Under the Umbrella.

The past couple of weeks have been brutal.  The temperature gauge is soaring and the triple digit heat is making itself quite comfortable around here.  In fact, it has unpacked its bags and I heard it on the phone earlier, making plans for mid September!  The nerve!  Our beautiful green land is quickly browning in the sun and the plants and trees are curling in upon themselves.  They look like they are in pain.  A few days ago, the thought crept in: why did I not flee to the mountain air when I had my chance one year ago?  Why did I allow myself to stay in this place of unbearable Summer heat and dryness?  In the face of obvious providential leading, doubt screams.  It screams and it undermines- taking the goodness of God and attaching it's worth to the painted lines on a thermometer, the drawn elevation lines on a topography map.  Much like a conniving serpent attached it's worth to a piece of dangling fruit at the dawn of humanity.

If He is truly GOOD, He would let you eat that fruit, because you want it!
If He is truly GOOD, He would have led you to cooler air and scenic overlooks, because you want it!  You deserve it, after all, don't you?

Is He more good in Colorado than He is in Oklahoma?  Is He more good in a luxury loft than a forgotten prison cell?

Reason may argue yes, but God Himself tells us no.  His goodness is limited by no circumstance on this earth.  It is FOR us and nothing can raise itself up against it, try as it might.  Not trouble nor hardship nor persecution nor famine nor nakedness nor danger nor sword.  (Romans 8:28, 35-39)

I can not allow myself to do this again.  I can not allow myself to feel soul-dead and angry and miserable from the months of June to September.  It happens every year, and I'm starting to see the immaturity of it... the blatant distrusting of God in it... taking the pleasant from His hand and rejecting anything that smacks of discomfort or displeasure.

I feel the tiniest spark of hope, sitting here at my kitchen table, watching the sprinklers out front as they battle for green.  Everything is brown and crispy, except for where there has been regular water.  HELLO, SOUL! Are you listening?  WATER THYSELF!!  Duh.  I may be dry and weary, but that doesn't mean I can't ask God to show Himself to me- even in this (seemingly) brutal and ridiculous season of heat.

Does Summer teach us what it means to long for something?  To desperately wait for something like the earth waits for the rain?  Is it set-up to teach my self-gratifying soul what it means to actually THIRST?  To experience something in life that has no quick-fix or on/off switch?  Is it meant to draw me to a source of living water- one that isn't dependent upon fleeting clouds- as I watch the ground outside my window crack and split open like a gaping wound?

If it can help me find these things, even in the slightest way, then... God, let it be Summer all year long!  I need all the help I can get in bringing this soul toward maturity and casting off the wavering loyalty of youth.  This soul of mine is far too quick to stomp around its room- longing for mountains and wanting its mommy- the moment things get hard.

Would mountains or mommies finally satisfy this cavernous, aching soul of mine?  Would it bring the rest that it so unceasingly searches for- every day and with every breath?  No. Of course not!  There is only one thing that brings true rest and true satisfaction to a soul, and that is the One who authored it... who called it into being and knit it together in secret places before the world was formed.

I believe that God is in control of every drop of rain and every gust of wind and every shifting of a degree.  I also believe that He is good.  Consequently, I believe that I am in this place, in this season, for a purpose and a reason, and I'm ready to stop grumbling about the heat that comes with it.  I will choose to give thanks in the midst of heat domes and record breaking temperatures and brown overtaking green.  I will lift my eyes UP, and be grateful for the lesson of thirst, knowing the water I truly long for is ALWAYS raining down on me.  All I have to do is put my umbrella away.

"As a deer pants for flowing streams,
  so pants my soul for you, O God.
  My soul thirsts for God,
  for the living God.
  When shall I come and appear before Him?"

(Psalm 42:1-2)

Before & After: The Kitchen!

The first room I am going to show you is the kitchen.  When we first walked into this house, I had a really hard time seeing past this beast.  Luckily for me, however, my husband is a genius-pro-expert at "seeing past the colors" and really catching a vision for a room, even while it still looks like this:

The walls were yellow, the cabinets were red, and the counter tops (which climbed allllll the way up the back splash) were blue!

