Please Pray for PEACE in Our Time of Chaos

Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22

“the LORD your God will fight for you” Deuteronomy 3:22

Ahhhhh… for this weary girl’s soul, nothing sounds better than for my God to fight for me while I rest! We have five days until the first derby and six days until a certain young man’s birthday party and this house is in utter turmoil. Well, sort of. Actually it’s been in utter turmoil for the last several months but it’s getting back into order now and it’s causing some chaos of its own. You know how, even when things are a mess, you at least know where they are. Well, now that things are getting put back into order, we don’t seem to know where ANYTHING is because we keep putting it away! Just in the last three days we’ve completely lost a set of keys, several 4H books and papers, and even my phone! And I’m not talking like, “Oh, I’ve lost my keys” and then look for several minutes to find them. I’m talking like, Gabe spending DAYS in his room looking for a book that HAD to be found and completed by 6pm tonight! Sean’s keys? Yeah, they are his keys to the shed where ALL of his tools are locked up so he hasn’t been able to work on anything with the car since the 3^rd of July! Not good news when you’re first derby this season is coming up in less than a week! Then my phone, it was lost the least amount of time of all the things today, only 6-7 hours. And the only reason I found it was because I wasn’t looking for it. I was just cleaning off the kitchen table and went to put a chip clip away in the drawer when I saw my little message light flashing from the “old phones” basket. Don’t ask me why in the world I put it in there!

Do you see what I mean though? I could really use someone fighting for me because it’s crazy around here right now! We had family over for the 4^th, so there’s that clean up. But then on top of that we’ve had the dryer to deal with. You see, Sean’s sister gave us her old washer and dryer to scrap. Except when we went to go pick them up they were WAY nicer than we were expecting so we decided to keep them. And because we have no garage to keep them in, they made their way into my living room. We asked on Facebook for a local appliance repair man, called him and booked an appointment for him to come out to look at the dryer to see if it was worth fixing up. The day he was supposed to come, he was 30 minutes late. He knocked on the door and barely even said, “Hi” to Gabe when he opened the door to let him in. Sean had pulled around the extension cord that he uses for the welder so that we could plug the dryer into it in the living room for the repair man to look at it. The repair man took one look at the plug, said, “I can’t do anything with that”, picked up his tools, walked out the door, got into his truck and drove away. I didn’t know if he was going back to his shop to grab another extension cord, or if he was literally driving away screaming from our house. I had no clue because he didn’t tell me anything! It was by far one of the strangest things I’ve ever had happen to me – well, as far as service technicians go anyway.

So, since my original washer and dryer were still working just fine, and because we were BUSY we just let the “new” washer and dryer stay where they were; in my living room. Then on the second of July I was having a rough night. I had had an issue at work earlier in the afternoon that I just couldn’t get out of my head. I was doing the laundry, so I started the dryer and pulled the lint screen out from the top of the machine like I always do. I heard something fall down into the lint trap and start rhythmically thudding around inside the machine. I sighed and opened the door back up to see if it had fallen into the drum. I searched around in the clothes; nothing. So I gently rotated the drum and heard the thing fall even further down into the back of the machine. Thinking, “Oh! That may have done it!” I closed the door and restarted the machine, only to be greeted with a sound that I can only describe as a machine gun type sound. I scrambled for the dryer door and yanked it open to turn off the machine. Then I grabbed the back door and with frenzy brimming in my voice yelled, “Sean! Can you come here for a second please!!!” He, of course, dropped what he was doing and came right in. I told him the whole story, thingy falling in, rhythmic thudding noise, opened the door, turned the drum, fell in farther… then I turned it on for him. He shouted frantically, “TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!!!” Until I yanked the door open again.

That night he tore the whole thing to pieces to find a big metal thingy (I’m sure it has a name but I don’t know what. It was something of his) lodged in the exhaust fan of the dryer. But it didn’t explain why the dryer was so blasted HOT. He got the whole thing put back together and hooked up and when he turned it on everything sounded ok, except for this slight buzzing noise. When we opened the door to the dryer and looked in we could see the panel in front of the heating element glowing orange!!!!! Sean just kept shaking his head trying to figure out how the thingy and the heating element short could be related. When I looked at him and suggested that perhaps they weren’t related at all. Maybe God allowed the thingy to fall in and make a racket in order for us to notice that there was a short in the heating element so that we didn’t catch the house on fire! Praise God! Thank You Jesus!

