Many of you who read this may know my friend, Tate (and, of course, many of you don't).  She was a dear friend from college who also happened to be a roommate during my senior year, and a friend through life since then.  Two weeks or so ago, she had gall bladder surgery, and then things got really, really messy.  On Friday night, after over a week under heavy sedation and all that entails, she had a brain hemorrhage.  She was taken off life support Saturday evening.  With her family surrounding her, she died.

Tate was 35.

Her mom and dad, older sister, Shelley (husband Dan, and daughter Sadie), and younger sister, Cindy, I'm sure, would appreciate your prayers.  They are a dear, very close-to-one-another family, and this is quite a shock to deal with.  You may not know them, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't matter to God--please, pray for them--for peace, and for comfort, and, well, for everything else.  

Things just aren't supposed to go this way, you know?? 

Nothing huge yet, but we had three showings last night, we have one this afternoon, and a re-showing this evening...so who knows...

We're trying not to get our hopes up, but that's not really completely possible, you know.  :)

Missed this yesterday...

In the kitchen… fresh yellow flowers from my brother and his wife...a sweet thank you gift.

From the garden… (from my mom's) drying hydrangeas for the kitchen table.

Outside my window… crisp blowing breezes...a sign of things to come.

I am creating… a plan for the first week of school...slowly but surely.

I am thankful for… 9+ showings in one week (because there are still 2 days left to book before it's a week!)!

I am striving for… direction.

I am praying for… my sweet friend Tate, who is slowly recovering from gall bladder surgery and sepsis, but is still sedated and on a vent.

I am praising for… a clean, show-ready house.  And kids who are helping me keep it that way.

I wonder… oh, gosh.  The list is long. 

On my notepad… a recipe for Lo Mein, the phone number of a bride who's wedding I'm coordinating, the total of the bill for the carpet cleaner, squiggles, Reasa's name.  She wrote it.

...what life throws at you.  And when.  You can walk along, through days and weeks, and everything kind of moves along with you.  People, situations...fit nicely into place, where you want them, where they should be.  There's no categorizing or sorting, no shifting or thinking...just living. 

Then...Everything changes.  Life whips out of control.  Like a fire hose turned on and left momentarily unattended, causing chaos, confusion, potential for injury in that instant, and shocked firefighters scrambling to get the thing turned off and under control again.  And picture everything going wrong in that scramble--can't find the connection...turn the pressure on higher instead of off...the handle breaks off as they twist...broken windows, dented cars, screeching car alarms, screaming children, barking dogs, cameras rolling (because, of course, someone is shooting a training video in the middle of all of this...). 

And all of that chaos just leaves you reeling.  Killing yourself to categorize and sort and shift...and think.  The living takes a back seat to the thinking.  Everything that fit together so nicely suddenly won't, and you feel like you're trying to grab hold of that flailing fire hose...only to get whacked in the head with the nozzle.  Underneath all the chaos, you know there's order...somewhere.  You know one of those firefighters will figure it out and turn the darn thing off.  But the moments of getting drenched and battered and trying desperately to help sort it all out...feel agonizing and endless.  And even with the knowledge that order exists, or will soon...when you can't see it...it's hard to remember it's there.

Life's throwing things at me.  Things I don't know how to deal with.  I want to deal with them.  Sort it all out.  Get a grip.  I know the One who controls the order underneath the chaos, and I trust him.  It's the remembering that He does have it under control that I'm struggling to do.  It's not getting in the way of that helpful firefighter...avoiding being knocked unconscious before He gets it taken care of...that's the trick. 

I'd like to learn that trick.  Not sure I look forward to the lessons...lessons in giving up control and gaining patience...suck.  But I'd like to learn that trick.

...at 6 tonight.  And area realtors doing a walk-through tomorrow...if you're praying...we'd love for you to continue!  Thanks so much, friends!

Today I think I might hit 10,000 page views here on my little blog.  How fun is that??  Amazing to think that in just over two years, that many people have visited my blog (or should I say, the same 10 people have visited pictures and posts on my blog totaling that very large number... :))  Thanks for visiting, friends. 

...those of you who have been praying!!  We have two showings tomorrow...we'll see what happens. 

Maybe nothing.

