Ode to a Father Who Provides

These past couple months have been, just, a whirlwind. I say this a lot, because it’s often true, but it seems that having added another infant to the mix has upped the intensity factor.I had had a few bad days, feeling particularly discouraged and overwhelmed, and in the shade of yet another overcast day, I found myself checking my email, trying to distract myself from my extensive to-do list. I read a blog written by my cousin (excellent blog, by the way!) about things she was thankful for, and it clicked in my head: I was so busy being disappointed with how things were not going how I thought they should be, and cramming more and more things into my schedule in order to rectify that, that I had forgotten all of the things the Lord was doing.

Shame on me.

Even now, scrolling through the pictures on my phone, I am reminded of so many of the things that the Lord has made so right. I’ve decided to share some of these with you, hoping we can both be overwhelmed not with the business of the season, but with the blessings of the Savior!

This is one of the clearest examples I can think of, of God providing for our needs. About a month before coming back to Wisconsin, I woke up one morning, and decided that the time for procrastination was over: we needed to start searching for a place to live. Our normal options were not available, and we didn’t have any backups this time around. Literally a couple hours later, we got a phone call, and were informed that we had a place to stay: a beautiful, rustic house ON THE BEACH! The above photo of the sunrise was taken out of our living room window.

I know.

We have three bedrooms, two bathrooms and even enough room for our Christmas tree! God is so thorough in his provision!

Now that our quiver contains four adorable arrows, our former vehicle options were proving to be insufficient. A few days after we got the phone call about the house, we received a phone call that a local pastor had a van that his family were willing to give to us.

Give. To. Us.

That makes our lovely little red Dodge Caravan the very first family vehicle that we have owned!

One of the blessings of having three bedrooms in this house is being able to have a dedicated room for school. After a rather disappointing and unmotivated school year last year, I was concerned about how this year would go. Somewhat shockingly, we are pretty much on track for where we should be for this time of year, immersed in phonics, Five Senses and the Middle Ages! Owen and Wyatt participate when they can, like our short study of the Pilgrims and Indians! They also participate when they shouldn’t, but we’ll leave it off this post for now…

A couple weeks ago, we were able to have Lincoln dedicated in our home church. We are so thankful to have a very supportive church family, and very blessed indeed to have very *ahem* energetic offspring to dedicate to the Lord.

That being said, I don’t know what it is about stages, but the air up there does something to our boys. I don’t think we’ve ever had a calm presentation of our children when they get in front of people, particularly when balloons are involved. That dang balloon. I must add at this point how grateful we are for very understanding church families spanning multiple states, because we are that family. I swear, guys, we aren’t doing this on purpose!

I’ll keep This one short and sweet, because if you’re reading this, you probably received one of these. Thank you. We are constantly loved on by the family, friends, churches, and supporters that God has surrounded us with. You have a holy knack for timely encouragements, and the Lord has used you all in ways you (and probably we) are not even always aware of, and we thank the Lord for all of you.