Out With the Old, In With the New

So many huge changes in our lives have come with the ringing in of the new year!

We are anticipating great things, even if it did start off with David and I getting a flu that kept us from being able to celebrate Olivia’s 20th birthday properly last weekend and my getting this newsletter out sooner!

So let’s start with Olivia: She finally had her interview for French citizenship this week and it was friendly, but they have a year to give her a final response. We fully expect it to happen before 2016 is out.

P1010324But her cat Gumdrop fell gravely ill just 6 weeks after Chester’s death. It fell to me to support her and have the vet put her down while David was out of town. We had been dreading this moment for years. (Here’s proof of their long and intimate relationship on the left.) But thanks to our new intercessory SWAT team, it was trauma-free. This cat was slightly neurotic and ran from everyone but Olivia, so we are thinking Chester’s disappearance, power tools and strangers in the house, combined with Olivia’s recent prolonged 3-week absence were more than her nerves could take. Now I can redecorate without fear of traumatized cat repercussions and we start the year with just one peaceful goldfish.

And speaking of renovations:

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Our old "water closet" is now a new half bath with a real door, sparkling white tile and green trees replacing the black mold. But 10 weeks later, the toilet is still not installed correctly and we’ve been without flooring on the entire landing. This delay has put a damper on my joy and David has reached his grace limit as well. Hopefully I can post my "secret garden" next month…

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Above was the end of the den where David’s desk was located. But it had to be moved to the spare bedroom in order to remove the old gas furnace on the L side. The new furnace (L) was installed in the laundry room (behind the above wall) and the den will have to wait its turn for a complete overhaul before we can move back into it. (David has cleaned it up and is using it as a temporary music room, at last clearing our living/dining room of all his growing gear!)

David also moved out of his office at the school at the end of the year and has been spending extra time with God trying to feel out a new schedule with new priorities. Noah followed in his footsteps, graduating in December with little fanfare and will start his first full-time job this month with Rolls Royce as a data improvement specialist.

So though we took on debt for this renovation last year, we can see God completely providing for our children and intervening to reduce our expenses this year. The government will give us a tax credit for our energy-efficient furnace. We no longer have pets with expensive health issues. We recently received free water-saving shower heads and taps. And the utility companies wrote out of the blue to say that we would be receiving a subsidy for our bills this year!

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The back of the house is the most marked change from old to new and it’s no surprise that the timing matches a new relationship with the neighbors! The follow-up event was when I went back over and talked to them about our church Christmas party, but I only had room in the car for 1 child. So the night before the event, the whole family came to the door to say that they were leaving the kids with "mamie" to go Christmas shopping and couldn’t guarantee that they would be back in time for Noémi to come. She was despondent. So I offered to babysit for all 4 of them. The kids begged, saying how much nicer I was than "mamie," and then she actually pulls up and insults them with "What kind of b*s* are you kids up to?"

Sitting on the stoop with the kids draped over me, I corrected her by testifying that these kids were making me feel more loved than anyone on earth at this moment in time and then got up and went back into the house.

The parents got the picture, so the next afternoon, the kids were dropped off, meeting and falling in love with Olivia and her bestie Barbara. We made chocolate-dipped pretzels and Rolo Turtles to take to the party, did hair and painted nails. Then I took the kids to church an hour in advance, asking church friends to bring my family later. Another couple from church met us there and helped me and the oldest boy, Lucas, do some last minute decorating. He has a beautiful servant’s heart, which speaks my love language! Then my Sunday school kids arrived for a last minute rehearsal of a banner choreography of Il Est Ne Le Divin Enfant. By the time people started trickling in, we had a tree up, candles lit, hot apple cider simmering and luminaries lining the drive to welcome them.

Every year we do a variety/talent show and then have a potluck afterwards. This year the sanctuary was packed out, with a strong youth presence, bringing lots of energy and enthusiasm to the evening. Everyone had heard David testify about my autumn party and they were thrilled to see the kids there. They were like chattering spider monkeys on our laps, but easily greeting others and cheering the loudest when David and I were singled out for our contributions that evening. Their favorite act was a rap/breakdance of O Holy Night. The evening ended with a circle dance and the kids joined right in. When their parents picked them up out in the parking lot 6 hrs later, I was ready to collapse. (Sorry, David had been too busy on the tech team to take souvenir photos.) But it was so much richer not to keep the love and joy to ourselves this year! (And the bonus is that now I have the mother’s cell phone number and don’t have to knock unexpectedly on the door anymore!)

And that’s not all that’s new about the house – we used Christmas money from my family to finally buy some proper mattress support for our latex mattresses that we’d thrown into our old waterbed frame where they were slowly suffocating (and we weren’t sleeping that well either!) As of this week, they are breathing happily on adjustable and repositionable IKEA slats and we are loving the difference!

Our outlook on life has also been radically changed simply by altering the lighting in several rooms. In summary, 2016 is already looking much brighter!

Happy New Year to all of you, Angela

Posted in newsletter.

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