Then again, maybe they'll be the right people at the right time. 

See, this is where it gets interesting, doesn't it?  My very optimistic, extremely hopeful side perks up!  She smiles, giggles, and says, "Here we go!!"  Then the realistic, annoyingly pessimistic side--the side I never heard anything from until 7 or 8 years ago--adds her two cents..."Don't get your hopes up.  It's just two people, and it's the first week.  This is going to take a lot longer than a week.  It's going to take a lot longer than a month."  Sigh.

I so want to believe that God is ready for my family to be back together again too.  That it would, of course, be his will that the house would sell quickly and we could move.  But as with so many other things in my life, it wouldn't surprise me if he chose to use this as a lesson to me.  Patience is not a quality I possess in great measure.  My life verse?  "Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him."  Psalm 37:7a.  He gave that verse to me the summer I was 18.  It is a verse he consistently brings to mind.  It dwells there in my heart...and I'm reminded of it so often...I'm not much of a "be still" kind of person  (can you tell??).  Which means I don't wait very often.  It is not a wonderful thing.  I know this is something God wants for me.  I'm not exactly sure what it's going to take for me to get there.  Ugh...did I just speak that over myself???  (I don't actually believe in that, by the way)

As an aside, please pray with me for my friend, Tate.  She is in the ICU somewhere in PA, and she needs it.  Apparently, she had gall bladder issues, they removed it (along with 8-10 inches of her colon), and she is septic...it's very, very bad.  The doctors believe she will make a full recovery, but she is one sick, sick girl.  Tate was my roommate 1st semester senior year...I miss her dearly.  I know she works in Resident Life at a college somewhere...so this must be a very, very busy time of year for her, which would make this timing even more complicated...so anyway, if you would pray with me for this stranger...I know she would appreciate it.

Thank you, friends.  Many blessings!!!

We signed the paperwork.  We counted rooms.  We listed the qualities and features.  The house goes on the market tomorrow morning. 

Sheesh.

Now, the waiting begins. 


Bring it on.

Therefore, it no longer hangs over my head.  On to the next task.  :)

The next task?  That would be calling my aunt in the morning and hoping she has time to come over with paperwork to sign to officially list the darn thing so we can maybe sell it.  :) again.

Until last night, I had never actually considered the idea that the house might not sell quickly.  In my mind, someone walks through the house the week we put it on the market, decides they just can't go another day without offering the amount we ask, and we close in a month.  In my mind, we move to Pennsylvania sometime in late September.  And that's the end of it.  I suddenly realized that this option...is just an option.  The unpleasant reality involves a much longer time frame. 

A time frame I am not eager to accept.

I know that reality tends to play out in these situations.  I know that I should prepare myself for a long process...of making the kids not play with their toys because they're all packed away in the attic to avoid a cluttered-looking house, of actually filing the kids homeschooling paperwork with our current school district rather than putting it off with hopes of not starting the school year here (...umm, we're two weeks away.  Can you say slacker??), of cleaning and keeping everything looking perfect for months on end (honestly, that's kind of refreshing...in a warped and twisted sort of way), of trying to figure out what to sign the kids up for this fall, and what not to...ugh. 

But I'm pretty hopeful, still.  Anything can happen, right?  Maybe we'll have a bidding war.  Three people will come through the house in the first week, and fight each other for it!!  We'll get $10,000 above our asking price!!

OK, so there's a marked difference between "hopeful" and "dreaming..."

I spent the entire day painting.  My eyes hurt from squinting at white-painted-covered surfaces.  There's paint in my hair I can't get out.  What can I say?  Cut a girl some slack.  And pray with me that my dream comes true...stranger things have happened.  Not necessarily to me...but there's a first time for everything.

...Sweet Home.

So glad to be here.  Not looking forward to the stressors of the week, but so glad to be here none-the-less. 

The kids rode beautifully--virtually no issues for the trip.  No one even fought over whose turn it was to sit in the middle, which is not typical--that argument occurs almost daily on around-town trips.  They watched more movies on the trip home than the trip down, but I think exhaustion finally set in, and the presence of a stomach bug or something with Reasa caused car sickness to take it's toll on her.  We're actually keeping watch over her...may have a UTI setting in...but since she's never had one (and neither have any of the rest of us), we're not totally sure what to look for.  Words of wisdom welcome.

