Spiritual Warfare

I saw an article someone one Facebook posted about a pregnant mom in Florida, who drove her minivan with a 10yr old, 7yr old and one more younger child onto the beach and into the ocean. The family was rescued and it was horrible reading the account it made me want to cry and also have a huge heaviness of heart thinking of it and then today one of the men that rescued the kids said the mom looked possessed. It got me thinking about spiritual warfare. It's very real but I can't say I've experienced someone who is or at least someone who is so very clearly acting possessed. Even though I believe that there are demons that possess people it seems foreign or rather unreal at the same time to me. I know though if I was little less sheltered I would probably encounter more of it. It's scary though to think what people can do or will do when under demonic influence. Thankful for the assurance of the Holy Spirit within me. Anyway, I am sure I have more thoughts about this but I am feeling super sleepy….so perhaps I will continue this train of thought later :)

652days

Well just thinking about blogs, thinking about Elias, I was curious how many days exactly it's been since he passed on into Glory, into the arms of Jesus. It's been 1 year, 9 months and 13 days. It is all so fresh in my mind, yet also a live time ago or rather a different life. A day doesn't go by that I don't think about him, gaze at one of his many pictures we have of filling our walls, the one I look at every night before I sleep, feel the sting of threatening tears begin and either win or abate for the time being. I miss you my little love and all the days we didn't get to see you grow in.
I think I want to start blogging again but I really don't want it to be just about family life, a journal or purposeless ramblings :) I was thinking about my facebook account and this blog how I use it, how I follow other people but I've been pretty quiet just observing and also I was thinking about how small my circles of fellowship are these days. The majority of interactions I have with peoples besides my kiddos and random strangers at the grocery store or elderly neighbors are my long distant friends on here/facebook. And I love Jesus and need to think about him more, and read about him more and make his words the center of more of my conversations then they presently are so I guess I am going to steer my blog entries more towards that direction....in the direction of the hope we do not see yet our eternal hope... these entries will probably still be just a sort of journal of family life but perhaps more thoughts and conversations about things that matter most in this life, at least that is my goal. :)

Well, it's been a while I actually started two different posts in the past month but both times never finished writing them for various reasons but I wanted to write down this evening so I don't forget about it.
In our journey through this loss of our sweet Elias. I have made it  a point to keep in mind that the kids are going through this loss of their brother who they adored too. And with that in mind keeping my eyes open for when they might be dealing with the grieving too. They see Judah and I have our moments of tears and grieving sometimes and so far Josiah has had a few moments in the past few months were he is missing Elias or remembering him and the tears come but tonight it was Jaelle. This afternoon I finally got around to start working on memorizing scriptures with the kids, honestly it's been months and yesterday I felt a great urgency to start doing it again and not put it off at all. So this afternoon was actually really great after talking to Judah about where to start I picked Gen 1:1 and John 1:1-5 at the beginning so after working on those verses and talking about them a little bit we read from "the Beginning Reader's Bible" (any one with kids, grandkids, I really really recommend it I believe it's fairly new but it's the only beginner's bible I've come across that isn't a "story bible" but actually takes the scriptures and compiles them into an abridged version but just uses the scriptures to tell the stories and it's illustrated pretty good too!)
We read the first story about creation, worked on helping them to memorize what happened on what day and then Enoch asked how he was made, which then lead to us reading through Psalm 139 and talking about it about how God made us and formed us, how he knows ever single thing about us, what we do, what we think, when we do it, before we do it. How we can never hide from him and that he knows how long each of has to live that He knew how long my first baby living in me had, how many days that baby was going to live inside of me. How many days our friend's three babies had to live inside of her, how many days Elias had to live. He knew all those days and wrote them down in his book before anyone of them came to be. And that God in the beginning when he created the world, when he created man he also planned out and created each one of us.
And Jaelle my sweet girl, was weeping for her brother it was good, good to cry with her to let her know it good, it's okay and right to cry for him when we think of him and miss him.
Anyway nothing spectacular or profound happened it was just one of those moments of sincerity I am glad I didn't miss.

Man, it's been a long hard week. 

