God is so Neat!

For those of you who were not at church on Sunday, I'd like to recount a cool story of God at work. One of our pastors led us in a "prophetic clinic"...basically calling up four people at a time and asking us to listen to God and tell them what comforting, encouraging, or strengthening words He had for them.

First, four men volunteered. I was amazed at the variety of things that were spoken to them and the way they were moved, and the similar themes that would be repeated for each one. I sat there, completely blank, wishing I could hear God, too.

Then, four women came up. I was pretty discouraged and longed to hear something for them. All I could see of the one girl from where I sat was her cyan-blue scarf. I thought it was interesting that the guy who had sat in the same chair also had a striking scarf on, which became the theme of a lot of the encouragements. So, I decided to ask God if there was something about her scarf. The colour made me think of the sky and the verse from the Psalms came to mind: "Your love O Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness stretches to the skies". I didn't have my Bible with me so I turned around to the stranger I had whispered a question to earlier in the morning and asked if I could borrow her Bible. It fell open to a bookmarked place in the Psalms. I could not for the life of me remember the reference for the other verse, but I noticed a bunch of verses in Psalm 37 were highlighted in the exact same shade of blue as her scarf!! I couldn't discern any specific ones, so I read them all.

I didn't get a chance to talk to the girl afterwards but I was quite confident they were for her. This was cofirmed to me when someone told me they had gone to Psalm 37 as well.

This whole experience not only spoke to me of God's knowledge and care for each of those up front, but also for me. He knew how to get my attention and gave me very clear signposts to guide me to the right Scripture. What a neat God!

On Life and Parenting

The last week or so has seen some of its lowest moments in parenting. Children screaming, mommy screaming, that sort of thing. It was over the top. Granted, J always seems to have an emotional recovery time when being sick involves losing appetite. He's always been very sensitive to blood sugar levels and once his body starts wanting food again, he's a bit of a bear. And I was very tired with R being up at night. So there were definite physical factors. But I also really felt like there was a strong spiritual component as well.

So, needless to say, Sunday I was feeling my weaknesses acutely and was blessed to be prayed for and to sing this song by Craig Musseau:

Good to Me

I cry out
For your hand of mercy to heal me
I am weak
I need your love to free me
Oh Lord, my rock
My strength in weakness
Come rescue me, Oh Lord

You are my hope
Your promise never fails me
And my desire
Is to follow you forever

For you are good
For you are good
For you are good to me.


I am happy to say that this week is going astronomically better. Mommy has more compassion and self-control and kids are more even-keel as well. There have been some really precious moments with J in particular that I haven't had for a while. Plus, we are all sleeping better at night! Hurray! Exercise is coming back into my life and I'm even hoping that my kitchen will be clean by the end of the night. Quiet time has been there, although not amazing. Reaching out also happening.

That's it for now. Must do dishes...

(Yay, Canada! Keep the medals coming!)

Misery Likes Company?!

On the week-end, we finally broke down and bought some glue board traps. We put one in our closet and one elsewhere. I won't go into too much detail, but I was awake to hear the first one...he was the male, I think: immediately really ticked off and then silent for quite a while (I thought he had died of a heart attack or something), and then feebly complained intermittently until I woke up Rod and he bopped him twice with a shoe. (Sorry, that was quite a lot of detail wasn't it?) Shortly thereafter, another met "her" demise...I just kind of heard her whimpering (squeaking really) and we immediately put her out of her misery. And then all was quiet.

I really wasn't too excited about the idea of mice struggling their way to death, but this was definitely the most effective way yet (i.e. because we were able to kill them quickly after they got caught and because we knew where they were and they didn't have to stink first for us to find them).

Hope I haven't offended too many, and if it helps, I really don't think the mice suffered that much...mostly annoyed them...but then again, what do I know? Thanks, again, Beckie, for sharing your mouse solutions!

What do May Flowers Bring?

Pilgrimage. For us, anyways.

Yes, both of the buildings are slated to become ours on May 1. We're excited and at the same time still in shock. It's all actually happening, to the best of our knowledge (I still keep thinking something will happen to prevent this).

Both places will need a lot done to them, so having the possession dates the same day was not our first choice. We will be needing a lot of help in the next few months, so if anyone is a packing or painting whiz, or just wants to take care of our kids for a few hours, we would appreciate the help!

We will be paring our possessions down as much as possible, so if anyone loves to purge, I would welcome your assistance!

Today I got an idea from someone of having a monthly music night/potluck where people just get together and work on new music together. I think that's so cool. Maybe we could do that in our new studio!

Restless

Church was so affirming for me today. The image of God's love as water soaking into the dry soil and then as that gets saturated, getting "restless" as it tries to go to the lowest, farthest away place, was very powerful.

We've been feeling like God wants to move us closer to the poor and just in the last week, it seems the pieces are falling into place. And it was just encouraging to know that this is what God does. He fills us up and then he calls us to people and places that need that love.

In this next week, we'll be writing up an offer to purchase a three-suite house with a storefront on Selkirk to live in and quite possibly another house with storefront a few blocks away for a studio. Both can be purchased and renovations begun for what we hope to get for our house. Our living space will be greatly reduced, but we will have the privilege of blessing our tenants and have less financial strain in addition to being closer to our church and the community it serves. Our big dream coming true is a separate studio space. Rod can shoot there without disrupting family life, teach photography, rent out the space to other photographers and artists, and who knows what else! Our church has a huge artistic community. I hope somehow that this could become a place where artists gather.

So, please keep us in our prayers as deals are finalized and then as the purging and packing process begins! Oh, and that we could have our house sold in the next three months! (yikes, did I just say that?!)

The Undertaker

I have now "undertaken" to dispose of three dead mice this year. I am woman--hear me roar! (Yes, I am quite proud of myself). This year has been bad for mice all over Winnipeg...they just won't go away! I hear a good mouser-kitten is effective, but I'm not crazy about animals in the house (yeah, just mice!)

Anyways, I have developed an easy three-step method and if anyone has a dead mouse to get rid of...I'll tell you how!