Family Dynamic Changes

I wondered if moving to the country would change our family dynamics.  When my older children were little, I longed for them to be outside with space to explore, throw a ball around, and spend time together.  We had 1/3 of an acre in Colorado when they were little and we did spend long hours outside.  I remember being barefoot and pregnant there and sitting outside watching them play. I visited with my neighbors in the backyard while they played on the swings, dug in the dirt or in winter went sledding down the short hill we had.

Then we moved to Dallas area and bought a house with virtually no backyard.  It had an 8 ft tall fence and a small patch of grass.  We looked for months for a house with a big yard but there were none in our price range and in the area we needed to live.  At least the house we did buy had two large trees that they could climb when they were older.  They did play in the street out front but had to be very careful not to hit a parked car with their baseball practicing.  We did take many walks at the greenbelt close by to get out into nature and when they got much older, they could go ride their bikes down there and explore.  We made due with what we had and they had a lovely childhood.  I on the other hand, quit sitting outside with the Texas hot sun and plethora of bugs to wrestle with.  I did when we first moved there but over time, I quit.  I'm not sure why. . . maybe it was the view of the tall fence that detoured me.  I did spend time trying to garden in my square foot box but that is only so relaxing.

When we moved to East Texas this summer, we bought a house that sits on 2 1/2 acres.  What a blessing it has been.  For the first month or so I felt like I was living in a country vacation home.  All the fresh air is mesmerizing!  I love the sounds of crickets, cows mooing, roosters crowing and the breeze rustling in the trees.  If it was too dark to be outside on the back porch then I would open the windows in our sunroom and sit out there and listen, read, or just sit and be thankful for all of it. I think God is glorified when we are just still with a thankful heart.

This is our sunroom where I can still feel like I'm outside without being out.  When it gets too cold, I'll sit out here maybe with a space heater so I can feel like I'm still outside.

Our front yard and house.

So how has all this space changed our family dynamics?  Well, I know it's helped me have more peace.   I automatically began spending time outside again because I love nature and gravitate towards being in God's creation.  Didn't God create all these trees, sounds, smells, and creatures for us to enjoy?  They reveal His handiwork, His splendor, His intelligent design!  I try to sit outside everyday for a bit and I just stand amazed at all the beauty there is to see.

Just yesterday I went outside to do Micah's reading lesson with him and it took us almost an hour to get started because we got distracted with a Monarch butterfly that floated by and landed in the tree above us.  We studied it and then I had to go get my camera.

I've always heard about the Monarchs migrating to Mexico but have never experienced it.  The more we watched, the more we saw.  One would flutter by and then another.  One right after another.  So as I was following them, hoping they would land in the yard so I could get a picture, I spied a flowering weed and saw 5 Monarchs drinking the nectar!

Aren't they pretty?  I had to get over the guilt of lagging in Micah's reading lesson and kept telling myself, this is what school is all about.  This is life science!  He'll learn to read all in due time.

We have slowed down since we've moved and that has helped me sort through what is important.  We stopped piano lessons, baseball practice, and home school elective classes.  Not because we wanted to but because we had to.  We might pick up some of these things again but for now we are learning what there is around here in our little town of 3,500.  Instead of me being the family taxi, we are spending time getting to know our neighbors, having friends over (new and old) and playing outside. all the while discovering things like Monarchs, spiders and the habits of birds.

The boys have named this chicken Fluffy Flyer.  She is our most docile chicken and will let most anyone hold her.  She is slow so she is easy to catch and never pecks at you. Chickens are so fun to watch.  Sometimes I go outside in the late afternoon to read a bit or maybe plan our meals for the week and make a shopping list.  I can hardly concentrate because the chickens are so interesting to watch.  I love that they eat the bugs in our yard especially the grasshoppers and crickets.  The run here and there as fast as their fat, fluffy, feathered bodies will carry them to catch a jumping insect.  They roll and puff up their feathers in the dirt and dust to clean themselves.  They separate themselves from the flock when they need to go lay an egg and will always lay it in the same place.  One makes her way back to the pen, another sits by the workshop in her dirt nest she has created and still another has made her nest on top of a grassy mound.  It cracks me up to see her fluffy red head peeking up over the grass as she sits and waits for that egg to drop out of her.