We started the week with school starting. I've enrolled the kids in a program that is a "virtual academy" virtual as in we have an assigned teacher that approves our curriculum choice, plan and goals for the school year and has weekly contact with each kid to report progress and lend advice and help if needed. But then all the teaching of the actually curriculum is up to me. 

So from our list of choices we choose the Calvert curriculum and then a few supplemental art  programs for the year. 

Calvert is good where everything is mapped out for me but as all the kids are in different grades with completely different lessons. It's been hard figuring out how to get them all done within the day and not spend 10 to 12 hours each day doing it. (you figure 4 hours each kid plus some for interruptions and all)

Anyway, slowly I am starting to get familiar with how calvert works and how I can effectively teach all the kids together and what I can skip doing and what I need to really do. 

Praying things smooth themselves out and I don't end up hating Calvert all year because I am in this for the school year no backing out or changing the curriculum now that we've started. 

HaHa, but I am already planning out how I want to do it different next year (and we've only been at it a week)

So, by the third day I was a bundle of emotions and spent the next two days miserable at the verge of tears and often spilling over for two days straight :( 

Couldn't sleep, almost fell asleep only to wake up startled from a vivid dream of those moments when Elias first stopped breathing. Ugh, I don't want to stay in those thoughts or dwell on those memory's only leads to tears and gut rot. 

Fri "day" was much better, I had been trying to go up to the cemetery for a few moments for a few days and finally had a chance to go which helped my day. 

I like going up to the cemetery just to be as earthly near Elias as I can. I feel anxious when its been too long in between going, like I need to make sure everything is okay there or something? Not exactly sure why I feel like that,  I know he and the cemetery aren't going anywhere. I think it's partially because it's all I have to take care of Elias still and because it's just comforting to be able to sit there by him. It's not the same way for Judah though so I know it's partially I feel about it. 

So, towards the evening (friday) though I started feeling depressed about it all again and after the kids went to bed and judah went to work I  just shut my brain off vegged in front of the computer watching movies, folded laundry and still went to bed way to late. 

Today the kids and I are going up to see Nate and Marielle play a concert, not excited really to be at a festival with the kids by myself but I haven't actually seen them since the funeral so if I don't go up there today I now it will probably be who knows how long before we see them. We are only two hours from them but I wish it was closer. 

Anyway, not sure how this next week will be. We did monday thru friday but I hope to get us on a mon, tue, wed, thur off, fri, sat, sun off schedule so we can have a day off when Judah has a day off so we shall see if I can make it work. . .

Home again, home again.

Well, we went to North Dakota and back again this past week and a half, actually two weeks ago now. We left on the 31st and got back on the 9th. It was a really good trip, we got to meet my mom and dad and aunt and uncle in Montana for about an hour. They were heading to a family reunion in Canada, we still on our way to ND and it just worked out that we were getting to the same area within a few hours of each other. So we stuck around Billings, MT in almost 100 degree weather but got to see them which was great even if for just an hour!
We got to spend 5 full days with our friends, went fishing, played settlers, got to see Beth and her girls,  went swimming, picked choke cherries, watched the kiddos pair off and play together. Fully enjoyed the freedom of super, super small town life!
We love the LeMoines!
Then we made the journey west again arriving late in the night at our newlywed friends' new apartment . Spent the night and all the next day with them walking around Missoula,  eating some meals together, played Bang! with them and the kids. :)
Then we left that evening and drove through the night getting back home thursday morning around 5:30am.
So then the past few days home have been, mostly uneventful attempting to get back into the swing of things here, I really hate unpacking from long trips!
Elias' gravestone was finished, picked up and set  on his grave while we were gone. On thursday we went to see it, it turned out just right. I am happy with the way it looks but I am hesitant to say I like it, love it, or anything like that just because of what it stands for my baby gone and buried in the dirt underneath that stone and so I hate it too. ;(

