again. The memorial service was Thanksgiving weekend and my husband had the privilege of giving the message at her service and burial. It was also a time to see family we do not get to see often since we are spread out throughout the country. I was so thrilled to even see my cousin Gabe who had just returned home from his 2nd tour in Iraq! How proud I am of him and his wife and kiddos and all they has fought for and sacrificed!

All of the great grand kids sang "Away In The Manger" for Grandma Lucy at the grave sight. She loved being a Grandma and loved being a Great Grandma who our children called "GG". I have been so blessed to have had my grandma get to meet all 5 of my children before going home to be with Jesus.

We enjoyed having Matt's family stay with us over Thanksgiving and my sister and brother in law stay with us for the funeral. I loved preparing for them.

All prepared for Thanksgiving dinner!

And here is my sister captivating the kids with a funny animal app on her phone-Talk about giggles!!!

There has been so many wonderful events but I am simply exhausted and attempting to catch up on sleep and work. Thank you to all my customers for being so gracious and patient with my schedule!! I am getting back into a normal routine again. I was able to get some new items listed this morning and thought I would share a quick peek.

A new set of grape jelly mittens for women...

Some new dotty coffee cozies....

And a few new sets of button bookmarks...

Will the Darkness Ever Lift?

Long my imprisoned spirit lay, Fast bound in sin and nature's night.
Thine eyes diffused a quickening ray.
I woke; the dungeon flamed with light.
My chains fell off; my heart was free.
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
~Charles Wesley


This quote captures the essence of depression. It is a dungeon. Something that seems to be growing around us. Many of us have experienced some sort of depression at some point in our lives. Maybe it has come from a deep loss, or maybe from a hardship, or maybe it just seems to have showed up with no reason at all. Maybe it stayed for a short season, or maybe it has been your enemy for a very long time. Or maybe you have not experienced it personally, but it has affected a loved one and you have had to endure watching them feel trapped by this. It is a devastating thing to watch swallow up a loved one and rob them of who they are, robbing them of joy. It makes you feel very helpless. I have only experienced it very briefly during my pregnancies after being bed ridden and sick for months unable to care for my family, but even then,I knew it would eventually lift and there was a hope that lessened the sorrow. But I have been witness to the effects of depression in family members, the closest being my own dad. My dad has struggled with depression off and on for most of my life. And almost three years ago, only 3 weeks after my little Noah was born, I received that phone call that I never wanted to get and in many ways never expected to get. My Dad had attempted to take his own life.

Now, I have to pause after saying that. There are so many sentences that could follow that one, so many. It would probably take a couple weeks of long talks over coffee to express all that this season in my life has brought following that day. Life changed forever, but much of life continued on the same. I have never kept that circumstance quiet, but just saying it doesn't uncover all of the struggle attached to it. But this is very important for me to say. Never should there be a time that my thoughts and feelings are not weighed against what the Lord says. He is always at the end of any sentence, emotion, any weeping, any fit of anger, any feeling of deep loss or question of what to do. We aren't meant to live seperately from Him. How good it is to fall into His soothing arms and be able to trust He is working. And all those feeling of how can I help , what can I do, come down to, I just need to get on my knees and ask.

He says...

Peace I leave with you...
I do not give to you as the world gives.
Do not let your heart be troubled
and do not be afraid. John 14:27

Weeping may tarry for the night,
but joy comes in the morning. Psalm 30:5

But the Lord is my defence; and my God is the rock of my refuge. Psalm 94:22

And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full. And He was...asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish? And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was great calm. Mark 4:37-39

The salvation of the righteous is of the Lord:
he is their strength in the time of trouble. Psalm 37:39

Wait on the Lord: be of courage,
and He shall strengthen thy heart:
wait, I say, on the Lord. Psalm 27:14

Many are the afflictions of the righteous:
but the Lord delivereth him out of them all. Psalm 34:19

The Lord also will be a refuge for the oppressed,
a refuge in times of trouble. Psalm 9:9

We went through fire and water,
but you brought us to a place of abundance.
Praise be to God, who has not rejected my prayer
or withheld his love from me! Psalm 66:12. 20

For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted,
neither has He hid his face from him,
but when he cried unto him, he heard. Psalm 22:24

There are two things that I especially see from these verses.
One is that it is very obvious that we are all going to struggle, let's face it, we live in a fallen world-God intended it to be eden, but all of us fall short. None of us can escape from hardship completely. From the beginning of mankind, people have been faced with depression, with sorrow, and the like.

