Keeping Our Heads Above Water - Chapter 29

May 20, 2016

There's this saying I painted on the Dining Room wall shortly after we moved into the Lakehouse......

"...And when we grow old, 

I will find two chairs 

and set them close

each sunlit day,

that you and I,

~ in quiet joy ~

may rock

the world away."

We had been married a short four years at the time.....and these words were romantic....they were sweet....they were lovey-dovey sappy....and they were the first words I had ever painted on a wall.  I spent hours....maybe even a day...carefully making sure they were straight and perfect on that Dining Room wall.  For fifteen years, they've been staring down at us over Thanksgiving dinners, endless games of Mexican Train Domino's and watching grandchildren grow out of high chairs into teenagers.

This week the wall is bare.  One of the many sacrifices of the Flood.  A new color replaces the old....a new chapter replaces the old.  ~ Deep breath.....and life moves on.



We are less than two weeks away from moving back into the home with the double swing on the back porch that Chuck built so many years ago for us to rock the world away.  It will have been 5 months since The Flood.....and we have learned so many lessons during this time.....

~ We have learned that we have too much "stuff".  That we can live with a fraction of the things we had on December 27, 2015.  Less stuff means a lighter load.....and we plan on lightening the load...ALOT.

 ~ We have learned we don't need to watch House Hunters International every night in bed.  We used to call it our little mini-vacation before falling asleep.  But the two houses we have lived in these past 5 months have had no TV in the bedroom....so we've been falling asleep talking or with a book in our hands instead.  And we are happier.....and smarter.

~ We have learned that sometimes God chooses people to go through things.  Remember Job?  I always thought Satan picked Job....but the reality is, it was God who suggested Job to Satan. "Have you considered my servant, Job?"  Chew on that one for awhile....

~ We have learned that good people still exist.  I have lost count of the meals we have been brought, money we have been given, hands and feet that have worked for us and arms that have hugged us.  At first I tried to keep track of everyone.....had a spreadsheet and everything...but I finally threw it up in the air and gave up.

GOOD - PEOPLE - STILL - EXIST, 

PEOPLE.

And we have learned we can still see a sunrise...a sunset...a crazy awesome cloud...and be moved to tears.  Some things never change...Flood or no Flood....and I always race to show Chuck the gift God gave my eyes and soul to see that day.

And then we sit out on the back porch and rock the day away.....
 

"YOU INTENDED
TO HARM ME,

BUT GOD

INTENDED IT ALL

FOR GOOD."

Genesis 50:20

Keeping Our Heads Above Water.....Chapter 28

Mothers Day 2016

Today is the day we would have taken Mom to Olive Garden if she were still living on Earth.....I probably would have photo-shopped her face onto a card and she would have laughed and said something like, "Oh Liz.....where did you come from??".

And today is a happy day....a very happy Mothers Day with a Mom in the loveliest of lovely places....she is right where I want her to be.  The last few years of her life were not that kind to her....and although I miss her something awful.....I'm over-the-moon that she's.....OVER THE MOON.

NOW......on to Post-Flood news.

"The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow.....Tomorrow.....Tomorrow....

Actually, no it won't.  It's never coming out again.....we are showing rain all week.  Someone mentioned to me the other day that we are in a 7-year El Nino Rain.....I wanted to slap them.

We moved this week.  Not quite home yet....but right next door.  Our crazy awesome friend Anne is coming home this week and we realized we've spent more time in her home than she has over the past 6 months.....it's time to torture another neighbor who has generously given us a key to their house.   I also came up with a solution to Chuck's questionable wheelchair driving while in other people's homes.  It's called.....wait for it......bubble wrap.

I'm kicking myself for not having thought of this 4 months ago when we moved into Anne's house! What better way to protect our neighbor Pat's kitchen island she did such a fabulous job painting...or her refrigerator....or her door frames....than bubble wrap!  It's pure genius if I say so myself.

 I miss home....even though its right next door now.  It's looking, and feeling, more like home again.  And even as it thunders and the forecast promises rain every-single-day until the End Of Time, I still love standing in the middle of my messy, construction-zone-living-room and imagining the day we live there again.

Two days after The Flood......and four days after Christmas......I had to make a decision on what to do with our Christmas Tree that was still standing in front of the window looking out onto the lake.  I had no where to put it....I had no energy to take the Lake-ee ornaments off of it and quite honestly, it was too much of a reminder of something I'd prefer to forget.  So I threw it into the lake.....ornaments and all.  I stood there and watched it until it sunk to the bottom....Good Riddance, I thought.

But this week the strangest thing happened.  One of the ornaments came back.  I found it sitting on the wood railing Chuck had built many years ago leading to the lake.  It was of a fish sitting on a wicker bait bag.  It was an ornament that spent over 4 months in a muddy lake.....and it came Home.

And it reminded me we are almost Home.  I love my home at the lake...but I LONG for my true home in Heaven.  I long to be like that ornament and arrive Home muddy, banged up, missing parts and when I least expect it. 

And like a good friend wrote me in a text this week, "He will plant your feet on solid ground, Liz", that crazy Hobby Lobby fish sitting on a basket that had been sinking in the muck of Lake Cypress Springs for 4 months.....was now sitting on solid ground.