So here I was with two dryers and neither of them worked properly. One didn’t heat and one heated a little too well. With family already in town for the Fourth we decided to simply turn that circuit breaker off, and unplug the dryer, and deal with this later. So it sat there until the 5^th when Sean pulled both the washer and dryer out, I spent the entire night painting the laundry room. (The LAST room in our house to be painted; it only took us seven years to get them all done! Hallelujah!) The next day, yesterday, we spent several hours moving the washer and dryer into position and getting them all hooked up. Then I spent another couple of hours putting everything that was in my kitchen from the laundry room back into the laundry room this afternoon. Just as I was hanging up the second load of still-damp laundry for the day, our super-sitter’s mom knocks at the front door to pick up the fish tank that has been sitting in front of my desk in our entryway/library for the last two months since we re-did the living room floor and rearranged the furniture. She and I and her two muscled-men spent the next hour fishing the last few fish out of the tank and draining what was left of the water so that they could carry it out to the truck. We loaded them up with boxes filled with our old goodies and topped their load off with our old still-working washer for our super-sitter to sell in her yard sale to raise funds for her mission trip to Chile.

During that time Sean got home and was keeping Gabe on track working in the Aerospace 4H book I had managed to miraculously find only a short hour or two before. You know, because it was due tonight at six after all. After the fish tank left Gabe was just finishing up his books and we were getting him all packed up and ready to get them checked in when he couldn’t find his Shooting Sports papers to take! That entire project includes only two posters and those two papers that prove he attended the workshops – and we couldn’t find them. Now, the poor kid had just spent the last THREE days in his room looking for his Aerospace book and now all the sudden he can’t find his Shooting Sports papers, all on the night that Sean has set aside to work on his car, finally, because he’s been working on the dryer situation, but can’t work on the car because all of his tools are still locked in the shed because we can’t find the key! Aaarrrrgggghhhh!!!!!

So after looking for those papers for an HOUR, we decided to call it quits and pray that the 4H leaders would have Grace on us and allow him to show anyway. I volunteered to take Gabe so that Sean could get to work on the car. So with only fifteen minutes left in the check-in time frame, the kids and I jumped into car and headed out to the leader’s house where they had done the book signing last year. Except when we got there no one was home! So I called Sean and asked if he had any idea where else they might be doing the check-in. He suggested their other site a few miles away. Nope, no one there either, not a soul. I headed back into town trying to think of where in the world they *might* be meeting to sign books. We went to the elementary school, no one. The high school, nothing. The library, nada. From the parking lot of the library I called Sean and he said that he would call the other guy he had talked to the other day about check-in and see if he knew where they might be; when suddenly he said, “OH NO! Move kitty move! OH NO!” I cringed, he was in the truck, “Did you hit it?” “Oh yeah. It was a kitten.” Sigh…

The kids and I headed home and met Sean there in the driveway. I started dinner and Sean got a call from one of the 4H leaders giving him directions to the check-in location (which was nowhere near any of the places I had gone to earlier). So as I sit here now, Sean’s shed has been broken into and his tools have been liberated, Gabe’s books have been signed, and I have a working washer and a sort of working dryer. It just takes a really really really long time. And Anna, well, she’s just being Anna.

Yes my friends, it has been a very long week. A mostly good week with lots of changes and upgrades – if you will – but it’s been stressful and chaotic and at times downright frustrating. We have five days until the first derby. That means LATE nights for Sean who has early mornings for work. We have six days until 4H projects are due and Gabe’s twelfth birthday party. Which means days filled with lots of scrambling to get things recovered from the chaos of remodeling all while trying to help Gabe with his projects without doing them for him. AND trying to keep Anna from feeling too left out in all the excitement, because none of this is all about her. I guess I say all that to say this, we could REALLY use your prayers right now. The first derby of the season is always the most stressful – especially for Sean. We’re all tired and grumpy and frustrated by this point in the season and honestly, we’re just ready to get out there! Prayers for PEACE would be so very much appreciated!!!

Thank you so much for everything you do! You guys are always there for me and I can’t thank you enough for that. Just telling you about how things have been going has made me feel better. I hope it was at least entertaining for you to read. :D I love you all!!!!!