Busy, Busy, Busy

I love this time of year! It always seems to get crazy around here towards the end of the school year with end of the year activities, planning vacations, mission trips, summer camps, etc. But I still love it...there is something so wonderful about knowing you will have all this extra time to do all the things you wish you had time for during the school year.

Summertime for me as a kid always meant a trip to Tennessee to see my grandparents (unlike yours, mine were awesome and actually...cool), my aunts and uncles and MANY cousins. The relationships I formed growing up with cousins has made me the person I am today and I am so thankful that I still have those close-knit bonds with several of them. How incredibly blessed I am that that summer trip to Tennessee is still a part of my life and now, my kids as well. I get to sit back and watch as my daughter and son form those same close-knit relationships with their cousins!

As a family, we have been to many beautiful and fun places across this wonderful country of ours, but we still feel a draw to head south...to that state that will always feel like home to me...

I really need to post more often.
*Just got back from a great trip to Florida to hang out with family that I actually really like...a lot.
* Proud of my kids - Gavin stepping out to play lax for the first time and making honor roll again
Alora - really too much to say. She makes such good choices relationally (even when it's hard) - like who she should no longer be friends with and who she should or should not date.
*I'm already sad that she's leaving for college...in two years.
sigh

Intruder

So I’m driving my daughter and her friends home after youth group last night and my son - who is home alone for the 20 mins this trip should take (shutup hater’s - he’s almost 12!) - calls me whispering that there is someone upstairs walking around and he sounds almost as scared as I am as soon as I hear this news.

I told him to take the phone and run to our neighbor’s house - get out of the house I said. Wasn’t sure if this was better or worse advice than “find a really good hiding place and stay there!”
As I quickly turned my van around and sped home, I began to think of a plan. The odd part of all this is how methodically I began to plan this person’s demise. It never occured to me to call 911, or to try to scare them out by pulling in horns blaring, screaming etc. No, I never intended for them to leave my house of their own accord.

This isn’t the first time one of my kids have been scared by someone trying to break into our home. Just last summer, two guys tried to get into our front door after seeing my daughter (who was 15) home alone. They were thwarted by the locks, the dogs and perhaps seeing her with a phone in her hand.

I suppose bewteen that incident and this one - the Mom in me had had enough. Long story short, the intruder was his Dad…my darling husband who was supposed to be out playing soccer and this ended well.

But it has me thinking about lots of things. What makes some people decide to confront something dangerous and hoping they will come out on top as opposed to doing the “smart” thing and knowing they will? What does it take to make a mother calmly plan to, at the very least, put someone in the back of an ambulance as calmly as if she were pulling together the week’s grocery list? Perhaps most importantly, why, as a Christian, did it never occur to me to pray? Maybe, if I had done that, those other thoughts would have never even entered my mind…

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most Highwill rest in the shadow of the Almighty.I will say of the LORD,“He is my refuge and my fortress,my God, in whom I trust.”
Psalm 91:1-2