As I was considering today’s question, I gave thought to how much I am enjoying this way of getting to know you.  Thanks for letting me be a part of your lives.  Thank you for being a part of mine.

After reading Jayme’s post here and being very challenged by it to make the most of every five minutes of my life…I decided to ask you this:

In your opinion, what do you think is a big waste of five minutes?

It seems that time just stopped for a few days as we were out of town with family and dealing with the news of my cousin’s deaths.  I have no idea what day this is…and I’m not sure what’s for lunch.

While we were gone, two of the clocks in our house actually stopped.  Weird. 

And yet, time did not stop.  Life goes on…even when you’re in the midst of tragedy and grief and you feel like everything else needs to stop and wait for you to catch up.

So we’re back home now, and reality is setting back in.  

Because we left in such a rush on Saturday…there were a few things that normally we would have taken care of  before leaving for a trip that just didn’t get done. 

As a result, we came home to a stinky house.  :)  Somehow there was wet laundry that had gotten put into a pile in the bathroom…and we all know what wadded up wet laundry does in the course of five days.  And…the dishes in the sink had begun to grow fuzz…which of course added to the stinky house situation.  And…there’s just a lot of moisture in the air from all the rain and humidity…so everything just feels heavy and wet…and stinky.

So, today…I’m working to de-stink my house.  Several loads of laundry and a few open windows later…things are starting to smell better.  (Oh, and I handed my boys the toilet brush!)

The lawn looked like we’d moved away for good….with it’s 3,457,982 dandilions and only 12 blades of grass….all long enough to clog the mower.  Sheesh. 

But we also came home to this:

And it proved to me in a joyful way that indeed, life does go on.  And for those of us remaining on this earth, God will continue to bring about changes and death and new life. 

He is real.  He is unchanging.  He is steadfast.  And because of Him…life goes on.

It’s funny how great and how horrible you can feel at the very same time.

I’ve noticed that irony every time I go through something difficult.  At the same time you can be experiencing something so hard you think your heart is going to explode with sadness, you can experience a joy and comfort and love so intense you can hardly keep yourself from shouting out to God!

I love how God does this for his people.  How He offers the same level of comfort to match the level of dispair you are feeling. 

As we celebrated the lives of my cousins during their funeral yesterday, I was so struck by the mixture of pain and joy.  As a congregation, we sang several songs focused on heaven and God’s promises.  How amazing to be able to worship the God who feels our pain with us and is loving us through it during the time we are grieving and sad and angry and falling apart. 

As we sang “Blessed Be the Name of the Lord” together, I was struck by the power of the song:

Blessed be your name
In the land that is plentiful
Where the streams of abundance flow
Blessed be your name

Blessed be your name
When I’m found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed be your name

Every blessing you pour out,
I turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say…
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your glorious name

Blessed be your name
When the sun’s shining down on me
When the world’s all as it should be
Blessed be your name

Blessed be your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there’s pain in the offering
Blessed be your name

Every blessing you pour out,
I turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say…
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your glorious name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, Blessed be your name

Though we’ll all have times in our lives when we are walking through the desert and the darkness is closing in…we can praise God…because He is so good.  No matter what we are going through, God’s goodness is just so, so good.

Thank you all so much for your prayers, love and encouragement during this difficult time for my family.  The most wonderful part of this awful tragedy was how our family was all brought together.  It was an incredible blessing to be surrounded by so many of the people we love.

And although God chose to take Gary and Kim from us now..we bless His name.  He is so good.

As we’ve struggled through the last several days, suffering with grief and unbelief over the sudden death of my cousins, we’ve been faced with so many decisions. 

It’s amazing how difficult it can be to even think rationally, much less make a good decision, when your mind is really elsewhere.  And we didn’t even have to make the really difficult decisions about where to bury my cousins or what the service should be like.  I can’t even imagine the difficulty of those decisions for all of the immediate family.  I know God is just giving them strength beyond belief right now.

Matt and I were simply struggling with the decision of staying for the funeral or not.  Even though there really wasn’t a decision to be made (I mean, of course we should stay)…there were several days between my cousins’ deaths and the day of the funeral.  That ended up being a lot of missed days of work for Matt, not to mention all of the other loose ends that hadn’t been tied up before we left home in such a rush.  Could we handle it financially?  Should we go home so he could work a day and a half, and then come back?  (With these gas prices?!) 

We originally assumed that the funeral would be in Colorado where the couple had been living, so we didn’t think it would really be an option for us to go.  It was then decided to bury them here in Kansas.  As we wrestled back and forth with our decision to stay, someone finally said,

“Laura, how will you feel about your decision a few years from now?  When you look back on this time and think about how you went home and missed the funeral…or about how you stayed and were surrounded by family…what will you feel?”

