Surprise Welcome Home Party at Kristy’s house. There were 23 neighbors in attendance.

On Friday night, I snuck into my home town.

My parents were expecting me at 8:45pm, but truthfully I arrived at 7:30 or so, but I didn’t want them to know that. They were still staying at the rental house, but I did not go straight to the rental house. I went by my childhood friend, Kristy’s, house. We were on a mission, you see.

I grew up playing with Kristy and the other neighborhood kids. Kristy’s grandparents lived next door to us, and she spent a lot of time over there. As kids, we climbed trees, rode bikes, swung, swam in her granny’s pool, and played a good deal of make-believe and front yard baseball.

Then six or seven years ago, grown-up Kristy bought the house across the street from my parents! Pretty cool, huh? That tiny street is full of people who have been living there for most of my life.

They’ve been watching the destruction and re-building of my parents’ house up close and personal. They dealt with the smells, oh, you don’t want to know about the smells, the rubble looters on the day of the bulldozer, the construction crews, and the watching and waiting. They never complained.

Kristy said, “I’m telling you, they could’ve built it faster.”

Mrs. Sara (Kristy’s granny) lamented, “Well, the only problem is they built it closer to the road than it used to be, and the way it’s shaped I can’t see Terry on his front porch, and I can’t see Terry on his back porch. How am I supposed to know he’s okay???? How am I supposed to know it if he falls?”

She’s right, that’s a problem when you have good neighbors. Kirsty reassured her it’d be okay because she can still see him from her front porch.

Neighbors that look out for each other. Such a beautiful thing!

A month or so ago, Kristy hatched a plan for a surprise party. We had no idea what day they’d finally move in, so she planned it for December 10th, and lo and behold, what day do you think they finally moved in? Well, December 10th, of course, so it was pretty easy to get my parents over to the right place at the right time.

Chris, Kristy, and me

We decided the best story to tell to make sure my parents were at the new house unloading at party time was to say that pizza was arriving at the new house at 11am. This was pretty easy. I just used Alan’s obsession with pizza coupons as my cover story.

“You know how Alan is about his pizza coupons. Well, he’s already got the pizza scheduled to be delivered at 11am tomorrow at the new house. It’s a little early, but he wanted to make sure he had plenty of food, and that way when my brother gets off of work, they will be able to get straight to work with the heavy moving then.”

No one doubted that story for a second.

By 11am, every one of us was in place at my parents’ new house, but there was one part I hadn’t thought through. Now how do I get them over to Kristy’s house? Everyone was focused on the mission of moving… Hmmmm

“Hey, um, y’all, I talked to Kristy out in the yard, and she said when Dad gets here to have y’all stop by her house real quick. I think she has a Christmas gift for ya.”

And to my surprise, it was that simple!

They just said, “Oh. Okay,” and started off across the street.

“I think I’ll come too,” I said, motioning the boys to come on. John David was of course shoeless. Alan got his little shoes on JD as quickly as possible, and we all six followed Mom and Dad across the street.

Mom said she did think it was weird that we were ALL coming.

Kirsty opened the doors and motioned for us to all come in. I’m not sure how long it took Mom and Dad to figure out this was their surprise party or that we weren’t actually having pizza. Pretty funny! This was so fun to be a part of.

We all ate together. Mr. Byrd, a neighbor I remember as the one who would buy whatever I was selling from my school fund-raiser every year, said a beautiful blessing before the meal.

We laughed over the surprise, and caught up with everybody.

Then we walked everyone over and gave them a tour of the new house, for those who hadn’t seen inside of it yet.

I know. I know you’re dying to get a peek inside too, and I would show it to you, but Mom’s not as big on posting the minute details of her life on the internet as I am, so I’m going to literally just show you one peek. I’m going to give you Kristy’s porch view of the new place:

Mr. Byrd, Dad, and Chris and Kristy’s porch view of the new house.

It’s not a re-built house. It’s a completely new house. The old one had to be bulldozed and carried away, down to the last scrap of concrete. Nothing could be left. What wasn’t burned was all damaged by smoke, water, and asbestos.

Everything is gone. The trampoline burned too. When they were clearing the house away, there was a huge storm that came through, and lightning stuck the last of the tall pine trees that still stood from my childhood. And as they took away the dumpster last week, they killed the mailbox too.

It was as though God decided that he couldn’t just partially fix it. It had to be completely made new.

We may not understand the ways of God, but his ways are best, and I know that this house is going to be a great blessing to my parents.

Isn’t it funny how God even arranged it for Alan and me to move back down here for two years, so that we were here for all of this? I got to see construction of the new house in all of its phases. I got to pore over paint and tile samples with Mom on my coffee table.

And I got to be there for move-in day, even when we didn’t know until 3 days prior that it would be moving day!

God moves in mysterious ways.

I wish you could see what all Kristy has done with her house too! She bought it after the housing market crashed, and completely re-modeled the place, knocking down walls, moving the kitchen, painting, and putting in new floors. It’s inspirational to look at what she’s accomplished without even hiring a builder, a little at a time!