And the second thing I see in these verses is that the Lord promises to be there with us. He is merciful and says He will be there with us through hardship, pain, even consequences we must face. He says he will hear our cry.

So, this is what I am praying for. I am praying for healing for my dad, and I am praying that my dad will wait on the Lord and wait for the morning. And this is what I remember of the Lord's faithfulness. When my Dad was missing, in those few short hours, family and friends were called to pray. The Lord heard those prayers and spoke very clearly to my dad, and said, this is not what I have for you. My Dad called in time for paramedics to get to him. The Lord saved his life and answered all of our prayers. There was a battle waging for my dad's life that day, one we cannot see with human eyes and that battle is ongoing. Today I am choosing to join that battle and to put on God's armor and fight for my dad when He is weak. Remember to pray for those in your life that are weary from the battle of depression. Remember to ask the Lord for His healing. It is the best way to show your love for them.

What Is Up With the Story of Job!!!

Those were the words of our next door neighbor one day as my husband stood at the fence talking with him. I am going to be pretty honest in saying that I have definately thought the same thing sometimes! There is not ever a time when reading the book of Job, that I have not been astounded in one way or the other-whether it be weeping for sorrow and grief or angry for what Satan was allowed to do to this man! But the most overcoming emotion I have for this piece of scripture is awe for how Job continued to praise the Lord! He still got that we deserve nothing and God deserves everything from us. Would I be that faithful in the face of utter despair and loss, or would I turn my face from God and curse Him for my exsistence!

The Lord is at work and He has been putting pieces together in my mind. And I want to share some of what He has done and is doing that very much reminds me of Job. Last year Matt and I had a chance to go to the Desiring God conference that John Piper has been doing for awhile now. It is the second time we have gone and it has been an amazing blessing and encouragement to us. This year during one of the breaks we browsed around the book shop and found an amazing book by John Piper, telling Job's story through poetry and art. We snatched a copy up and took it to dinner with us that evening. As we sat in the resturaunt, I read it aloud to matt and could barely see the words through my tears. Two things came to my mind while we read this.....Ralph, our neighbor-and the story of my parents.

The first thing we did was to go buy a second copy for Ralph, who we are praying comes to know Jesus. We gave the book to Him for Christmas, hoping to help him understand God's purpose for telling us of Job.

The second thought, is one much deeper and personal to me that I am hoping to begin sharing. Although it will take some time, and I am not sure how to even pull it all together. Let's just say it will be a work in progress.

I was born into a family where my parents knew Jesus and loved Him very much. I was raised with the truth and took it as my own. I grew up knowing Jesus loved us, created us and ultimately saved us from our sin. I also grew up in a family that faced utter tragedy many times over! And that is the part that is amazing-I had a mom and dad that showed Jesus's love to me despite the incredible heart aches they faced. My parents could have easily choosen to turn from the Lord and convince themselves that He was removed from their lives and didn't hear them. But the Lord has used their faithfulness to draw me to Himself.