It needed a fresh coat of paint. On EVERYTHING.

My husband just so happens to be the best painting contractor in town, so he spent a lot of nights up here before we moved in spraying the cabinets and ripping the counter tops OFF OF THE WALLS. heh.

We were on a limited budget so we wanted to make sure we tackled the most important things first. 

The appliances were much newer than anything we'd ever had before, so that was a bonus.  (My previous appliances were older than brontosauruses' mothers!)

Truman didn't seem to mind the circus colors too much.  Oh, the innocence of youth! hahaha.

This may not look like anything too exciting to you, but let me tell you why this is one of my favorite parts of the new house: I can do laundry and still be inside!!! My washer and dryer in the old house were out in the garage.  You know... like where the bugs all lived.

I can now do laundry in a bug-free zone!  It definitely needed a little sprucing up, though.
(yipes!)

My husband worked very hard, and this was our end result:

I'd like to get a colorful rug for the floor in front of the oven in here!

Our neighbor had passed away a couple of months before we moved, and his family was kind enough to share some of his beautiful belongings with us.  This kitchen table was one of them.  We loved him so very much, and the fact that we get to have some of his treasures in our new house means a great deal to us.

We will eventually completely re-do the counter tops and add a fun back splash.

yellow accent explosion!

 

My freshly painted INDOOR laundry area! Squeeeeeeeee!

These large free-standing corner pieces were in the living room at the old house.  They work perfectly in here as kitchen pieces, I think!

Knick knacks for dayzzz.

 

I love my cozy kitchen!

More rooms to come soon! :)

In Hope of a New Day : Epilogue.

"The Celebration"

 Hello darlings.

I said I'd be back in a few days and it turned into a few weeks, and for that I apologize.

Things have been... batpoop crazy.  In greatly magnificent and also gut-wrenchingly low sorts of ways.  You understand how it goes...  The culmination of moving + summer break + husband working all hours for a few weeks + being out in the country + packing & unpacking all on my own + turning THIRTY = many many many weepy meltdowns for this here mama.

The "end-in-sight" for all of this chaos was the big giant birthday/housewarming/barn dance party bash that we had planned for this past weekend.  Both Chris and I felt like this party was going to be the exclamation point at the very end of this incredible one year journey we've been on... the one I recently told in eleven chapter installments here.

If you'll recall, I mentioned in the last chapter of that series how two friends in different parts of the country had dreams on the same night about a birthday/housewarming party for me that was being thrown in a barn.  Little did I know then that my husband had already been scheming just such a party, even though the house with the barn wouldn't officially be ours for another few weeks.  My friend Kathryn had told me that in her dream, I had been wearing a yellow dress.

Allow me to pick up the story where I left off a few weeks ago...

I hunted for that darn yellow dress for MONTHS.  I ordered a couple different ones, but they just weren't "it", so I sent them back.  I was starting to get frustrated and give up hope, when one night my husband and I got away for a bit and ended up wandering around in a thrift store right before they were closing.  I was in the middle of telling Chris about how Ezra (my seven-year-old) had told me earlier that morning that he had been praying that I would find my yellow dress, because he knew it was important to me and that I hadn't been able to find it yet.

As I was telling Chris this sweet story in the thrift store that night, I had casually leaned up against a rack while I was talking to him.  When I turned back around to keep looking at the clothes, I let out a little gasp.  My had was resting right on top of a YELLOW DRESS!  And not only any yellow dress, THE yellow dress!  I knew it instantly.

We bought it and brought it home, and kept planning for the big birthday bash that would be taking place a couple of weeks after that.  Chris' sister was going to fly in from Reno to be here for my birthday party, and so were two of my dear friends from Denver.  We wanted everyone to be able to come out to the new house out in the country and celebrate and commemorate all that God had done in our lives.  In the two weeks before the party, however, life got really hard, as it often times will.  Chris was working himself into the ground, and yet the bills were piling up from endless unexpected expenses.  I was barely making it through the days with the boys because I was feeling so overwhelmed.  There were still a million things to do to the house to make it "perfect" and no time to get to them all.  A few nights before the party, Chris and I found ourselves sitting across from each other, talking about the possibility of calling the whole thing off or at least postponing it for a while.  We were at the end of our ropes and so bummed out.

