Christmas Snippets...

Well, even though we're already into late January (!!!) I thought I might post some of the highlights of our Christmas break.

Most blogs are all about Valentine's day. With moving, and traveling, and neurology appointments, we've been a little busy. So, here's a recap of our trip home....

Here's what we thought was going to happen:
-Drop off a horse in Denver
-Take the trailer back to WI
-Celebrate the holiday with our families
-Head up to GB to do some support raising
-See my bestie's new baby boy
-Trailer a cabinet my hubby and FIL made together back to CO

Here's what really happened:
-Drop off a horse in Denver
-Have our transmission die just over the border into IA
-Leave the Suburban and trailer in IA while we rent a car to get to WI
-Celebrate the holidays with our family
-Hang out with my dad who was trying to recover from surgery
-Witness the peaceful passing of my hubby's grandfather
-Hang out with my hubby's family who came for the funeral
-Attend the funeral
-Postpone leaving because of the record breaking cold and vehicles that wouldn't start
-Rent a vehicle to get back to our repaired Suburban
-Return back to CO without the cabinet

I mean, really.

It didn't go at all how we had hoped.

But, we still had some good times.

We, of course, ate well...

A little post-birthday celebration

We ALWAYS love Papa's pancakes

And Nana's coffeecake

We got to play in the snow a bit...

We even tried making gingerbread houses (from scratch - no store bought kit for us! This is something I always wanted to do)...

We celebrated the life of sweet Grandpa Great...

And, I enjoyed some time with my sweet Grandpa...

And then came the presents...

and the frenzy that gift opening with kiddos is...

I love having the cousins together. 

One of the best parts was the Little Mister building something special for his daddy and me with Papa Eddy...

And, hey, we even wound up with a great new photo of the two of us! (Thanks, Wizbang Photography!)

Eventually, we made it back here...

...where our days are filled with snow, sun, mountains, kiddos making messes, me cleaning up those messes, trying to get a house settled, making neurology appointments and trying to enjoy the chaos that is life with littles. 

We cannot express enough gratitude to those of you who helped get our Suburban up and running again. I'm so grateful that the transmission went out while we were all together (as opposed to when the kids and I were by ourselves going to get groceries an hour and a half away with no cell reception). 

It was a rough situation, but God took care of us through it... He always has.

Thanks for being a part of this journey...

-kt

Not growing weary in the waiting...

I feel like this is my current challenge.

We're waiting on so much...
   ...waiting to afford a vehicle
   ...waiting to see if my husband has a job in a few weeks
   ...waiting to find out how to deal with the Little Miss's seizures
   ...waiting to find out if we're moving or staying where we are
   ...waiting to make holiday travel plans because of the previously mentioned reasons
   ...waiting to think about baby #3 because of all of this uncertainty
   ...waiting to find out about my dad's health
 
Those are all really big things for us.

But, I'm waiting in the little things, too...
   ...waiting to go grocery shopping to see how far we can stretch our food from the last trip
   ...waiting for the kids to start playing together more consistently
   ...waiting for a big snow to hopefully push animals down for next hunting season
   ...waiting to decorate for the holidays in case we are moving soon
   ...waiting to dust because, frankly, I don't feel like it!

People say all sorts of different cliche things, like "God can't direct your path unless you're moving," or "The only way you'll know if the door is opened or closed is if you try walking through it."

All of the big things in the first list are kind of out of our control. We can't take steps of faith in them. We are really just stuck in a place of waiting for others to decide our fate.

It's really hard not to grow weary of the waiting.

It's hard not to get bitter/scared/frustrated that we live a lifestyle that provides absolutely no security.

A friend of mine and I were recently discussing how great people of faith were often looked at as being foolish.

Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac.
Then they came to the place of which God had told him; and Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood, and bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
              Genesis 22:9-10 (Read the rest of the story. It's a good one!)

David danced like a crazy man.
And David was dancing before the LORD with all his might,... Michal the daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD...
              2 Samuel 6:14a and part of verse 16

Joshua was told to march around Jericho for a week straight playing instruments so the wall would fall when they hollered on the seventh day.
Then on the seventh day they rose early at the dawning of the day and marched around the city in the same manner seven times; only on that day they marched around the city seven times. At the seventh time, when the priests blew the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, "Shout! For the LORD has given you the city." So the people shouted, and priests blew the trumpets; and when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted with a great shout and the wall fell down flat,..
              Joshua 6:15-16, 20a

Joseph married Mary anyway.
And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly... When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife.
              Matthew 1:19 and 24

But, I think the truth was that they realized God had their backs.
That no matter what the world said, no matter how the world defines success, security, etc, that God is the one who is ultimately in control of the end game anyway.
I believe they had a peace about the fact that God was working in the details, in the stuff we can't see, behind the scenes.

