The Week In Words

     Actually, the week started last Saturday instead of thinking in the usual way that it starts on Monday. Or that's just my way of notching my stick, I suppose. Anyway, it's Saturday again.
    Last Saturday at this time Elv and I four-wheeler-ed up to our lamp-lit cabin and clambered down the snowbank through the front door and found Lance's and Amy welcoming us with triumphant smiles. They'd cut the electric lights just in time and had all 16 lamps polished and glowing just for us. 
    Sunday, about noon Susan and I took the four-wheeler out through Joshua road's mud and ice to the car parked on high ground and headed toward Walker, Minnesota. We had 3 1/2 hours of driving and plenty of visiting to do so it was perfect. The only thing we really saw all the way over was a porcupine high up in an  aspen tree by the road. We actually stopped. Susan said Abram would want to see a picture of it. So.
    We found the little church where about 100 people were gathered to listen to Michael Card sing. It was the nicest concert I've ever attended. I am encouraged to discover that an artist turns out to be just people, too. About my own age and ordinary. It was fun to be able to sing along. I'm just that sappy. Oh well, I told Kristine the other evening that I hope to sing with Vestal Goodman someday in heaven. Everybody just laughs at me. I suppose we all have our bucket list for the heaven days. That's just one of mine. For once, we'll have time. 
    We drove back across the swamp and arrived home around midnight. It was worth it. Monday morning headed home to Wisconsin. 
     I worked Tuesday. Amy worked Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Wednesday evening she had me come look at her mysterious, spreading rash. What is that? She'd been feverish and tired over the weekend. Pushing through her days, now this rash. Who knows, but chicken pox came up. We still don't know. All better now. Just scabs. Who knows!
    Over in Thailand, Dru's attended a staff retreat this week. Some of us have a better idea what that means for their little family. Sewing dresses for the Havilah. Laundry with the iffy rationed water situation. Preparing and packing in 100 degree weather. That's just ordinary stuff for them. Then there's the future of Dru's work and visas and questions and plans. So we prayed for them. 
   The weather finally turned summer-y, suddenly. Not much green and the fire danger hiking higher every day. We need rain and green. But finally, it is warm. At work, we opened up the garage door and let the sunshine and warm breezes pour in. At home here the stoves stand black and silent. A lot less dirt and dust! The tulips and daffodils are up. Blooms to come soon. 
    Elv is coming home filthy every evening because it's the season to power wash the woods machines. And, absolutely beat and weary and sore. Road bans go off on Monday. Then the real work of summer logging shall begin. 
    Hopefully, despite the busy-ness of summer work we can find time to go canoeing and picnicking.  Francis called today to say that they are closing on their "new" country home next month. "You can all come and help me paint the kitchen, Mom."  We will do that about the second weekend in May.
     Elv and I stood in the most unfinished part of the basement under this old stone house and brainstormed a walk-in closet. It'll be a lot of icky, hard work. And the two of us always get to practice getting along well, when we're remodeling. When we're done, it should be a lot dryer and cleaner. With the addition of an egress window, it should be a lot sunnier down there, too. We hope. 
    The dog ran off twice this week. I think he's bored. And I think he misses Brad. But not as much as I do, I'll wager. 
     I'm reading Second Suns by the same author as Three Cups of Tea this week.  True story of the miracle of sight given to the blind in Tibet by the skilled hand of two ophthalmologists. Of course, it's a fat book with lots of other interesting tid-bits, too.  And this is not to be taken as a book report, because it isn't. The truth is, I have three of the thirty-two books on my to-read-this-summer list in my hands from the library right now. And It's going to be amazing if I get them read in time. 
    Because, most of any free time must be spent trying to make a viable speech out of my collection of scribblings and ideas and a long power point creation. I'm suppose to speak at a young ladies retreat this coming weekend. To say that I'm scared is an understatement. I'm sure everybody is sick and tired of hearing me ask for prayer by now. But I'm depending on those prayers and a lot of God's grace. I realize that I am not going to feel ready, ever! I just need to work on this my best and let God do the rest. Knowing that and trusting that are two entirely different animals! 
    I didn't tell you about the crazy days at work because people went traveling to PA for business and a wedding in Canada and birthday parties. And we finished the week off with a nicely busy Saturday of selling furniture right and left. 
    One day this week, I had Clark's children for a few hours here. We put shoes on the baby and let her play on the patio and the boys and I did some raking and picking up sticks. We piled the sticks in the fire pit and tried to burn them but they were still too damp. Angelie kept taking off her shoes and plumping down on her bottom on the wet ground and getting dirty. We sat down to hotdogs and carrot sticks and fresh, baked, still-warm cookies for lunch. Asher couldn't believe his good fortune when I told him, twice, that he did not have to eat his bread. He ate his meat and veges, happily. What more could a Marmee expect, I ask you! So he got cookies, to boot. 
    Clark's invited us for fajitas one night this week, too. He dug out his old LP player and we settled down for an LP party, but this old player kept not working without a lot of fiddling. I've decided that he needs a new one. We love listening to old records: Cathedrals, Lundstrums, Disney's Winnie the Pooh, and Gospel Echoes. We order up one song from each and he stands there and keeps changing them for us. It's fun. And the in-laws roll their eyes. And that's fun, too. We didn't even get to the Statler Brother's Christmas album.
    And nothing's been said here so far, about the fact that in two weeks I am to swallow a radioactive iodine pill to kill the overage of thyroid action I have going on. It's nuclear medicine and comes with precautions that I will be advised of when I get it. They'll likely roll a couple of pills out of the inside-est of two bottles one inside the other because it's radioactive, you know, into their gloved hand and hand it to me... my bare hand. I'll swallow that and be immediately dangerous to society in general. I am to stay at home, not share anything: my bed, my rest room, my plate, anything with anybody else for three days or so. They say this is a safe medicine. All I have to say is that it better work! 
    And those are my paltry offerings of life at the Grabers. While ordinary weeks like this are happening for us; others are being touched by eternity in more real ways with birth and death. I noticed that this week. We never know what the week ahead holds, do we?
     I asked Elv tonight what would he do if he knew he had only a year left to live. He said, "I'd probably concentrate more on my walk with the Lord, and my relationships."  I'm thinking that this is just the ticket for our days right now no matter how long we have left to live.

