The January Rollercoaster

It’s been one of those weeks where you keep thinking you’re going to hyperventilate at any moment.

It started with feeling like it was Christmas in January when a replacement UV bulb was installed into our water system and we could once again say goodbye to hauling our drinking water from camp and to having GI symptoms when we forgot and used tap water to brew coffee.  As if that wasn’t enough, a few hours later a brand new stove, frig and dishwasher were delivered to our house and the thirty year old models left the same night.  I shed no tears.  The frig wasn’t actually the original thirty year old version but it was the third one we were using in a year’s time thanks to two other models that didn’t work.  I really don’t miss having to turn around and shove the door with my hip to make sure the seal closed the entire way down.  I also don’t miss having the dishwasher leak water all over the floor.  Or the noise when it ran.  Do you have any idea how much appliances have improved in thirty years?  And the stove?  Well, let’s just say I was most grateful of all to get rid of the timer knobs that punched me my distended belly every time I stood in front of it.  I thought it worked the best of the three until the new one was installed and now I can’t believe how fast my food cooks!

The guys did most of the loading and unloading, but I scrubbed thirty years of dirt from underneath their original lodging places and ended up on the recliner with too many contractions to sleep until nearly two that night.

On Tuesday, I thought I was about twenty minutes from going live with camp’s new website.  I’d only spent about a hundred hair-pulling late night hours trying to figure out how to make it work and I was down to two main issues.  When I called our former neighbor who is a very knowledgeable web developer he informed me the theme I’m using is broken and can’t be fixed.  This is not the kind of news you really want to hear when you are thirty-five weeks pregnant and trying desperately to wrap up projects before baby arrives.  But, it DID feel better to hear that perhaps there was more to blame than my lack of functional grey matter.  I’d never worked on anything that made me feel so inept in my entire life!  I stayed up til one that night installing a new theme he recommended and trying valiantly to figure out things that are way over my head.  I’m pretty sure I’m using about 2.7% of the power of the new theme, but at least it’s working.

On Wednesday, we went to a local flooring shop to look for carpet for the basement and met what I’m pretty sure must be one of the most annoying salesman I’ve ever met.  His sales theology could only be described as a McDonalds dollar menu version.  He continuously attempted to get us to consider much cheaper carpet because he “knows we don’t want to spend more money than that” and in a few years we’ll be bored with the carpet and want to change it anyway.  Really?  We’re just dying to redo all this work. Not. What should have been a twenty minute stop took two hours because he.would.not.stop.talking and the boys got an education from us afterward on what NOT to do if they ever have a job as salesman.  Among the top don’ts: Don’t peek your head around acting as though you’re being all sneaky behind your co-worker’s back and buddy buddy with me and giving me a “cut” in price.  I picked a few sample boards and a color and hoped that was that.  It was one of those days where you feel like you work three shifts.  Homeschool.  Make food to feed your family.  Clean up the house.  House shopping x2.  Get groceries.  Put boys to bed.  Work on website til 3 AM.  David was amazing and stayed up with me til 2 helping me get things converted.

On Thursday, David called the guy who will install our carpet (and who we trust implicitly) and he said the carpet samples we were looking at were among the worst on the market and the carpet wouldn’t hold up.  Translated: I would need to drive two hours one way to pick out carpets from a flooring shop where he does business and could be trusted.  Breathe.  Just breathe, Michelle.  I tried to paint trim that afternoon and pretty much collapsed.  Let’s just say there were no late night web development hours going on that night.

On Friday, I woke to the sound of Adam throwing up.  All I could do when David walked into the room was mutter, “Please tell me it’s not true.  Please tell me it’s not true.”  But it was.  Liam decided he was sick, too, and both boys were hunkered on couches with warm, fuzzy blankets.  David insisted I keep plans to get carpet.  It’s going to be the biggest holdup and if didn’t get ordered, the risk of baby arriving before install went up exponentially.  Three hours later the house was clean and the boys were bouncing around as normal as ever except Adam had a residual headache.  First migraine?  I left to choose carpet and came home to discover Adam flunked a Math test for the first time ever.  I’m pretty sure I want to throw away the homeschool hat.

