With chagrin, I miss the husbandry, childcare, and travel that our older children experienced. However, I do not miss the chaos of self employment, medical emergencies, and ........ addictions.
There is beauty in order and disciple of daily Bible meditation, bodily exercise, teaching of academic fundamentals, home maintenance, and meal preparation are what I'm instating. But I never want that to be the end all, my family in its little box.
Core. Drills. Heart of the matter. Early in the day, so as to make room for more than the coherence to "laws," but to be grace to someone, my someones, to everyone. I'm 45. I don't have time to heehaw around.
With a scientist and an artist on my hands, I won't have to worry about ever having too clean a house. Funny, those were my two greatest areas of interest in college. God's gift to me that He would let me experience them through my children. Creative juices.
Shannon coming, no fear, we're not really that close to "normal," especially as I hear whispers here and there of fostering little ones ....
All of $30 to our names. But freezer has in store for us lane snapper caught by our daughters on my father's boat on the Gulf Coast waters, rainbow trout caught from my son's pole in the Blue Ridge Mountain streams, wild blackberries and farmed strawberries harvested locally, peppers and okra Mike planted in a small bed. On top of it all, we have volunteer pumpkins growing from last year's take from Virgie's garden. And we have the canned juice from her son's muscadine vineyard.
To most, the thought of no savings or credit is cause for concern, but I have to admit that I love not only the challenge of seeing what we can live without but also the provision of the Lord, primarily from others' excess or refuse.
Too, I feel as though I'm being released back into the fold, with all the conversations, at least a dozen, I've had in the last couple of weeks. And a women's Bible study, to boot. Not before Lock down post - always by Father's daughter, my husband's wife, and my children's mother - FIRST and fully.
I imagine I can say with some certainty, that I am the only person who enrolled two children in the local homeschool organization, one in public high school, returned one to boarding school, AND married a daughter, in a matter of days.
I have to customize each one's path according to their passions and their history, not sending them about before they are ready to bear their Armor, though. Weeding through. Football captain. Melody camp - disloyalty, wedding - pictures, cake, nevermind bride's maid - 16 before that and all the certifying that goes with that, school, MRI - endoscopy. Megan - gettin there, not sure where she's gettin, but she's getting there. Still small voice, American opportunity, which one to take. McKala - retelling of the wedding. Miranda fire school. Counselor and Consultant.
Not sure what the outgrowth will be, but Satan surely was giving it his everything to put a stop to it. He would have had me convinced that the time for Mike and me was over and that there was a ready replacement. If I had not clung entirely to the Word of the Lord, I would have settled for what Spurgeon calls "almost right" instead of what was right. I would not likely see the fruits bearing in my children now, nor would they see that a man and a marriage can change, much less a woman's misguided heart.
Was pushing restart on my day at 11 am, out on the front porch, second cup of coffee and my Bible in hand, season changing wind blowing my hair and Miah's too. She's the rare flat coat retriever we have. Beautiful animal. Always wanting for attention, as if her beauty is not enough. Exactly, it is not enough for her to "sit still and look pretty" as the new song sings. There are so many songs of feminist rebellion now, but they do still make a point. What I gather and believe to be the truth is that pretty people are often lonely people as anyone with any advantage, men always wanting something from them or women coveting what they have. What is perfect about the story of Esther's beauty is that she did not use it to her vanity but to the salvation of her people. That we would as wives use our attributes humbly for our husbands, then for our children, and then for the world at large. That we would harness what we were given freely, to give freely.
So, no, don't sit still and look pretty. Serve and look pretty, giving no thought to the flesh, except to cultivate and make modest what we were given. Easier said than done, seeing how Satan would twist our thoughts at every given moment. Key word - "given." Make it a habit to not only discipline the body and spirit, but the mind. A lesson I am learning all too well. Command verses used to stand out, then heart ones, now mind ones.
How good it is to sleep in my own bed again, after having left the job with Virgie. However, I already feel us slipping into the complacency of routine. I am so accustomed to being on the high plain of passion, mostly the hurtful kind, that I don't know how or care to operate in pattern. Love making ...........chamber of pray guarded still ...but my voice and even my song are back ....
(Originally written and unfinished, from 2016 I think)
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