Lasts

Years ago I read an article about Lasts. The article pointed out how we don't always know or notice when the last something will occur. The purpose of the article was to encourage its readers to savor the moments.

Sometimes lasts are a welcome relief. The last winter we had to live in Minnesota. The last day I had to live in that small town that was so lonely for me. The last day on a job that was so hard to go to everyday. The last day of college classes because you are finally done studying and can get out into the grown-up world.

Some times the lasts are bittersweet. I don't remember the last time my little daughter reached out to hold my hand. I don't remember the last time my little son wanted to watch me put on my makeup. When did my babies last crawl or call for me in the middle of the night? When was the last day they went running to the door when their daddy got home from work? I kept a calendar the first two years of their sweet little lives and wrote down their firsts. Their first tooth, first bottle, first steps, first words, etc. I don't have a calendar of their lasts. Those lasts sneak up on us and go by unnoticed as time marches on.

Maybe that's a good thing because sometimes those lasts can be super painful and if we knew they were coming it would be unbearable.

Like what I've experienced lately.

My parents are in the process of moving to North Carolina. They have lived in Iowa their whole lives except for a few years in the Air Force when they were first married. But now they want to be closer to my sister's family.

I've come to realize that the last time I was in Iowa, two plus weeks ago, was the last time I will see them in the house they have lived in since I was eleven years old. I'm feeling like it's the last time I will ever be in that house and that is very painful for me. I did some serious growing up through my teenage years and college year summers in that house. I lived there longer than any of my siblings. My parents have thrown a lot of parties in that house celebrating graduations, engagements, weddings, birthdays.

The thing with lasts is they sneak up on you and sometimes you don't realize it and you don't get a chance to process and try to comes to terms with it and before you know it, it's done and gone. I thought I would have a chance to do that, but it seems like things are moving along faster than anyone told me, than I thought they would. How did I know that last Christmas was the last one I would ever celebrate in that house? I didn't get a last chance to go through the rooms and see if there are some treasures that time forgot. I won't say I didn't get to at all, because the last time I was there I found a vinyl record of my high school senior year variety show I had forgotten about. How many more of those types of things are there? I'll never know. I didn't get a chance to go room to room and play the memory tapes of the past, of my high school friends hanging out with me in the kitchen, of my date sneaking a kiss in the garage, of my husband and I talking in the basement the day before our wedding, of my son's second birthday party there, of my daughter learning to use a fork or hiding her peas in her glass of milk, of my nieces and nephews sliding down the stairs, of all the kids sledding in the backyard, of my parents at the front door waving good-bye.

Forty-three years of memories. Done. My heart is grieving.

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

The Weekend

Hubby and I took a little road trip on Saturday. He was told about a little town in northern Georgia, called Helen, that has cute shops and restaurants. Along the way we stopped at a Farmer's Market stand and bought some tomatoes, a watermelon and some Georgia Peaches.

Somehow buying Georgia Peaches in Georgia just seemed right. I love fresh peaches and really want to make a peach pie, but I haven't found my recipe box in the unpacking yet so I don't have the recipe. (I should insert here how anxious I am about not finding my recipe box. It would be a disaster to loose 31 years worth of recipes collected.)

As we approached our destination, we got stuck in a traffic back up. We figured out that it would take us awhile to get into Helen and we were hungry, so we turned around to have lunch at a pizza place we spotted along the way.

The pizza was very good...

But the popcorn they served while we waited was amazing...

I have no idea what made it so good, but we devoured two bowls of this. It reminded me of popcorn popped in my parents' really old popcorn popper.

Our lunch spot was less than two miles from Helen, but it took us 30 minutes to finally get onto town only to realize there was a Shriner's parade going on which explained the forty billion people trying to get into town. We decided it wasn't worth trying to fight the crowds, so we decided to not explore the town that day.

We took a small detour on the way back home to see this college campus. 

A sweet friend went to school here a number of years ago, so we thought we'd give the campus a look. This friend and her little family live in China loving people there for God. You can read her blog here.

 It was a very pretty and very small campus.

We were back home in time to slice up some of the tomatoes we bought for the summer's first BLTs. 

