New Year's Greetings

Happy New Year!  Greetings to our family and friends in the name of Christ!

This has been a very difficult year for us, yet we have tasted the sweetness of the Lord like never before.  We praise Him for His goodness to us-- both in sending Christ and in taking care of our entire family.  We pray this greeting finds all of you well and experiencing the new mercies given daily by the Lord.

Paul with the kids at the airport on Memorial Day.

Paul was deployed to Iraq on Memorial Day, and the year has been one of intense loneliness, stress, and adjustment for our entire family.  Our church family has truly upheld us through this time.  Paul's aunt, Jessica, has also come regularly to help me despite having her own large family, and my own parents spent two weeks here around Thanksgiving, supporting and encouraging me immensely.  We are so thankful for all of them.

I approached this Christmas season very weary, yet I am constantly encouraged by the little things the Lord does to remind us that He is intimately acquainted with every detail of our lives.  I could write pages and pages about the ways He has shown Himself to be more than enough.  God has grown our marriage abundantly as we have had to rely solely on Him for comfort when our mate was so far away.  He has increased our friendship with each other in ways we never would have dreamed, and that is a very great blessing indeed.  

I am able to talk to Paul often and we e-mail regularly-- not all Army wives have such luxuries, and I am very thankful.  The children love to e-mail him as well, although the younger three dictate their message to me as I type, and then they spend much time punching in "x's" and "o's" themselves before clicking "send".  Paul always writes them back right away, and it is just precious.  Paul has also done a tremendous job of continuing to lead our family spiritually.  He videotapes daily devotions using a great resource based on the Westminster Shorter Catechism called Training Hearts, Teaching Minds by Starr Meade, and then he sends the tapes to me.  I play "Daddy's devotions" at night before the children go to bed.  Having Paul's continued leadership despite being so far away is a gift beyond description, both to the children and myself.

We are all thrilled to have Paul home for two weeks over Christmas and the New Year!  Please continue to pray for Paul as he serves the Lord in Iraq.  The days are long and lonely, and I know he misses us very much.  Cards and e-mail are a great gift to him.  Lord willing, he will be home the end of May 2009.  We do not know where the Army will send us next, so we are waiting and trusting that the Lord knows every detail yet to come.

Heidi and Isaac in September!

The children have done fairly well, although the stress of deployment has taken its toll at times. I am still homeschooling-- this year with three students!  I also have the joy of directing the adult choir at our church this year.  I always have visions of completed photo albums and completed sewing projects, but for now, we are plodding along by God's grace day by day.  The projects will just have to wait for another season of our lives.

Josiah-8 years old!

Josiah is now 8 and in the 3rd grade.  He has become an excellent swimmer this year and also spends much time curled up with a book.  He worked his way through some unabridged classic literature like Swiss Family Robinson and Treasure Island this past fall!

Our twinnies are 5!

Micah with a model truck he built!

Micah is 5 and is loving kindergarten!  He has also become a great swimmer!  He is very precise and affectionate, and loves K'nex and Legos especially!

Our "Curly Girly"!

Sarah is 5 and loves Kindergarten and swimming too.  She also took some gymnastics classes this year and is a great helper around the kitchen.  She is more of a free-spirit, dancing and singing all over the house!

Isaac at swimming lessons!

Isaac, our little laughter, is now 3 and LOVES to make us laugh!  He likes anything in the "potato chip and cracker" food group, and he is a real snugglebug!  I enjoy that a lot!

The kids and I at family camp!

The children and I spent three weeks on the road this last summer, covering 2600 miles, as we went to family camp at Scioto Hills Baptist Camp and then traveled on to Myrtle Beach to spend two weeks there with Paul's parents.  They were a tremendous encouragement and generously did everything they could to lighten my load and give us a nice vacation, despite Paul's absence.  We then had the opportunity to meet up with Paul in Virginia for a few days in early November when the Army sent him to America for a class.  The children are all great little travelers, and the Lord carried the five of us and Paul more than 15,000 miles total that week without a single problem-- yet another evidence of God's grace!