If any of you have heard Natalie Grant's song "Held" it is the perfect description of what my parents experienced when I was just 1 1/2 years old. One morning after my Dad had left for work, my Mom got up surprised that my new baby brother had not woken up to eat yet. Jason was a rolly polly chunk of 11 pounds at birth!!! When my mom checked on Jason, she found that he had died in his sleep. Since I was only 18 months old I do not have much of a memory of the experience, but my mom has shared over the past 10 years pieces of this day. From what she has shared, it was their neighbor, Rose, that called 911 from hearing the screams of my mom. The one memory I do have is the picture in my mind of the police officers coming in. I think that has stuck because my Mom said that Jesus took Jason to be with Him, and I wanted to know if the police officers were Jesus. Jason was 2 1/2 months old when he went to be with Jesus, and some day I will see him, but even more important is that my mom and dad will see Him! It is pretty difficult to understand why these things happen. It is difficult to think of my mom sitting in her nightgown alone in the back of a cold paddywagon on the way to the hospital, pleading with Jesus that Jason would just wake up,just be alright, or think of my Dad falling into my Grandpas arms and crying Daddy when they met in the hospital right after Jason's death. I do not think there could be a deeper agony or pain than the loss of a child. How do you begin to even breathe let alone get out of bed in the morning. I know that losing Jason changed my mom and dad forever, they will tell you that. My mom has said she is not the same person she was before that, and wonders sometimes what she would be like, had Jason not died. And even though they were hurt and didn;t understand the Lord's plan, they continued to follow Him and believed that he loves us.

That loss would not be their last though. After my sister Nicole was born,who was a sweet balm to my parents, Mom endured many miscarriages and one of the babies, who was a boy, died at five months along. Mom had to deliver Paul in the hospital among all the new moms and babies. They buried another son.

My baby sister, Molly, Is a miracle baby. I was in third grade, Nik and I were home from school for some holiday when my Mom recieved a call from her brother, who my Dad worked for. her screams were chilling and Nicole and I were wide eyed. My dad had been in an explosion at his work site. Dad was in construction and He and his partner Joel were working on a town home. There was a propain tank in the house that was leaking. They were told to carry it outside. As they walked back into the house, the entire place exploded. There are some amazing things I beleive the Lord was a part of. When the roof came down on them, each of them were under a skylight! It was also winter time which meant snow to cool the horrific burns my Dad sustianed until the ambulance arrived. My Dad's burns were over his face and head, hands and back. When my Mom arrived to the hospital and they told her were he was, she came back the the nurse and said there was a mistake, and that that man was not her husband. Dad's burns were so bad, she could not recognize him. May dad went through months of very painful recovery and skin graphs. I remember him coming to my softball games completely covered and with an umbrella on sunny days because he could not be in the sun at all. All the while, Mom was carrying Molly safe in her womb. Do you think God has plans for Molly!?

My parents have now been facing the struggle of unemployment off and on for 5 years. It is a very scary situation that they face everyday. They have to make decisions of what to let go of, will they be able to keep their house, will the bills get paid next month. So much being out of their hands. So many details being unknown to them. But they continue to worship, continue to trust and continue to talk to the Lord.

My parents have modeled so consistantley throughout my life their reverence for the Lord that it now seems quite foreign to me to ever want to go through anything without Him! They have been testiments of God's grace and healing, His love, forgiveness, and His faithfulness. Mom and Dad do not always know why and they may not ever in many things, but they know they can trust Him. Despite the hard, I have witnessed the miracles that have come with them. He has worked good for His plan. It has given me an excitement for the future and it has also taught me that the here and now is so very temporary compared to the eternity he saved us for to spend with Him!!! I am beginning to see that the story of Job is a reminder of who God is no matter what the circumstance is. He is the author of everything!

This is a quote from the book written by John Piper on the life of Job.

"Why do bad things happen to good people?"

"Afflicted with disease, stripped of his wealth, and asked to confess to evil provocations, righteous Job reaches through his cloud of suffering and strains to touch God.

We have heard Job's story. Yet as we ponder Job's misery, do we see the threads of God's mercy in it? We will all face suffereing at some point in our lives, it is inescapeable,. But what makes calamity endurable is not that God shares our shock, but that through every flame of pain and flood of fear, His soveriegn goodness sustians us and turns it all for our good."

What a friend we have in Jesus!!!!