It makes me smile to see Alan getting to talk to these sweet neighbors, these pillars from my childhood. When I see Mrs. Sara I always smile and think of how she used to call out to us from her front door, “Y’all play purdy now!!” Maybe I should start calling that out my door to the boys and their friends.

Our neighbors didn’t just feed us and visit with us, even though that would have been more than enough. They also SHOWERED my parents with gifts, AGAIN. I say again because they’d already helped after the fire, but they just kept on giving!

opening gifts

Kristy, our lovely coordinator and hostess

They were given a big, beautiful set of Rachel Ray cookware, which I could tell Mom was excited about, as well as all sorts of other useful blessings!

Mom and I have always admired what Kristy can do with her vinyl cricket (cricuit?) machine!

An Emotional Gift

The most emotional gift was this large framed floorboard from the original house, which Kristy wrote their name and anniversary date on. I cried when I saw it, even though I knew she was planning it. Mom cried. I don’t know if Dad cried.

The day of the bulldozing, Kristy had looked for some wood from the house, but there was none available that wasn’t too damaged, so she found a whole plank from the Pergo floors. This made it even more special because Mom and Dad had put those floors down themselves around 10 years ago, and we’d all just loved those floors.

Kirsty laughed about almost getting caught salvaging that board from the rubble. She said she left the kids with Gail and ran over to dig around for something she could save for Mom and Dad. She had just discovered a good board, and all of a sudden there was my dad! He was there to try to save some china, and she quickly dropped the board off to the side, and said, “Oh, here, let me help you with that!” She said she felt like she was almost busted. So funny, because Dad would have had no idea what she was doing anyway.

We laughed, we ate, we cried, and then we hugged people and got back to work!

This was such a blessing, what the neighbors did for my parents, and I just wanted to share it, the fact that things like this still happen. There are people who are still kind, giving, unselfish, who want to help other people, and we make each others’ lives better in the process.

Thank you so much for all the hard work you put into this, Kristy, and to all the neighbors for blessing us in such a big way. We are so thankful! Our cup runneth over.

“Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”  –Hebrews 13:16

May we all strive to be this kind of neighbor. Merry Christmas, y’all!

The post Moving Day, the Surprise Party, and the Power of Good Neighbors appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Daniel 3:29

Do you love a good rescue story? Man, I am a sucker for a rescue.

Lately, I’ve been feeling down. I’ve been letting circumstances get to me. I’m still pouting over losing my people in this move. I still have my family, my most important people. But I lost my support groups. I lost my friends. Friends are a tricky thing to replace. The thing is you can’t replace them because no two people are the same. It’s not possible. So you have to keep your old friends, but you have to find new friends too. I’ve met some ladies I like here, and I’ve already leaned on a few of them. We’re getting there. It’s promising. These things just take time.

Alan was gone for a great part of November for work, and it was a hard month. It was getting to me big time.

But this morning these verses in Daniel spoke to me. 

“No other god can save in this way.”  –Daniel 3:29

And those lines were spoken by the King of Babylon, who had just erected a giant gold statue of himself and proclaimed that everyone must worship it or burn.

But he saw the results. He couldn’t deny them. He SAW Jesus rescue those three Jews out of that fire when they refused to worship his ridiculous gold statue.

And that’s when he stood amazed, and he proclaimed a decree that no one was to say anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, “because no other god can save in this way.”

I’ve seen the results too. I might not have been there all those years ago for the fiery furnace rescue, but I have seen one rescue after another in my own time, and it lights a FIRE in my soul, let me tell you.

The Bible is not just any other book, y’all. And God is not just any statue. He’s not a statue at all. Why would you worship something so small you could DIY????

This year my parents had their own fire. In case you missed that, I talked about that here. It was a burn-it-to-the-ground kind of house fire. This thing was so impactful. I would never wish it on anyone.

But God’s raising up something beautiful from those ashes. He’s staging another rescue. My parents will move into their new house, probably next month, just in time for Christmas.

He’s making everything new and everything beautiful, and he’s blessing my parents with a new home. It smells like new paint, it is handicap accessible, and it has the prettiest master bathroom shower I have ever seen. I am so excited for them. And you know what I said at the beginning about the hardship of finding new friends? They won’t even have to worry about that because he’s building it right where their old house stood, on the same plot of land I grew up on.

They will still have their neighbors and their church family right down the street.

Don’t you love a rescue like that?

And I want to say a special thank you to the members of Victory Baptist Church and to their neighbors on their street. They blessed them in ways that I, far away in California, did not. They were there for my family when I wasn’t really. You have no idea how much that means to me. Thank you!!!

Remember the kind of God we serve. Amen. Amen. Amen.

The post I am a sucker for a rescue. appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Look closely. You can see the giant burn hole in the leaf.

Last weekend we were enjoying a leisurely weekend of letting the kids play in the backyard while we visited with family. Caleb, who loves all things science-related, asked Alan if he could show him how to use the sun’s light and a magnifying glass to make fire.

Deep down, I guess we are all like cave-men because every one of us was full of joy to watch this happen.

I had never actually seen this done before. The sun was shining, so conditions were perfect. Alan hunted down a magnifying glass and grabbed a dry leaf from the yard.