Just a few weeks ago, as I wandered around a store trying to gear up for Christmas shopping, I was struck by the thought that a thing far, far worse than living without Paul here for so many months would be living without Christ.  You are all very dear to us, and we pray that He will make His name very great in your life as we all plod on toward Heaven.   May Christ be more than enough for you now and throughout 2009!

Truth and Trash Bags

Handle-tie trash bags... I love them.  Oh, the feeling of pulling those slick little plastic ties out of the top of the bag and tying it up so nice and neat.  I detest twist ties, and even tying the top of the bag shut can be a real challenge if the bag is too full.  But handle tie trash bags... Ahhh. With the amount of trash we generate in our family, tying a trash bag is a big thing to me.

Do I buy handle-tie trash bags, though?  No.  Will I ever buy them again?  No.  Tying a regular trashbag has now become an act of worship in my life.  I don't think I could buy the others if my life depended on it.
   

How could I ever worship God with the ordinary and mundane task of tying up garbage?  Can God be found in the most simple of tasks-- a re-orienting of my life and focus throughout the daily drudgery of chores?  Can God use even the most common things to teach us great truths about Himself...to teach me that I am not my own, but that I am bought with a price?

My story about trash bags goes back several months to the time before we found out that my husband Paul would be deployed to Iraq for twelve months.  Our pastor was preaching on Daniel 1:8 where Daniel purposes in his heart that he will not eat the king's food.  I have always heard it preached that this decision was based on the fact that the food would have been served to idols first.  While that may be true, Babylonian culture would have dictated that EVERYTHING be served to idols, including the vegetables. Daniel went to the king's schools and wore the king's clothes.  So why did he reject the king's meat and wine in favor of the vegetables?

Yes, Jewish dietary laws may come into play, but my pastor asked these important questions--"What if Daniel chose the very mundane ritual of eating to continually remind himself that he belonged to Yahweh?  What if he purposed to live in such a way that there was no question who his God was?"  Simply put, in a culture full of idols and ritual religion, would dedicating one daily task to his own great God be enough to constantly remind himself that he did not belong to any other?  Would it tell the God-ignoring culture around him what, or for that matter, WHO was most important to him?

I listened to that sermon and began to mull it over in my mind.  "Is there anything that I could deliberately give up daily to remind myself that I belong to Yahweh?"  I began to pray that the Lord would show me what could become "the king's meat and wine" in my own life.

Fast-forward a month or so to April 2008 when we knew with certainty that deployment was the next challenge appointed for us.  As the reality began to sink in, I realized how much life would change.  In fact, there was one huge task that Paul had done regularly since our twins were born that was going to fall to me when he left:  grocery shopping.

Now, I can shop for groceries, but with so many little ones  at once-- four children in less than five years, to be exact-- it was just easier for Paul to go to the commissary or grocery store on his way home from work.  He also loves the challenge of finding the best deals.  He was happy to help, and I was happy to let him!
   

As we talked through the changes that were about to come, Paul said one day, "Sweetheart, I'm sorry that you will have to do all of the grocery shopping."  I then teased my deal-loving husband, "That's ok.  Now I can buy handle-tie trash bags!"  Throughout our marriage, we have had an ongoing joke about those same wonderful bags, but since he did the shopping, I was content to let him bring home the cheapest flat-topped bags.  It really didn't bother me, and he knew I was teasing him to say so.  He then retorted back to me, "Well, I'll just buy you twelve-months-worth of regular trash bags before I leave!"  We had a good laugh and went on with our day.

