My view on ladders and life...

                   My life of late has been busy,

                                                    but busy in a weird way...

A good three quarters of my summer has been spent away from home.

Between Summit, vacationing, spending time with family.

I really don't know what the weather was like in New York this summer.

Now Ohio and Tennessee on the other hand...

I could tell you exactly what the weather was like there.

On this first day of Autumn, I look back over my summer, and think...

It has been a good but challenging summer.

It has been full of new adventures, new faces, new experiences,

now some of these experiences I never want to experience again.

But I know that every experience,

and every thing that I have experienced this summer is all part of a bigger plan...

Even when I can't see what that plan will be.

This has been my view of late.

The caption of the photo above is very true. In many different aspects of my life, it is very true...

My view literally has I have been on a ladder a lot more then I normally am, as I have been helping rip old siding off our old/new house and put on new vinyl. It has also been the view of my spiritual walk. I am sure this needs an explanation.

'You feel like your walk with God is like being on a ladder???'

Well, no, not exactly, but there are some similarities.

First of all, you must make sure that you ladder is on level sturdy ground. You must be set upon "the Rock of Ages." And as soon as you are sure that your ladder is on firm level ground, you start your ascent, just starting the climb up a ladder can give you a thrill, you get that, "this could be an adventure" rush to the head, and your heart starts racing just slightly. A whole new exciting world with just one step off the ground.

As you climb you discover new things about yourself,

such as your fears, where you are afraid you will fail or fall.

It can be a truly terrifying spot... especially when the breeze blows and the ladder quakes just slightly. That is when all your fears are revealed in their full light. And it can cause you to freeze in your ascent to the top. Now it is when you are frozen to one spot that the most work can be done on the house that your ladder is leaning against. I mean you can't work when all that you are doing is climbing. It is at these frozen areas in your walk where you can get out the hammer and the crowbar and you can start accomplishing the work that you were on the ladder to do in the first place. I feel as if I am in one of these frozen areas on my way up the ladder. In fact I feel like God has allowed my ladder to be shaken. Which having your ladder shaken by someone can be the most terrifying thing one can ever experience, it sure will make you sure footed though. ;) It is a time that you truly get to know yourself. And hopefully a time when you can work on areas of your life that need attention. A time to get out the old crowbar and hammer and start prying away the old beat up layers of house, to reveal the original work of the carpenter. For it is only when the old battered pieces of protective layers are gone that the house is ready for the new protective layer of vinyl to be put on. What a mess it would be if we tried to just ignore the old aluminum and just started putting on the new siding... what a mess. It is a long and sometimes painful process. But oh, so worth it. Because someday the ascent will start again, move one hand, one foot, the other hand, the other foot, until finally you can go up one more rung on your ladder, and so starts the adventure once more. One rung or...

one day at a time.

Just take it one day at a time.

Our house before

And so ends my ladder object lesson to myself. It sometimes is just therapeutic to write stuff out, so if you read through it and were like, 'she can live on her ladder if she likes, but I don't really think life is like a ladder, she is a little whacked.' That's okay, this is the kind of post that comes out of me when the hour is getting later and later, and I am listening to Emile Pandolfi Radio on Pandora (piano ballads) Listening to piano music tends to make me a little reflective. ;) And sometimes strangely... emotional. But that is besides the point. Back to our house transformation, and enough about how piano music affects me.

During

Our house literally looks like it had a face lift.

I think it actually looks more sure of itself and cheerful with its new 'garments' on.

And I don't have a better after picture yet. So this will have to do.

Our house just needs a porch swing for the front porch to be perfect... Time to get into that wood shop that I have been talking to much about and start working towards making a swing.

Just hanging out on the ridge.

What better place to hang out after ripping stuff off the sides of the house then the roof? Josh didn't help but he ended up being in the picture 'cause he brought his Pepsi out onto the roof and that happened to be when Mom came out to snap some pictures. He at least gave me a sip of his Pepsi. ;)

Oh be careful little hands....

It has been one of the best experiences of my life to watch my son grow and learn and when he suddenly discovers something that he hasn't ever noticed before it just sends a thrill all through me.

Yesterday was one of those days....

...He discovered his hands!!!

As you can see they are completely absorbing, he will just sit and stare at them watching them move and intertwine :)
It just really makes you appreciate the small things in life, the things that most of us don't even notice like the use of our hands and how they work. Our God is truly an awesome God!

And this video is just one I got of Jimmy having a conversation with his Aunt Elise :)

Lift your eyes...

" I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
The Lord will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore."

~ Psalm 121 ~

This Psalm was mentioned this past Sunday and I have been brought back to it all week. I just thought I would share it... the promises made in it bring such hope and comfort to me and I hope they do the same for you.

Introducing...

James Daniel Archer

Born on May 21'st 2010 at 3:45 in the afternoon.
Weight: 7 lbs 13 oz
Length: 19.5"
Head : 14.2"
Chest: 13.6"


I just wanted to share a picture with you all of my beautiful little boy and let you all know that we are both doing very well.
Labor couldn't have gone any smoother, there were no problems whatsoever.
Labor started at about 3am when my water broke and didn't stop until he was born just over 12 hours later. We were able to come home Sunday morning (they would've let us go Saturday night if Jimmy's circumcision had been done) and I have been feeling better each day and gaining my strength back. I must admit that I have felt "great" ever since labor stopped, it is so nice to be able to move without feeling like a hippopotamus and I can actually get close to the table when eating now too :)

I will try to get on here again sometime soon so that I can update you on other big changes in our lives, the Lord has been giving us many answers in the last couple of weeks but I just have not felt like blogging at all for some reason :) As I type this I am hoping that Curtiss is on his way back home, he left early yesterday morning so that he could go and look for a place for us to live in the Columbus, Ohio area. We had found a place online that we both really liked the look of (we actually drove right by it when we were in Ohio a couple of weeks ago) and when he saw it yesterday it was as good as we had hoped so today at noon he was going to be signing a lease agreement and then driving back. So yes, if some of you didn't know this does mean that we are going to be moving and soon. Curtiss has a job out there and now we have a home. So LOTS of big life changing things happening around here :) Like I said I will try and get on here and give more info some other time.
For now I just want to say "Welcome to the world my baby!"

wait and trust... my thoughts...

"Wait on the Lord;
Be of good courage,
And He will strengthen your heart:
Wait, I say, on the Lord."
~ Psalm 27:14 ~

I have discovered that a lot of life is spent waiting. When you are young you have to wait your turn to jump rope or play a game... As you grow older you have to start waiting for more important things, which also means it gets harder to wait for them. Life seems to go very quickly from waiting your turn to climb on the teeter-totter, to waiting to see who God is going to put on with you, to join you on life's big teeter-totter. And on this see-saw you spend a lot of time waiting. Waiting for a job, a closing on a house, or for a doctors diagnoses. How well do we trust during these times of waiting? I know I flounder... I know I have doubts... I know I have times when I say, " I don't want to wait anymore, somethin's gotta give!" It is at times like this that I read the Psalms and God gives me the above verse to read. How awesome is it that out of all the thousands of verses in the Bible, He leads us to the one that speaks to us at the exact time we needed it. So, to all of you that are in a season for waiting, "...be of good courage, and He will strengthen your heart, wait, I say, Wait on the Lord."
just wait.