I love BLTs, but I cannot stand the smell of bacon in the house for days afterwards. I had a brainstorm about cooking the bacon. I put eight slices of thick cut bacon in my biggest cast iron skillet and put it on the grill outside. It worked wonderfully! The bacon cooked nice and crispy like we like it and the smell stayed outside!!!

Sunday morning we visited yet another church that didn't seem like a good fit, went out for BBQ for lunch and came home to unpacked a bazillion boxes. I have unpacked every box that was labeled "kitchen" but still have not found my recipe box. Because of that and because I unpacked a box that was labeled "living room" and had pillows from the couch and three small shelves from the basement bathroom, I have to conclude that the recipe box is probably in a box marked "garage" or something equally absurd. Whenever the recipe box is found, there will be much rejoicing on my part (and probably on Hubby's part as well since he won't have to listen to me whine about it anymore).

This week's goals for me are getting the pantry in order, unpacking a box from my desk and finding a place for all those things, organizing a bookcase in our bedroom and getting a pedicure. Lofty goals for sure.

Weary

Last night Hubby was invited to attend a Greenville Drive minor league baseball game by a local college that Hubby's company works with. Since he could bring a guest, I tagged along. I'm not a huge sports fan, but I can sit through a game now and then and sitting in  a suite, meeting some new people and having yummy food sounded fun.

The game was rain-delayed about an hour, someone forgot to order the food and we ended up with hotdogs and chicken strips. Not terrible, but not great. I ended up not talking to anyone. A few people introduced themselves, but quickly went on to other conversations.

I titled this post Weary. Why? Because that's how I am feeling about this move. Don't get me wrong, I am very happy to be here in South Carolina. It's a beautiful part of the country that I haven't explored and am excited to. It's just this transition time that seems to drag on and on and being the new kid on the block that is making me weary.

I don't know if it's just me or if it's common with all humans, but I long to feel like I belong. I've even forced myself to use the word (or is it words) Y'all to try to sound like I belong, but it sounds foreign to this Midwesterner. (But I'll keep trying because it is cooler sounding that You Guys.)

I can't even count the number of churches we have visited since we moved here in January. So far we haven't found one that seems like a good fit. If we have a conversation with someone at one of those churches, it seems to be one sided...the other person doing all the talking and not asking any questions about us. Is it because we all have a desire to tell our story? I know I do and I get weary because no one wants to hear it. Maybe that's selfish. Maybe the point of all this is for me to learn other people's stories and not push mine. All the same, I still long for a friend I can meet for lunch and have a nice long two-sided talk.

I think God created us to be in relationship with other people. In fellowship with other believers. I keep looking for that, but I grow weary at times.

When we were looking for a new job, our prayers turned from, "Dear God, Make this job available because this town seems like a logical place for us to move to because of location and closeness of family," to (after many no's from God), "Dear God, Your will. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. Amen."  So even though I don't understand how living halfway across the country from our kids is God's answer to that prayer, I believe this place is God's answer to that prayer.

There is a story in the Old Testament book of Exodus, chapter 17 about a battle the Israelites were in:

So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.
Exodus 17:10-13

I feel weary and tired. I need help and prayer to keep my head up. I want living in South Carolina to be a wonderful experience we look back on with fond, positive memories.  I'll keep praying, "Dear God, Your will. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. Amen." I'll probably continue to have times when I feel weary.

But in the end,
God is still God and Jesus is still sitting at His right hand.
And that's all that is important.
Praise be to God.

Another Trip

I think I have mastered the art of avoidance. I returned from my two week trip to the Midwest, repacked my clothes (the majority which were dirty) into a smaller suitcase, slept a few hours, and thirteen hours after I got home, took off in my car for the Atlantic Ocean.

I met my two sisters and sister-in-law at my oldest sister's beach house. I wrote about our visit here.

Wait...what was I avoiding? When I was in the Midwest, I was avoiding the house having the floors refinished. Last week I was avoiding painters.

We have never hired someone to paint our house, inside or out, but I am so glad we did this time. We had all the main rooms, a powder room, the master bedroom and the master bath painted. I'm pleased with the paint colors and I am thankful for all the time saved from Hubby having to do all the work. Plus, Hubby not having to figure out how to paint the stair well and the funky angled high ceilings in our bathroom was worth it as well!

