Thinking in Song

Do you ever think you’re living the words of a song? Like you almost know how your story will end, because you know the final verse of a certain song? Sunday night I had the chance to sing in our church. This is something that I just LOVE to do. Let me tell you, many times over the last few years, I feel like these are the words to my life’s song.

Blessings by Laura’s Story

We pray for blessings
We pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
All the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

‘Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom
Your voice to hear
And we cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough
All the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we'd have faith to believe

‘Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
And what if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise
When friends betray us
When darkness seems to win
We know the pain reminds this heart
That this is not, this is not our home,
It's not our home

‘Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
And what if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy
And what if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are Your mercies in disguise

(Here’s a link to her singing it: Blessings - Laura's Story)

That’s not meant to sound like I’m feeling sorry for myself, or anything even close to that. What I’m actually saying is that I’m so thankful to be at a point in my life that I can look back on some crazy, rough, scary, sad, what I thought was horrible times… and thank God for each of them. I would be nothing without Him, and He knows exactly what I need.

Father God, thank you for writing each verse in the song of my life. Thank you for each blessing, each tear, each sleepless night.

”What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy”

Monday, October 18

It was Monday, October 18, 2010. Oh what a glorious day!

After a few calls to Brent’s case worker at the cancer center, we heard the word that we have been praying to hear for just under 2 years now. REMISSION!

Here’s how it went… Brent and I were sitting in the car in the parking lot of his work place. Courtney, his case worker, called with the rest of his results from his bone marrow biopsy. Here’s their conversation (I’m eliminating a bunch of medical stuff that no one really understands anyway):

Courtney - “I just wanted to let you know that everything looked good. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Brent - “Oh, OK.”

Kelli - “Don’t hang up! Ask where your level is.” (Note: I don’t really know what this level measures, but he knew which one I meant.)

Brent - “Courtney, do you happen to know where my level is? You know, one time it was 0.19, last time it was at 0.16. It’s the one that tells us how where we are compared to remission.”

Courtney - “Oh sure, you’re at (phone cuts out) 0.”

They confirmed his next appt, and that was it. They hung up.

Immediately after hanging up, Brent looked at me and said, “I’m probably going to need to you to call her back this afternoon.”

So later that day, I did just that. She confirmed that his level was truly at a ZERO. To be quite honest, I still didn’t believe that we were talking about the same level. She must be looking at some other count. I wanted to make sure I was understanding this correctly, so I simply said, “Courtney, I need to know… is this remission?”

And then I heard it, fewer words have been better to hear. “Kelli, we’ve hit remission.”

“Thank you, God!” It’s all I could think. It’s all I could say. I had to walk away from my desk and go somewhere private (I work with guys, you know how they get when they see a girl cry.)

THANK. YOU. GOD.

Brent was off work by this time, so I called him immediately. Wanna hear a grown man cry? Tell him that he just beat cancer. That’ll do it!

This was truly a day to celebrate!

No Apologies, OK… maybe a few

Great intentions have been getting me no where. Things have been so crazy lately (you know, in the last 3 1/2 since I last updated). When things happen, good or bad, I think… I should blog about this. And then I don’t. And then something else happens, and I think, “I can’t blog about this until I catch up on the last thing.”

Well, last night we were sitting at Brent’s parents’ house looking through old pictures and scrapbooks. It was so fun to listen to stories and hear the different memories that certain pictures brought up for different people. It was then that I decided to not feel guilty any longer. No catch up sessions (except for the really big stuff), but it won’t be in order. I need to blog about what’s going on in our lives, because you can bet your bottom dollar that these things certainly aren’t going into a scrap book of any kind.

So there you have it. Sorry that I’ve been missing. But I’m not sorry. Life happens. I’m only sorry to my boys, in case they ever wanted to look back at this as their scrap books.

Happy Monday. You’ll be hearing more from me than before.

Kelli

Tornado 2010 (Part III)

What do you do when you find out your house has been hit by a tornado? How are you supposed to act. We were all OK. Immediately I thanked God that I could honestly say we were all OK. Brent looked out our kitchen window and saw a hole in the back of our garage. Of course, there was no electricity, which meant no lights, which meant that we couldn’t fully understand the extent of the damage. Karter was scared and didn’t know what to do, but so was I. The first thing he asked is why his slide was broken. My heart broke for him as he looked out the window at where his swing set used to be. Brody clung to me, but I think that was just because it was dark. I just remember Brent’s shakey voice saying, “Kelli, we were hit by a tornado.” We walked into the living room. I remember thinking, “Thank you God that we still have a living room.” The boys and I sat on the couch in front of the big window. Just on the other side of that glass was chaos, and I didn’t want to go out there. Brent put shoes on and walked out our front door, now with an actual flashlight. Our front porch was in pieces. He didn’t know if it was safe to actually walk on it, but he did. Outside in the street people were coming out of their houses. Fire trucks rode down the street. Firemen knocked on doors making sure everyone inside was OK.

The next thing I know, I had dialed my sister’s phone number. By this time it was about 1:30 AM, and I didn’t know what else to do but call Kristi and talk through this. Matt answered right away, like it wasn’t even weird that I was calling at that time. He and Kristi were vacuuming up water in the basement (thank you God for keeping the water out of our basement). I didn’t even ask for Kristi. I don’t even know if I was making sense. I just remember telling Matt that our house had been hit by a tornado.