Now this is where it gets complicated:

Oh wait,no, it doesn’t. Literally, all we did was let the sun shine through the magnifying glass onto the leaf, and smoke appeared rather quickly.

In this photo, the one side of the leaf is mostly burned away, and they’d started on the second half.

Ta-daaaaa

Everyone had to take a turn burning the leaf.

Well, folks, that’s all there is to it. This may be my shortest blog post of all time, eh?

You don’t have to be a home school family to do fun science projects at home. These are the kinds of activities your kids won’t soon forget.

Want to know the science behind all this? I googled it for ya. I must confess that I did not find the science behind it interesting at all, but this site did the best job of holding my attention: thenakedscientist.com. Just click on that link there.

Okay, I guess I should go back to being an involved parent or tidying up or something. Hope you are all having a great week!

The post How to Make Fire with a Magnifying Glass appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

“Your wedding dress? What do you want me to do? It’s…” I don’t remember exactly what my mom said, but I got the idea.

“Ah, man! My wedding dress? I didn’t even think about that. I forgot that was in there. It’s damaged too? Well, everything is. It has smoke damage?”

“Well, yeah. We can try to have it treated,” she offered.

I don’t know how much exactly insurance covers, but I want them to use that for what they need or at least what can be used again. Neither of which applies to my wedding dress.

I turned to Alan. “My wedding dress? What do you think?”

It’s so silly. I mean, my parents lost everything in their house fire. Literally everything. My few trophies and wedding dresses and old letters were trivial. Why should I care about my wedding dress?

“Trash it,” Alan said.

Ouch. Men. They just don’t get it.

Me and my high school friends at my wedding. I was 21 when I got married.

I sighed.

My mom was on the phone, waiting for my answer. “Do you want some time to think about it, and get back to me?”

“No…I…uh…well, I mean, I…Alan says we should…um.”  I couldn’t say throw it in the dumpster. I could not say those words…

“Well,” I continued in my bumbling, “No. I will let it go. It doesn’t fit. I will never be 115 pounds ever again. That’s not even… And I have no daughters, so there’s really no conceivable reason to keep it.”

“Are you sure?” Mom asked.

Sigh. “Yes.”

And that was that. The last few weeks I have so badly wanted to fly down to Alabama and be with my parents. Just to be with them through this great trial, as my brother, thankfully, has been. I wanted to stand on the lawn and help sort through what goes in the dumpster and what gets ozone cleaned. I wanted to be there. But I wasn’t.

It hurt. It hurt to know I could not be there, and I couldn’t. There are times that I could have, but this wasn’t one of them. Once you are married, you have an overriding duty to your family. Two become one, and this was my husband’s busiest hour. I had to step it up on the home front so that Alan could finish up his thesis. If I left, Alan would be left with a 2 -year-old, a 5-year-old, an 8-year-old, and a 10- year- old.  That thesis wouldn’t even be turned in yet, and graduation is only a month away.

So I stayed. Because when you’re a mom, that’s what you do. You put your husband and children first, even when it’s hard. It’s part of that whole “for better or for worse” thing.

Thankfully, I have the kind of family that understands that. Instead, Mom is actually flying here to help us out because I have my procedure this Wednesday.

I can’t wait to move back down South so I can be there for my family again.

Because there are things that fire cannot touch.

The fire took my wedding dress. It didn’t take my marriage.

The fire took my parents’ house. It didn’t take their lives, their identities, their love, their hope, their faith, nor their memories.

Through all the years of my childhood, only one photo of all five of us was ever made. After the fire, it was nothing more than a rectangular crunch of glass on the hallway floor. The fire took our photos, but it didn’t take who we are.

It took my parents’ earthly refuge, but it didn’t take their Heavenly one.

The things that fire cannot touch are the most important things of all:

-our spirit

-laughter

-good deeds

-relationships

-reputation

-love

-tenacity

-resolve

-skills

-your relationship with God

The wedding dress was truly a small thing. It has significance to a woman that is hard to explain, but our marriage was always bigger than any wedding.

Things of this world: having a house in the right neighborhood, a car with heated seats (my dream!), blankets, computers, dishes, stemware…We grow attached to these things. We’re so attached to them that Alan and I pack them up every few years and haul them all over the country with us.

And for what? They are so quickly reduced to dust and hot ashes. It is all a brilliant reminder of a Bible verse we know..

19“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.    Matthew 6:19-21

It’s such an easy sentiment to use. It isn’t so easy when there are suddenly no records, no pictures of your people, no souvenirs of your past, no, not even so much as a laundry basket to count as your own. That’s a level of loss you have to experience to understand, I think.

But the most important things survived. My parents escaped this fire! Hallelujah! None of us kids or grandkids were there at the time, so no one died. Praise the Lord! We all still have each other, we have our sense of humor, and we have our faith.

What counts in the end? It’s all still there. So this situation reminds me of a different Bible verse. When everything is tried by fire, what will remain?

…12Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love.                               1 Corinthians 13:12-13

Love remains. Love always remains. It is fire-proof. No fancy dress required.

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