Mom in Sepia

Rarely am I ever on this side of the camera and that is how I prefer it. After taking another hundred or so pictures of the kids this evening Grace grabbed the camera and told me to sit down. I have been sick for 3 days and was in my barn grubs, but I sat down. I like 'em Grace.

Some Day

Grief never stops. Sometimes I just wish I could shut it off for a while and go have a coffee break. Go back just for a bit to what life used to be like. Other times I realize I have just gone five minutes without thinking about Trent and then feel guilty that I should be thinking about him. Sometimes I wonder if he really knew how much I loved him. If I remembered to tell him how much I loved him the night before the accident. Why I didn't kiss him goodbye before I left that morning. I wonder why it had to be this way. I wonder how I will go on every day missing him so bad. Why I ever took one little thing for granted. Why I ever yelled so much or insisted his school always had to be done to perfection. Sometimes I wonder what I will do when I finally wear out all of his socks and have to buy new ones. Sometimes I can't recall his voice. Or his giggle. Or where he sat at the dinner table. Or what his favorite dessert was. Sometimes I cry myself to sleep. Nearly every night I cry myself to sleep. I don't want to enjoy life without him. Sometimes I realize this isn't just a nightmare.
Some days I want to be free from it. I don't want it to be my son who died. Sometimes I realize that just because one child died does not exempt me from any other children dying. Some days I fully trust God for that and others, well, other days I hold them closer. Some days I can't see past this world. I feel the shackles of the bondage of sin that hold me so tight here. I long to see heaven with my own eyes. I long for Trent. I long to hold on. To wait patiently. I long to quit crying. I long for the peace and trust again. I long to be held by my Heavenly Father who said He will wipe away every tear...... some day.

A Little Sepia

The Big R

Responsibility. We believe in it pretty strongly around here. Our poor deprived children don't get the luxury of most children in this day and age who are indulged with every new electronic device that comes out. Our kids get an old console TV that is green half the time with no antenna, a DVD and VHS player that is off limits until school is done or they convince their mother that they really are sick, and up until the last few months no gaming devices until Trent and Cole bought a used X-box and games with money they had saved from working hard for neighbors and friends. We believe their childhood is better spent playing with goats and chickens and their brothers and sisters rather than watching little blinking lights together. And yes, they do have to walk uphill both ways to their home school. Ahem, didn't mean to get on that soap box. Just meant to brag up Alexis a little bit.

When these sweet little dumplings of ours prove themselves responsible we bend over backwards to help them achieve their dreams. Alexis loves, loves, loves to write (where in the world does she get that from?) and has filled up tablet after tablet of stories and journals. For close to a year she has been saving and putting money away to buy her very own laptop, and just this past week she was so excited to see the mail lady pull up into our driveway with a box with her name on it. Now our kids don't get allowance so the extra perseverance and patience and plain old hard work made this all the sweeter. And she even let me take her picture using it. You go girl! Can your mother borrow it once in a while? Pretty please!

Catchin' Up

It seems I have a bit of catching up to do to keep everything current here. Believe it or not I am still using up pictures that I took three months ago. Of course three months ago the biggest things going on my life were that we were gifted a passed~along beautiful old dresser and had rearranged our bedroom, plus the boys ripped up the old ugly orange shag carpeting in the hallway and stairwell. How things can change. To keep myself sane I have wrote mostly about grief and God's goodness, but other things have been happening around here as well that I need to get recorded. So this will be a catch-all post with some of the highlights of our otherwise normal life in no particular order.

These pictures are at least a month old of 10 happy kiddos in a cold ditch full of water. There is a reason why we do not live on a busy highway. Since Trent has died we have treasured relationships all the more. We have taken every excuse, or no excuse at all, to get together with friends and family just to be together. There were so many sweet mornings, afternoons, evenings, and days of fellowship. I have especially enjoyed the time spent with my sisters Brenda and Traci and their families. God is good to me. We have spent many days swapping kids back and forth and hugging, crying, and just being together. For the first two months after the accident there were maybe 5 days that we didn't have company or weren't gone somewhere. We tried hard to welcome every opportunity to minister to everyone who walked through our door and have thanked God for all those who have surrounded us at this time.