Back to the beach....

After the 4.5 hour drive (which was tough since I hadn't had enough sleep), I arrived to this:

 My sisters weren't due to arrive until late that night, so I took the time to wash my clothes. Nothing like arriving on vacation with a suitcase full of dirty clothes. ha. But the time the others arrived, I had it all done!

The main reason we all met there was to organize the closets and clean out the fridge and freezer and organize the pool room. Lots of people stay there throughout the year, especially the summer months, and it needs some maintenance of the spaces. We ended up with three trash cans full of stuff we threw away.  I don't know about you, but I feel good when I sort and organize and throw things away, even when it isn't my stuff.  I even came home with a fleece for Hubby, flip-flops for my daughter-in-law and a pink hoodie for my granddaughter. (Left behind and not claimed by anyone.)

I thought about taking pictures of my sisters and I working, but when I realized that we all still had our pajamas on, I thought maybe it wasn't a good idea to take pictures and post on the world wide web. ha.

This is the only photo I took of our "work":

My oldest sister asked me to make labels for storage areas so people know where to return things to. These are all the rejects. We only needed 8 or 9 signs, but I had quite a pile of rejects. It was a collaborative effort; I cut out and wrote the signs, my sister-in-law laminated them, one sister punched the holes and the other sister hung them on the appropriate shelves with zip-ties.

We were there about four days. I think we could have gotten the work done in two days, but then there wouldn't have been time for sun and pool, TV watching and shopping and eating out!

I kind of wanted to walk on the beach, but it was a challenge to get to the beach. The week before we were there Tropical Storm Ana went through Holden Beach and left the dune between the house and the beach looking like this:

That's about a four to five foot drop. My sister, who took this picture, had to climb back up on her hands and knees. I hope it gets fixed for all the beach goers this summer!

I came back home on Saturday and have been busy doing laundry and cleaning and ordering organizing things for my kitchen from The Container Store and getting myself geared up to unpacking some boxes.

Being gone for almost three weeks didn't make those boxes get unpacked. Sigh.

Settled In? Hardly!

Two weeks ago Monday, the moving truck delivered our household goods. Several people have asked if we are settled in to our house. I just laugh because we really are not at all. We still have about 12,876 boxes to unpack.

What the heck have we been doing?

We realized before the moving truck came that the wood floors that are in all the main floor rooms (except the bathrooms) are in very bad shape. It's only a nine year old house, but it's evident that 1) the builder cut corners with finishing the floors, and 2) the previous owners did nothing along the line of upkeep (of anything in the house). (And they left the house filthy.)

We have lined up someone to come refinish the floors but that won't happen until the end of April. In the meantime, we don't want to unpack too much stuff that we have to move again when that happens.

Yes, this is pretty frustrating. No, I don't do well living in chaos. When I fell stressed I like to quilt, but that's not possible right now because my sewing room is still in boxes. Sigh.

Hubby has been working like a madman to clean up and paint the garage. The previous owners smoked in the garage (and on the screened in porch) and it smelled terrible! Every time someone opened the door from the house to the garage, the smell wafted into the house. Ugh! So, dear, wonderful, hard-working Hubby has washed all the walls, prepped with Kilz paint and is now painting the garage. Since the walls are already divided into three areas: drywall, cinder-block base and a molding in between, he is painting it two shades of gray and the molding black. Even though he's not finished, it already looks so much better and the awful smoke smell is gone!

Anyone want to come in May to help me set up the kitchen? I look at all my stuff and I look at the kitchen and freeze. Not my strong suit. It takes me a while to figure out how to make it function.

We left our house in Minnesota on Christmas Eve. It will be more than five months from that point before we feel like we are settled in to our new house. Sigh.

I decided a good way to deal with the stress of a chaotic house is to leave! Mature way to handle it, huh? I'm flying to Iowa this weekend to see my granddaughter (and her parents)! Yippee! Can't wait to hold that precious little sweetie! I hope to see my parents while I'm there, too!

I Know Who I Am

I spent the first two days of this week proving to the state of South Carolina that I am me.