Yes, sometimes He tells us exactly what to do and gives us what we need to do it.

But, sometimes He makes us wait.
     and wait.
          and wait.
                and wonder how He's going to make it right.

The people in those examples I mentioned didn't have the details. They didn't know how God was going to fix it. They just trusted that He would. Even if it wasn't exactly how they wanted it to turn out.

In those moments, we probably look foolish, because with so much up in the air, shouldn't we be doing something?!

I want to do what God has for me.
But I really don't want to do the things He doesn't have for me.

What if He is asking me to wait?
What if I tried to reconcile all of these things and ended up messing up His plan?
What if, by not being comfortable just waiting for Him, I miss out on something great?

So, for now, I wait.

and pray for peace.

and wait.

Because I know that if I let Him work it all out for us, it'll end up so much better than we could've orchestrated on our own.

It always works that way.

-kt

Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted;

but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;

they shall mount up with wings like eagles;

they shall fun and not be weary;

they shall walk and not faint.

Isaiah 40:30-31

The day I didn't die.

This past weekend I had one of the most terrifying, humbling, nightmarish experiences I have ever had.

I lost control of my pickup truck on a snowy mountain pass in CO and went nose-first over the edge of a mountain cliff, rolling the truck until it eventually stopped in some trees.

I was heading to Denver to pick up my d-group from my summer project in Lake Tahoe (that was 9 1/2 years ago) when the snowy pass bested me.

I was going slow and being SO careful. I was doing everything my husband taught me. I loved that truck. Cars, trucks, all sorts of vehicles were flying past me over the pass no problem. I don't know, maybe I was being too careful.

The truck hit a slick spot and started to swerve. The brakes, turning the wheel, nothing… nothing helped. 

I suddenly found myself sliding uncontrollably toward the cliff, nose first. 

The nose went over and I went right down with it. The grade of the cliff was so steep that the truck started to roll, driver's side first. Then I was upside down, then on the passenger side, then upright again. 

I don't know if I rolled again or not.

What I do know is that I (fortunately) finally settled in some trees, on my tires, upright and thinking, "Oh my God, I have to get out of this truck. Get me out of this truck!" 

It was braced in some trees, but I was unsure if the truck was going to break the trees and keep rolling.  

It's SHOCKING how many thoughts can flash through your brain when in an emergency situation.

Praise God for adrenaline.

My mind went to my husband's advice for traveling through the mountains and I knew my best bet would be to find an ID, my water bottle and my phone (even though we don't have reception over the pass) and get back up to the road to wave down some help. Luckily, all of those things were within my reach along with my backpack that had emptied when I flipped. I threw those things in there and climbed up (because of the angle of the truck) to the passenger side door. 

It would only open about an inch but no more. With EXTREME care, so as not to shake the truck, I climbed into the backseat and tried to get out that door but it would not open either. My last hope was the small sliding window along the back. I slid it open, climbed onto the bed of our truck, shimmied down the back and using the right back tire, hopped off and landed in snow up to my knees.

Then, I dropped my phone.

Not surprising since I was shaking so bad and constantly repeating over and over, "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, OH MY GOD." 

You can feel emotionally alone, but let me tell you, there is no more lonely feeling then standing knee deep in snow, next to your destroyed pickup (that probably just saved your life), without your cell phone, while oblivious drivers are safely in their vehicles passing out of sight above your head. And, not one human knows where you are.

It was morning. It was cold. No one had their windows open to hear my screams for help.

I begged God to help me find that phone quickly.

By His grace, He immediately answered that one.

Then my concern was being seen/heard.

Every stick/tree I grabbed pulled out. Every rock I grabbed slid down. 

I had been trying to keep my hands as dry as possible to avoid freezing but quickly realized that survival depended on digging into the snow and scaling up this cliff.

I was almost to the road, but slipping, so when I heard a vehicle approaching I reached as high as I could and waved, screaming, "Help me!"