But something deep down in our guts told us to hold on.  Something told us to fight for the celebration that GOD himself had set in motion all those months ago.  We just knew that we couldn't call it off... just because things suddenly felt so difficult! Not after all the dreams and joys and miracles we'd seen!  We were going to FIGHT for this party as if our lives depended upon it, and that is exactly what we did.  Over the next few days, both of us experienced an inexplicable increase in energy and strength and we were able to pull together and make everything happen that needed to happen.  We both knew this was going to be a very important night for us, and the expectation was building with every passing day.

July 13th finally came.  My two friends from Denver pulled up to the house in a rental car and proceeded to pull 30 giant yellow balloons out of the backseat.  Things were starting with a bang! Literally. Because I popped a couple of them trying to get them in the front door.  haha.

 

My sister-in-law, Candace, and my friends from Denver, Courtney & Rebecca, all pulled together with Chris and I and helped us get everything set up for the party.  They made a big vat of yummy sangria and helped me decorate and made the whole day completely joyful and fun.  We could NOT have done it without their help!

The time came for me to get all dolled-up.  I was excited to slip into my yellow dress and put the fascinator in my hair that I had ordered from ModCloth for the occasion. :)

Ta-da!!

We all took some goofy pictures in front of the fireplace before the guests started arriving, because, well... because we are so very awesome! hehe.

People started to arrive and we chatted and showed them around the house and ate yummy treats and it was a wonderful time.  The one thing that was weighing on my heart was the fact that it was such a blaring-hot day outside.  I had been praying for months that God would do a miracle and make it some freakishly cool day in mid-July for the party so that we could all be cool enough to dance in the barn and roam outside and enjoy the gorgeous property.  All that day it had been HOT, and there was nothing in the forecast indicating that it would cool down at all that evening.  I tried to resign myself to the fact.

But, wouldn't you know it, right before sunset, some clouds started building to the North of us, and a cool breeze started blowing through the trees!  We could see lightning far off in the distance and felt a few tiny drops of rain.  The temperature dropped significantly, and the clouds created the most spectacular sunset for all of us to enjoy.  It was the most amazing thing!!!!  I was jumping up and down for joy and every fiber of my being was praising God for answering that prayer of mine.  I couldn't believe it!

Chris had worked so hard the night before getting the barn all decorated and ready for the big dance party.  He hung up Christmas lights and organized all of his work stuff and set up make-shift tables and got some tiki torches in place.  The end result was absolutely magical.

More people started to show up, and Chris gathered everyone together to tell them how thankful we were that they were here to celebrate such a special time with us, and he showered me with love in front of all of my friends, making me blush and giggle and snort with love and gratitude.  I have never felt so loved and cherished as I did on this night, surrounded by the people I love so dearly.  It was the best birthday party in the history of ever.

Once the sun went down, the dancing started.  And it. was. EPIC. 

My husband DJ-ed the evening and everyone was dancing like crazy.  We were hot and sweaty and loving every minute of it!  I felt the joy of God and His pleasure on us as we jumped around like crazy people and allowed ourselves to cut loose and really celebrate all He'd done!  It was amazing and I will never forget it.

When I got too hot, I changed into another dress I had on hand that was a bit more airy and easy to dance in. :)  At the end of the crazy dancing, Chris had everyone sing happy birthday to me, and I felt like the luckiest girl in the world to have such friends and family as these.

To end the night properly, we put on some sigur ros and got ready to launch some hugenormous fireworks into the sky.  It felt so surreal, seeing those explosions of color over my head, and knowing that every detail of this celebration had been orchestrated by a God who loves me so.