So, for those of you who prayed for our trip, thank you.  We did have fun.  We're just glad to be home.  Pictures to follow (with breakdown of the week's events).

...is beautiful.  I could live here.  No problem. 

Too bad the gas field isn't here.  Ah, well,  Pennsylvania it is.  :)

The new gymnastics scoring system...


...SUCKS.  It's wrong.  What the heck were they thinking?????????

...Rocks.

And that's all I have to say about that.

...only this time, it's for a better reason.  Well, I think better.  This time, it's my job to keep my husband awake.  Because right now, the time is 9:47 pm, and we're about 2 hours north of Roanoke, VA...and I think somewhere around the time we turn onto Rt. 77, we'll reach the point where he's not going to be able to drive any more, and we will stop at a Best Western (where Seth has the rough equivalent of 3 full weeks of free  stays with all of his earned "points" over the past year), sleep for a few hours, get some "breakfast," and hit the road again.  If we make it to Rt. 77, we'll have about 300 miles left to drive in the morning, which will put us in Georgia with enough time to "not waste the whole day," as Seth has put it.  We left at 3:52 this afternoon...about an hour after Seth's hoped-for time...but we've made good time.  The kids are angels.  Absolute angels.  And they have occupied themselves with their goody back-packs (with new crayons and coloring books, activity pads, drawing pads and markers from Grandma and Grandpa, their nintendos for a little while, and a movie right after dinner (we stopped in Harrisburg to go to the bathroom and grab a bite at McDonalds)...only one meltdown, and it was over a ketchup spill...a sharp corner slopped the ketchup cup off Bryson's lap and onto the floor--I really think the bigger issue had nothing whatsoever to do with losing his ketchup.  I think he feared Daddy's response to ketchup on his floormat (plastic...phew).  Reasa quickly came to his rescue with napkins and a reassuring pat.  :)  I have the best kids. 

So, what the heck am I doing posting on my blog at 10:00 from the truck??  Some perks of Seth's new job:  unlimited Verizon internet access with Seth's work computer, a computer station in his truck, an awesome GPS unit with all the bells and whistles to find job sites when all he has to go by are latitude and longitude numbers (which also works beautifully when you know the actual address of the place you're looking for), and this truck.  There is so much room...the kids are all stretched out, getting ready to sleep, I have all of my crafting/reading things on the floor underneath me and my legs crossed on the seat, with the computer right in front of me...it's pretty stinking awesome.  This trip, I have several official titles:  navigator, food service manager, maintenance supervisor, peace officer, nintendo charger, entertainment coordinator, and alarm clock.  :)  Whatever it takes to make this trip as smooth as possible...I'm all over it.  So far, so good.  Seth doesn't know what to do with himself.  This trip marks the first time we have ever taken an official vacation--with pay--in our entire marriage.  Ever.  Even our trip to Florida when the kids were tiny...they occurred during lay-offs from work when Seth worked seasonal construction.  He has guilt...feeling like he should be available if issues come up this week.  He's frustrated with his boss for not returning a call he made to him on Friday evening.  I asked him if Mike is the kind of guy who would say, "You're on vacation.  Let it go," and he said, "Yes.  He would definitely do that."  Let it go, hon.  You're on vacation.

This will be an interesting week.

I'm actually looking forward to it.  And so far, I haven't thought of anything I have forgotten.  I have no doubt that will change...but before we left, I said to Seth, "Please, just assure me that whatever I have forgotten, within reason, we will replace when we get there so that I don't have to worry about it."  He was very, very willing to agree to that (I think he just wanted to leave). 

Have I mentioned how much God has blessed us?  How fortunate we are at this time in our lives?  We have had really, really lean years in the past.  Really lean.  We have wondered how we would come up with money for bills at times...to be able to take a vacation like this...and not worry about the fact that the cost of gas skyrocketted this summer (we paid 3.59 in Harrisburg!!  Yeah!!), or that we'll want to keep busy while we're there, or that we'll need to eat some meals out, etc...this is amazing. 

God is good.  Exceptionally good.  Especially to us.  He has always provided for us, even when we didn't know how he would.  But this...it's just above and beyond.