Makes it feel even more final then it already is, like it takes a chunk out of the small piece of hope we are fighting to hold on too.
Lately, I feel these little bursts of anger (the type of anger you feel just for a moment, and you want to hit, throw or break something to relieve it). Anger at how stupid it all is and how it's just not right that Elias is gone but my anger does not help anything or change anything so those moments leave me just frustrated and in tears.
So it took us a few days to be sure but while we were gone someone got into our apt. and stole judah's two laptops (his mac and his small pc for school) the thing that is hardest about it all is there are pictures and video's of elias on there that we aren't sure if I have on my computer or if it got transferred to our external hard drive(thankfully they didn't take that or Judah's gun which was also right near where the computer's were in our room) We think someone opened our window crawled in grabbed the computer's and left, the window was closed but we forgot to lock it before we left so they could have opened it from the outside. :( I think I am going to see if the apartment complex will put bars on the window's they do on the other-side of the building for the same apartment on our floor but there has been an increase of theft in our neighborhood lately and I never feel super comfortable leaving the window's open at night because anyone can crawl down through the "yard" between our building and the next and our window is right at ground level.
Definitely doesn't make for easy sleeping at night when judah is working.
Anyway, that is most of what is happening around here lately.

Cleaning House

Not much to say today I have spent the past two days deep cleaning and un-cluttering my living room and dining room as well as laundry and staying on top of the kids room too (not an easy feat but the kids have not put up too much of a fight about cleaning up their stuff so that has helped)!
My house has not been this clean in over a month and it so good to have it so. I notice my heart is happy too when my house is clean.

Judah just came and told me that we finally got a correct proof for Elias' gravestone/memorial marker. It's the third proof we've seen after two wrong ones and a little over 8 weeks long (when we were told it should take a week or two : \ ) now I wonder how long it will take for them to actually engrave the gravestone, ah well after the second wrong proof I gave up any expectations on seeing the gravestone done this summer. So perhaps it will take less time then I expect and will be done sooner rather then later.

Also praying to go visit the great plains of North Dakota next week. . . well, not really the plains but our peoples there :) with a pit stop in the Big Sky Country to visit some newlyweds on our return trip but we still haven't heard yet if Judah has been approved to take the time off of work so I fear if this works for us to go it shall be very very last minute!

Laughter is good medicine.

Today, my tears have been near the top and breaking the surface often. Even in the tears though the day has been full of little joys or moments to bring the laughter out too.

Really the day started yesterday or at least the back story to some of the laughs started yesterday!
All of last week we went to a VBS in kent at CC South, the first church we went too when we first moved out here to WA. It was really good to see friends that we had made the first year out here and hadn't seen (aside from facebook stalking) since moving to Seattle. It was good for me to be at church where people were not avoiding conversation with me because Elias is gone and fear of awkwardness or uncomfortableness.

So yesterday was the last day and although it was good, it made us all extremely worn out and poor Josiah was just a bundle of emotions. So when on the drive home he was all weepy and irritable at his siblings and just overall grumpy and sad, I asked him why he was crying still (after being scolded for teasing Enoch earlier yet was still crying) and come to find out one of his teeth had been knocked loose (by bitting into a chocolate bar) and now he was afraid I was going to pull it out so that thought had him in tears. HaHa :) Once we got home I had completely forgotten about his tooth (probably because all I saw was the junk yard my house had become because of being gone everyday this week and too exhausted to clean in the evenings) much to Josiah's relief until he started talking to Judah about his tooth being loose and I heard him and then I remembered to look at it. Josiah then proceeded to work himself up crying and screeching about how much it was going to hurt and he didn't want me to pull it to the point where he was almost hyperventilating about it. So after giving him the chance to pull it out himself he just spending 10 min. crying and not really trying. I took over and after a few tugs seeing it was super loose but not so loose it was going to just fall out without some tugging. I decided that with all of Josiah's blubbering through that and the fact that I just could not stop laughing at Josiah because his crying was so unnecessary and borderline ridiculous that I would let his tooth alone a few more days. Haha, poor Josiah after that ordeal and once he had calmed himself down he told me thanks for letting him keep his tooth in a bit longer and try and let it fall out on it's own.
So then today as we were about to head out to Sam's Club for grocery's and as it was getting close to lunch time but we were out of bread. I told the kids we would either get some pizza or pick up some hamburger's on the way out for lunch but if they were too hungary to wait they could eat an apple on the way. A few minutes later as we were just about to walk out the door, I see Josiah just standing there by the counter looking like he was about start crying so I asked him what was the matter. He looked at me and said "Well, I broke my tooth." I said, "What? You broke a tooth?? Which one? Come, here and let me see." He opened his mouth and showed me the tooth that was loose and we had tried pulling yesterday it was bleeding around the top and he said again "It's broken." Chuckling I could see he was about to start getting himself all worked up about so I went and grabbed a napkin and said "Okay, come here lets get this over with, open up." and I just barely touched his tooth and it fell out. I showed it to him and he quickly took a deep breath, calmed down and looked very relieved.  Then promptly asked me if he could get three dollars for it. Laughing I told him no and he said, "Two dollars?" Then I told him "No, you can have one." Chuckling again. Then to top all that off a few minutes later as we were still trying to get out the door Josiah stated, "Well, yeah, I will have a hamburger now. I can enjoy now that my tooth is out."

