Crazy dreams and the thoughts they bring

Have you ever thought about what you would be like if all of your flaws were taken away? I’m not talking about being sinless, I mean what if you were able to lay aside all of those things you know hold you down and hold you back. What if you were able to simply accept grace? Think about how this would affect your life. If you fully understood grace what would that mean? You would have the ability to love everyone wholly. You could understand them and enjoy them because you held no discontent for them. You could also enjoy yourself. You wouldn’t go around kicking yourself for the stupid things you had done and hanging on to mistakes you had made. Understanding grace would change you inside out. If you were able to accept grace you would always have a heavenward vision. Worries would fade away. But how in the world do we get there. How do we fully understand the greatest paradox, the impossible equation that the sins of the world plus Jesus does not equal punishment and justice for all, but means eternal life.
I had a sad dream last night about the death of a family member that got me thinking about this. I woke up feeling the left-overs from the emotional dream and feeling true sadness. Death does that. It quakes our core with the feeling that it’s just not right, just not fair. It also causes us to look heavenward and inward. It causes us to examine ourselves and our lives. I get a similar but milder feeling sometimes when I am in a plane. Being so far from normal life makes me relax and take on a different frame of mind. All my problems are down there with the antlike dots that are rushing around and mixing everything up. I think and view life more clearly when I get that feeling. Death makes all the small things fade away, it helps us understand grace. It was a sacrificial death that made grace possible. I think this is why older people generally understand grace better than the younger ones. They have been sobered by death more than the young.
I hope I can stay in this frame of mind, seeking a truer understanding of grace. I think that must be the key, because to understand the dichotomy of grace is to understand the Father Himself.

Dear John

Okay this may be a strange post but this is what I am thinking about. …… Toilets, yes toilets. They are so grose! Really who decided that it would be a good idea to put these things in our homes? We all know what goes on where the toilet is and then some of us are men, so SOME of us don’t care about what the ramifications of toilet activity are. The reality is that toilets in the home NEED to be cleaned! AUGH!!! GROSS!!! I mean this is an intimate job. It requires crouching down closer than you ever want to be to one of these things and swishing the water around NEAR YOUR FACE!!! Then you will need to reach down (preferably with gloves)…….. (Preferably disposable gloves) and wipe down the entire surface. If you are lucky enough to have a man in the house you get the added pleasure of wiping down the floor in front of the toilet, and I hear if you are blessed with a younger man you get the EXTRA pleasure of wiping down not just the floor but the walls and ceiling too. Just love taking care of my man. I think that the integration of toilets into the home is a sign of our society’s digression NOT progression. At one point our forefathers had it right.
“I doth declare, we shall build a separate building for the expelling of waste! Where will it go? Directly into the earth. The result of this action shall leave all hands unsullied and suitable for praising the Lord” –John Commode
Someday I hope to build my own home and yes there will be toilets in the house but they will only be used by those who have earned the privilege. Only those who have proven themselves to be in possession of a snipers aim and proven to maintain their firearm in tip top shape will be allowed to visit the indoor bathroom. For those whose rank is still “Private” there will be an outdoor facility where he/she can go to practice proper use of the facility and proper respect for the cleanliness and general good smelliness of the indoor facility.
Well that’s all I have to say about that…

Even This

I can feel it. I'm not quite there yet but I know what it feels like now when I am about to write a song. Trying my best not to relate myself to famous artists but I have heard some say that it's like they were blessed with the song or the piece of creativity; they say that they were simply in the right place at the right time to receive it from some higher source. Throughout history artists have had trouble comprehending that their art came solely from their own being. I think that's because true beauty is not native to the cursed soul. We are so used to sin and so permeated by it that anything but sinfulness is an anomaly. I feel that way too. Even though most all of my songs are written for my heart and for my savior.... Or maybe it's because of this that I do feel that I am given the words and the chords and that they have little to do with me. But like I said.... I can feel it now when I am about to write a song. I am overwhelmed by something and the awe hovers over me. I think the completion of a song for me represents revelation, a lesson learned through and through, like this one's going to stick for life. All the hairs on my body raise , usually it is Christ and the Cross or a story of His love that I am overwhelmed about..... but sometimes it's sin.
About a month ago I wrote a song about sin. The sin was mine and more horrifying to me than any I have experienced first hand. Now whoever reads this may not identify with what I am about to talk about. You may have different beliefs, or you may just be uninformed but this is truth as I know it. I don't know if I did or not, God only knows, but I may have killed a child.