Rob is a professional cheese maker and found out in March that again he placed for three of his cheeses. In April the awards ceremony was held in LaCrosse, WI, which meant our family got to go on a little vacation. When the kids were younger we used to take the time to have a few days away for just the two of us. Three years ago, shortly after Micah came home from India, we started regularly taking the kids with us and they have been taking turns being Rob's date. This year it was my turn to go. I am not super big on fancy dinner parties, and am much more comfortable in my goat barn, but went to make Rob happy. And talking about Rob~ it has been amazing to watch God work in him. I stand back and am in awe of how God has chose to answer so many of my prayers since Trent's death. Do you ever have a time where you feel like you are just standing back watching God work and He allows you to connect the dots in a sense? And it is beyond any way that you could have comprehended accomplishing things? Just a few of those things that I can share here is the simple answer of God saving Trent and allowing him to dwell in heaven for eternity and using him in a mighty way. God gets all the glory, He gives us joy, and Trent is still in heaven. As if that wasn't enough God has gone on to answer our prayer to be used by Him and for Him, and especially in Rob. Since Trent has died Rob has been able to speak at several different events and to local youth groups, as well as many individuals, and has presented the gospel to more than a thousand people in the past two months, challenging them to consider where they are with God. I sit here dumbfounded to even write that. My husband. Wow God. Now if he had been a public speaker, or a talker at all, I might not have been so astounded. Just wow. One of the things holding us so tight together after Trent's death is our belief that nothing here on earth matters as much as a persons eternity and God has only united us deeper with more passion now.
In other exciting news, Micah lost his first tooth at the hotel.

Spring has sprung and with that the pond has once again opened up. The frogs are singing us a serenade every night to usher in the new season.

And with Spring comes Easter. Our first official holiday without Trent. Why, oh why, didn't we take Christmas pictures last year? On Saturday we went to the Easter Passion Play and watched the amazing story of the life, death and resurrection of our Savior with John and Brenda's family, then enjoyed church on Sunday morning. I am horrible on dates, on remembering birthdays and anniversaries, and don't get too much into holidays. But it was still the first one. For years we have hosted Easter lunch for my extended side of the family so we continued the tradition this year, trying to keep everything the same. Now I don't believe in the easter bunny, but I do love chocolate easter bunnies (call me a walking contradiction but if my $5 donation, okay $10 donation, to a pagan holiday causes you all to wag your finger at me, I'm sorry, I'm still gonna eat my chocolate bunny, and Trent's chocolate bunny, and enjoy every bite of it), so as per tradition we started out the day with hiding the easter baskets. We even hid one for Trent. And I was having a good day so didn't cry in front of anybody until lunch time.

Rather than the traditional ham sit down meal we fire up the grill and cook up some farm fresh steaks and burgers and enjoy potluck style, get in line first so you get a seat at the big table, kind of meal. After lunch we send the Dad's outside to hide plastic eggs and force all the children to sit on the stairwell and get their picture taken. This year we had 20 kids. Nothing makes me happier:)) It was Traci's idea to start the easter egg hunt years ago and the kids all love her for it and have come to expect it every year. After the easter egg hunt Grandma Lee got out the old pictures she had dug out of her closet and we laughed so hard that we nearly peed our pants! That is at the ones that weren't hidden or destroyed first. If those show up at Christmas time girls I won't be happy! Oh the torture of being a teen in the 80's with all that high hair and pictures to prove it. The uncles had ample time to pick on everybody and none of the kids were ready to leave by the end of the day. Guess it turned out to be a good first holiday.



Missed you kiddo! Trent, Easter 2009.

