when it rains…

On our second day at the Outer Banks, I hopped into the Suburban and heard a weird noise when I shut the door – like sand shifting off of the boogie boards, or something like that. I turned around to find myself staring at sky, through the back window of the truck. We were able to get it fixed just in time for our return home, and insurance covered it 100%. As the trip progressed, Isaiah Jane became less and less satisfied with her environment. The pack-n-play in our room was simply not close enough. Being held on someone’s lap was insufficient. She wanted to be held, facing out, while we walked around. She also developed a scream that everyone labeled, “the banshee;” a scream so loud, in fact, that it caused us to leave the beach early – in the middle of the night. On our last morning at the beach, we learned that someone had stolen Chris’ debit card number (card still tucked safely in his pocket) and attempted several hundreds’ worth of transactions somewhere in Alabama.

We were now down to one debit card, which I managed to lose several times throughout the trip. On one such occasion, we dumped out suitcases at 3am, one by one in the gas station parking lot, until we found it. We returned home to a van that is doing its best to give up on us. It protested our absence by turning off its speedometer and groaning its brakes rather violently, leaving it virtually unsafe to drive. Thankfully, it’s our back-up vehicle and we’ll just repair it as we can afford it. My iPhone has officially bitten the dust, and I’m hoping to make a friend’s old one work for now. Christopher’s recording equipment is out of commission, too, after a decade of hard work – he’s also relying on a friend’s generosity, borrowing a piece piece just to get by. Needless to say, our backyard fence must now wait several more weeks, even though we’ve already paid our deposit.

I’m not saying it’s all sunshine and rainbows around here (see above), but it’s pretty darn close. Each time another thing went wrong, Chris & I would look at each other and say something like, “We’re survivors. We fight. It’s just what we do.”

When I walked in from dropping off the van at the shop, the girls smiled at me. They didn’t cry and roll over and wait for me to pick them up, as usual. They just smiled. The big boys were hanging out with them, and the toddler was running around singing along to this tune. The Holy Spirit hit me so hard.

I feel like I’m growing up. I’m able to articulate and experience what it means to count it all joy, and it’s such a freeing concept. We had an amazing week, despite all of those things. They will each be settled one at a time, and life will keep moving forward. And He is good. He is good.