I've been thinking a lot about this question this week. What do you think? Allow me to post a couple of quotes from the book I've been reading:

"...though I experienced death, I also experienced life in ways I never
thought possible before...I did not go through the pain and come out on the
other side; instead, I lived in it and found what within the pain the grace
to survive and eventually grow."

"...I did not get over my loss of my loved ones; rather, I absorbed the loss
into my life, until it became a part of who I am!" (this really resonated
with me!)

"...sorrow took up permanent residence in my soul and enlarged it! I learned
gradually that the deeper we plunge into suffering, the deeper we can enter
a new, and different life. A willingness to face the loss and to enter into
the darkness is the first step we must take."

"...Choice is therefore the key. We can run from darkness, or we can enter
into the darkness and face the pain of loss. We can indulge ourselves in
self-pity, or we can empathize with others and embrace the pain as our own.
We can run away from sorrow and drown it in addictions, or we can learn to
live with sorrow..."

"...the darkness lingers for a long time, perhaps for the rest of our earthly
lives. The choice to enter the darkness does not ensure that we ever
completely come out on the other side...Is it possible to live this way? Is
it possible to feel sorrow for the rest of our lives and yet to find joy at
the same time?"

...doesn't that sound exotic?

I feel a bit like a smitten young lady again as I'm anticipating the weekend.

I'm married to a wonderful man for (can it be?) 18 years this Monday. We're packed and ready to take the night train tonight to Austria for a three-day getaway, and I can't wait. We hope to rest in the hills of Austria and return refreshed in soul and mind.

As it turns out, my sickness was a blessing. Now we will really and truly get to celebrate ON THE DAY! How great is that!? :)

I feel blessed, happy, and terribly excited.

Birthday--Austin celebrated his fourteenth birthday this month. Our children are growing up so fast it can scare us at times. John and I were just talking about our teenagers last night. They are normal boys with developing facial hair and a fast growth spurt. :) On one side, here are negatives not having a lot of peers to be growing up with, but on the other side, they have been forced to find out what they believe personally about life and it hasn't all been bad. They have become good friends with some of the VS boys. We are deeply thankful to God for their lives, both Conrad and Austin. They have both matured a lot in the last year, and we are very grateful for their obedience and workable spirits. All the praise to God!

weather-- We've had strange weather this month for Poland, at least. Hot, sticky weather... evening thunderstorms... and driving rain. Very unusual! We felt some anxiety during one rainstorm. John and I were in Minsk with a trailer getting rock to work on our gray-water drain lines. While we were gone, it rained so hard that there was flashflooding in Minsk and by the time we had got back out to the house-building site, there was water running down the driveway. Thankfully, Conrad was there and had noticed wet spots on the ceiling upstairs. He had enough presence of mind to go up in the attic and put buckets around where he could find drips and that probably saved our house from some unwanted disaster. John waited for a break in the storm, then he went up and fixed the tar paper rips on the roof. Thank God! Since then we have had more hard rain, and it is becoming imperative that we get the metal roof on!!! Anybody want to offer their help in the next month? Ok, I know that everyone is busy in the summertime, but we are feeling a need to get the roofing and the siding on as well, before we run into more problems.

Pizza supper-- Maria organized a Saturday evening pizza supper and ping-pong evening for some of her friends and the friends of the other vsers. We met in our new garage, since the weather wasn't too favorable. We had a nice time, and I was able to meet some new people that have become important in the lives of our young people here. It was a rewarding evening and reminded me again how building relationships is one of the only possibilities we have here in Poland to reach people. They don't need our money or aid! They are quite self-sufficient. But they have a deep need of Christ as a personal Saviour in their everyday lives. Are we continually willing to be used of God in this way? I realized again how time-consuming relationships can be.

Summer classes-- Our school, GTE, offers a three-week intensive English class every summer, and they in session right now. The classes run three hours every day, five days a week. It keeps the teachers hopping to keep up. John has only taught one class so far, but he tries to be at school as much as he can to keep things running smoothly. nfortunately, between housebuilding, legal work for the new vsers, and the missions financial books, it's made it frustrating and difficult for him to keep up. He can so many times feel like he isn't doing a good job anywhere when he is stretched so thin. Pray for added strength for him this summer.

House project-- And the house saga continues. We really have gotten a long way this summer. It is very discouraging at times when we just work and work and work and if feels like we aren't getting anywhere. It can feel very lonely, too, with not a lot of others helping anymore. But, thank God, we're making progress. And we are getting good at packing suppers, throwing in batches of laundry when there is a free minute, and just being ok with our house here in Krolewiec not being cleaned very thoroughly. The downstairs is all painted and John is starting to lay tile in the kitchen. The upstairs is ready to have the final sanding on the spackling in preparation for painting and the ceilings are almost all textured and ready for primer. So, we are trudging on! It has been a good family project, and it has been rewarding (I didn't say fun!) to work together. But it is difficult with a lot of stress on all of us. I told John the other day that I hope the two of us have a relationship left by the time we are finished with this project. It's amazing how the stress and hard work brings out the worst sides in all of us. :(

Here are some pics of different rooms--family room (colorwashed), our bedroom (paper illusions), trying different colors and ideas for colorwashing, my laundry room border, John laying tile in my kitchen, John spackling in the staircase (don't ask how high he is, my heart almost stopped)

And some miscellaneous pics. I can't believe I forgot to post my daughter's bday in June. Here is a pic of her with her cake.

Now for a story of God's protection--Derek and Alli decided to build their own fire to play house with with permission to make it on the driveway. Unbeknowns to Mom and Dad, Derek took the matches and built a second fire over beside the fence under the trees. He decided it wasn't safe, so he threw dirt on it and left. The next morning, Eric came out of the cabin to billows of smoke coming from beside the fence. He quickly ran to get buckets of water and called John and Robin at school. They came hurrying out and helped to extiquish the smoldering fire. They looked at the situation and figured it must have been arson since it looked like the fire had started on the property next to ours and had crept up the hill. We have had problems with theft and now fires?!? What next? Well, Eric stopped in at our house and told the rest of us about the fire as big as a living room that he had put out. With terror in his eyes, Derek told us about the fire he had secretly built the evening before and the dirt that he had smothered it with. A sober boy went out to look at what had happened. There were a couple of little hot spots that we kept an eye on that day, and we could smell smoke when the wind was in the right direction. It must have been on his mind a lot, because a couple of days later, we had one of our flashflooding storms. Afterwards, Derek told me, "Well, now the fire is for sure out." A big lesson learned!

Here is the cute little fire that was started with permission.

The children shoveling rock for the gray-water drain lines. They thought they were all ugly rocks when we first brought them, but after a downpour notice in the second picture that the work was forgotten as they sorted through all the myriads of kinds of rock, a hobby of my boys. They came home with a small bucket full and many plans to organize them and label them. Guess what!? Mom is ready to pitch them out since they have sat around here getting in my way.

Our neighbors for the past seven years, holding their granddaughter, who incidently is my namesake, Laura, a rather unusual name in Poland.

My daughter sitting on the roof of our new house, crossstitching.