Today's Thoughts

Just had to get down some of my Sunday morning church thoughts. First of all I stand amazed at God. At the way He answers prayers, ordains things for His glory, for how He places people in our lives, in the many ways He moves through His children. Overwhelmed and in Total Awe of God, Peace and Truth and Righteousness, Praise, Honesty, Confession, Forgiveness, Grace, the Power of Prayer, Trust, Conviction, Laughter, Tears, Hugs, Friends, Eternity, Mortality, Salvation. All in a matter of 90 minutes. And to think I was going to stay home in my PJ's and cry over spilt milk.

None of the stories are mine to tell, but oh how I was blessed to be in the midst of God working this morning in that sanctuary. The power of removing our Sunday morning masks and being real in front of each other~ isn't that what a group of believers is all about? To carry each others burdens, to lift up prayers begging for grace and wisdom and the ability to trust God in His sovereignty, embracing each other when we are struggling, forgiveness when we have sinned, sharpening each other with the Word, laughing together, encouraging each other, saying goodbye as others are standing next to the edge of eternity and preparing to meet God. I love those people and what God is doing in their midst.

As believers do we even have a glimpse of what the cross cost? As Blaine prayed that before taking communion this morning it made me stop and consider the last two months in our lives. It is so easy to talk about God and Jesus and a wooden cross a couple of thousand years ago. But do we even have a clue? To feel the pain of loss that we are feeling now I don't think many of us even begin to understand what salvation cost, myself included.

I have been pondering the cross from God's side the last few days. Trying to imagine the perfect harmony of the relationship of the trinity and then to have that broken as the Son left heaven to enter a fallen, sinful world. Was there not the pain of loss there, even for God? In God's perfect sovereignty over salvation He Himself had to endure the loss of His own Son. And to consider the pain of turning His back on Jesus on that cross when our sins were laid on Him~ could you even begin to imagine turning your back on your own son in the moment of His greatest need? Although we feel the loss of Trent, God never asked us to turn our back on him like He had to on His own Son. It is too much to even comprehend.

Do we really believe that should have been us on that cross rather than Jesus? How many times do we mouth that? Who really thinks his own depravity is actually worthy of being hung from a cross? We have accepted the rewards of salvation without considering the cost of salvation. An easy salvation would not be worth obedience, or worth offering our own lives in response. Is the reason we minimize obedience because we have minimized what salvation cost? What about the joy of suffering with/for Jesus? Jesus suffered for the joy set before Him. He did not go to that cross because He loved us all so much, Scripture says He went to the cross out of obedience to His Father first. Let's split a few hairs here. If we think Jesus died a horrific death out of love for a fallen creation than salvation is all about us. But scripture says that everything is all about Gods glory and He will not share that glory with anyone or anything. Out of obedience Jesus submitted Himself to the will of the Father. It makes a difference when we talk about What Would Jesus Do if we don't know why Jesus did what He did. If Jesus is really the example in a believers life than the believer should strive all the more to be obedient to God through what Scripture says because that is what Jesus modeled~ submission and obedience.

And how about the issue of sovereignty~ Why is it so hard to allow God his Sovereignty? It's easy in the "good" things, but how about in the hard things? Freedom is found in simply acknowledging God's complete sovereignty and trusting Him for whatever He will do. We do not have to understand it to accept it. God said it, who are we to argue with His wisdom? Do we really think we know better than the creator of the universe? The God who knows how many hairs are on your head as well as how many tears you have ever cried can take care of all the other details as well. Joy is found in simply trusting and believing Him, for what He has already done and for what He will do. He is the potter, we are the clay.

All these things continually run through my brain. No wonder God ordained that we will spend an eternity with Him~ it will take that long to reveal how amazing He is. Every day He will show Himself to only be better than the day before. It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, it is the honor of kings to search it out. Aahh, sweet Sundays, they come once every seven days.