Gratitude Upgrade

 I rearranged the refrigerator art this morning. Gwen handed me a new piece while she was here this week so it was a good time to update anyway. Jube's beaver and Havilah's big yellow duck stay. I'll add in more as it comes. We enjoy it. There are two Thankful magnets.  Elv met me here this morning while I was playing with the arranging and read them out loud. Dawning spread across his face when he said, "I haven't been feeling so grateful lately."
Me too. So here's my list, below.

~ For the children's artwork: purple squirrels, yellow ducks, and elephants. 
~ For colors: pencil colors along with the sketch books in the arms of our six year old, her eyes shining while she thanked us for the nice birthday gift. 
~ For eye glasses: mine and yours, but especially Myles's. Now we can see.
~ For lemon juice. To add to my drinking water. It's good. Try it sometime.
~ For spring breakup. Because now Elv has time to install a furnace and haul scrap metal and clear the trash out of the back room.
~ For Elv. Because he goes about mending things: fences, relationships, machines, drive shafts, you name it. 
~ For laundry soap and cleaners and new washcloths. 
~ For the prospect of a new walk-in closet soon. A place for everything and everything in its place shall have new meaning around here. 

Wherein I Tell Shilah What My LIfe Is...

Because she wanted to know why I never talk to her or more particularly why she never hears from me or Evie and what had she done to deserve to have such silent sisters. The following is some reparation for my neglect, I hope. I am being "efficient" and posting it in a blog as well, albeit slightly revised for privacy purposes.