And I have so many things in my brain, sleep probably won't come easy.  Nice way to talk myself into that, right?

We returned tonight from camping for the week with my parents.  We had a good time, really.  Primarily because I almost sat around for four days, doing absolutely nothing some of those times.  The kids occupied themselves almost entirely with playing in the gravel which surrounded our campsite, riding their bikes (Bryson got a new one on Sunday night, really late--his very rusted chain kept falling off his too-small bike, and his knees practically hit the handlebars each time he peddled, so daddy said enough was enough...and bought him a new one), tubing behind my dad's boat (with a very kid-friendly tube I convinced Seth to buy on crazy sale last weekend), swimming at the "beach," drawing, coloring, playing Yatzee, and so on.  The downside of camping is food preparation and clean-up, although, I have to say, when you share all of that with your mom...it really does go much more quickly.  We kept things pretty simple, and mostly quiet.  I even read myself to sleep two nights...finishing both books as I did.  I wish I could tell you they were very important pieces of literature or something that related to homeschooling or child-raising or spiritual maturity...nope.  Not on your life.  I read Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (which was a disappointment, but I still read every page), and a dumb romance I've read before...what can I say?  I needed mindlessness this week.  I got what I needed.  :)  On Monday, I helped my brother finish his last college math assignment, and he took his final on Tuesday (and he passed!!  Hooray Kevin!), then Tuesday evening, my brother and his family arrived right before an insane thunderstorm hit the campground (about 11:30pm)--the lightning lit the sky for virtually the whole storm.  It was incredible.  Unfortunately, my girls didn't sleep through it--they're not big on thunderstorms.  Paul and his family stayed until about 3 hours before we left tonight (Thursday).  The kids?   They're beat.  I mean, wiped-out exhausted.  So tired, we never even heard a peep after we put them to bed tonight.  No visits downstairs from any of them (unheard of).  No claims of tummy aches, sisters bugging them, "forgot to unpack my Webkinz."  Nothing. 

Tomorrow...oh, tomorrow.  The insanity really begins.  Tomorrow, I finish painting the back of my house.  I clean the house--the real cleaning part.  Bathrooms, dusting, floors, glass, etc.  I make a cake for Seth's grandparents' anniversary party from 1 to 3 on Saturday, and I pack for a week of vacation in Helen, GA, beginning as soon as the party is over.  We're actually taking a vacation.  Other than our anniversary, it will be the first actual vacation of our whole marriage.  Vacation.  Doesn't that word just sound relaxing? 

I'm tired just thinking about it.  And the thing is, I haven't told you anything about what I did since my last post on the house.  Honestly?  I don't want to think about it. 

And I'll mention this:  thinking of slip-covering your couch and love seat?  Don't start it at 10:30 at night using flat, king-sized, queen-sized and twin sheets, no matter how energetic you're feeling or what a great deal you got on the sheets.  You will run out of sheets, and you will run out of patience.  The couches are slip-covered, but they're not quite finished.  They'll work, but they won't work if people actually sit on them.  They sure do remove the look of really-worn-out-11-year-old furniture, though.  Which was, after all, the goal.  So, I'm not really complaining.  Just...commenting.  :)
 
I'm going to bed.  Also unheard of.  It's only 10:37, after all.  Will keep you posted...I guess it looks like the house will list on Monday, Aug. 18.  (Our realtor goes out of town tomorrow, or it would be this coming Monday...apparently God didn't have that date in mind.)  While this really frustrates me...because I'm thinking if someone offers us a price we could accept on the first day we list it, we're still looking at not closing until mid-late September...and I had really, really hoped to start school this fall in our "new house," wherever that winds up being.  Ugh.  I know God's plan and his timing have nothing to do with how we think things should go whatsoever...but I'm not good at just sitting here and trusting. 

Yes.  I know.  That's the point, isn't it?  He's asking for me to walk in faith entirely on this one.  He doesn't ask that of me very often. 

I don't like it.  I'm here.  I'm doing it.  But I don't like it.  Do I have to like it, as long as I don't do it and drag my feet at the same time?  Or is the very fact that I'm saying I don't like it so adamantly making it something that's not quite obedient? 

Ugh.