Courageous Joy

Wednesday – THE day…

Having a child leave home who is READY to leave home, who is following hard after God, who passionately loves God with all their heart…has to define the term bittersweet!

Today is a bittersweet day for our family. The girls are so ready to begin 2nd year at Master’s Commission. We want them to stay home…but really we don’t. We simply wish that the stage of life when all the little chicks were at home in the nest had lasted a bit longer. It all went so fast…beware…this is coming from a woman who will have children in her home for at least 40 years…the years go quickly. Roll your eyes now. But someday…you will know what I know. I’d give just about anything to have some of the seasons in life back. No, we don’t have major regrets…it’s only that I could have been more loving, I could have embraced being a mother much earlier…I mean really EMBRACED it instead of waiting for them to grow up so that I could “get on with life”. Ah well….as it is…I love the Lord wholeheartedly and my two babies do as well. Life is good. Life is painful but Life is good. :::sigh:::

I have found myself having internal conversations like this today “I just want my babies home”….”no, I really don’t want them home…it’s time for them to leave home”….”choose joy”….”I don’t like this one bit”….”choose joy”….”this is just not fair” (not sure WHAT that means!!! LOL)….”choose joy”….and life moves on.

Zander refused to get out of bed to say goodbye. He tends to get angry at those who leave. I was encouraged that he is talking to Mike on the phone. Yesterday (and I apologize to all from the Pacific NW for what I’m about to say)…..when I told Zander the girls would be leaving today to go back to WA he informed us that “WA is stupid, everyone who lives out there is idiots”. I asked him if those unkind words had left a bad taste in his mouth and he emphatically told me “no”. At least THIS time he appears to be mad at the state of WA and not at the girls themselves.

As we prayed this a.m. before the girls left…Nolan lost his tooth. That was exciting.

The appliance repairman came today. It turns out that I have a WARRANTY! I called yesterday to schedule them to come. I said, “I only bought this a year ago – but it’s broken down. I need to get someone over here”. I had no clue I had purchased the warranty – its Mike’s policy that we don’t purchase warranties. It did work out well this time. I don’t have to worry about trying to fix it or pay to fix it while he is gone. I’m still tracking down someone to fix the tub.

Josiah had the day off today. We decided to go geocaching. He found six of them that he wanted to try and we FOUND THEM ALL! We had a huge sense of accomplishment. Josiah showed Jamin and Jared how to enter way points and they navigated to a couple of the caches. This is good. We’ll be able to do more of this even when Mike and Cy aren’t with us. All of us were stumped with trying to figure out Mike’s GPS but it seems that Jared knows how to use it….we’re in business. We certainly did NOT find the direct routes but we found 3 caches out by the lake…..then we ran home to pick up the CAMERA, water and use the toilet (Arielle and I are not au naturale). We headed out and found another cache in a park. The kids had a great time playing for a bit. We ate the rest of the cookies that BreAnne and the little ones had made yesterday. Our last cache was cool. It was a spot that used to be a training ground for pilots here at our base. At some point the AF gave the land to the city and they made a raceway out of it. It turns out that the cars now go faster at the track than the airplanes did. We enjoyed the drive (it was in a small town about 10 miles from ours) and the history.

We decided to eat out tonight – no one had thought to prepare for dinner before we left. AT 6:40 we pulled into Burger King. I had a hard moment when I realized that a month ago we needed *FOUR* tables and tonight we only needed *three* :::::gulp:::.

Back at home, Arielle, Nolan, Stacia, Jamin and I went to feed the deer. I read a chapter out of Hank the Cow dog to Arielle and Nolan. We can’t find our current Narnia book. We tracked down the girls…evidently they left a message on our machine but it wasn’t ON our machine. I was getting worried. They DID get to talk to Mike at 4 this a.m.