Mm.  What is three days of missed work in the big picture?  Isn’t God going to just totally take care of us anyway?  Isn’t family more important?  Wouldn’t we for sure look back with regret that we felt like we just couldn’t stay away from home any longer?  What’s really important?  (Probably not the over-due library book waiting for me at home.)

I was really grateful for the wise words about making a decision.  I plan on remembering that for many decisions of my future.  Even the small ones. 

Step back from the situation and ask yourself, “How will I feel about this decision in a few years?  Will I have regrets?  Will I feel like I did the right thing?  What is truly important?”

If I’ve learned anything in the past few days, it’s that life is short…and can end unexpectedly.  Our life is a vapor.   This world is not our home.

It is just so important to focus on what really matters.
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More Works for me Wednesday here.

 On Friday night, my cousin Gary and his wife Kim were driving from Colorado to Kansas to be with family.  Only about an hour from their destination, they were caught in a tornado and killed.

They had been so excited about this trip.  It would have been the first time they were to meet their newest nephew.  I’ve been reading on Kim’s and her sister-in-law’s blogs for the past several weeks about how excited all of them were to get together to see the baby and have a “sister lunch”.  Kim, Jayme, Sally and Crystal all have had wonderful relationships and loved being together. 

Gary and Kim had been married just over one year.  They were absolutely perfect for each other and absolutely in love.

Both Gary and Kim loved the Lord and followed Him.  Thank you God, thank you God, they are with Jesus now.

Gary worked as a chef at a Boy’s Ranch in CO.  His dad, my uncle, used to tease that Gary and I had the same career…we both cooked all day for a bunch of boys! 

You probably have met Kim here on my blog, but you would have known her as Suezque.  She visited here and left comments all the time.  She was a regular poster with Gratituesday.  She was one of my biggest fans.  I always loved hearing from her.  I wonder how long until I stop watching for Suezque’s comments. 

Kim was working to begin her own website called http://suezqueathome.com/blog.  Her goal with her site was to encourage young married women as they worked to keep a home and work outside the home as well.  She emailed me often with ideas…and mostly just with her excitement over beginning her own site.   While I was wrestling with disbelief that this tragedy had happened, I went to her Suezque @ Home site to just try to be with her one more time.  It was then that I realized that truly, she is now at home and it gave the name of her site new meaning.  And I praised God.

I have many, many things I am so grateful for this Gratituesday.

I’m grateful to you and for your prayers.  I am comforted by you.

I’m grateful for my husband.  When I got the phone call, he was home with me.  When we were trying to figure out if we should go to KS to be with everyone and I said, “Matt, I don’t think I can stay away.  I need to go.”  He just said, “Okay” and started packing.

I’m so grateful to be surrounded by family…to be able to hold people and weep with them.  I needed to be here.

I’m grateful for blogging…as it brought all of the sisters closer, and helped me to get to know all of them so much better too.  I loved being able to get to know Kim.  And to get to know Gary better because of Kim.

I’m grateful for Marie and the friendship she had with Kim.  Marie, I know you miss her so much. 

I’m grateful for loving people and for how they have cared for the family during this time.  I love watching how people have just stepped up everywhere and taken care of everything from casseroles to toilet paper.

I’m grateful for the life of Gary and Kim.  God brought them together and they completed one another.  Their love and joy for each other and for God was evident as they served Him together. 

And now, they are truly experiencing life.  The life we all long for.  The life we are given hope for because of Jesus. 

I thank God for life.  Life lived for him on this earth and life lived with Him in Heaven.  Oh how much we all have to look forward to in Him!
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Experiencing death of loved ones makes you realize how much we should all be appreciating the little things.  I’d love it if you’d share with us.  Please leave a comment or link up to let us know how God is working in your life.  God is so good.
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We received a phone call this morning to let us know that my cousin and his wife were killed tragically in an accident last night.  It’s amazing how something like this can put life into perspective.

We quickly left and headed to Kansas to be with our family.

I won’t be posting for a couple of days, but I wanted to request your prayers.  I’ll resume posts on Monday night with Gratituesday. 

Certainly, even during sadness and tragedy…there is much to be grateful for. 

God is good.

I KNOW I told you that I’d show you my freezers and refrigerator this time…but my Azure Standard food co-op order came in this week.  Don’t you want to see what I got?!

But first let’s review…

Nerd information about Laura #1:  Laura loves jars.  Like crazy.

Now…

Nerd information about Laura #2:  Laura loves to pull out everything from her Azure order boxes and lay everything out on the counter…and then just look at it for many, many minutes.

