Blessing

We just got back from a week at the beach with family.  Toes in the sand, diving under waves, bike rides, and family meals.  It is so easy to rush through days forgetting the biggest blessing we have is in relationships.  How sweet it was to soak in the family time and see cousins giggle way too late into the night.  We are going to miss the summer days but can't wait to move ahead into what God has next.

The note

I saw the note flutter down out of the corner of my eye.  I turned from doing dishes and opened the backdoor to find the small envelope resting on the grass.  When I looked up to the second story window I saw Luke, then only five years old, peering down with big eyes.  He must have opened the window and squeezed it between the screen and sill watching it sail down to the ground.  I had sent him up to his room to think about how he treated others and not to come down until I came to get him.
My voice had not been raised but I was clearly at a loss on how to soften his heart.

I opened the small card with steam engine on front and read his large mismatched print.  With a heavy heart I climbed the stairs and hugged a still crying boy.  Those are the moments to speak truth in love.  Truth about unending grace and forgiveness that wipes clean.  Truth about love unchanging that is not based on what is done or left undone.  He answered with his typical response of already knowing that.  But then he quickly asked what if I had forgotten about him and had eaten dinner without him.  And, if I could forget him, then maybe I could stop loving him.  I gently reminded him that he was mine, my first son, given by a good God and I could never forget him.  Tears dried and we talked more, I left him alone again to think about love and forgiveness and a heart that is soft.  We all ate dinner as a family that night, the note still tucked deep in my pocket.  The prayers and I love yous at bedtime felt a little sweeter.

Since Shirley's death there has seem to be a number of losses.  Some that are not mine to write about but have affected our hearts.  Others that are ours and are still hard to sort out.  And like most important seasons in life, the answers and reasons are unseen.  The monotone place of wait still rests at our doorstep.  It is so easy to feel forgotten in the wait and unloved in the loss. It seems the biggest fear to battle from small child to grown adult is am I loved?  I found this note again in a big blue jar where I keep all the boys old love notes in. I reread this one, remembering with Luke the conversation we had that afternoon.  This note could have been written to God from me many times this summer.  Written every time my heart ached, or I felt forgotten, or a time line changed; each time I questioned His plan and struggled to receive His love.  And yet, His answer will always be, I have never stopped loving you.  I will never forget you, YOU ARE MINE.  Unending grace and unchanging love.

And I feel it.  I feel His love right now in a place of unknown.  In a place very different than I thought we would be a year ago, I feel His love and joy even in the wait and small losses.  I have no clue what will happen in the next two months.  I do know that I don't have to write these notes to God each night as disappointment spills from my lips or the whys aren't answered.  The cycle of feeling unloved can be met with the truth of His unchanging love.  I can choose to whisper I love you, I trust you, I receive what you have for us instead.  In that there is freedom and joy.  Anticipation that hinges on His ability and not mine.  

If you have time in these last few weeks of summer grab a copy of Corrie Ten Boom's The Hiding Place.  It has held truths my heart was aching to hear this season.  I pray that you feel His love as you read it.  Here is one of my favorite quotes form the book, Corrie's father talking to her about love:
"Do you know what hurts so very much?  It's love.  Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain.  There are two things we can do when this happens.  We can kill that love so the it stops hurting.  But then of course part of us dies too.  Or we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel."

"I have loved you with an everlasting love;I have drawn you with unfailing kindness."Jeremiah 31:3

Basque Update

We've had quite the summer of fundraising.  Well, mostly Jeff. I show up and talk a little bit but he has done some hard and faithful work.  Speaking at churches and bible studies, meeting with people one on one in between a day of meeting with local HS kids and planning camp trips.  Then came the camps and trips out west to potential partners.  And the biggest event and blessing in many ways, a banquet.  The banquet was a chance to share our hearts and God's love for the Basque people with a larger group of people.  We were hoping for forty and just over a hundred came.  Amazing friends locally helped us pull it off.  High school friends served without payment and an incredible caterer, Aruna of Kababs N More, created an amazing meal.  We felt loved and encouraged and can't imagine not having had that chance to share.  We raised 12% more of our budget in one night which is no small feat.  We are still have 38% to go.  The conversations and generosity have encouraged us deeply.  They have humbled us and made us feel ready to fly out tonight!  The numbers nudge us to the ground.  We still have work to do.  Adding to the nudging is that Jeff is officially off Young Life staff September 3rd.  He is putting together (and looking for) building/remodeling projects to get us through late October as we continue to fundraise.  We see the deadline looming and the needs of our family also.  It is a fine line between responsibility and faith.  We feel we are suppose to walk this part out as faithfully as we can with sacrifice, sweat, and sometime tears until we have reached that time.  Our heart is to go.  We believe God's heart is for the Basque people to hear.  If you feel a desire to give to help make that happen here are the links to give towards The Stables Family, Basque, Spain YL International.  It is a secure site and all gifts are tax deductible.  Our biggest need is monthly partners, small gifts given regularly are better for the health of the mission than a bigger one time gift.  Thank you for walking through this with us and we are excited to see what God does in the next two months!