Karter asked a few questions, and I didn’t know what to tell him. How do you explain this to a 3 year old? We sat on the couch, and watched the commotion outside. Karter wanted to know why those “fire guys” broke the houses. I explained that they were good guys and were making sure everyone was safe. After a few minutes Brent came back in. He sat with the boys and I went and walked around.

It was shocking! I couldn’t take it all in. There were flashing lights, people walking, trees down, entire roofs missing. It was chaos. I asked Brent if I could take pictures, but he thought I should wait til morning. Here are a few pictures of our damage:

The garage door in our 3rd stall was either sucked or blown in (yet the doors on the two stalls where we park our vehicles were not damaged)

 

The back wall of our garage was pushed about a foot off the foundation (and yet our vehicles remained undamaged).

The front porch: (One of the support beams actually went through our neighbor’s window. Thank God no one was seriously hurt!)

Our swing set and some broken trees:

 

In my last post (part II) I mentioned that I remembered feeling a draft of air when I went in to get Brody. It wasn’t until later that I found out that draft of air was coming from the window. Brody’s window had shattered. Luckily his crib is across the (very small) room from the window, and none of the glass made it that far over. Karter’s room was also missing a window, but that one was not shattered. It was sucked out and landed about 3 houses down. It breaks my heart to know that this all happened while they were still snuggled in their beds. I can’t help but think about the what-ifs, and it makes me fall to my knees and thank God that he kept my family safe. I am amazed.

At about 3:00 that morning we headed up to Brent’s parents’ house to try and get some sleep. That was really the first time that I paid attention to the damage done to the rest of the neighborhood…

Tornado 2010 (Part II)

Let me start by saying that I am a tight sleeper. When I was young I had no choice but to be a tight sleeper. My Dad snored so loudly that it didn’t matter where your bedroom was. If you weren’t a tight sleeper… there was no sleep to be had. So, it’s not surprising to me that I don’t really remember Brent saying (loudly) to get the boys and get downstairs. I really don’t remember all the little details. All I knew was that he flew out of the bedroom, and I was following him. It was pitch black, and I didn’t know what was going on. Brent ran in to Karter’s room and grabbed him. I grabbed Brody, and we all headed to the basement.

It’s funny how after a little time has passed and you have time to stop and think (or wake up) you remember little details.

Example 1: In the confusion and chaos Brent and I ended up running right into each other. I’m not talking about just bumping into each other. No, I mean a collision in our pitch black hallway. It was when we were trying to get to our boys. In true Kelli fashion, in one of the most inappropriate times, I got a serious case of the giggles.

Example 2: When I went in to grab Brody out of bed (still not really sure what was going on) I remember feeling this strange draft of air.

So, we’re all sitting in our basement. Brody kept looking at me like I was crazy (I couldn’t argue with him there). Karter was scared and unsure of what was going on (totally justified). Karter had to go to the bathroom, and he didn’t understand when we said we couldn’t go back upstairs to go to the bathroom. We let him pee in a spare bucket that was down there. Normally that would be fun for him, but not in the middle of the night when your parents rip you out of bed and can’t explain why.

The thunder was loud and the lightening was constant. We could watch the action from our basement windows. We sat, the four of us, on a spare mattress while all around us the wind had reared its ugly head. I remembered hearing what sounded like a dish falling to the floor. I remember feeling very unsettled. I didn’t dare ask Brent any questions, as I didn’t really want to hear his answers. I wanted to sit on this mattress with my little family. I wanted to cuddle, fall asleep and wake up to a big misunderstanding.

That didn’t happen.

“Mommy, why is Kevin barking?” Brent and I had the same thought, “Hallelujah, Kevin is barking.”

The power was out, and our cell phones were our makeshift flashlights. After about 30 minutes in the basement, we talked about going back upstairs. Just as we were discussing it, we started to see headlights outside, and then we started to see flashing lights. We headed upstairs and looked out. Brent’s worst fear had been confirmed. Our neighborhood and our house had been hit by a tornado.

Tornado 2010 (Part I)

Last week Wednesday seemed like a normal day. Work for Brent and myself and daycare for the boys. Brent was supposed to get together with his Bible Study guys that night but ended up skipping. There was too much he wanted to get done around the house. He was mowing and cleaning out the garage. The boys and I spent the evening playing outside. Brent finished mowing and drove the mower back up to his parents’ house. While he was gone, it started to rain. Normally I would have rushed the boys in the house to keep them from getting wet. That night, however, we decided to play in the rain.

Brent came home and joined in the fun.

 

It was probably about 8:00, so I headed in to make supper. We ate, played in the house and headed off to bed. Sounds pretty normal, right? That was the end to our normal day.

Thursday, July 22, 2010 ~ 12:30 AM

I woke up to Brent jumping out of bed and yelling, “Kelli, get the boys and get downstairs!”

Feeling Called

I must admit, I’m very excited to write this (quick) post. For a while now, Brent and I have felt like God was calling us to serve Him. We wondered what it would be. How would He use us? Well, I’m so very excited to say… In September, we will begin our three year adventure as youth sponsors (Sr High) in our church. I might be a bit biased, but I feel we have some of the kids (adults) in our church! And I have a feeling that they’ll teach me far more than I could possibly teach them!

I’m also really excited to work with the sponsors! I love getting to know people of our church a little deeper, and this sounds like a really fun way to do it!

Looking forward to September!

Thank you, Father, for the youth in our area. Not only at Carmel Reformed, but all over. I ask that you be with them through the summer and that they may all feel welcome to come and learn more about you, no matter what level of relationship they have with You. Father, please be with us as we prepare to be sponsors. I thank you for this opportunity and look forward to serving you!