Over the next few days, the Lord began to prick my heart about the way even something as insignificant as a trash bag could become an object of disrespect in my marriage.  Even though I was truly teasing Paul, could that become a tool for Satan to use down the road as he craftily drew my attention to myself, whispering, "When your husband was gone, you got to buy whatever you wanted, but now that he's back..."?  I so badly wanted to uphold and respect Paul's leadership in our home while he was gone so that it wouldn't be such a hard transition when he came back home.  I know my own sinful potential for enjoying being in charge.  Does the curse in the Garden of Eden come to mind?  While he was gone, I was going to be responsible, but not in charge, and I needed to live that truth.

So I finally had the answer to my prayer about the "king's meat and wine".  Trash bags.  Plain, ordinary, flat-topped, cheap trash bags.  I could worship the one true God every time I tied a trash bag.  I could be reminded of I Corinthians 6: 19-20 which tells me the amazing truth that I am not my own, I am bought with a price.  I am to glorify God in my body and in my spirit, because they belong to Him.

So now every day I tie the bag, and say the verse, and let the Lord re-orient my perspective.  It has not always been easy.  At times, it has been very difficult to be reminded that I don't live for myself.  The Lord continues to gently lead me down the path toward godliness, although I have so very far to go and spend most days just plodding along by His grace.  Truth and trash bags-- two seemingly unrelated things that had a head-on collision in this Army wife's existence.

When Paul deployed, I decided to keep track of how many trash bags I would tie throughout the year he's gone.  I may have missed a few here or there, but at the time I write this, I am up to 198 with six months to go.  Almost two hundred reminders that I am not my own.  Two hundred opportunities for the Lord to remind me that He bought me and I exist to glorify Him.

Handle-tie trash bags... I love them, but I am learning to love Christ and His claim on my life more.  Can you worship with the mundane task of tying a trash bag?  I sincerely believe that you can.

  

   

Our Birthday Cake Tradition!

It has been a tradition in our family for several years to make any style birthday cake the children want, starting when they turn three.  Paul and I have always done it together, and we try as much as possible to make almost everything edible.  With Josiah's birthday recently, I had expected to make his cake by myself, so I spent a lot of time mulling over his choice-- a jungle cake.  Then the Lord allowed Paul to be home for Josiah's birthday, so we once again had the joy of constructing a cake together! 

Eventually the kids are going to come up with an idea that goes beyond our cake-decorating ability, but so far, we have been able to have some great celebrations.  They really look forward to it!  They even talk about their next birthday cake choice all year long, sometimes starting the day after their birthday as we sit around the table eating leftover cake!

(To see some pictures of our past cakes, see the slideshow on the left-hand side of our blog entitled "Cakes, Cakes, and more Cakes!"  So far we've made a polar bear, a fire engine, a T-rex, a princess, a crocodile, a race car, a pink pig, a tank, a tiger, a princess castle, a globe, Mack from the movie "Cars", and the jungle cake shown above!)

Why chocolate syrup and cookie dough?

Why is our blog title "Chocolate Syrup and Cookie Dough"?

On the day Paul left for Iraq, I had to run to the store for a few things.  As I walked down the ice cream aisle, I realized that my husband was the one that usually bought the fun foods.  I tend to buy the sensible ones.  It struck me that life without him here was going to be a little like plain vanilla ice cream--still sweet, but not nearly so delectable!

When I got home, I told him about this revelation and then said to him, "You are my chocolate syrup."  Our son, Micah, thought that was so funny-- daddy being mommy's chocolate syrup!  From that conversation was born our blog title.  I love chocolate syrup, and Paul loves cookie dough.  We are trying with God's help to cherish the sweetness of each other even though we are so far apart!

A long silence....

It has been a long time since I added a post to this blog.  We had a busy summer and now we are settling back into our school routine.

Paul was home for three days this last week-- a huge blessing!  We celebrated Josiah's birthday and spent time together as a family.  What a great time to be together!

I will try to add posts more regularly now, along with pictures.  I am also planning on adding sections about Paul's traveling companion (a stuffed beagle named Scout) and all of the things the Lord is teaching us through this deployment!

May the Lord make His name very great!  

First e-mail to daddy!

Josiah sending his daddy the first e-mail message!