Excited

Sunday will be our first night in our home. We won't have the electricity or gas turned on for another week so we will be 'camping' out in our house. I plan to use the grill and coolers, along with flashlights and oil lamps. I am so excited to start unpacking!

Contentment and Simplicity

I have been learning a lot about contentment over the last couple of years. It's amazing how much we can take for granted and how much the simplest of things can bring us joy.
Years ago I thought I had learned this lesson in Belarus. I think I did to a large degree, but over time we forget. While I was there I was convicted and inspired by the joy that people had while having so mush 'less' than most Americans. Simple things like indoor toilets, hot water or a personal car were not common luxuries but the people were more hospitable, joyful and generous than most Americans that I've known.
More importantly, I learned that I could be happy without all of those things too. I didn't want to leave Belarus, probably because I had discovered genuine contentment.
The years passed by and I again became used to wanting more and more things. Most people, myself included, would call most of them necessities... bigger home, more clothes,microwave,cable.... I am not saying that it's wrong to have these or other things, just that it's wrong for our happiness to depend on it.
After going for 2 years without a home of our own I truly appreciate the one we used to have. The one that I often complained about and thought wasn't big enough.
Again I appreciate the small things, like keeping our own hours without being afraid it's bothering someone, cooking simple healthy meals in a clean kitchen, playing music as loudly as we want to or decorating the house for Christmas. There is a long list of things that I have missed very much that were often taken for granted!
So now, as we prepair to move into a bigger, nicer home than we had before, I am thinking of all the wonderful times we will have there and knowing that I won't take them for granted, hopefully ever.

Hmm..

Funny thing about blogging, if you don't have anything going on there's nothing to write but if there's too much going on you don't know what to write. Well, maybe that's just me.
Life is just so weird lately; a weird kind of weird that seems normal and yet strange all at the same time.
Let's see.... So we are kind of sort of homeless and yet have a home to stay in - so not.
We pretty much do things normal-like, just not in the normal way.
I have a great hubby, just don't get to see him more than 2 days a week.
I Lived with a mentally ill person for such a long time that the good normals seem oddly abnormal - yet nice.
I am enjoying a lot of things about life right now and still very upset about the meanness and insanity of others.
Day to day, thing are always changing and yet never completely. It's confusing yet obvious, hopeful yet sad.
So many people make up the life of one person that it can be overwhelming.
All in all the really important things stay pretty much the same and that is what keeps us grounded, well almost, I think.
Oh boy, I have way too much going on in my head!
Ha ha! Life is a crazy crazy thing! (And sometimes the people living it.)

Isaiah said that he wishes he could go to sleep and not wake up until we have a home and everything is OK again. I feel for my sad boy and agreed that that would be nice. I often think that myself.
All of the kids are heartbroken to be away from their daddy and to have so much sadness and stress consuming us - again. There really is no safe place in this world but in the arms and hearts of those that truly love us. If home is where the heart is we won't be homeless an long as we have each other.
Funny thing is that every time I start to think about wanting to give up I here Dory from Finding Nemo in my head saying "just keep swimming, swimming, swimming..."
Even a cartoon can help to motivate at the right moments.

Sometimes life is just way too hard.

HAPPY OCTOBER !