pressed but not crushed

dealing with hard junk is a different ballgame with kids around. you just don't have the luxury of throwing yourself full blown pity-party. you can't just velcro yourself to the couch while using your bathrobe simultaneously as clothing AND a kleenex and crying sloppy tears into a pint of ice cream block of sharp cheddar like you really want to.

partly you need to keep it together so you don't scare/scar the little cherubim, but also because if you sit still long enough in this house, you WILL be pooped on.

so life goes on. and darnit if those little monkeys don't make it all easier. don't get me wrong, first and foremost they make everything harder, but big picture, it really is hard to stay defeated when these amazing little almost-us faces are smiling/drooling/laughing/blowing raspberries right into ours. every day we have these travel-sized nuggetty reminders of god's love for us. they don't care if we're a mess or cranky or forgot to buy the orange juice, they just love us full-blast. it's the greatest. i know parenting won't always feel like this, but it's exactly what we need right now to remind us that god didn't accidentally forget us in all this.

we've had a setback. it's a professional and therefore a [big] financial one that comes mostly from our own mistakes. for the past 50 hours i have been a wreck. worry, embarrassment, shock, anger, guilt, and the worst of it all: cold mcdonald's fries. yeah. rock bottom.

nothing material has changed about the situation in these 50 hours, but lots of people we love have been praying for us. i don't know a thing about how that junk works, but it must, because all of a sudden we just have a peace about this whole thing. scared smurfless? yeah, a little. numbers still not close to adding up? nope. but it truly is okay.

and not because i still have healthy kids and an awesome husband and twelve yoke of virile oxen. if all of that was gone, i'm pretty sure the bible says that everything would still be okay. it might be have to be okay in a padded cell for awhile, but even those treasures aren't the highest stakes in this life, and i am not blessed just because it could be worse. that is cruddy reasoning because it implies at some point there is something i could lose that would put me at the bottom of some ranking list and then i'd really be screwed. there's not.

the bible goes buck wild talking about considering trials as blessings because they are opportunities to build character and lean hard into jesus. ok then. i will take this gladly. god will show up. i know it. that doesnt mean things might not get way worse or that it won't be hard, and it doesn't even mean we're guaranteed to all be healthy, whole or present through it. but he did promise that HE would be healthy, whole and present through it all. i am clinging to this right now. with a side of cheddar. and these goobers:

sometimes there is nowhere to put a baby down for a few seconds when you need both hands

you'd pluck her out of the nile if she was drifting towards you, right?

it's up and it's goooood!

tiniest of hippies rocking a t-shirt some of jesse's old youth kids made judah. don't ask me what his spooky fingers are doing... "these aren't the droids you're looking for...move along"

a binky and a daddy are great ways to ride out an ear infection

the background captioned this one for me