My life is mostly keeping home for Elv, me and the children that still hang around here most of the time.  I still don't like to cook.  I had this neat idea that I would pretend I have a cook who WANTS to do the cooking.  And we would sit down, she and I, and find recipes and menus together.  Then I would make a grocery list for her and send her shopping and each day I would sit with her and tell her what kind of meal our family wishes to enjoy in the evening including the table setting and decorations.  I would order up anything I wished to enjoy.  Then I would turn around and tell me I am she...so get on it now. I thought maybe it would help all the blahs I am enduring with wheatless food and meals.  

Besides the meal battle there's homeschool hours.   I have two of them in school and the three of us have fun, bookish discussion every day on all sorts of subjects from hydrogen atoms to adjective phrases.  And we're reading Ben-Hur for story time.  

There's the home management part of my life.  I have been going to paint the ceilings for years.  They're still not painted. Maybe next spring now after we're done firing the stoves.  I noticed yesterday that I need to dust my bedroom and sitting rooms badly. Several months ago I thinned out a whole bunch of books that didn't mean anything to me and gave them to Salvation Army and the big old bookcase to Charlotte.  That makes more room in my house.

Then I took Grandpa Skrivseth's old bookcase to the cabin where it fits perfectly under the windows in the front room upstairs and  holds lots of books.  Each time we go up we take a few more. 

Yesterday, I stopped at the SA store to look for a big heavy covered soup kettle. I envision a red pot wherein you can cook up two gallons of soup and serve the army.  Is there such a thing?Something like this. What I did find was a blue teapot and a bluer coffee carafe for the cabin.  

And there was an ugly wall sconce with a candle inside a lamp chimney for a dollar.  I wanted only the lamp chimney, the rest can go in file 13 for all I care.  Lamp chimneys seem to cost about six dollars a piece around here.  I have 14 lamps at the cabin and three more that need chimneys so I always am on the lookout for such things.

 We have been feeding a few armies lately because we have been helping our friends move their business out of town to home and it is a huge undertaking.  I can't really lift or scrub much but I can cook and play hostess and innkeeper.  I'll be doing that again Friday and Saturday up at the cabin near to where our friends are working. Thankfully, I have had lots of good help from other friends in preparing and serving food.

Good Taste Matters

Amy posted about choices and finding joy and contentment wherever we are today. Read it here. She did a grand job of saying it well.  
The quote at the top of her post set me back just a little.    A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves." -Henry Ward Beecher- 
Now I don't really have a pick with the quote itself, but this week our family had to reconsider the connection between pride and being deserving. 

Elv's work takes him a hour from home, logging in "blow-down".  I'll skip all the details of the storm and how the woods looks...it's bad.  He is expected to put in "marathon" hours on this job since it is a resort/retreat/convention center for an exclusive group of folks...never mind who it is.  Anyway, they were putting him up in this cabin or that motel room where ever they had an open room in the complex and feeding him too, in the dining hall, if he wanted to take the time for it.  The cabin/condo they suggested for us just never materialized due to other reservations.  Which doesn't matter here either, but the upshot of it is that we ended up taking the travel trailer up there and parking it by the warming shack at the back of the property where most of the trees were down way back in the woods.  We lived there for two days and decided that maybe we could be content like that for a few days every week till freeze up anyway.  We'd have family time in the evenings that way and the kids found blueberries to pick and there were acres of woods to explore. 

 As of yesterday word got around, I guess, that the gypsies (I don't know what term they used; but Bob assured them that we were not what they thought), had moved in on the resort till it reached the ears of the big-wig at the top who lives out of state.  Never mind that the gypsies were hired to log on their property to clean up their complex... it was not okay!

I told Elv that I am not homeless, as it happens, and I will not wait around for eviction notices. We moved home this morning.  As soon as the boss finds us a house to live in by the job we'll move back. 

But now I wonder if our contentment with travel trailer living just to keep the family together was taking things a bit too far.  I have a feeling that we should have had more pride than we did , so that we could have avoided the embarrassment we were headed for.  Seems to me that our zeal to get it right by the family over-rode good taste and made us look less deserving than was necessary. 