Click here to give a one time gift
or
Click here to set up recurring gifts

Shirley

 A knock on the door this morning let us know that our dear sweet friend and neighbor is finally home with the one who created her.  The one who knit her together in her mother's womb and loves her with an everlasting love.  There is a great celebration in heaven today.  Sweet embraces and no more pain.  We are left with beautiful memories.  It is not fun to say good bye.  The boys and I have cried a lot today.  We also have talked about how amazing it is that someone we love so dearly is now getting to see God face to face.  To talk to Jesus and be known completely without fear, shame, or sadness.  A reminder that this life is not a game and the Gospel is not a fairy tale to be told but a truth to be lived out.  She lived a life poured out for others and surrendered to Him.  She was still speaking of His goodness up to the end.  Thank you for all your prayers for her in these last months.  Please pray for her daughter and son and their families.  Shirley was a big woman in a little body and she will be missed tremendously.  

Light

     We have twenty-nine windows and five doors in our home.  I know the exact number because I counted them one night.  The night a raccoon sauntered off into the woods after knocking the cat dish repeatedly into the backdoor at one in the morning.  Jeff was out of town and I counted ready to tell him just how many entries there were for an intruder.  A house with three sleeping boys and one wide awake mom.  By the time he got home days later I was unafraid and grateful again that there is almost as much glass as there is drywall in this house.

Thirty four ways to let the light in.  Light that streams in from the back each morning as I fumble to fix coffee and bowls of cereal.  The light that pierces through the row of tall pine trees out front to signal the end of another day.  The only thing I will miss more than our backyard of clover and woods is the windows that surround me with light.

     We are still in a season of wait.  Our hands have become much busier.  The purging of clutter turning into packing of things to save and store.  Jeff is speaking at churches, sharing the heart and vision of Basque while wiggling boys sit too close to me in unfamiliar pews.  Letters and thank you notes start each morning and Saturdays are filled with catching up with old friends.  But the wait is still hemmed in with the knowledge that the unknowns out number the known.

     I still feel my stomach go into knots when someone at the park or in the grocery store asks when we are going and what will we do for schooling for the boys.  I still feel my mouth twist into a half-hearted smile as I answer that we are still not sure. I am sure in His provision and His timing.  I am completely  unsure of me handling it with grace or without some presence of fear heard in my voice as I reply.   I am asked these same questions and many more by Luke and Levi.  I answer the same but each time recounting all the things we were so unsure of when we moved to Culpeper.  Letting them remind me of how each was answered.  They were too young to ask questions then, to have fears, or see the messy process. But they have lived the answers through the years.  This time we walk through it all together.

Each time we talk I feel it shed light in their tender hearts and my  aching one.  Not a bright spotlight that reveals all.  But a soft one that filters through.  Strong enough to make it through a thick forest of trees and leaves and cast itself onto us.  Strong enough to remind me that spotlights are rarely given when stepping out into the unknown.  Strong enough to remind me that our job as their parents is not just to sit on the front stoop and watch the sun sink safely into the pines but to awake each morning trusting the God that raises it.  Each day that is filled with family and friends who help cast that same light when fears spill out.  That softly point out the lies that confuse and the truth that sets free.  I hope you get to see His light filter through your circumstances this week.  

"Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling."  Psalm 43:3

Not left behind

  As the youngest of three and a true daydreamer, I was given a healthy fear of being left behind.  I was never good at keeping up with two much more focused and braver siblings.  Often, the gap between our strides would widen until I would realize how far behind I was and rush to rejoin them.  Ian is not a daydreamer, he just is a lot younger than Luke and Levi.  He did not come in the nicely spaced
two years of his older brothers. Or even a reasonable three or four year spacing. It was the summer Luke was seven and Levi was five that Ian came into our lives.  And pictures changed from Luke and Levi side by side, to Luke and Levi with Ian far behind.  The gap is slowly closing as I take snap shots
of their adventures. 

I use to worry that Ian would be lonely.  He would feel like an add on child.  Feeling foolish for thinking we looked like parents that didn't have their act together. Not like the other families that planned and provided just the right spacing for siblings to share bus rides and friends.   I didn't know I had the expectation that all my children would be grouped tightly together until it didn't work out that way.  

Funny that is how expectations work, they are silent until met with something different.  Then the loud voice of discontentment, what ifs, and why not echos through my thoughts.  Fear becomes louder than hope.  

I love this picture because it reminds me that our expectations and fears are wrong.  Ian loves to be in the middle ground.  He enjoys watching his big brothers charge ahead, call him forward, and rests in knowing I am safely behind watching it all.  He doesn't look ahead panicked that his stride does not match theirs.  He certainly isn't concerned that I am behind and not beside.  He is enjoying his own pace and making his own set of tracks, his own ripples.

It is so easy to get caught up in our expectations or someone else story that we forget to trust God's timing, spacing, and path set specifically for us.  When we fixate on how God unfolds life for others we begin to think He is withholding from us.  We can miss the blessings of the middle ground, the ripples and steps of them, because we are wishing to be further along or in a past that feels safer.

I am grateful for two older boys who are fearless and charge ahead in adventures.  Thankful for Ian  following the trails they have blazed and often times creating his own.  He is a reminder daily
 that expectations and time frames that disappoint at first, end up strengthening
our trust and faith in the end. A reminder that looking down at the steps taken
now is better than fixating on the future or wishing for the past.
To rest in the knowledge that we are not left behind and we are never alone in the journey.

"You will keep in perfect peace

all who trust in you,

all whose thoughts are fixed on you!"

Isaiah 26:3

Hold on

"When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don't throw away the ticket and jump off.  You sit and trust the engineer."

-Corrie Ten Boon