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I was in New York this weekend visiting my daughter and heard the story of Horatio Spafford in church (Redeemer). He is the author of the song It Is Well With My Soul. Perhaps you know his story, but after years of singing the song I did not. And like seeing a painting change before your eyes with a slight shift in your position, hearing the story behind the song has forever shifted the meaning of it in my mind.
Read Post →So if you read my last post you know that I was speculating that God was trying to tell me something about my mood in the black and blue sky. And I think I got it! So today this was my reward in the sky. The validation of hope. I am like Noah. We had the flood, days of homelessness, dark skies and confusion, and now after 40 days (ok it’s really only 35) of confusion we have landed in a condo on the Bayshore with a view of hope…right outside my window. 😉
Read Post →It has been awhile since I updated you on our housing status post flood. Today marks one month exactly and I am happy to report that we are no longer homeless. We are not in our home but we have found a place to rent for the next 6-8 months. It’s a condo on the Bayshore (we live in Tampa). Today after work my daughter begged me to take a walk with her along the Bayshore. I didn’t want to go. I was…tired.
Read Post →I was sitting at a ball game chatting with a mom I didn’t know well. We got into what “we do” and I explained that I work at iMOM. She questioned me about the program and said, “Wow, you must be a really good mom!” Ugh. Sigh. Piercing inadequacy. It made me kind of want to throw up. I am not a really good mom; I am not even close. In fact, I will go to the grave wondering why I never overcame quite a few of my faults. So, because it actually causes me anxiety to think that someone might think I am perfect, I am going to lay it out. Here I confess my imperfections, or my top 10 (for today).
Read Post →When we bought our “forever” 1920’s house and spent a year renovating it I remember thinking, “It’s a shame I won’t ever do this again because I know so much more now that I have walked through the entire process.” Now that my oldest child is 27 I am thinking the same thing, “It’s a shame I won’t ever do this again because I know so much more now that I have walked through the entire process!” I did make some minor adjustments to my parenting, experimenting on the oldest and applying what I learned to my youngest, but there is so much benefit from hindsight that takes you through all the stages from infant to adult. Looking back I can more clearly see the big picture that was difficult to keep in perspective when there were five children clamoring for attention. So here are three broad, big picture thoughts that would have helped me in those “mommed out” moments when I doubted all – my sanity, that a stage would never end, that children were a blessing, etc., etc., 1. Motherhood is not for the weak at heart. The tenderhearted yes, but not weak. You will have “mommed out” …
Read Post →So, if you know me you know that we are still living in a hotel due to a flood in our house. It is week 3 and we are a bit…tired. That being said, life goes on. That also being said I have an excuse for anything and everything in life that I don’t want to go on. Quite easily it can roll off my tongue like this: “I am going to have to cancel, we had a flood” or “Maybe another time, we had a flood” or how about “I would like to help but, we had a flood”. Do you get my drift? Well, thankfully, I didn’t drift this weekend. I kept my commitment to travel with 50 high-spirited football players to Palm Beach for the Heath Evans Foundation 7 On 7 tournament. Had I not gone I would have missed one of those precious slices of life that so easily slip through the fingers of fleeting time and are gobbled up by the black hole of eternity, never to be seen again.
Read Post →Today, I had to say goodbye to Spot. He was such a fun bedtime friend to my children. I was hoping to introduce him to my grandchildren. He didn’t make it through Phase III of the flood – letting go of the unsalvageable (yes, that is mold) (see Phase I, Phase II for more details on the flood). Do they still sell Spot books?
Read Post →When Phase I of the flood – save what you can see – was over, we entered Phase II – save what you can’t see. Using sophisticated infrared cameras it was determined that there is quite a bit of water in my plaster walls. Water can destroy plaster walls and fuel an outbreak of mold, yikes! So the baseboards came off and the battle began. My house needed life saving air, kind of like mouth to mouth for a house. Fans by the dozens were imported, heaters, tubes and a generator were employed to breath air into the walls. My house was on life support. It was a little…disconcerting. I really didn’t like what I saw in my walls and when I pictured mold in there, too, well I wanted to cover it up and pretend I had never seen it.
Read Post →On a clear, sunny day for one brief hour, a bizarre, windy storm hit Tampa. In that one hour my roof was exposed to the sky – shingles and paper off, just the skeleton of wood. My dry, 90 year old house received the drenching like a 100% pima cotton towel – soaking it up into every crevice and passing the excess on so that it permeated our two story house and landed in victorious puddles on my wood floors. It was amazing to walk through, and to wonder at the fact that it was raining inside! It was dripping from the ceilings, draining through the light fixtures, dancing on the walls and drenching the beds. The plaster ceilings began to crack immediately with the water pressuring for a place to escape. The walls began to bubble as they filled with water that couldn’t break through the paint. Within minutes the ravenous rain had saturated the house from top to bottom.
Read Post →It filled the attic… And seeped through the ceilings… It splashed on the furniture… And ran down the walls… It puddled onto the floor… And then fell some more – down one more level. It couldn’t be stopped… And that’s when the ceilings began to drop!
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