So I don't think I totally agree with Mr. Beecher, after-all.  Brother Andrew had to learn this lesson too, when someone finally clued him in that God isn't stingy and to have a few nice  clothes is okay, even for missionaries.  I believe that God has a plan for keeping our family together while this particular job gets done and we are ready to do whatever that is without making ourselves look gauche.  


Note:  It's generally considered okay for a logger to pull in a travel trailer and live on the job if he chooses. 

Perspectives

   Well, there is snow in Wisconsin. Lots of it.  Almost two weeks ago the children and I headed down to Nebraska and I blithely informed Elv that I was seeing the last of snow for this winter.  How wrong I was!  There was snowfall in Nebraska, too! 
   I was going to come home to yard clean-up and spring house-cleaning. Not that there aren't sorting and culling projects to do indoors.  We have too many THINGS in our little house and for the first time in my entire married life we are considering a yard/rummage/ garage sale to get rid of extra books, furniture and other household paraphernalia. Except we will have it on the lawn not having a garage to my name.  
   But I wasn't going to post about spring cleaning.  I was going to pontificate about the inequalities of life about cars, Jeeps, and value.  
   We headed home Saturday morning in good time from Gabes.  As soon as we hit the highway two miles from their house we knew we were in trouble.  There we were driving on interstate 80 in second gear with home being 600 miles distant.  Nobody in their right minds would drive that far screaming along in second gear with an Australian Shepherd breathing down the driver's neck. But that's a different story...the dog part, that is.
   So we turned round and headed back to Gabe's while Elv and Gabe talked on the phone about what to do.  Which meant that the Jeep Gabe has been talking with Elv about the last two years was to be our way to get home and also to replace the Sidekick, as it happens.  
   Now I'm ready to state how odd it seems to me that a Jeep with a broken windshield, lots of corrosion (note, I didn't mention rust), and layers of Nebraska dust can be worth $1,2oo, while my own car of the same year ('93 model) having absolutely no rust, a good engine and being moderately beautiful as cars go, to my mind, can be worth only $200, or so, just because the transmission is out!  Elv has been patiently explaining to me that the Jeep is 4-wheel-drive, of all things! It's like duh! what can you possibly be thinking?! Okay, so it's a man's world stamped plain and clear with a man's perspective of value and that is what carries the day in my world. Get real, woman!
   So here I am, car-less and snowed out of yard work.  I can whine and complain and focus on my thwarted life, or I can get busy with the work at hand.  Even more, I can trust God who knew He was going to keep my car in Nebraska with a "For Sale" sign on it long before we headed down there.  So what is next shall be another adventure! Get at it!
   

Concern…or Complaint

             How To Tell The Difference

 

Concern

1. something that affects or is of importance to a person; affair; business
2. regard for or interest in a person or a thing  he felt a strong concern for her
3. anxiety, worry, or solicitude
4. important bearing or relation  his news has great concern for us

Complaint

noun
1. An expression of pain, dissatisfaction, or resentment.
2. A cause or reason for complaining; a grievance. 

Let’s  just be honest. Am I truly concerned? or am I complaining!  How easy it is to be annoyed for bitter or selfish reasons and then try to convince myself that I am “concerned”. Being “concerned” instead of being honest with myself gives me license to tell you about it, too. 

Like the ripples in a pond attitudes and news have a way of reaching shore very quickly.  True concern is positive and redemptive.  Complaining is  poison and condemning.

And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful. Colossians 3:15

A Week of Events

 

This post will be disconnected, busy, and hardly coherent...just like our days/world/life right now.  I have just spent a week in the company of my two parents traveling to Barb's funeral in Michigan... and back, also having them here at home with us till this morning.  

It's a long 12 hours to Newago, MI!  It's 12 hours if you go over the top of the lake and it's 12 hours if you go through Chicago and around.  So we took the top route along lake Michigan, through the endless forests on a two lane highway for hours and hours.   