That night, after everything was mostly tidied up and I finally fell into my bed after 1AM, I could not fall asleep because of the giant smile on my face.  And traces of that smile are still lingering on my face even as I type this. It was the best night of my life, aside from the night that I finally got to marry Christopher Clark.  :)  A huge THANK YOU to all who came and joined us, to Rebecca and Courtney who came all the way from denver to be a part, to my sweet sister Candace for making the whole week special, and to my husband who worked tirelessly to pull everything together... just so I could feel like the most special girl on the earth for a night.  And, oh!  I did!!!  God is so good for allowing me to have such a closing chapter on a story that began 365 days before this night, and I hope and pray that HE gets all the glory for bringing my family & I into this amazing new day.  May He bring all of you who've reached out to me over the past few months with similar feelings of stirring and restlessness into your new days as well!  Thank you so much again for reading along and being a part of the past year of our lives!

***********************************************

ps. the before & after pics of the house will be up soooooon! woo hoo!  :)

Movin' to the Country, Gonna Eat a Lot of Peaches.

We are officially moved in to our sweet country abode as of Saturday, and I've got pretty much everything unpacked, for the most part! The move was completely smooth and seamless thanks to the help of our wonderful friends and neighbors. We had everything loaded and unloaded up here by 11:00 AM, and once again I am reminded of how sweet community is, and how necessary it is when life gets a bit...chaotic. We could not have done it without their help!!

I will definitely be posting all the amazing before & after transformations that have taken place up here over the last couple of months, as well as pictures of all the rooms as they get all put together, but I need to wait until our Internet gets all hooked up- which should be in the next few days.

The boys and I have been having a blast discovering all of the new and wonderful things about this place. We've found lots of cute turtles and a tiny litter of newborn kittens were born under our deck a couple of days ago. We've also discovered a peach tree and a cherry tree growing right next to the driveway that leads back to the barn! What a blast!!

Although... to be fair... last night I was sitting in the living room relaxing, and when I stood up I saw a scorpion that was only inches from where I'd been sitting. Its tail was up and its claws we're out and it was swaying side to side like a horrible, tiny little satan monster. I think i even heard it deny the cross! I died from fear and then spent the next hour trying to relocate it so that I could smash it to bits with a microphone stand. That was... not so much great. Hahaha.

It is so calm and peaceful out here (apart from the attempted scorpion attacks, of course), and I can already feel myself getting all claustrophobic whenever I have to drive back in to town. It's amazing how quickly one's perspective on things can change. I grew up out in a more rural area, so this new home of ours feels like stumbling upon a long lost friend. We are so grateful to be here!

Much more to come soon! xoxoxo

When the Storm Hit.

My family and I went through a traumatic experience a couple of nights ago, and I'm feeling the need to write it out... to get it off of my chest so that I can breathe again.  I honestly feel like I've been walking around in shock for the last 48 hours- like my body is going through the everyday motions while my heart is wandering somewhere very far away.  I've felt completely detached from reality, and strangely lonely.  I need to try and reattach myself so that I can get back to focusing on the monumental task in front of me-- packing up my entire house before Saturday while somehow still caring for and managing my three boys all day long.  I wish my mommy lived nearby.  I feel like I just... need her.  I need someone to help me and take care of me and make me a cup of tea so that I can have a moment to process what happened to us... grapple with the shock... and process the fact that we're moving away in two days... but I just haven't been able to find the time or space to do that yet.  Things have been crazy busy and really really difficult these past couple of weeks.  I've been at the end of myself for days now.  I know writing this story will help me to get it all out and begin to move forward.  NOW is not the time to have my mind and heart wandering off in lonely fields.  I need the whole team here, because this house is not going to move itself!  I've got to do it.  I've got to get it together, or I fear everything is going to fall apart.

*********************************

On Tuesday afternoon, I picked up Ezra from school and I took all the boys up North to the new house.  My husband was already up there, painting the hallway, so we thought we would do dinner out there and go for a nice stroll around the neighborhood before heading back into the city to put the boys to bed.  Ezra only had a couple days of school left, and needed to catch up on some sleep after the long, tiring weekend we'd had.

