All the Possibilities . . .

God holds so much in store for our little family in the near future! It's incredible, and thankfully, not overwhelming (at least, not yet).

We are expecting a girl the end of August. Yay! We are both so excited, and I am especially blessed to see and hear how excited my husband is to have a daughter. I thought perhaps he wanted another boy, but he was just as eager as I for a girl, perhaps more so!

She already has her own personality. She is far more active then her older brother was in utero, a lot more steady motion and kicks during the day, and is growing steadily stronger.

About 3 months after she is born we will most likely be moving into a bigger town, just a block up from our church! We'll be so much closer to all the places and stores we go to, which will be so helpful. And most of our friends live in that town, too, so that makes things slightly more accessible for us to spend time with them or invite them over.

The house we are thinking of renting is owned by some church friends. It's an old Victorian style home, with a lovely design and great wood floors...I just love the sound of old, big, Victorian houses. There's a lot of work to be done in it first, especially the plumbing which leaked from the upstairs and drove our friends out of that house to their current house! But, to help out our friends to rent or sell it, and to help us out with a good home, our church is going to finance all of the repairs and remodeling!

That news floored me. I almost cried (and I still wish I had!) when I realized that our tiny church of roughly 40 members were going to take care of us and our friends in one fell swoop. On top of that, there's another family in our church who have fixed up a number of homes and sold them, and are very knowledgeable in construction. They will be doing the work, and so they will also be blessed by this project. I don't know of many congregations that would just offer to do this without someone coming and asking for help. We didn't ask anyone, we were all set to find our own rental and we thought we had to move in less than a month. I was strangely not bothered by that, but I was incredibly moved when I learned the church didn't want us to have to move and also had a wonderful back-up plan for us.

God certainly is good, and over and over He proves to me that His mercy endures forever.

Enthusiastic Housewife

The "chapel" talk I gave to the girls went well and was fun. I did go overtime, though, which I think is probably bad since they are on a strict schedule for class periods, but I just couldn't stop after 15 minutes! I think I went around 20-25...I'll have to ask Mr. N how long I was. :) He very graciously held the man-child for me while I rambled about what women were made for.

I basically took the well-known passages from the Bible on women, starting with Genesis 2:23 - woman taken out of man, woman made for man, and woman made to be man's helpmeet/support/encourager, etc. So our lives are focused around the man/men in our lives ("men" meaning father, brothers, husband) which is vastly different from a man's calling.

Then, I asked what does that look like? I used Proverbs 31 to answer that question. And yes, I was talking to junior high girls, but I told them it's never to early to know how to respect, obey, and build up their fathers and brothers. It's also never to early to love domestic things such as sewing, cooking, cleaning, caring for babies and children, learning how to make oneself lovely to behold.

I jumped over to Titus 2:1-5 and touched on what it looks like spiritually to be a woman. A woman is chaste, good, sober, discreet, loves her husband and children, a homemaker, obedient to own husbands (and I applied that to their fathers strongly).

It was a good challenge, and fun, for me to tie these all together and try to encourage the girls to see that the Bible gives very clear direction for how they are to act now and how they can prepare for what God has made them to be: wives and mothers! I hope I didn't scare them by continually mentioning that that is what women are to be. :)

On the Home Front, our friends are definitely moving, which means we are definitely moving from an apartment to a home! Huzzah! We are indeed sorry they have to move because of the economy, but since they *have* to move, we are glad to be their tenants and take care of their home. And I hear they are so pleased to have someone they know to live in their house. So it's a good deal! I need to now start going through closets and our little storage throwing out stuff we haven't used in over a year (I KNOW we have some stuff we've just been storing for no good reason!) and begin packing things we won't need every day.

The move will most likely be the end of November, so I have plenty of time. But, with Mr. Baby, I like to allow myself plenty of time to get the packing accomplished.

I just glanced at the title of this post, and it reminded me what I was going to say. I'd been slacking off a bit with the housework, but my dear husband gave me a gentle nudge, and so today I did the laundry and cleaned both bathrooms! I still need to get to the floors, but I think I can either do that tonight or tomorrow. I guess I'm so excited that I got that accomplished, AND did the dishes after lunch, because with Beowulf not always being exactly predictable when he'll wake up from his naps, I never know how far I'll get on a project before he needs me to feed him, change him, bathe him, or just play with him.

Speaking of the child, he's been quite chatty lately! I love how he's really experimenting with his voice and all the fun sounds he can make! I'll try to figure out how to post a video or two on here of his newest skills.

'Nuther Chance

So there's another house-to-rent chance. As of yet, it seems certain, but I am still wary and won't be quite at ease that we ARE going to rent it (even though both parties have said as much) until we sign papers. And that might not happen for a bit, because the landlords don't know when they are moving out exactly, but it'll be around 2 months from now.

Prayer that this would work out this time would be wonderful, and at the same time that I would not fret and worry as I am so wont to do! :) Trusting in God to provide materially and being *at peace* no matter what happens is something that seems to keep popping up in my daily life that I am more aware of than before.

To the ladies in partic: In a different vein, Luke has asked me to give the "chapel" talk to his 8th grade girls this week on biblical femininity. I really only have tomorrow to work on it, and although I've given it some thought, I still need some resources for things important for junior-high aged girls. I'm going to do an overview of what it should look like in young girls, and later during the year hit on some things to work on, something like that. Naturally, the Bible is where I'll start and end, but if there are any good blogs I could peruse or any quotes anyone has, or general advice, I'd love to look it over. Thanks!

New Horizons

That's a cliche title, but I feel like we're living cliche days . . . it's all happened before.

There's a home for rent that seems to be in our future, and if the Lord is willing we will be renting it in a mere few months!

We were "burned" earlier after accepting to rent a dream house. The circumstances of the burn are unimportant, but the gist is that we were crushed. At least I was. I know Luke was disappointed, but I was *crushed* when I heard it wasn't going to work.

As I said in my last post, God seems to be teaching and reminding us through disappointment and other random struggles that He is in control and we need to lean on Him for every big and little thing. Lots of "golden opportunities" seem to be waved beneath our noses, and we look around for any potholes, but when we step to reach for it, we sink a few inches, or feet as the case may be. We realize we forgot to say "please," and were snatching, rather than holding our hands open to be filled.

God gives freely, and we need to receive freely. Grabbing never gets you anywhere, ultimately, and certainly trying to hang on will lead to disappointment. But holding your hands open means God can give and take without scarring. God gives and takes, but the amount of pain depends on whether you trust Him to give you good things and more good things, or replace good things with great things.

Watching Beowulf bob his little blond head up and down as he struggles to hold it steady to look around the room while sprawled on his tummy on the floor reminds me how very much I love him and how very sad I'd be if anything happened to him. It reminds me of fears I had while pregnant, fears unfounded but nevertheless fears of things going wrong. It reminds me of fears I had during childbirth, and afterwards, and even now I still struggle with fear for him. I am constantly reminding myself to open my hands and keep giving my baby back to his Creator.

But through disappointments I've learned (or re-learned?) that better things have ALWAYS come from them. If something amazing you want or desire is taken away, something far better is found in its place. When an opportunity falls through, a far better door (or window or kitchen cupboard) is opened for you to walk through.

It's cliche, but it's true.