"Keeping Our Heads Above Water - Chapter 27"

 There's this song titled, "Bring On The Rain" by JoDee Messina that keeps playing through the Hard Drive player of my Jeep every time I fire it up....

Another day has almost come and gone
Can't imagine what else could go wrong
Sometimes I'd like to hide away somewhere and lock the door
A single battle lost but not the war

 I don't know JoDee Messina, but sounds like she's had a bit too much rain in her world too.  I love this song......I have no idea where it came from or how it made it to my Jeep hard drive....I just know it plays Every-Single-Time I turn the Jeep on.  I have to laugh at the irony.....

 'Cause, tomorrow's another day
And I'm thirsty anyway
So bring on the rain

That's right.....

BRING 

IT 

ON. 

Because of this monsoon season, we have the most beautiful azaleas we have ever had blooming wild in front of our house right now.  And a contractor-worker who serenades us during his lunch break in front of these azaleas that makes my house look a whole lot less like the disaster it actually is...

And because

Without all that dad-gum rain we had, we never would have met Raymond....the dumpster guy....and his precious wife, Virginia, who we met Friday night for dinner.  These two have been married 42 years.....and I thought I was going to tell them to "get a room".  P-R-E-C-I-O-U-S.  My goal is to be like Raymond and Virginia after 42 years.......yep.

It's almost like the hard times circle 'round
A couple drops and they all start coming down
Yeah, I might feel defeated and I might hang my head
I might be barely breathing but I'm not dead, no

'Cause, tomorrow's another day
And I'm thirsty anyway
So bring on the rain, ooh

I'm not gonna let it get me down
I'm not gonna cry
And I'm not gonna lose any sleep tonight

'Cause, tomorrow's another day
And I am not afraid
So bring on the

Tomorrow's another day
And I'm thirsty anyway
So bring on the rain, ooh

Bring on, bring on the rain

No I'm not gonna let it get me down
I'm not gonna cry
So bring on the rain, ooh

Bring on, bring on the rain
Bring on the rain
Bring on the rain, ooh

Read more: Jo Dee Messina - Bring On The Rain Lyrics | MetroLyrics

"God Will Use Your Struggle For Good"......words spoken by Max Lucado straight into my heart.

Keeping Our Heads Above Water - Chapter 25

April 18, 2016

It's 1:48 a.m.

It's raining.....again.....and I have placed earbuds in my ears to drown out the sound of falling water outside...a sound I used to love hearing and that would lull me into a blissful sleep.

I now find myself checking the Water District website in the middle of the night to see the level of the lake and how fast its rising.  I see from this site that our county is under yet another Flood Warning right now and just above that, I see where just a little less than a month ago, FEMA denied the appeal for assistance from our struggling county yet again.

Rain has not been our friend this year....and I desperately wish I didn't fear it.....


But I do.

A few months ago, a friend said she felt I probably had PTSD.....Post Traumatic Stress Disorder....on nights like these when the tears are falling on the keyboard and I'm forced to face my fears.  I don't think so.  I don't need a title to justify my lack of faith....I just need more faith.

Period.

I need more faith that God will take care of us.  I need more faith He will be with us in the floods of life....and that it's still His plans to prosper us and that He hasn't forgotten about us.  I need to feel less like the boys on the boat that said, "Teacher, don't you care if we drown?" and more like Jesus who said to the waves, 'Quiet! Be still!' Then the wind died down and it was completely calm" with a quick word to the baffled boys, "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have NO faith?"

He might as well have put my name at the end of that question, "Why are you so afraid, Liz?  Do you still have no faith, girlfriend?"

"I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, 

you could say to this mountain, 

'Move from here to there' and it would move. 

Nothing would be impossible." 

 (Matthew 17:20)

I pray for the rain to stop, but it doesn't.  I pray His will to be done and to instill more armor and faith into my soul....yet I'm still scared.  Does this mean I don't have enough faith?  What words do I need to say to have the kind of faith that would move a mountain?  That would stop the rain?  That would quiet the evil one that keeps telling me the rains won't stop and where is my God when I ask for Him to stop the rains and they don't?

I turn up the music in my ears 

so I can't hear the water pouring 

outside the window.