It was a beautiful evening.  After dinner, we noticed the sky clouding up a bit.  They had only been calling for a slight chance of rain, last I'd heard, so we checked the radar on our phones.  Storms were building and approaching the new house.  The weather report broke in over the radio and said there was a threat of large hail.  We had no TV at the house, so we were unable to see exactly what was going on, and we felt a little bit in the dark.  We haven't fully moved up to the new house yet, so half of our stuff is there, while the other half, including our TV and storm radio, are down at the old house still.

I felt... uneasy.  With any severe thunderstorms this time of year, tornadoes are possible.  We have a tornado shelter at the new house as well as the old house, so we would have been safe at either place, but I felt my mama-bear instincts kick into gear, and I just wanted to be where we could be by a TV... where we could see & hear exactly what was going on.  Our phone's radar images were not cutting it... half the time they wouldn't refresh and it was hard to tell what was really happening.

What was really happening was this, an extremely rare weather event.  A severe storm was approaching the metro area from the North (up by where we were at the new house), but there was also ANOTHER severe storm approaching the city from the SOUTH.  They were going to meet directly over the area of town where our old house is.





The storms seemed to be moving very slowly (looking back now, maybe the weather app on our phone was not updating properly?) and so we had the decision to make whether to hunker down at the new house, without anyway of knowing what was coming at us, or make a break for the old house, where we could be in our shelter AND have a TV and weather radio on hand.

I made the final call.  We grabbed the boys, threw them in the car, with my husband following us in the truck, and we sped off for our old house, thinking we could beat the storms before they merged together and all hell broke loose.

This is the part of the story where I just want to go back in time and slap myself across the face.  What was I thinking?  I know I just wanted to be back in what was familiar... where I knew I could keep my little ones safe... but the risk in getting them back to their comfort zone was far too great.  Hindsight is 20/20.  The storms had sprung up so suddenly and unexpectedly... our decision was rushed and we made the wrong choice.

We sped back towards the city and as we got down the road a-ways, I could see the blackness of one storm to my left and the blackness of the other to my right.  There was a small patch of blue sky almost directly over our heads, so I kept telling my boys to keep their eyes on that patch of blue and pray.

The blue patch disappeared very quickly. And the the sky turned a putrid green.  I felt sick to my stomach, but tried to keep a brave face on for my boys.  We were about halfway home.

As I stopped at a red light next to a Walgreens, the tornado sirens started going off.  They were very loud, and the boys started to cry and scream.  I was on the phone with my husband... panicking at this point and crying... quietly, so as not to freak the boys out even more.  The hail started to fall on top of the car and it was deafening.  As I started to go again after the light turned green, my husband told me we needed to flip around, do a U-turn, and head back to the Walgreens we had just passed.  His windshield wipers had stopped working and he could not see.  There was no way we were going to make it home.

Completely panicked and shaking, I flipped a U-turn and stopped again at the same red light.  I was still on the phone with Chris and the boys were screaming and I couldn't feel my feet and suddenly I heard my husband, saying something like "Oh no! I'm gonna hit...."

CRUNCH.

My phone went flying.  I felt hot pain up my back.  His truck had completely locked up and slid into our car.

Now the boys were beyond hysterical.  Looking back, I think Ezra thought it was a tornado that had caused our car to crunch and jolt.  I tried to calm them all down, all the while wondering if a tornado was bearing down on top of us that very second.  I could not see anything.  I had no idea what was going on. The light finally turned green and I floored it into the Walgreens parking lot.  The employees were just shutting up the doors... bolting them against the storm and the hail.

Without even turning off the car, I gathered up the screaming kids, Chris grabbed Truman in his car seat, and we ran for the door.  When we got inside, soaked to the bone, pelted with hail, the employees looked just as scared as we were.

"Is there a TV?!",  I yelled.  "Where is your TV?!"

A young guy pointed to the back office, where another employee was hooking up a mini-DVD player to a tiny little antenna so he could get the local news channel.

Looking back now, this was a total providence from God, this little set-up they had, because a few moments later, all of the power in the store cut out.  It was pitch black.

