Tis the season for everything to break...and to be thankful for it

Everytime I visit someone else's blog I come down with a severe case of "blog envy." For example, just the other day I visited my friend Shawna's blog and what has she managed to post? Her whole wedding album! I don't even know where my wedding pictures are! And to add insult to injury, here it is two days past Christmas and my blog is still covered in fall leaves because I can't remember how to switch my background.

But that's not at all what I want to write about. I just had to get that off my chest. Really, I think Shawna's wedding album is beautiful and someday I plan on kidnapping her and forcing her to show me how she managed such a feat.

You know how Paul says, "give thanks in all things? I am going to attempt to do just that, despite the fact that this has been a very broken season.

Rewind one month. Imagine this. Our family, along with three others rent a picturesque cabin in the Great Smokies. The fall air is crisp, the autumn leaves still hang on the trees. The cabin is spacious. There is a TV in almost every room. The one downstairs is set in an alcove above the fireplace. This is the kid's room. Mom has worked all day preparing a pot of chili for 12. The baby is napping blistfully in the next room so she decides to relax for a moment. She fixes herself a piece of strawberry cheesecake and settles into the lazy boy. Up goes the leg rest back goes her head and then BANG! A scream of terror sounds from the floor below. Mom flies out of the armchair and runs down the stairs to find the TV and all of its accesories lying facedown on the floor. The nine-year-old is obviously guilty. But how? Mom demands an explanation. Nine-year-old is speechless. Mom screams louder, in front of the other three families, mind you. Nine-year-old begins to stammer out something about a lost DVD and not wanting to bother relaxing mom upstairs. Piece my piece we recreate the scene of the crime. He stepped on a suitcase so he could reach the TV, he moved it to the side in the hopes of retrieving the DVD that had slipped behind the set, when bam he lost control. The TV came hurdling to the ground, narrowly missing the seven-year-old. It was dead. All attempt to revive it failed. Mom and Dad were out $320. Nine-year-old is sentenced to three years without an allowance, plus menial labor. How to be thankful for this one? Well...if the baby had been down there he could have been crushed. Or it could have been one of those rediculously over-priced flat pannel deals instead of a $300 WalMart special.

Then one day, not long after the falling TV incident, the garage door made this mournful whirring sound none of us ever had heard before. The next time we tried to open it, it refused to budge. It too was dead. And how you ask, might we be thankful for this one? Well...we can be thankful for the garage and its willingness to shelter all our junk. For the extra refrigerator and deep freeze that faithfully cool our surplus food, the piles and piles of camping equipment that keep us entertained in the spring, the seven bicycles and baby trailer that keep the flab off our legs, the widgets and fidgets Dad uses to keep our house from falling apart, and the countless other extras that find shelter in our garage.

A day or too after the garage door bit the dust, a friend pulled the door handle off of my van door. Mind you the door on the other side was already broken. So now, I have two broken sliding doors. One that can be accessed if you reach your arm through the driver side door and unlock it manually from the inside, the other which is hopelessly stuck shut. This of course, makes for much seat scaling on the boys' part, which always leads to dirty seats, knees in noses, random kicks as one boys climbs over another and general mayhem. Of course, this one is easy. At least I have a vehicle that starts and stops when its supposed to. I can't tell you how many women I know in the housing projects who would work if they just had a car that ran.

Now this last one. This one was a biggie, at least for me in my little housewife world. It was two days before Christmas. My mother-in-law was already here, her husband was on his way. My mom and brother were due as well. The turkey was thawing nicely on the deep freeze in our faithful little garage. The ham slept peacfully on the bottom shelf of the extra fridge. The trimmings, though not yet made were floating around like pages of a cooking magazine in my head. I wanted to get a running start so I could relax a bit on Christmas Day (remember where relaxing got me last time?), so I decided to start baking. Non-chalantly I walked to the cabinet above my oven where I stored my army of cookbooks. I reached above the stove top to grab a few favorites when out of the corner of my eye I perceived a crack in my glass-top stove. No, it was more than a crack. It was a crevace, a great yawning maw and nearby lay the guilty flashlight that had plummeted off the nearby refrigerator on to the stove. I gasped in horror. Visions of a stuffing-less turkey and gravy-less mashed potatoes flashed through my mind. Christmas was ruined! How could I cook without a stove? This was too much. I refuse to be thankful for this one, Lord. But here too, gratitude was found. After several phone calls to the cooktop experts of Huntsville, we discovered the uncracked burners were useable until the top could be replaced. And even that wasn't going to cost as much as we first thought. Christmas was saved thanks to a little ingenuity with a skillet and some crockpots.

"Now may the Lord of peace Himself continually grant you peace in EVERY circumstance."
2 Thesalonians 3:16

Oh...what a year

After my latest misadventure, I decided it would be fun to do a year in review of Sarah's dummest moments. Plus, I thought some of my friends out there could use a good laugh. There has been much sorrow in my circle lately and as I recall, laughter makes the heart glad.

Let's start with Monday night. My friend Kristie and I drove all the way to Birmingham to here a dear sister working in dark places speak of her ministry. After driving around the church several times, harriedly looking for a parking place while, at the same time, trying not to drive down the wrong way on a one way, we decided the Budget car rental lot located behind the church building would be as good a place as any to park. We drove through the open baricades, glanced inside what we thought was a darkened office, and pulled, nonchalantly into a space toward the back of the lot. We got out, locked up, and headed to the church.