When that car had passed, I used all of my remaining energy to get the rest of the way up and I saw that driver with his backup lights on.

At this point, I'm back on the road, covered in snow and as this man gets out to help, my emotions overwhelm me. 

Hysterically, I try to answer his questions and he calls 911. 

I'm saying over and over, "Oh my God! I just rolled my truck down the mountain!"

The operator speaks to me. More people stop to help. I'm talking, I'm breathing heavily, trying to make sense of this and to grasp my current reality. I look down at my truck and lose it again. I'm nauseous. I'm grateful. I'm terrified.

All I wanted to do was get down from that pass, but no one had the intention of taking me anywhere until the emergency crews came. 

The fire chief showed up and had me warm up in his truck.

Each man told me that in these situations, they are normally extracting a body, not standing next to the driver chatting about what happened. I am lucky to be alive and unharmed.

Then came the fire trucks, you know, in case mine burst suddenly into flames.

We were so remote, it took the tow trucks about an hour to arrive.

And then, because my truck is such a beast, it took two tow trucks to bring it up anyway!

I don't even know how long traffic was backed up for. It felt like an eternity.

When my poor truck was finally back on solid ground, I snapped some pictures.

I truly believe it saved my life. What a tank.

(It doesn't even look that bad, but apparently there is a bunch of damage to the under carriage.) 

Right before they had to hook up the 2nd truck to finish the job.

I was speaking with my dad this morning when he mentioned that there are so many things to be thankful for.

Just to name a few of the ways God was good to me through this:

• I never hit my head or blacked out.
• My truck rolled on it's side, not end to end.
• The side windows stayed intact, not shattering all over me or making it treacherous to climb out the back window.
• The trees stopped me without going through any windows.
• My seatbelt kept me right where I needed to be.
• Because there was no front end collision, my airbags didn't deploy.
• John had cleaned out the truck so my friends would have plenty of room so there weren't many things flying around with me that could've injured me.
• This one is weird - we lost Jake's Soc. Sec. card on his first day of school. I found it in the passenger door at the impound lot. (SO RANDOM)
• The people who stopped to help me actually had cell reception. 
• My husband, my children, my friends were not with me. 
• No one else was close enough for the truck to take them out with me.
• I didn't get cut on any glass. 
• I had grabbed my best winter coat in an off-the-cuff decision because I thought maybe my friend from Florida would be cold.
• The State Trooper that came for me has a wife and kids my age and he was very professional and kind and made me feel like he was going to make sure to take care of me. 
• One of the first vehicles that my accident stopped was a truck with flashing lights from the set of The Fast and the Furious 7 that was filming on the pass. She was able to use the lights to warn traffic that they had to stop for us. 
• I was able to share a lot about my faith, my life, and camp with the men who came to my aid. The State Trooper, fire chief and tow truck guys should have no doubt that I believe God spared me and isn't finished with me here yet.

My friends were very gracious and rented a car to drive here. We ended up having a wonderful weekend catching up and being able to speak encouraging and challenging words to one another. I love having friends like that. I love that these sweet friends took all the time and effort to get here so we could all be together for the first time in about 4 years. I feel blessed that I have more time to be with people I love. 

I'm only a little stiff in my joints. I have headaches and feel dizzy often and I kind of feel like some words got knocked out of my head sometimes… but I'm all in one piece!

I'm also having a hard time sleeping. My brain replays it all over and over and I'm having some scary dreams. I don't want to be the person who is too afraid to travel on the highway where they had an accident… but geez.

(What are some scriptures you cling to when trying to overcome fear? Please leave a comment with tips!)

The Little Mister went to Sunday school and, after they did their scheduled project, he asked camp's CEO (who was teaching that day) if he could draw our truck being towed. 

I'm actually really afraid that this is going to be hard on him. He loved that truck, too.

For now we are dealing with the insurance company and the reality that we don't have any vehicle we can call our own. There is literally no way we can pay for a vehicle (which is why we currently only had one).

So, as usual, we are in a place where we are waiting on God's provision.

He provided a way for me to stay safe in our truck and to get off that mountain with only a few tiny pieces of glass in my hand and one in my cheek (that didn't even leave marks). Now I just have to wait to see how He's going to provide for us this time!

I hope this post finds you well (and safe!)

-kt