Why? I was trying to get a South Carolina driver's license for me and South Carolina license plates for our cars.

There are many steps required by the state to go through to get this accomplished. I would say the easiest part was paying the property taxes for the cars.

Then came the DMV.

I may be wrong, but I got the distinct feeling that the lady who first receives the people at the local DMV delights in finding that you don't have the right documents. I went on Monday afternoon to get the list (which she quickly rattled off) and Hubby and I searched boxes for the correct documents. We were having a hard time finding some of the required documents and frustration was setting in. I prayed for God to intervene, and a few minutes later Hubby comes upstairs with a three-ring binder and starts pulling out the necessary documents. I laughed. It was a very logical place because a few years ago I asked Hubby to put together a notebook. In it is all our important papers and information about financial stuff, etc. Hubby did a wonderful job of organizing it. The problem was, we both forgot about it!! We blamed it on the stress of moving. Yes, absolutely that and not the getting older and all that stuff.

Tuesday we both went to the DMV together to finish all of this. As we were showing different official documents, I thought that it seemed a very difficult task to prove we are who we are.

But I KNOW who I am IN CHRIST. And I couldn't be more thankful.

Romans 10:9 says:  If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

If I am saved, then I am a child of God.

Galatians 3:26-28 says: So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

1 John 3:1 says: See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!

I am thankful that God doesn't require a birth certificate, passport, marriage license, proof of address, social security card to call me His child. 

So grateful.

A Summary. The First of Several.

Two weeks ago I flew back to the Midwest to see family and to assist in packing up our house in Minnesota.

After a visit to my full-term pregnant daughter, I spent a few days with my parents. It had been a long time since I had seen them (Christmas). I met them at their Bible study group that they have been a part of for more than 30 years. I know several of their friends and my dad led the discussion. A good study on John 4 and a fun group of elderly people still learning about God's word. That is so encouraging to me to see people in their 80s still seeking to learn about God and His word. I have heard an 80-something year old say that he didn't think he had anything left to learn about Christianity (I even heard him say this when he was still in his 60s). That made me so sad.

The next morning I accompanied my parents to my mom's speech therapy at the University of Northern Iowa. The stroke that hit my mom in September of 2013 took away her speech. While she doesn't talk, she is comprehending two-step instructions (pick up the cup and pretend to drink), matching words to pictures and working on playing UNO. She has one-on-one time and some group time. The group time is for social interaction and is with people with the same type of language disorder caused by damage to the brain (most commonly the result of a stroke). Anyway, I found the whole thing very interesting (and hard) and am so thankful for people who study speech-language pathology.

Another morning I got to see my mom working hard in physical therapy. They have a very good and patient man come to the house three times a week to help my mom with movement. The stroke also took away the use of the right side of her body. She cannot use her right arm or leg. Amongst other exercises, physical therapist helps Mom walk with the use of two different types of walkers. He helps move her right leg. I watched my mom walk across the kitchen floor several times. I loved the look of determination and concentration on her face.

After a few days with my parents, I took off for Minnesota to meet my husband there.

(Can I take a break here to confess how the rental car I had drove me nuts with trying to figure out how to operate it? Oh, I could start it and drive it, but the climate control, radio and even the gas door release got the best of me. I spent a good five minutes at the gas station trying to figure out how to open the gas release thingy. I finally consulted the manual. I just needed to press on the round door and it popped open. Good Grief. Sometimes I just laugh at myself.)

Okay. Back to Minnesota. 

We finally were able to pack up the things in our house in Minnesota. Not only did that house sell, we found one here in South Carolina.

(I must clarify that by "we finally were able to pack up the things in our house" I mean we supervised a moving company packing up the house. And by "we supervised" I mean my husband. Of course. He's the best.)

It took a team of people three days to box everything up and to load it in a moving van. The moving van will unload everything here on Monday.

Whew! I'm tired just thinking of all of those boxes that need to be unpacked. I am so thankful for a husband who has the Gift of Organization. He also has the Gift of Spacial Reasoning and can visualize how our furniture will fit in a house. We spent a good part of today walking around our house trying to figure out where the bigger pieces of furniture will go so we can have the movers do the heavy work.

