The Seasons are **Changing**

It's been a mighty long while that I've been on here!  I think I've posted twice in 4 or 5 months.  I wish I could say it was because we turned off the computers and have been just busy living life ever since my last post.  But such is not the case.  That is ok, though.  Because truth be told the computers did NOT get turned off.  The day or two after I wrote my post we jumped head first into the mold remediation that needed to be done here at home.

We had to move our second oldest out of the house due to her loosing her hair from the mold toxicity.  So I spent time finding her a place to stay, and getting her ready to leave.  It wasn't what we wanted to do, but we also didn't want a bald daughter (for her sake!!),

Some time during these past few months there has been a stirring in my spirit.  Coming to realize that we were in NO way shape or form living a victorious life.  Some would tell me that we are where God wants us to be.  But I couldn't accept that for one more day.  I knew there was a better way, I had tasted of it many years ago, but fell away.

I had been praying in a very dark place.  I could feel the wall that separated me from God.  It was horrid.  And I finally said, "ENOUGH!!!  No more!!!"  I determined then and there that Satan would not have one more day attacking us, and winning.  August 23, 2016.  That is the day when I took my stand that our family WILL be victorious, BECAUSE we already are in Christ!!  I was determined that I wasn't going to let go until I saw success.

It's only been about two weeks, but a lot has happened during that time (spiritually speaking).  I've decided I needed to go back to 'school'.  No, not college.  I needed to pour into me LIVING hope.  To be frank I have not shared the Gospel with another person in over a decade.  Sad, but true.  The reason being is I knew that my life, my family, were the living poster to living in defeat.  The Gospel is supposed to bring LIFE.  We were not dealing with trials, we were living in them day after day after day after day!  And this has been going on for years and years.  Who would sign up for that?  There had to be something I was missing from those verses in the Bible that spoke about having life, and having it more abundantly.

Now, to my friends who are reformed, no need to write to me to tell me how far off the wagon I have fallen.  We have suffered much harm from the teaching of reformed doctrine.  Don't get me wrong, the people had the BEST of intentions, they wanted to help us, they LOVED us.  However there was no power in the religion that they offered.  Of course, maybe it was just me?  All I know is that I have had more victory (notice I said "more"...I've got a lot of growing to do!) in the last two weeks than I've had in a decade.  The Word of God is active and ALIVE, glory to God!!!

We have been making a lot of progress on our mold remediation.  More than we thought we could.  We are hopeful we will be able to move our daughter back in soon.  In the meantime I am filling myself with a lot of Bible reading, webcasts and books and DVD's.

I highly recommend the reading program from here: Bible Reading Plan

Here are some pictures of the new flooring, works in progress and the things I have been devouring :-)

I colored my lists in rainbow order so I could more easily see which reading came next, as when the markers are all in a row you can not see the numbers too well.  Here I have them splayed out to get a better look-see, but they would fall out if I kept them like that.

A close up of one of the markers.  The "187 days" under the list number tells you how long it will take to read that list's books of the Bible.

My 'back to school' supplies.  And here is the amazing part....this was ALL free!  And lest people are worried, like I said I have seen more fruit in two weeks than I have in 10 years.  And we've had a MAJOR testing during this time, one which would have had me totally FREAKING OUT.  That will be another story for another day, but trust me, it was bad!  BUT, we were victorious, and we saw the power of prayer at work in a very real, tangible way!

The new laminate in the family room.  You can see a bunch of books off to the left.  Those are what is left from moving the shelves back into the room.  It took me half a day to get the other books back up on the shelves to where they belonged!  I was all 'booked' out, and have been leaving these to when I am up to dealing with more books again :-)

The laminate flooring in the living room, and the new tile.  The tile goes from the front door to the dining room.  Eventually the tile will cover the dining and kitchen.  There is just soooo much traffic that goes through this corridor that we knew the laminate would get ruined with the dirt, wetness, etc. from all of us coming and going.  So we put the tile in.  It is a dream to clean the floors, knowing I am actually cleaning them!  I have to say, that will the amount of traffic, the amount of people in our house, the amount of mess we create, that our Kirby vacuum really did a great job.  There wasn't as much 'stuff' under the carpet that I supposed there would be for 10 years!

A picture of the paint color the girls picked out.  They are eager to move back in, but you can see there is a wee bit of stuff in the way!

Harder to see, but this is their sub-floor, they chose a tan color.  We will have to go over some spots (and obviously clean it!) after we move everything back to where it belongs.  This is a temporary fix, as we plan on having laminate throughout the house.  But we need the carpets out now, so this is the best option.

The girls' closet floor.  Here is what it looks like after the carpet has been removed.  The staples and padding are still left behind.  Jeremiah got those up last night and put the first coat of paint on.