Changes

Perhaps I am wishy-washy. Perhaps. But I guess that’s the way The Lord has made me.
Or maybe I’m rather more a person of habit?
One or the other. 😀
After two years of keeping a blog at Google’s Blogger, swapping to WordPress was a choice driven mainly by the idea that I could reach more people who may be interested in reading my stories once they were published. But now I have begun blogging more regularly, I find that finding an audience for my books are a minor part of my blogging experience compared with the lessons and life stories I share.
I want to reach as many people as I can for The Lord Jesus and be a testimony to them, but at the same time I’ve always been against putting my whole life out for anyone and everyone to see.
And when I write I share a lot.
Thus, I am moving my blog back to its original home on Blogger, which seems to be less open. It might not be so wonderful at getting my stories out for others to read, but my own blogging can be more free and my own.
This adventure with WordPress hasn’t been a waste though.
I thank Jesus that I’ve met several new friends through this experience.
Please come over and join me at my original home for My Life In Him;
www.april4Jesus.blogspot.com

I’ll look forward to seeing you there!

And more trouble

I wonder sometimes why The Lord allows such problems.
My mother, sister, and I are now stuck at an O’Reilly’s Automotive with engine trouble on the family van, and Daddy’s trying to find us after taking the work van to try to get tires (not completed yet).
And we’re here now with crippled vehicles, 1/2 hour from home, exhausted, with more work than we can handle pressing on us each day, and chores still waiting at home.

And what’s the reason?

A satanic attack, maybe? A trial from The Lord?

Mobile Blogging…being a teen…growing up…and other things.

Well…unlike I figured…I have a nice deal of time on my hands today with which to write a blogpost – even mobile. 🙂 actually I have a LOT of time today!

The surgery is taking the whole day, so far as can be told right now, so everyone is sitting around talking, doodling, and otherwise killing time while we pray for Randy in the operating room and trust the Lord’s Hand will guide the surgeons as they work.

It’s a wet, chilly day today.
It was even worse at 2:00am when we got up!!

That’s writing-worthy!

As I may have mentioned before, I am more of a night type person. I like to stay up late, reading or writing. Getting up before the sun is not usually my favorite way to start the day. I don’t mind sometimes…but 5 is about as early as I can handle.

Well…in order to see Randy before they took him back to surgery, we had to make it 150 miles or so by 7:00am.
Which meant, in order to get chores done, we had to get up at TWO!

So…up at 2, chores at 2:30, breakfast 3:30, then on the road by 4:07. A two and a half hour drive and we’ve been in Winston Salem, at the baptist hospital since 6:44.
Thank the Lord we did get to see Randy before they took him back – but just before. He got ere just a few minutes after us and they took him in less than half an hour later!

Now we’re in the dreaded hours of waiting…aching…praying…starving…bored…waiting…praying…aching…thirsty…getting lost in the hospital…..
The list goes on.

But we’re enjoying it – despite the circumstances and the tiredness! It’s nice to see our relatives again, get caught up on the bits of news we’ve missed, and see Randy’s boys again.

Trai and Thomas have certainly grown – even since my first mention of them on my blog a couple years ago!
Watching them play games, organize their collection of miniature cars and trucks (and planes!), draw (and very well, I might add!), study up on their homework, etc. it reminds me of when I had just turned a teen (and a little younger).

13.
That was a beautiful year.
It should be really; the child is growing, feeling his age, learning more about life, but still young enough to enjoy it – all of it, not just parts of it like adults! – in their simplicity.

Hmm…
When I turned 13, my family was in the middle of moving to a new home, I was thoroughly enjoying both piano and writing, was busy with my school lessons, and only had the responsibility of my four year old cat and partial responsibility of our four dogs.
I and my sister took up violin that year and The Lord truly blessed that. Besides Mamas attempt to teach us guitar when we were six or seven, learning violin was our first experience with a stringed instrument. It was a LOT of work, but The Lord planted the desire to play so deep in our young hearts that it took off like wildfire and despite the aching necks and fingers, we learned quickly and loved every minute of it!

It was also the year that the Lord blessed our young bee farm; our whole family spent a LOT of time tending the bees, building supers, catching swarms, harvesting honey, and talking talking, talking about bees.

It was a year of learning, changing, expanding my mind (not through reading, I add, my affair with reading had already waned), experiencing new things and meeting new people.

I did not write much in my diary that year. I didn’t like where we were living, I thought everything exciting had been left behind at our old home. So, I didn’t care to write much about my life (I just wrote stories) though now I wish so much I had documented more about my first year as a teenager. (Though I do not in any way regret the hours I spent scribbling stories. The Lord taught me more in that year – and in the next two or three – about writing than I think I ever learned mechanically since.)

