Satisfying Comfort

  The junktique business can be overwhelming. Pieces are piling up in the garage, in the entry, in the study, in the dining room...

  Yikes, could I be a classified as a hoarder now????

 Just to be sure I stay focused, I put in a request for some Godly ladies to pray that  I use my time wisely and to honor God. So far, I am encouraged. Several pieces are in the process of getting done. My favorite, by far, is a settee that I knew as soon as I saw it what I wanted to do. Design at first!

 It has great appeal and just needed just a bit of TLC - a minor repair, dirty and faded green upholstery, dings and scratches. I am not done with it yet but during one work session with the settee, my brain immediately thought of pillows. I love pillows! So comforting, so fashionable. It was the perfect time to try out the embroidery settings on my sewing machine. I know...I have Craft ADD.

 I must confess, too, that I have had this sewing machine for over a year and have not touched the embroidery settings or parts at all. Everything was still packaged. After some frustrating fumbling with the hoop and layout settings, it was running like a dream and in no time, I whipped up two adorable pillows. 

  If you look close there is a bit of the settee's new upholstery and paint peeking through but I won't reveal it until I am completely finished. 

  This is dirty and tiring work. Digging through dusty piles and stacks, loading and unloading pieces, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning again, and dismantling pieces is enough to wear out anyone, much less an old, tired woman who is lacking sleep but it is fun. And, working on all these pieces has been a constant reminder of  2 Corinthians 5:17. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." 

  Chalk paint can hide a multitude of imperfections but only Jesus can completely remove ours. With junk, I am just redoing what already exists but He doesn't just spiff up what we already have, Jesus makes us brand new. The old is totally wiped away and it is utterly satisfying and comforting. 

The more things change, the more they stay different

  Yes, yes I have been gone a while. Life kicked into high gear and my body went into low gear and it was just a hot mess. Raising a toddler when you are older is a workout. Jellybean is growing and he actually made it on to the growth chart. Not the adjusted one, the  regular one. Okay, he's at the bottom but, hey, he's on it. He is a whiz at pushing a wheelchair and can use a walker for a short period. He is a speed demon at crawling so we are busy chasing him most days. The feeding pump is still part of our life but Jellybean is trying to eat on his own and we are learning sign language at a snail's pace (us not him).

  See...

  Busy, busy, busy. 

  And now, this little piggy is trying to start a teeny little business. One day while we were out looking at junktiques, the hubby said, "We should have a junk business." And, BOOM! It was born with the purchase of this sweet little wooden sewing box which became an outdoor planter. 

(Mary, Mary Quite Contrary, the sewing box that started it all...now a sowing box)

   It has been so nice to be creative again with something besides medical equipment. Not that I am grumbling but I think I have been in a funk. Could be the sleep I miss at least once a week. At my age, you don't bounce back from it. The only statement I make when I go out is "this is what 2 week old lettuce that has been sitting in the hot sun for a week looks like." 

  My prayer was "God refresh me, renew me, give me something I can do." It is still hard to get out and our schedule is pretty tight but sometimes on Saturday, we all wander the junk store for a bit. One of my fave things is to find something that might look like trash to others and give it a new life. It was skill acquired from growing up broke. You can be really creative when you do not have any money. 

  Now what will God do with this?  Whatever He wants. Does He really lead you to buy junk and repurpose it? I think He gives us all a place where He can use us for His purpose. We all can't write amazing Bible study books or be conference speakers but we can honor God in whatever He leads us to do. Any talent we possess is a gift from Him in the first place. In this season, this a feasible for me while I maintain caring for Jellybean so we shall see what happens. 

  Hopefully, you will come back and check out my projects. Who knows what this little piggy will get into next????

The Glitch Not Heard but Felt

 I lost my words. 

 Somewhere in the midst of busyness, the words left. My mind is weary and my heart is heavy and the words went away from the chaos. 

 Not much exists when you enter survival mode. It is a place that is not necessary especially as a believer. Survival mode is where you go when you set faith aside and try to eke out an existence on your own. 

 There...I said it. The plain, ugly truth. 

 One day that I cannot pinpoint, the glitch happened and there I have been wandering day after day without an ounce of trust in God. Many days I told myself the right words and listened to right teaching but it bounced off the borders of Survival Mode. Here I am now heartbroken and more weary than ever wondering how it happened. 

 Could it be my worry for my two grown children? Could it be my sadness for my husband's struggles? Could it be the pain mixed with joy for my adopted son? 

 Yes. Just yes. But, even more so, it is my forgetfulness of God's holiness. 

 A lot of days I think about adopting our son. It is hard not to. The process evokes in many people a sense of awe for adoptive parents, which most would shake off like a wool coat on a summer day. No badge of honor is necessary for adding to my family the sweetest little soul made in God's image. Besides, in the reality of adoption is a quiet secret. Adoption is sadness and joy coexisting always for the child and the adoptive parents, even if they do not acknowledge it. Joy is abundant and love, too, but there is the persistent knowing that the child came from someone else and the loss is real on both sides. Jellybean is my child in every sense except that he was birthed by someone else. He has history in his genes that tell of another family and to try and deny or cover it up would be dishonoring and wrong. We are his real family. We are just not his biological family. But, as his family, we will walk with him through that struggle when he is ready.

 If it sounds like I went on a random tangent, let me tie up the loose ends. God adopts us through the work of Jesus. It is a perfect adoption but not without a sense of loss. You see, the separation between God and man is real and felt by us all. We were once with God and then came sin. We love our sin and although there is the innate sense of having a Creator, we also have a strong bond to our depraved flesh. When we are redeemed, we still battle with the desire to stay attached to that old bond. God willingly gave His Son to redeem us and that loss is much greater than we know, hence, the reason rejecting Jesus brings such great condemnation. 

 Choosing Survival Mode when I have such a great and loving Father is spitting in the face of Jesus' work. Yet, God walks me through the struggle to bring me back in love and there are no words for that.