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.

"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".

EASTER 2016

March 27, 2016

It's Easter. 

And some of us are sitting in the pews of this church for the first time all year.  Our lives have been busy with our kid's volleyball games, the yard needing to be mowed or we found it hard to come back to church after having been gone so long.  We all have our reasons....I have mine....you have yours.  But we are all here.....Today.....Together.....worshipping as one.  Worshipping THE One.  When we focus on the fact that we are all family, that makes today....a Family Reunion.  A reunion that has become tradition in the Christian faith. 

I'm rebel enough to discard most church traditions that are done for the simple reason "just because its always been done". That doesn't work for me.  I told you I was a rebel.  But this tradition called Easter....well.....I LOVE this tradition.  I long to gather with You as part of My family and worship the Head of Our household......Jesus, together.

And there's another not-often-mentioned tradition of the Christian church.....the eating of figs after Palm Sunday.  I hate figs.  But many do this....because the day after Palm Sunday, Jesus, hungry for fruit, saw a fig tree.......

"He went to it, and found nothing on it but leaves only.
And He said to it, "May no fruit ever come from you again!"
And the fig tree withered at once."
Matthew 21:18

The irony of this story is that the first action after the fall of man, was Adam came looking for fig leaves, and the last miracle before being nailed to the tree, Jesus came looking for figs.  Please don't miss the paradox here, sweet family.

If you asked Adam today, my bet is he'd tell you, "The authentic Christian life has GOT to be more than leafage."

See.....your FAITH must have FRUIT.  It's the fig-bearers who live a faith that bears fruit.....and it's the leaf-wearers who live the lie.
ENTIRE family trees wither away without a grace that produces fruit.  Without this grace....we waste away. 

"The stone was not moved so Jesus could
GET OUT.
It was moved so We could
GET IN."
#Easter

Keeping Our Heads Above Water - Chapter 23

March 21, 2016


It's beyond belief to me that we are approaching the 3-month mark since we were flooded out of our home the end of December.....

 It's now Spring here in East Texas.....I know this cause my allergies are SCREAMING it so.....

And there is GREAT NEWS at the Etheridge Houseboat!  Floor insulation was layed this past week.....and here's a little DIY/Pinterest helpful hint for those of you who find yourselves laying floor insulation in the future:

To keep insulation from getting on you, 

pour flour all over your body.   

Is it me, or does he look like Jesus with flour and a Rebel shirt on?  Just sayin'......

Yes....this keeps the insulation from sticking to you.... my guitar-playing, Good-Times Van driving contractors who are hammering this little house of ours back together tells me. 

And friends are still coming by....pushing the concrete-block-holding-my-front-door-closed, out of the way....and writing their scriptures.....their wishes.....their prayers for Chuck and I....on the studs and walls...and heart....of this beautiful home we will once again live in soon......

They are doing the Downward Dog yoga pose as they balance vicariously on our new WATERPROOF 2x4's as they leave their mark on our home....

And as we walk through this final week before Easter.....a time of remembering an event 2000 years ago with our hearts burst wide open.....we reflect on the miracle of that time that allowed Chuck and I to be able to experience the Blessings....the Grace.....the Miracles we have experienced in the last 84 days.  Without a Savior to die and rise for us, the Blessings from our Storm would never have been realized.

Do a little "Downward Dog" and meditate on that for a while.

Oh ya......and don't forget to send this handsome husband of mine a little BIRTHDAY message today on his special day!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SWEETHEART.....

......YOU ARE LOVED MORE THAN YOU KNOW

Keeping Our Heads Above Water - Chapter 22 (Everyone Loves Raymond)

March 15, 2016

We - Have - Turned - A - Corner

Today marked the FINAL day of Raymond Tabor's dumpster sitting in my driveway.  Glory-Be!!

Raymond and I have become such great friends over the past 2-1/2 months since "The Flood" crossed our paths, that we tell each other "I love you" when we end our conversations.....we hug each time he pulls into 89 Eagle Cove....and we promise to get the spouses together and have dinner SOON.   I teared-up as he let me sit one final time at the controls of his truck.  I won't miss the dumpster in my driveway....but I will desperately miss Raymond......cause Everyone Loves Raymond!

But saying good-bye to Raymond and Dump #6 means we have finished Part 1 of this journey and getting ready to begin Part 2.  The days of walking on a 2-inch piece of wood to get to the other side of the house are almost over.  We will be laying sub-floor soon and you can't even begin to imagine how excited this makes me!

Finding this guy under my floor hammering will be a thing of the past....

And no more passing these broken mirrors that have been sitting on my driveway reminding me how I've aged 10 years in the past two months. 

Friends, this has been, without a doubt....hands-down.....one of the most challenging experiences Chuck and I have ever been through.  AND yet...... filled our hearts will gratitude and humility.

Everywhere I look.....I see this.  Friends like Maaike.....writing their words of encouragement....their favorite scriptures.....their blessings on this house of ours that will once again be a home to us some day.  Many of them come in and out throughout the day, past the contractors...past the mess, to find their favorite places to write their words.  And every day....at the end of the day, I come by to find new ones written in the walls and studs and beams and sheetrock of 89 Eagle Cove.  And it blesses me.  Oh.....how it blesses me.

And when the rains threatened to invade this house of ours once again last week, those same friends didn't just write the words.....they SPOKE the words.

They prayed prayers with our names on them....day and night....and the rains continued for 4 days and 4 nights solid....but the rising water stopped when it came to the foundation of 89 Eagle Cove.....and my only used twice, bubble-wrapped-in-case-it-flooded-again, washing machine never got a drop on it!   Not-A-Drop.

And in the words of my dear friend Ellen Louro's favorite scripture,

"He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire; 

He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along." 

Psalms 40:2

Oh ya......we're walking on solid ground, friends....we have been lifted out of the mud.