"Where is your safe-spot?", I asked, nearly out of my mind with fear, clutching Myer and Ezra, who were beside themselves.

A lady led us to a large walk-in refrigerator in the back of the store.  We slunk inside, wet to the bone and shivering. Chris grabbed some towels off of the shelves in the darkened store and wrapped us up in them. In my mind, at this point, I was picturing all of the worst-case scenarios.  I pictured myself shielding my boys with my own skin, praying the earth would swallow us up as a tornado ripped apart everything above and around us.  I pictured the way it would sound in my ears... the screams and the wrenching of it all.  I pictured my life being forever changed, or forever ended.

But for now, everything was calm.  The sound of the hail was deadened by the metal walls of the refrigerator, and all I could see were cases of soda being lit up by the beams of a couple of shaking flashlights.  Chris kept his eye on the battery-powered TV in the office.  There was a tornado on the ground, but it was not near us.  There were reports of 6-inch hailstones.  Straight-line winds of 80mph were knocking over power lines and causing power-flashes around the city.  Car windows and house windows were shattering alarms were going off everywhere.  Lightning strikes were causing fires around the city.

We sat in this state of terrifying unknowns for an hour.  More storms were building behind the first ones, which had met right over our old house and twisted around each other like a tiny hurricane.  Should we head for home before another wave came?  Should we stay put and risk not being able to get underground, where we'd be sure to be safe?  The mama-bear in me was frantic for home.  I felt like a wild animal... I had to get home or I felt I was going to die.  My husband wisely decided we needed to wait a little while longer, to be sure we would be okay, before we tried to move again.

The storms finally started to weaken, and we decided to make a break for it.  We had no idea if we'd even be able to get home due to power lines and trees down everywhere, but it was late and dark and we needed to try.  We loaded up the boys, who had become very calm and quiet over the last hour, and who were being brave little champions, while their mommy felt like jello inside.

We cautiously made our way home.  It was dark, so we couldn't see all the damage, but we caught glimpses of it in our headlights.  All the street lights and traffic lights were out.

We finally made it home.  Our neighborhood looked like the apocalypse.  The streets were covered in branches and leaves.  Car windows and house windows were busted out everywhere.  Our neighbors were taking shelter over at our house because they knew we weren't at home that evening and the shelter was free.  We all began to share our stories of the evening, as the kids huddled together in the living room and we vacuumed up all of the broken glass from the carpets.

Our house took a major pounding.  The wood siding has big holes in it.  Chunks of our fence were broken clean off.  The glass patio table shattered into a million pieces, and the hail stones had broken through both the storm windows and the screen and the interior windows of the boys' room and left debris and rain and broken shards everywhere.

But we were safe.

(the neighbor's house) 

As the adrenaline started to wear off and we finally tucked our boys safely into our bed, I became aware of the shooting back pain I was having.  The whiplash from the collision had done a number on me, but thankfully all of the boys were unharmed.  The pain has been easing up quite a bit over the last 48 hours, and for that I am grateful.

We will never ever attempt to drive in a severe storm ever again.  Lesson learned.  And I beg of all of you fellow Midwesterners to remember this story and follow suit when faced with the same decision.  Stay put!  Hunker down!  It's not worth the risk of being stuck in your car when things get scary.

Now we begin the process of cleaning up and moving to the new house (which, thankfully, had no damage) and trying to heal from the memory of that night.  I have felt very frail the last couple of days, but writing this all out and diving back down into the memory, painful as it may have been, has been helpful.

So, thank you all for listening.  You are good medicine.  :)

In Hope of A New Day: Chapter Eleven.

"Two Dreams and a Dress"

On March 19th, my friend Kathryn emailed me to tell me that she had had a dream about me. I haven't seen Kathryn in years, ever since they moved out of the area, so I was very curious as to what it might have been about. This was what she told me:

I wanted to share a dream that I had last week, and hope that you will find it encouraging... Your husband was throwing you a birthday party. Everyone had gathered in an old barn and it was beautifully decorated. You were in yellow.
You stepped out for a moment to the parking area. Everyone began to sing "Happy Birthday" and there were so many people and so many voices that you could clearly hear them from the far side of the parking area. I'm not sure about all of the details, maybe they will mean something to you. I am sure that God wants to let you know that you are loved, cherished, and celebrated by MANY people. I hope that this encourages you!