Arriving at Dave's we found other Kauffmans gathering to surround the family, to visit, laugh and cry together.  Funerals are sad, no doubt, but they're times of refreshing too, for those who have put their trust in Jesus.   Friends of Dave's family opened their homes to all of the in-gathering Kauffmans.  I stayed in a lovely, gracious home with Galens, Dales,  and my parents. I thoroughly enjoyed the aunts and uncles.  You can learn a lot just listening to the 65-year-olds.

Thank-you Danette, Sharon, Janette,Charlene, Yvonne, Sam, Cynthia,  Violet, and Nadine for the wonderful visiting we enjoyed.  

Mom, Dad, and I came home Saturday back through the woods and along the lake. 

Sunday, Amy was baptized along with three other young ladies.  The singing was rather enthusiastic and the "house was full" at church on Sunday.  My mom and Aunt Pearl thought the singing was too loud, but I heard a few others say that they enjoyed it.  We went to the boat landing where the four girls were immersed/baptized.  It was a beautiful day, perfect for the outward sign of an inward cleansing.

In the meantime behind all these scenes of family and faith is the ongoing struggle that my sister and her husband face.  Behind daily joys and duties we share is the knowledge of a burden to pray and yearn over.  We are all wearing this on our faces just behind the smiles and tears of normal days.  "Grandma seems different, " says Lance, knowing full well why. 

Sunday afternoon and evening our little stone house filled up, as usual, with family, friends, and overnight guests.  Dru had invited two of his friends to stop by to use our home as a bed and breakfast.  They're nice guys, and we enjoyed them.  And Lisl had invited Elv's mom and Aunt Pearl to stay overnight as well.  Dru's friends helped us sing for the old folks.

I must mention that Adam and Sana were bid farewell on Sunday as well.  I took a picture of their car sitting in the church yard Sunday morning.  It was loaded to the gills.  I hope nobody opened either of the back seat doors...it would have been rather difficult to put back!

Monday morning Elv went to work and I started a huge washing.  I had put Dru in charge of making breakfast for our house full. Lisl got up to help him and they served us delicious pancakes and eggs. 

This week we've had very humid warm weather.  The AC runs all day long providing us an oasis in this heat.  Mom and Dad joined our world of work and play till today.  We picked black berries yesterday and Dad helped Dru fix a deck at Clarks.

Next is the family reuinon.

The Lost Cell Phone

  I lost my cell phone.  It happened in one of my crazy moments.  I had called a sister to "share" (air a gripe, to be honest) with her and get something off my chest.  Let's just say that I didn't consider discretion and patience as the better part of being virtuous in the heat of the moment.  I even felt convicted as I went to call her...that I ought to forget it...but I went ahead.  Of course, it was a rather satisfactory conversation...we pretty much had the world's injustices solved and settled, you know.

We talked while I was out at the clothesline hanging up laundry.  When we were done talking I put the phone down? or no, I think I brought it in and set it somewhere...where?  It rang twice before voice mail picked up when I called it from the house phone, over and over while I ranged far and wide... in and out listening for the familiar tune.  I gave up till later in the evening when I wanted it again.  That time when I called it; voice mail picked up immediately.  Okay, so now it's "out of reception" or destroyed completely somewhere...please, not out in all that rain!

That was Saturday. Now it's Monday.  Still no phone.  Saturday night I woke during the night still thinking and searching in my mind about it.  It was like I could almost figure it out...just short of remembering...  When Elv walked out the door this morning he instructed, "Find your phone today, okay?"  That's when I realized that ever since I tried to find it Saturday, I have been solving and searching in the back of my brain both waking and sleeping.  It's nearly driving me crazy. 

Finally, after two days I think it's time to pray about it and skip it till it shows up.  We have a small yard and a small house. It's gotta be around here somewhere! In the meantime I have had plenty of time and opportunity to think about how unnecessary that conversation I had with my sister was.  Okay so someone else was brassy and inconsistent, but so am I sometimes.  When am I going to learn to let it go and let God grow them up as He is TRYING to grow me up...if I can be quiet long enough to notice what HE wants of me.