Have I mentioned to you that I have amazing parents?   They live far away and I miss them but they get to love on people right where they are.  One of those people is Emily Keller.  When my parents moved 3 years ago to a new town they met Emily and her family and quickly made them part of our family.  I’ve gotten to know Emily through my parents and am so honored for her to share just a snipet of her story with you as she has seen God work in the midst of a crazy season.

My husband (mostly my husband) and I have been working on a complete renovation of a house for 8 months. Wow! Has it been 8 months? Yes, it’s definitely been 8 months. We finally moved in! We still have work to be done, so I’m withholding before and after photos, but here’s a super cute one of my kids hanging out one day.

Inspiring, I know. Thank God for the amazing family and friends that came and helped.

Most of my involvement in the renovation had to be squeezed in while June and Thomas were at school. Jakob and I would do our work on the days my husband was at work, hoping to stay out of the way of bigger projects. I get a chance to think a lot when working by myself for hours in silence.

On this particular day, I was cranky and weary of working on the kitchen cabinets again, and missing my husband, whom is either working at work, or working at the house. Did you know you can’t really be mad at a man for being gone when he’s building you a house? It’s like he has a get-out of-jail-free card, and it doesn’t expire any time soon. Misery loves company and like any woman would do, I threw myself a party- a pity party.

[Tweet “Did you know you can’t really be mad at a man for being gone when he’s building you a house?”]

Jakob decided to take a nap on June’s bedroom floor, wrapped up in his daddy’s jacket, while I continued staining, sanding, and finishing cabinets. God gave me this image as a sweet reminder one, of one of the cuter reasons I’m tired! But two, to remind me that Kerlin and I are not the only ones sacrificing.

Jakob sacrificed his bed for a floor! Yes, I would’ve let him stay up the 45 minutes longer to wrap things up and go to the apartment, but he wanted to lie down.

The sweet little bonus? He slept his full nap time, which gave me enough time to finish, clean up, and sit outside in God’s creation, hearing him whisper in the wind. It was a beautiful day! But first…I called my usual order of contacts on my phone. Isn’t anyone going to pick up the phone?

As a very social person, I realized I’ve been afraid of peace, always feeling loneliness in the quiet and reaching for my phone, sad when no one picks up the other end. How can a mother of three be lonely in peace?! Still, I do. I did.

[Tweet “I realized I’ve been afraid of peace, always feeling loneliness in the quiet.”]

On that day, God showed me He is the one I should be reaching for in my quiet times. He’s pretty talkative too if I shut up long enough to listen. Go figure.

Do you ever sit in silence with a friend and still have the best time and feel closer than ever? Yeah, we did that too.

The last thing I did before Jakob woke up, I did without even realizing what I was doing, until it was done. I found a roofing nail that miraculously hadn’t made it into one of my tires yet. (I am the queen of flat tires.) God kept that nail out of my tire specifically for this day. Two blessings in one. Sweet. I leaned over and absent-mindedly wrote all my cranky feelings in the sand with the nail.

I watched as the wind slowly whirled the sand around, mesmerized by the fading letters of my feelings as they disappeared. And they did.

How amazing is He?!?