I thought the dream was very encouraging and sweet and so I told my husband about it later that morning. As I was telling him about the details, he got this frozen look on his face... like he was completely shocked.

TURNS OUT, Chris was planning on throwing me a big 30th birthday/housewarming party in the BARN, which he wanted to decorate to make it look cozy and cool, and he was going to invite all of my friends. He hadn't wanted to tell me about it because, well, technically the house wasn't even OURS yet. But he was already scheming and dreaming up the details because he had so much faith that the house would be ours, thanks to all of the confirmation we'd had from God about the place.

I was completely baffled. God had given a dream to a friend in another part of the country about a birthday party in a barn when my husband had been planning to throw me my 30th birthday party in a barn!?! I felt like it was just more sweetness from God- reassuring me that the house would indeed be ours in a couple of weeks, and that He had big plans to CELEBRATE with us when it was all said and done. We were meant to close on the house on April 2nd, and my birthday wasn't until the beginning of July. We wouldn't have to be out of our old house until the end of June, so this would give us THREE WHOLE MONTHS to slowly move our stuff and work on the house and get everything ready before the big kick-off party in July. Could the timing of all of this worked out any better?

No. No it couldn't have.

If all of this was not amazing enough, a couple of days later I got a text from a friend. It was from my bestest friend from back home, Rebecca. Rebecca lives in Denver now, and I only get to see her once every couple of years. She told me that she had had a dream about me a couple of nights before... probably on the exact same night that Kathryn had had her dream. She said she dreamt that she came to Oklahoma to celebrate with me, but it wasn't clear what we were celebrating. She said she thought it was possibly a birthday/housewarming party, and it was held in some kind of a dark warehouse room, possibly a barn, and it was all decked out with candles and art and rugs. She said that all of my family and friends were there, celebrating my life with me.

You can imagine my reaction to this text. It included a lot of exclamation points, I will tell you that much.

This was just too crazy to be true. But it was true. Absolutely, undeniably TRUE. Two of my friends had pretty much the exact same dream on the same night about a birthday/housewarming party in a BARN, while my husband had been planning a birthday/housewarming party in the barn of the house we were trying to buy. Now there were only two things left to do:

1. Plan this epic party, to celebrate all that God had done.

and

2. Start looking for a yellow dress. :)

I will admit, that was one of the FIRST things that came to mind after learning about these two dreams and this party. I mean, you all know what makes me tick, right? I love fashion. I don't really know why I am this way, but it has been this way for as long as I can remember. When I was in high school, one of my favorite past times was digging through dirty thrift stores (waaaay before they were cool) to find that perfect vintage t-shirt to pair with those perfect vintage men's polyester trousers. I love quirky, interesting, fun, and unique fashion. But I have a veeeery hard time paying more than $7.00 for something. If I can't buy it at a thrift store, I probably won't buy it. I just don't like spending money on myself. At ALL. (This drives my husband a bit batty sometimes, lemme tell you.)

But this... this was a special occasion. I just had to find a yellow dress! And it just had to be... the dress! This may sound really silly, but I started praying right away that God would help me get a new dress for this epic barn party we were going to be throwing for my 30th birthday. (You know...IF we got the house and all...) Every time I was in a thrift store after that, I would scour the racks for THE yellow dress.

I searched for weeks. And I prayed for weeks. But I just couldn't find it! I started telling myself that I was just being silly, and that I should just be practical and plan to wear something that I already had hanging in my closet. It didn't HAVE to be yellow, after all. If I wore a green dress or a blue dress, the party would still be just as amazing and significant... right?




*************************************************************

On April 2nd, Chris and I drove up to the escrow office, signed a ma-jillion papers, and left with the keys to our new house.