And I start counting my blessings....thank You for Chuck, thank You for this safe temporary home, thank You for our contractor Mark we can trust, thank You for the shutters I found for $25, thank You for this beautiful place we call home......I get to about blessing #15 when I realize that gratitude always leaves me looking at God and away from dread.  It does to anxiety what the morning sun does to the fog on the lake.

It burns it up.

When Satan Attacks

It was around this time two years ago, Chuck and I were preparing to move into yet another neighbor's house while our house was being rebuilt from damage caused from a 350-year flood.  Unbeknownst to me at the time, my husband was also noticing various signs that we eventually discovered were cancer.  Serious cancer.  

"Why?  Haven't we been through enough this year?", I remember asking God at the time.

Fear would grip me most every morning at 2:00 am.  It felt like a full scale Satan attack we were in and I prayed (and cried) harder than I have ever prayed (and cried) before or since. I felt completely helpless, hopeless and scared.

"He said to them, "Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?"

Luke 24:38

I wrote scriptures of Hope and Peace and Faith everywhere....on my wrist, sticky notes on the Jeep dash and yes, all over our wall studs and sub floor.  I needed that constant reassurance that the attacks on our lives had more to do with who we might be in the future than who we were right then.  During the day, I could "see" the enemy was shooting arrows of distraction at us....wanting us to doubt....wanting us to remember the fear of that fateful day when we huddled in the bed listening to the water entering in and feeling the battle going on underneath us.  But at night, Fear continually whispered in my ear that I must have done something to deserve this.

And then I remembered reading these words, "The enemy does not attack you according to your history...he attacks you according to your destiny."

It's so easy to let the deceptive thoughts of Satan tell us we deserve what we're going through....that we must have done something to anger God and this was our punishment.  But friends, God is a God of love.....and Satan doesn't care about your past....he cares about your future.  He knows you better than you know yourself.  He sees patterns, he sees things you do when no ones looking....and oh, he's so strategic. 

So if you find yourself in the middle of the battlefield with Satan and his friends Fear and Doubt,  your best defense...your best ammunition....is to bend those knees, lift those eyes upwards and remember....

NO ONE launches that kind of attack on someone they are not threatened by. 

"Keeping Our Heads Above Water - Chapter 24"

Month 4 Has Begun......

This tough Winter is behind us and a fresh new Spring, a new beginning, is in front of us with lime green grass, heavy lightning, daffodils and wisteria growing wild on the sides of these East Texas roads.....and hope is in our hearts.

 Our general contractor, Mark Johnson, says we are about a month away from moving back home....a home we miss and are so beyond home-sick to be back in.....

When you walk into our home these days, you no longer have to watch your step to avoid falling into the dirt below.  We are now level with the walls cause we have a secure foundation and are now in the throes of sheetrock.  Sheetrock just has this amazing way of making a home look a lot more like home, you know?

We have been busy picking out paint colors, just waiting for Mark to say the word "GO" once the tape and bedding is complete.

We are opening up doorways that were too small for Chuck's wheelchair to easily travel through BF (Before-Flood) and we think we have a cool plan for the ugly bathroom window I can't afford to replace.....Pinterest, Photoshop and Jackie Carlson have become my new best friends......

To save money, we are spray painting all brass fixtures from gold to pewter and the new wood floors have been ordered.  Tile has been selected and patiently sitting in the garage next to the brand smackin' new (non-green) toilet.

Molly has this wild notion she is some crazy-great decorator, and offering her own opinions and decorating advice while at Home Depot has become a common occurrence......she can be quite sassy when we don't agree with her.....

.....and the missing master bathroom vanity drawer that had been lost since December.....has been FOUND.  After crawling on my hands and knees through our stored furniture in our neighbor's garage, a beam of light from Heaven shined brightly down upon it.....as well as the full box of Q-tips still in it.  Go figure.....

And the man that belongs to this ring?  Well, I can't imagine going through ALL of this.....including the monster rat eating through my Jeep's electrical system last week....without Chuck.  He has been solid-as-a-rock when I've been curled up in a fetal position worrying about how we were going to make it. 

It's called "Faith" he says to me....."Just Have Faith, Liz".