In Limbo

Life lately has sorta been just hanging around in limbo here in South Carolina. We have a contingency contract on a house and are waiting for some details to get ironed out. If it all works out, then we close on the house March 19. That means another month of apartment life. If that doesn't scream limbo, then I don't know what does.

We continue to search for a church. Last week we managed to stumble into a church that was a bit lot too charismatic for us. When some of the people let out a scream or two during a worship song, we cringed. That came after the flag dancing and the announcement about prayer training in "Authority and Healing". We slipped out the back because we knew it wasn't for us. I guess you don't know what a church is like until you walk through the doors. God created all sorts of people.

A couple of weeks ago I was thinking about what we should do for Valentine's Day and realized it came on a weekend and said to Hubby, "Want to go to the ocean for Valentine's weekend?" We both kinda giggled at the thought. It is so foreign for these life-long Mid-westerners to think that we can drive 3-4 hours and be at the Atlantic Ocean. Crazy! So we are off to Holden Beach, NC. Why there? My sister and brother-in-law have a house on the beach there and no one is using it right now. I know just the two of us will rattle around in that seven bedroom house, but we'll enjoy the view of the ocean! I'll make sure to take same pictures.

Speaking of pictures, Hubby says I need to post more pictures on here. He's right, of course, but I have gotten myself out of the habit of thinking about taking pictures for the purpose of blogging. I'm working on it, though.  Can I photograph almost 70 degree days in February? I wish I could. I'm just so glad to not have snow outside my door to photograph. So glad!

Well, that's the sparse news from Lake Wobegon. (Can I say that if I don't live in Minnesota anymore?)

New

Here's the thing with moving, especially moving to a part of the country I've never been in before:

Everything is new.

The streets are new, the weather (for January for me) is new, the license plates on the cars are new, the grocery store chains are new, the people are new, accents are new, the customs of the local people are new, the churches are new, the landscaping around homes are new (holly bushes!), banks are new, places to travel to by car are new, phone numbers are new.

I think I'm getting my point across.

A few days ago I got a new cell phone. I really wanted a non-Minnesota phone number for one thing, and another thing was my old cell phone's microphone didn't work anymore. Makes it kind of difficult to use as a phone. I do have a bluetooth, so that worked fine for when I needed it. While upgrading a cell phone is usually a cool thing, I found myself being overwhelmed with one more new thing to adapt to. There is always a period of time spent trying to figure out the nuances of a new cell phone.

As I have pondered all this newness, it has made me grateful to know that my God isn't new. He is always the same.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

Hebrews 13:8 says, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

Those are good things.

My dad wrote on my birthday card he sent me this week that God has gone before us to South Carolina. For that I am grateful. I am grateful my dad reminded me of that.

Moving On...

Time to start blogging again.

I took a year off of blogging. (If there is a reader who is interested in my other blog, Just Enough Light, where I wrote for six years, click over to here to read to your heart's content.) 2014 was a very tough year and I was not sad to say goodbye to it.

Time to move on.

We have moved from Minnesota to South Carolina. (I've been here for a whole week now!)  New job, new state, new region of the country, new house (eventually). All that newness just calls for a new blog.

I want this blog to document our time here in the Southeast. This is a big move for this Midwest girl. True, I lived in Singapore for three years, but other than that I have lived in the Midwest. I expect there to be some fun/interesting things to observe. Take for instance, my visit to the grocery store yesterday. I saw bags of greens: mustard greens, collard greens, turnip greens. Not your typical Midwest fare. I smiled to myself because I have NO idea what to do with greens.

Anyway...

Let's talk about the title of this blog. Ampersand. Several years ago, I gave my hubby a large, metal ampersand and hung it on the wall in our bedroom. I told him it was to remind us that from now on it was just him & me & God. We were in the beginning stages of the Empty Nest. Our kids were married and now it was just us. This blog is about our lives & our adventures & my relationship with God & my hobby of quilting & our kids & the new grand-baby about to be born & whatever else come to mind.

Like how moving across the country takes time to find my place, time to have a rhythm to life, and lots of changes, I expect this blog to morph and change over time.

So... here I go off on a new adventure!