 It was an emotional experience and an emotional day. After all of those weeks of faith and doubt, elation and despair, dreams and fears... the house was officially OURS!! We drove up there right away and toasted the future with a glass of champagne while watching our boys run like wild things through the yard and back field. Standing there, looking out at our new land, we felt completely humbled and awe-struck. Why had God chosen to bring us on such an amazing journey, and bless us in such a way? Who were we to receive such abundant goodness? Why had God done such a thing for a grumbling Israelite like me?

It felt like holy ground.

It felt like a dream come true.

It felt like a New Day.

Our desire is to freely share this place we've been given, and we're praying that it will be a blessing to others as it has been a blessing to us.  And before we've even moved in, we've already been able to host a military wedding and have a family camp out/worship night with some good friends!

This place is going to be AWESOME.



*************************************************************

I started writing out this story on that very day that we closed on the house. I knew from the beginning of all of this that God was asking me to tell this story, to write it all out... to record and preserve the blessings that He had poured out on us so that others might be encouraged as well. A few weeks after I started writing it all down here, I got another surprising email. I had not told a single soul about my secret hunt for the perfect yellow dress, but I had told God. The surprising email was from Modcloth.com, my absolute most favoritest online clothing shop in the whole world, and it was letting me know that someone had sent me a giftcard for their store! It was from a friend named Haley, whom I've only met once in real life, but whose photography I have admired from afar for a very long time. She told me she'd discovered a credit on one of her accounts, and wanted to find a way to spend it so she could close it out. She clicked over to Facebook, saw the latest chapter that I'd posted about the house out in the country (which happened to have a modcloth advertisement posted right next to it at the time), just knew I'd need a fun dress for my upcoming country excursions, and bought me a gift card! I was so shocked and I could NOT stop laughing! My yellow dress that I had been hoping and praying for had just arrived in my inbox. (I have yet to find it and order it, but I'm on the lookout!)

I had a moment, after seeing such a seemingly silly little prayer answered in such a way, where I truly believed for the first time in my life, that God... sees me. Me! Emery Josephine Clark. He really does know my heart. He really does know what makes me smile. He really does want to draw that smile out of me and He LOVES to hear me laugh.

And you know what? He sees you too. He knows you. He longs to bless you and pour out His love on you as well. He is the same God. He does not change. He shows no partiality (Acts 10:34-35). Anyone who fears Him and believes in Him has bold access to Him. Ask for more! Read His word and ask for His grace to help you obey it! Be attentive to His voice... in your mind, in your dreams, deep down in your gut, in the pages of your Bible, and through the people He has placed around you.

The close of this story is all set to take place on July 13th, when we will dance and celebrate all the things God has done at the party that He Himself has planned. :) This will be EXACTLY one year from the start of this journey, when the restlessness poured out of me and my husband and I started asking for a new day, around the time of my birthday last year.

What a year it has been!!

I keep coming back to that dream Chris had of my blog, with the picture of my old childhood neighborhood at the top and title of "In Hope of a New Day" written bold above it. The more I dig into this story and write it all out, the more powerful that dream of his has become to me. I grew up on a street called Wintergreen. This new house is on a street called Evergreen. And when I first went out to the new property, I couldn't stop remarking about how much it felt like my childhood home. It felt like... home!! Which is what I've realized I was truly longing for this whole time!  God took me on this journey to show me that He is my home, and to strengthen my faith and security in that fact. But then, in His great goodness and mercy, He was kind enough to lead me to a place that truly felt like the home I had been longing for for my family to grow and thrive on all along! Only He could find such a way to take an old longing and turn it into something new... merging my old days with my new days in such a creative and unexpected way.

The God we serve is sovereign over all things.

And so, with tears streaming down my face, I thank Him from the bottom of my heart. And I thank you all as well for reading along and encouraging me as I've recounted this story of the past year of my life. I pray that it will strengthen and encourage you, and that the God of all Hope would begin to fill you afresh with the belief that He is powerful, that He cares for You, and that He will never stop fighting for your heart.

the end.