So finally getting out the door I went and got the mail and found a package sent to us by a family who lost a son last year and started a fo by undation called Ayden's Foundation of Hope. The sent us some financial support, a couple of books about grieving (MaryBeth Chapman book + plus Steven C Chapman CD, Angie Smith (wife of Selah vocalist) book + Selah CD) a king james bible, a streams in the desert book, a heaven booklet Randy Alcorn and a sweet note. So reading their story had me in tears. So driving home after the store I was attempting to listen to one of the CD's I know they have very good lyrics but sometime the music is a little too "contemporary christian" if you know what I mean but I wanted to listen to it anyways. As it was also fairly hot out I had all the windows down and the music "loudish" not blaring but still loud. Pulling up to a stoplights a sports car with it's windows rolled down pulled up beside me, there was a hispanic twenty something girl driving and her significant other (boyfriend?, husband?) was reclined in the passenger set and I see him out of the corner of my eye glance back at me with this smirk on his face. My thought instantly was "Yup, what of it, I am loudly listening to slightly cheesy contemporary christian music." and I had to laugh at myself, seeing what this guy probably saw, a white chick, in a white minivan, loaded with kids, Ron Paul sticker on the back, cranking up the contemporary christian music, stereotype!
and then I promptly switched CDs and put back on the Josh Garrels I was listening to before that because I didn't want to roll my window up the rest of the drive home and decided I would listen to the music at home.

Ha ha, oh the things i care about, didn't want to be labeled as one of those people, needed to preserve my hip seattlelite status!

Shared the box with Judah when he woke up and let the tears fall again together for our sweet Elias and    painted these pictures of my day for Judah laughing to together at the funniness of it all.

Later in the evening we put on the extended version of Lord of the Rings (we haven't watched the extended versions before and some friends insisted we needed to borrow them) as the kids and I folded laundry and then right before Judah left he prayed for each of the kids, somewhere in his prayers for them he prayed that they would not be afraid to die. Then a few minutes after he left for work and the movie was just finishing up, Jaelle runs up to me and just bursts into tears and sobs. Once she could control herself a little she told me she was crying because she "missed Elias and I loved him so much and that I am afraid to die and I don't know how to not be afraid to die and even though daddy prayed I would die, I am was still afraid to and I am just thinking about Elias" all in one long continuous stream of chatter between sobs. My thoughts, "what did Judah say to this girl??" LOL, I heard him pray with her but didn't hear what he said and somehow in Jaelle's attempt to explain to me her thoughts, daddy praying she would not be afraid to die turned into daddy prayed I would die, but I am still afraid to die and I don't know how to not be afraid of dying.  All the while Enoch is seeing Jaelle crying and not wanting to be left out, mustered up some tears for Elias saying he was missing him too and now Josiah was in tears too hugging Enoch because I was holding Jaelle. And so after holding her and just letting her cry and then attempting to answer her, we all prayed together and then I sent them all off to bed.
Later, Judah called and I related the latter conversation and he clarified what he had said to her and I just had to laugh. What else can you do? Laughter is good medicine it helps to spill out the raw emotions, relieve the pressure of darkness threatening to drown you. Otherwise I would just be curled up on the floor in a big heap of raw emotions and sobs unable to move or pull myself up, I think.

I then finished a book, watched another movie, stayed up way too late and that ended my day.