My husband and I love so many of the same things. We rarely disagree on major life decisions and our plans for the future and when we got married we were both in total agreement that we did not want to have a baby while he was in the Army. The other thing that we fully agree on is that abortion is murder and that we wanted nothing to do with it in any way shape or form. Even if that form was a pill that prevented a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. The problem with hormonal contraceptives is that there are so many and any hones Doctor will tell you that they don't REALLY know how they work. Reed and I were so lost in this sea of information, and we were only engaged for three months. We were focused on us. We were convinced that if we prayed about it, God would not allow us to fall into sin through the decision of what birth control to use. So we settled on a decision. I don't want to say what form of contraceptive we settled on because I think it may taint your perspective and force you to draw your own conclusions.
So we got married, moved to North Carolina where we have been for the past two years. About two months ago I started reading a book by Randy Alcorn, Pro-Life answers to Pro-choice arguments. There I found information about the form of birth control that I was on. I was totally unaware that the main active function of my BC was abortion. I was misinformed, or confused I don't know exactly how this happened but I became directly involved with something that I hate so much. Reed and I were broken by this information.
Now I'm pretty sure I know what most of you are thinking, "that doesn't count, you didn't know. God doesn't judge you for that." To you I will refer you to Luke 23:34 "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." They still needed the Cross even though they did not know that they were killing the Son of God.
The form of BC that I was on requires a Doctor visit in order to discontinue use. So we had to wait two weeks till that appointment came around. During that two weeks I couldn't get over it. I was mourning for the possible babies lost and also for what I did to Christ. I broke His heart.
I also just simply couldn't wrap my head around what this meant. This meant that He loves me, and has loved me even though He knew I was a murderer. Foolishly I felt like I didn't want to let Him have it. I wouldn't let Him die for something like that. I didn't want Him to take on that burden. He is too beautiful to stand before the judgment of God and say, "she didn't do it, I did, I killed those children"
So I started to write and to sing about this thing that I had done. I was overwhelmed by it. And as the words of the song came to me, so did the truth. I couldn't stop Him from taking my sin, He already did. I couldn't stop Him from doing what had already been done on the cross. He had already taken the fault.
And in the completion of that song, I received the forgiveness that He already gave. And now I am overwhelmed again by the cross and what it truly means. He died for a world of sinners, a world of murderers
You can listen to the song by following this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OSZROxsBJs

Buck Up

These are my Army Commendation for this deployment. No don't worry your tax dollars did not pay for them... not directly ;)But he was recognized by the US ARMY for his bravery and blagh de blagh on this last deployment so I did too in the form of a gift from my wonderful husband that I found under my pillow the other night. He is amazing!

I love my husband. But it's not just so simple as that. He is my friend.. my best friend. He takes care of me..... okay even still I am sucking at describing this. Seems quite fitting that my words are failing me right now. I just wanted to write a little about Us today though. The last couple months since Reed has been home have been amazing. They were hard at first because I though things would be different when he got home from Iraq. I thought that he would never annoy me because I would just be glad that he was home sleeping in my bed. But then I was trying to ignore the troll in my head saying, "you make my shower dirty, you leave your boots in the wrong place, you chew with your mouth open! And sometimes you get this face where I KNOW you need to spit out a huge ball of nastiness but you don't! GROSE". I tried to ignore those thoughts for a while because I wasn't supposed to be thinking them ...I also was so used to being alone that I would never let him do things for me that make him the man. I would find myself trying to move the couch on my own even though he was in the other room. I nearly brought myself to tears trying to open a jar of jam even though he was sitting across the counter. We were both kind of in every man for himself mode. Needless to say things got a lot better once we both acknowledged that we annoy eachother sometimes but that we still like and need eachother:)

But now another obstacle. Reed is scheduled to deploy again in less than three months. AHHH! I just got him back didn't I? Now ..we have learned that I clinically go insane when Reed has to leave. I start treating him like he is already gone or like he is leaving me on his own accord. Not fun. So I have been brainstorming on how to avoid these side effects. Here's what I have come up with.
1. Start doing drugs
2. Drink a bottle of Chard every time I start to think about deployment.
3. Start doing doctor prescribed drugs
4. Somehow give myself a terminal illness.. but only for the next couple months so that Reed is released to stay home at his wife's death bed.

