New Roles

All of us wear many hats, but I just realized I'm adding another to my hat rack. I'm becoming a mother-in-law. Now if you watch "Everybody loves Raymond" you realize I probably have the potential to become Deborah's night mare. But I certainly don't want that to happen. I think of the relationship I have with my mother-in-law and I truly desire that Kate and I (and any other daughters-in-law or son-in-law I might have ) will share with me the same kind of relationship. Esther has been like a mom to me. When my own mom could not be with me for the births of my sons, she was there. Even more, she has been a true friend. We've spent hours just talking, sometimes reading the Bible, laughing and telling stories on ourselves.
Now that I'm 'helping' plan a wedding I want to be careful. I know I had my own ideas as I prepared mine. How tempting it is to say, "Oh, at our wedding....." My best wishes go to Kate and Miguel as they be a journey together. May their journal be sweeter because of the supporting family they have.

The pendulum swings

WEll, someone dropped part of the puzzle again! (read previous blog). A week ago we received a wonderful purchase agreement - amazingly high and we were so excited. The phone interrupted our visit with Miguel the next day to tell us the offer was withdrawn due to financial problems. Yet they were still interested... The lovely weekend in Chicago allowed us to lay aside the disappointment we were feeling. So Easter weekend we received a call that the couple wanted to make a new offer. This time it is disappointingly low. So we are deciding to wait. It is early in the spring yet and we don't want to rush ahead. Our lives are in HIs hands and we will wait. Jesus reminded us that we are to be good stewards of what we have and to be as wise as serpeants (did I spell that right?).
I'm trying a new medication for pain, awaiting a pain block early in May. It is making me groggy so I'll go back to bed today... To finish the interesting book I'm reading - a memoir written by the mother of Courtney Love - not a biography of Courtney's life, but of the mother. It has been fun to read. Did you ever do really stupid and daring things as a kid? Confess. I know you all did. Well, this young girl was so clever with her little girlfriends and did some hilarious things. Now I need to finish it and start a book Miguel brought me this weekend. Check out Sam's post of the Easter weekend. He captures the fun we had together.

puzzle pieces

I've heard life explained as a tapestry in which all the different strands of color and texture blend to make a breathtaking piece of art. However, the back side is a stark contrast. It represents the jumble of threads that seem to twist into an uninteresting tangle.
I like to think of my life right now as one of those 1,000 piece puzzles. When I seem to be getting most of the pieces together someone bumps the table and it crashes to the floor. There has been Novali's birthday party. Such a delight to see her so grown up and happy in her Chicago world. There's been Miguel's intense time of writing and rewriting the dissertation and the wait on job possibilities and the fitting together of the pieces of his life. There's been the selling of the house. Cleaning, polishing and rushing out with hope the interested party will make us an offer. There was even the offer itself. Exactly what we had hoped for - full purchase price plus extra $$$$ for the purchase of a large part of our furniture. We were estatic until the phone range the next day to annouce that the couple had problems with their finances and had to withdraw the offer. There's been the up and downs of my health. I am awaiting the arrangement for pain blocks to be done again.
Somehow we keep picking up the pieces, discovering the joy of parts becoming clear again. MIguel had a wonderful job offer. Still other things for him to resolve, but that offer was an answer to prayer. We keep showing the house and waiting. We now have someone to live in our house in Bolivia until we are ready to travel which is a blessing.
Emotional tension impacts me in many ways and today I am pretty worn out. So I'm taking the rest of the day in bed - reading. I picked up a couple of interesting novels yesterday at the library.
Please continue to pray with us as we would like to sell the house soon. We believe God has a time and a purpose and so we do our part and will wait on Him. Sometimes it just seems the puzzle will never be done.

Great Read!

It took me a while to get into the novel I picked up on the New Book shelf at Butman Fish Library, but once I got past the first 50 pages and grew accustomed to the switching from first person to third person narrative, I became intrigued with the plot. An elderly woman who has no family works as a house sitter; finding that her agency will no longer keep her on becuase of her age, she decides to just take over the house she is sitting and in the course of the novel adopts a family and so the intrigue sets in. Actually I picked up the novel thinking that if I didn't like it Daniel might since it was a crime novel. The book? Half Broken Things by Morag Joss. It is by a British author and set in modern England. That made the reading interesting in finding lots of vocabulary different from ours - boot - trunk of the car; nappies - diapers, etc. If I were a teacher, I'd have been making a list of the vocabulary differences. Also as a teacher there were some many great sentences using personification among other imagery in the wonderfully written descriptions. If I were leading a discussion group, we'd talk about the 'have's and the 'have not's' and the justification of certain crimes, or the affect guilt plays in our life. But,I'm not a teacher anymore!
Well, soon we take off to Kalamazoo and Chicago to celebrate the family birthdays - Miguel 31, Daniel 58, Novali - 5! Excited and must get packed and the house ready for showings while we are gone!

I'm angry!

Last night's news and reading the Msn accounts have made me very angry. The story about Doyle - Homeland Security Official using the internet to seduce a minor and then the Lobbying Scandal and money laundering involving DeLay- one of our 'top' congressmen has left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. He leaves with no apology, no remorse! On top of that another murder of a teen in Saginaw yesterday - 2nd in 72 hours and 9th this year.
Is there no wonder our teens are out of control on the streets shooting, often randomly, when our leaders have abandoned moral decency to gratify their personal lusts and greed for power? Homeland security indeed! Keeping our borders safe - what about tending to the internal borders within our souls!
I can understand how nations around the world shake their fingers at us. Who wouldn't? We worry about jobs and our economy here in Saginaw. Rightly so, but what about worrying about our souls and the souls of the next generation?