After a couple of hours of hearing how God is using one single, devoted woman to bring the gospel and medical care to some of the most hopeless people in the world, we headed out of the church, rejoicing and hungry. We hopped in the car and headed out the way we came. That's where things started going south. Where there was once a wide-open, welcoming space there now stood a mennacing, 3 ft. tall barricade. A little surprised, but not yet frantic I backed up and calmly drove around the parking lot looking for what was sure to be another exit. None was to be found. The thought sunk in. We were trapped!

A bit embarassed, but determined not to have to drive back the next day to retrieve my trapped car, I bit my lip and headed back into the church for some manly help. Thankfully, the church also functions as a sort of half-way house for men trying to transition back into society after getting out of jail, so finding a way to remove the barrier that held my helpless, little blue station wagon hostage, was well...right up their alley. One brought a crow bar, the other a hammer. They weren't going to let a little padlock stand in their way. Who knows what locks they had broken in their past? But, this time, they harnessed their skills for good and with each crash of the hammer the lock steadily gave way until...pop, it opened. I took a deep breath, thanked them profusely, and got the heck out of Dodge. But not before Kristie offered to pay for the lock, which miraculously, had not broken after all and could be replaced, as though we had never been there at all. I'm sure there are several spiritual lessons embedded in that whole, convulated tale, but I am way too tired to dig them out.

And then there was the time, late in the summer, when I decided that I would fill the unsightly hole my sons had dug in the backyard (boys are a lot like dogs that way) with a pond. Those of you who know me, know that the words "Sarah" and "pond" should really never be spoken of in the same sentence. But, I was undeterred. I imagined myself relaxing peacfully on the back porch gazing contently at my lily-padded pond. Like I ever sit on my back porch. But, I was sure the pond would change all that. I purchased, what the lady at Home Depot promised me was an all-in-one kit. Let me just say, never trust a woman in an orange apron. I had to buy a cleaning pump, dechlorinator and baskets to hold down the wayward lily pads, which by the time I was finished, just about doubled the cost of my all-in-one prize.

Finally, after digging and positioning and digging some more we got the thing in the ground. And oh, how my heart soared when we filled it with water and turned on the tiny fountain. Why I had my very own Buckingham fountain right in my own backyard. I proceeded to fill my peace-inducing water utopia with several, carefully chosen water plants and two lovely koi. At this point, however, I had not figured out that my all-in-one pond needed a cleaning pump and so after a few short days, my pond morphed into the Slough of Despond. Toads took up residence in what I'm sure they thought was the newest swamp in town. The koi dissapeared in the murky mess and I, to my shame, let the pond go. Everytime I would walk by the bubbling mess, I swear I could hear it choke out the words "clean me". Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore. Resolutely, I grabbed our wet-dry vac and marched to the pond, orange extention cord trailing behind me. I would suck the muck and yuck out and start fresh. I banged on the edges of the pond, giving the toads fair warning that there eviction was about to begin, and then I thrust the hose into the murk. Plugging my nose, I waited for the drum to fill with heaven knows what, when I caught a glimpse of something orange darting through the water. The koi! Desperately I grabbed at the hose and yanked it out the the water. Did I suck him up? Who could tell? The water was murky as ever. With great trepidition, I slowly began to unscrew the lid on the drum of the vacuum, all along praying that he somehow escaped the vacuum of death. I leaned in, sloshed the bucket around a bit, and then ever-so-slowly, I began to pour the water out of the drum down the side of the hill, watching for a glimpse of orange. He wasn't there! He was alive! Our little koi had survived over a month in a slimy pit, and because his owners thought he had died long ago, the only food he had came from the water plants. What a little trooper. I cleaned up the water, fed him heartily, and skipped back to the garage thankful my little fish had survived such a cruel fate. Too bad the cat ate him the next day.

Of course, I can't forget the time I tucked my cell phone into the top of my swimsuit, so I would be sure not to miss any calls. I jumped in the pool and felt something bump up against my toe. Was it my long lost koi? No, it was my little pink Razor, sinking into a watery grave.

And then, last week, I tried to steal a man's coat. You see, we were all leaving church after a lovely fellowship meal. Absent-mindedly, I slipped on my wool, black coat. I'd know that coat anywhere. Gathering up my unruly little brood of boys, I proceeded to try to slip out the door when a kindly man of about sixty or so set his hand on my shoulder. "Excuse me," he said. "I think you're wearing my coat." I looked at him, my thoughts shifting quickly from unbelief to embarassment. I slipped my hands into the pockets searching for the familar rip on the right side. It wasn't there. My hood, that would prove whose coat this really was. But alas, there was no hood either. The truth was crumpled up in his hands. There rested my coat. Quickly, I unbuttoned the coat that I was so sure was mine, and meekly returned it to its rightful owner. Now, I will be forever seared in his memory as the "Sunday-morning coat thief."

So I had a mishap or two or three or twenty this year. They just remind me of Who is really in control and that though I can make a royal mess of things, He is always there taking my ashes and turning them into something beautiful. Oh...what a Savior.