On Saturday, Darius and Ro came to help us work on the basement.  Seriously, David’s family has outdone themselves with helping us on this project.  We are not strangers to DIY building projects, but it has been different doing it away from our families, a church community, and access to a trailer full of Edenali’s tools.  DIY really means DIY, not DIY and some days your family and friends come help you work or bring food or keep your kids.  In spite of living three hours away, David’s dad has been here twice helping him with plumbing and electrical.  When it was time to hang drywall, three of his brothers carpooled up for a day and helped him knock it out.  Two weeks ago, all four of my sisters-in-law traveled up and helped me get first coat put on all the walls.  It was a HUGE boost and after they left I realized the social boost was equally powerful.  I don’t think homeschooling moms always realize how lonely and adult-deprived they are until they hang out with other women!  Although in this case it probably had as much to do with hanging out with women you’ve known for a long time as anything else.  You know, the kind of girls you show and tell the new baby clothes for and they ooh and ahh as excitedly you do.  And who bring you the partial bottle of your favorite baby soap they still had left because the manufacturer quit making it years ago and they know it’s your favorite.

It was the same week the girls were coming that I realized we really weren’t going to get finished pre-baby.  I asked David to tell me the truth and he said “probably not.”  That same week I prayed a desperate prayer for help.  “Please God, can you send help for David?”  I don’t think I really expected an answer.  Three days later, David and Joanna called to see if they could come help us the following Saturday.  David and Joanna attended church here every other Sunday for a year to help out and still do sporadically so we’ve gotten to know each other through that.  I could hardly believe God was giving us this gift.  They live an hour and a half away and were planning to attend church here the next day which meant packing up a family of seven for the weekend, including food for carry in on Sunday.  Plus, Joanna brought fabulous food for our meals on Saturday.  I’m pretty sure I gained five pounds on her chocolate cake alone.  The two David’s knocked out a tremendous amount of trim and Joanna and I painted and painted and painted trim with plenty of talking and laughing in-between strokes.  We were assembling pizzas when the phone rang and I heard David say, “Absolutely I could use your help.”

And so it was that one of the board members came out early Monday morning before the board meeting and helped David with more trim.  Adam looked at me incredulously that afternoon and said, “Mommy, your prayer got triple answered.”  I was in disbelief myself.

Becca came over for two afternoons to sand and caulk while the boys puttied nail holes.

The next afternoon I got the email from Ro saying they wanted to come help  this past Saturday.  I cried.  We went from not possibly getting finished to hopefully being able to wrap up pre-baby.  Darius and David worked on shelving and fixing drop ceiling issues and installing baseboard in the bathroom and Ro and I painted and painted and painted trim.  I could not believe how much got done in one day.  But the gift these people gave was so much greater than their physical labor.  There is something profoundly powerful that happens with this kind of help.  It is the gift of hope when a situation feels hopeless.  It is the humble gift of unselfishness when we all know that everyone has a million things they’d rather be doing for themselves on a Saturday.  It is the gift of friendship, and smiles, and energy to people who’ve been holed up with drywall dust in a basement for many months.  It is the gift of Jesus’ hands and feet and heart and what happens in our spirit exceeds what happens in the basement.  We are grateful beyond words.

Meanwhile, I am once again saying, this week the website is going to go live.  And hopefully it really will happen.  I would love to say this week we’re going to wrap up the painting, but I don’t quite dare.  Each week it gets harder and harder to move up and down ladders and drag my body along the perimeter of a concrete floor with a paintbrush.  After a day of painting, my pelvis does the hokie pokie all by itself when I attempt to stand still in the mornings.  Today, I can barely walk.  But I am believing that the God of miracles who carried me so completely this past week will carry me right through the next one as well.  When God said He will gently lead those with young, I thought He meant that He would make their life easier.  Now I realize He meant that He would give them supernatural grace.  Every morning this week I looked at my day and could do nothing but hold out my arms across the bed and say, “God, I need strength.”  And every night I went to bed in amazement at the way God answered those one line cries.

There is something so incredibly powerful about living in that place where you can’t and God does.  It’s those days when I feel as though I can almost feel a tangible connection to heaven itself.  Still, I am human enough to hope this week will hold a few less technical web issues, a few earlier bedtimes, a few less non-productive contractions, a few more this-has-second-coat moments, and a few better Math grades.  What are you wishing for this week?

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