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Monday, October 24, 2011

mourning into dancing

This weekend was a super sweet family weekend, even if it was nothing like it was supposed to to turn out. Did anyone else have one of those? 


Nick and I went into Thursday ready to conquer the world with a million fun family plans and a lot of work to do as well. Buuuuuut, about two hours into our dinner at a friend's house on Thursday, he looked at me with some panic in his eyes saying he didn't feel good and we were headed home. My man had the straight up FLU (and for a few hours I thought I did too but I think it might have been fair food, mahahaha) and we were without him for our 48 hours. 


could you tell this face, "sorry, Dad is sick, no fair for us!" ? nope. 

on a ferris wheel with some of my faves


Anyhow, the weekend went on. Massive fair trip with Rubes & Hunkle Josh and the Walters. Super sweet, so fun, very tiring. Loved riding rides and sharing CORNDOGS and MILKSHAKES with my kids. (corndog=vegan flu) Saturday brought some sweet alone time with my two big kids and Sunday brought POP all the way from Germany! He assisted us in some serious pumpkin painting & football watching. And maybe Mama did a little painting too. 


oh, this boy. 


The whole weekend I kept thinking, though. It's been exactly a year since my friends sat me down and bravely told me they thought I was struggling with depression. And it's been a year since I asked Nick if we could postpone our church plant. I think the 36 hours following that conversation were the hardest of my whole life. What now? What do we do? I felt abandoned and scared and needy and messed up and broken. 


love her. Especially when she rides kid rides alone. 

why my uber loving Pop looks so scary in this picture, I'll never know.
I never could have imagined where He would have brought us in this past year, by His grace alone. Still in Columbia and feeling the redeemed version of all those things. I feel like all of 2 Corinthians 4 could be our testimony for this year, but specifically: 


We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 

If I could have planned this year, it would not have included living in this tiny fishing shack or having a daughter diagnosed with epilepsy or losing a baby or struggling day in and day out with my own inadequacy. I would have written a happy ending that just kept on going. But truly the Lord has turned my mourning into dancing because I'm boasting in those broken places now. Boasting and rejoicing and loving the cracked and messy places of my heart and life that leave so much room for Him to move. 



You can't be with more for more than three minutes and think I have it all together and you can't listen to any of our story and think we've got it all figured out. And yet, as we walk, I pray that more and more we carry His life in the midst of all of our death - that He will be all the more visible and all the more beautiful to the rest of the world. 


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