Okay so none of this really helps for retaining my sanity. So I guess I'm just gonna go with trusting my God. See how that works out. It's always worked out in the past. After all it worked when I was sure that there were no amazing men left in the world and decided that I would leave the husband department in His hands.
I guess he wants me to trust Him with the Husband department for my whole life! UGH! It was hard enough doing it for about the 6 months that it took Him to answer my prayers for a husband with Reed! Now I have to do this my whole stinking life?! This gets easier right? I can see you all shaking your heads.. that's ok. In the words of Rosie the Riveter "We can do it!".... Through Christ

And We Did

Well I did it…. Or we did it. Reed deployed with much tears and heartache and we both survived. We didn’t die or lose our minds. I don’t know about you but I am shocked. I guess I could have continued blogging through that period but I think you would have really thought I had gone crazy or was in some deep dark suicidal place and maybe you needed to get some help for me before I do something to hurt myself ;) I think it was good to spare you that.
So now we are back. Reed has been home for a little over a month now. I’m not doing cakes anymore, I’m trying something new but closely related. I am currently in the process of building a web site that is sort of my own video blog. There I will post videos that I will make of how to do fun things in your home. I am calling it The Retromodern Housewife. I don’t want to disclose the URL quite yet because the site is in it’s infancy and I don’t want to send anyone there yet. But rest assured that I will plaster information about this site when it is ready. It’s gonna be fun.
So other than that life has been good for the past eight months. Lol. Now Reed is scheduled to deploy again in January! Lol I know. Gotta love the US ARMY. I’m just glad he is not going to a hostile zone. I’m doing much better with the news of this deployment than I did with the last one. I’m ready! Armed with my new web site to keep me busy and a plan to not go crazy on my family.
In the mean time I will be here in the South enjoying Reed and trying to be a more normal person. Reed is building a privacy fence (so we can enjoy it for about two months) and we are preparing to install new carpet throughout the house.. See all normal people things. Infact I am about to go to the gym!
I’m sure your glad that there is hope that my posts will possibly be less intense from now on. I hope you keep tuning in 

This is getting tough. Reed finally got a deployment date. The 13th of January. This is about 2 weeks earlier than we thought it was going to be. I am just in shock. I absolutely cannot stop thinking about it. Every kiss, every brief goodbye I imagine that it is our last. There is a huge black box in my living room that holds everything that my husband will send ahead of him to Iraq tomorrow. I want to write him a letter to put in the box so that he can read it when he gets there but I know in writing I will yet again be brought to tears. I am so so sick of crying. I just want to be happy. I am learning so well the pain of love. I think that true love must just hurt alot of the time.
The bible says that if we were to see the face of God we would die. That makes total sense because my God is Love at it's purest form. I know that my heart could not continue beating in the presence of true Love, it's having trouble now.
I'm becoming a poor housewife, not making the best meals, being lazy about doing laundry and cleaning. I just want to stay in bed in the morning when Reed leaves for work at 5am. I am only at rest when I am either in Reeds arms or on my knees weeping before the Lord. Either way I am usually on the brink of, or crying. That rock of emotion wells up in my throat. I am at war with that knot in my throat. It comes to ruin moments of joy and peace when I am looking into Reeds eyes and just loving him. It comes to remind me that he is leaving so soon and could possibly never come back. Well now I am already crying to I might as well write that letter to put in Reeds box. If you read this please pray that God would grant my heart a peace that surpasses all understanding, especially mine.

It is Well

I really wonder who reads this stuff. I don’t really care. I know mom and big Sis read it. I like to know that they can update themselves on the state of my mental health if they want (Hi mom, Hi Brooke) but it is also nice to be just a little transparent. In a world where it is taboo to be sad or hurting, I enjoy having a place to show my hand and whoever cares even in the slightest can see it.
I’m not hurting or sad right now though. More and more I am able to look at the future difficulties in my life and honestly say “It is well with my soul”. I have been asking God my whole life to change me enough that I can sing those words with no doubt in my mind and no fear in my heart. In the last two years I have been learning what it really means to say those words. The man that wrote that song endured what I hope I will never have to. The cost of a heart fully devoted to Christ can be very high .Horatio Gates Spafford lost his son, his business and three daughters and wrote those words, “it is well with my soul”. I’m sure you know the story. Heart ache is what grows a relationship with Christ.
It’s hard to prepare for what may come. I get to mourn the death of my husband even though it hasn’t happened. I get to prepare everything as though that will happen and so does he. The truth is, everyone is faced with impending death. I simply don’t have the luxury of living in ignorance to that fact.
This week I am trying to get my passport in order. I have to make sure that I can leave the country at any moment. If Reed is wounded or killed they will send him to Germany where I will go and get him and take him home. Last time I was in Germany, I was there for Christmas. I can visualize the airport, the indoor smoking stations, the waiting areas with the smell of stale cigarette smoke and the tarmac with busses driving wildly getting passengers to their planes. I have played out the scene in my head of what that would be like to go there for that purpose. In my head it is all very Hollywood. I even visualize myself wearing a big coat and high heals, the typical grieving widow. It makes it easier to romanticize everything, but in reality there is nothing romantic about Death. He is a twisted evil that longs to ruin and kill us. But Yahweh has concord Death and I need no illusion and no fantasy to calm my fears. I only need a constant renewal of truth in my heart.