…and when she’s finally satisfied after a long time of staring at her groceries, Laura will slowly put everything into smaller containers (like JARS!) and put everything where it goes.

…but she’s such a nerd about it that she really doesn’t want anyone to help her because she has a system and she really just has so much fun with putting it all away and looking at it all, that having helpers would just sort of ruin the fun.

(There, now I’m done talking about myself in third person.  )

This time, after I laid my order out on the counter, I took a picture for you (just in case you wanted to stare at it for several minutes too).

Here’s what I got this month:
Natural Value plastic bags (a safe plastic…on sale this month), 5 pounds frozen peas, 4 oz. cumin, 5 pounds Landmark raw white cheddar cheese, 2 jars Natural Value peanut butter, 2 pounds raw cashews, 1 pound fresh leeks, 5 pounds carrots, 5 pounds oranges, 5 pounds pinto beans, 5 pounds cocoa (think of all the brownies I can make!), Braggs apple cider vinegar.

Not pictured:
25 pounds Redmonds real salt, 10 pounds frozen strawberries, 3 boxes Julies ice cream sandwiches (a total splurge…one that made my kids cheer all the way home), case of 12 big bags of Kettle brand organic blue corn chips(I highly recommend these chips…they are YUMMY, and are priced VERY REASONABLY.  Even though they don’t give us much in the way of nutrition, they are at least a decent chip.)

My total for all this food was $237.49.

Sound like a lot?  Maybe.  However, this is the bulk of my grocery spending for the month (about half).  The salt was my big purchase this time (25 pounds costs around $50!)…but that will last us well over a year and a half, even with all the canning I do.  The baggies I bought for freezing produce this fall, since they were a very good price this month.

The cocoa will last a long, long time (as long as Laura can control how many brownies she makes) (oops, switched back to third person again).  The chips will last quite a while, as will the beans, strawberries, cashews, vinegar and cumin.  Everything else will be eaten in a month most likely. 

Now, just a couple more things about what I did with part of my order! 

Yesterday I used the leeks I ordered and several of the carrots and made a big pot of chicken broth, and a big pot of beef broth.  Now I have big jars full of broth ready to make soups and sauces and gravies. 

AND…take a look at this beautiful 10 pound bag of frozen strawberries!!

I divided the bag into 3 gallon sized freezer bags for easier freezer access.  Now we have plenty of strawberries for smoothies and slushies and milkshakes and snacks.  YUM!!!

All this food, along with the fresh milk and eggs we buy from local farmers…and along with my freezers full of meat and veggies…and my pantry full of grains and canned tomato products…

We are ALL SET!

Okay…coming up next will really be my fridge and freezers…but thanks for letting me show you my Azure order. 

(Am I the only one who likes to stare at their groceries?  Just wondering…) 

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about lately in regard to money…

Why would I ever complain about not having much money for “extras”?

If we ONLY have enough money for what we NEED…then it sounds to me like we’re living a life of wealth.

Don’t you think so?

I mean…have you seen my pantry?  And my big house?  And my healthy family?  And my closets and tubs full of clothes? 

If we ALWAYS ONLY have ONLY what we NEED…then we’ll ALWAYS have just enough. 

And that’s just what we need.

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Visit Biblical Womanhood for ideas on simple and frugal living.

It’s rainy and dreary today…so the boys and I were just sitting down to play a game of Skip-bo…and my Dad called.

While I was on the phone with my dad…all the boys started to go nuts!  They haven’t acted THIS bad while I was on the phone for a couple of years now! 

It was like I had four extra large monkeys in my living room who had just eaten a five pound bag of sugar coated sugar…each…

And here they are pulling each other’s socks off and yanking on each other’s legs and arms…and all the Skip-bo cards that were all neatly piled and ready to play got all strewn around…which of course upset Asa (because he had a good hand).

And I’m on the phone trying to say, “Uh huh.”  and “Yeah” and answer questions…all-the-while..I’m walking from monkey fight to monkey fight, pulling bodies away from each other…

But of course I can’t pull them off of each other…because one set of hands is attached to another set of socks…which are of course attached to someone’s feet…

And I only have one hand to work with because one hand is holding the phone…

It was delightful.

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!?  WHERE IN THE WORLD DID THESE CRAZIES COME FROM?!?!”

I’M SORRY FOR SCREAMING.  *ahem*  i’m sorry for screaming. 

I’m okay now.

Hurry!  The HeavenlyHomemakers new E-book Half Price sale ends tonight!!!!

Grab “Think Breakfast…Outside of the Box!” and “Have Your Fruits….and Veggies Too!” for either $2.97 each…or $5.00 for the package.  A GREAT deal!!

Don’t miss out!!