13 was a good year for me – I might not have felt so at the time – but looking back, it was a very good year.
But isn’t every year like that?
Every year we should appreciate the Lord’s working in our lives – no matter what we see in our natural sight. His work is so much greater than our ideas – our biggest dreams are so time compared to His plans for us.

May we learn to love each day, each month, each year as a gift from our Savior.
One day we WILL look back and see His Hand in our lives where before we saw only trouble and trials, and we will lift our hand in Praise to His Providence.
But how much more wonderful our lives would be if we could become conscious of this WHEN it is happening!

“For with Thee is the Fountain of Life: in Thy Light shall we see Light. O continue Thy Lovingkindness unto them that know Thee; and Thy Righteousness to the upright in heart.”
Psalm 36:9-10

What I do

“Labour not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom. Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.”

Proverbs 23:4-5

I know I talk a lot about our work; renovating low-income houses for the government. And I share a lot of pictures, and updates about our jobs (Hemlock is almost done by the way 🙂 ), but it seems it can still be rather confusing what we really do. I guess because from the time we started in it again ’till now I’ve never really sat down and explained it, other than that we do construction work.

So…I’m going to explain it now. 🙂

Our job starts with getting bid packages from the city government. (To do this you must attend a pre-bid conference. If you are not at the pre-bid conference then you do not get a package and do not get to bid; its really a strict system.)

After you’ve got the packages (i.e. write-ups) you visit the houses.

I look forward to visiting houses. 🙂 Its fun to go into town and see communities you never knew were there – get a glimpse as to how city people live. Seeing kids riding their bikes on the streets, playing ball, and making friends with neighbors brings me back to my own one year of city life when I was young. Nostalgic in a way…in another very repulsive…but I’m off the subject….

Anyways, we all four go to look at houses together. Generally there’s more than three – last time there was seven, time before that twelve – so we make a day of it, usually eat-out and all that. 🙂

Then there’s the part of getting up the bids. Daddy does most of this, but usually we all look them over, pray about it, and give our opinions. We try to let the Lord Jesus guide us in this – as in all that we do – our natural logic and figuring is never equal to what His Will may be.

I pray we never lose this conviction.

Then there’s bid meeting. Everyone brings their sealed bids to the city meeting, signs in (you have to be there on time), and then they are read aloud. The lowest bidder – within 10% above or below the Public Body Estimate – gets the job, after it is approved by the state.

Some of the homes we work in are rough. We try not to get jobs that are in too bad of neighborhoods. With a family of three girls and one man, its not always best to spend weeks in a bad area, even if you’re getting paid.

So far I thank the Lord that we’ve worked in pretty decent areas. The jobs have been hard, but not overcoming, and we’ve been able to handle them.

There’s a lot of painting involved, some carpentry, a lot of replacing HV/AC systems, some windows, pouring concrete, building handicap ramps, and other things like that if you are sort of getting the idea. Complete renovations, but not gutting the houses (thank the Lord!)

You’re generally given between 45 to 60 days to do the work. This time frame seems to do well for us. Weekends off and we take some week days off too if we’re pushing too hard and need a break. It really provides us a free schedule, the ability to set our own hours, and work other things in if we need to.

I am beginning to actually enjoy this work. I don’t like the work itself, mind you, but the whole atmosphere of having a family business, working hard with your hands to make a living, going to new communities, seeing things you’ve never seen before, “living” per se at another house for a month or two, cooking and packing healthy lunches (or eating out 🙂 ), scribbling in my diary at lunch time, listening to our music as we work, updating facebook on the job, taking tons of pictures (between one and two hundred a day actually 🙂 ), even working on my stories sometimes when there’s slow moments and I’m not hollered at or my job threatened. 🙂

Construction work isn’t a girl’s job. That’s true. But who says a girl can’t be in it, enjoy it, do her best, help her family make a living, and be doing something most girls never even imagine doing? I mean, most girls my age would never dream of helping re-screen a porch, hang ceiling fans, paint a whole house, help bust up a segment of concrete drive-way, or lay carpet and vinyl flooring – no more than they would ever imagine living on a farm, helping haul in 200+ square bales of hay two or three times a year (in the hottest days of summer), helping a doe give birth to tangled twins or triplets, milking nine does by hand every day, or even drinking goats’ milk period!

I’m beginning to see the beauty in, and appreciate very much, my out-of-the-normal lifestyle.