Anthony has had to observe 5 birds for his biology class.  He took some exceptional pictures last week, much better than I could have captured them.  This is a hawk.  Hawks are beautiful birds but really not chicken owners friends as they will eat them.  One swooped down into our yard the other day and all the chickens scattered and squawked.  Sometimes the chickens will just freeze when they sense a predator.  They will stand motionless for a very long time.

This is the neighborhood Blue Heron.  He/she hangs out by our pond next door and one day when I was pulling away in my car, I saw it flying across the road to another neighbor's pond.  The wing span was so enormous and seriously, it's wings were blue.  Absolutely beautiful are God's creatures!

This the Texas state bird the Northern Mockingbird.  They are fabulous looking when they fly because they have a white wide stripe on their wings contrasting with black or dark grey and they seem to love to fight with each other.

Isn't this picture striking?  Anthony got this one of our friendly Cardinal!  He is so pretty and comes around often.

 And, did I tell you about the newest animal that our neighbor's added to their household?  It's Pepper the pot-belly pig!  She is 10 weeks old in this picture and our neighbor brought her over to meet our boys.  Levi loves animals and always seem to wind up kissing them.  Pigs can be cleaner that dogs and cats, I guess so this one is a pet and lives in the house with them.  It sleeps in a crate at night in their son's room and they take her out to go potty just like you would a puppy.  So far, she hasn't had any accidents. Amazing!  I never would have known.

I've even decided that I love taking the time it takes to hang my wash outside to dry.  I love being outside so why not?  It's just another excuse to be outside among the trees with the breeze drying our clothes.  It saves money on the electric bill and I love the way the clothes come out slightly stiff with that fresh air smell.  In seems like more work because it is easier to throw them in the dryer and push a button but in the end it's less work.  I don't have piles of clean clothes laying around waiting to be folded and put away.  I fold them as I take them off the line and put them in the basket.  Then when I get into the house, I put them away. This goes right along with my resourceful personality.

So living in the country is slowly changing the dynamics of our home.  We are spending less time in front of media and technology, less time running from here to there, and more time outside.  It has created a less hurried lifestyle. There seems to be more peace in the home and patience with each other.

 We just ordered 9 ducks to add to our bird farm so I'm sure in the weeks ahead, I will be taking tons of pictures of ducklings.  My nature girl, Julia and I, could not be more thrilled, anticipating these day old ducklings coming in the mail.  Our neighbors have ducks and gave us some duck eggs to try.  They are amazing!  Did you know that duck eggs cost about $1 a piece?  They are a precious commodity!  So we will pray that they will make it through the winter weather and stay safe from predators so that in the Spring we might get to eat duck eggs regularly.

Stay tuned as we experience life in the country.

Kristin

Two kinds of people in life

I've noticed that there seem to be two kinds of people, country people and city people.  City people would be defined as those who like their conveniences, downtown activities and plethora of choices in shopping and restaurants and don't mind the traffic to get there.  They are comfortable around lots of people and noise doesn't seem to bother them much.

 Country people like the slow pace of virtually no traffic, a few quaint shops to choose from and don't mind spending the day driving to the closest grocery or town to stock up on food.  They don't like crowds as much and find the peace and quiet of nature, soothing.  They don't mind getting their hands dirty, occasional bugs and spiders don't freak them out as long as they aren't in the house.  They like the idea of not having city rules like no clotheslines, no farm animals, and no burning garbage.  Your lawn can be as long as you like and you can compost or stack bags of leaves to use later wherever you want.

Some people who have a country mentality have to live in the big cities but they find ways to embrace nature and slow down.  They might choose to live in a suburb on the outskirts of the city and avoid the freeways.  They might even choose a larger lot over a big new house so they can be outside and have a garden and do their own thing. City folk would choose the new house with all the latest conveniences and a patio instead of a yard so they don't have to mow.

I suppose some people are a bit of both.  Let's face it we all love our comforts and conveniences but I if I had to pick a category, I'd be a country girl.  And isn't it a good thing that both the city person and country person can actually like each other and get along?  Even though, we are somewhat opposites, its a wonderful thing to get along and appreciate those differences.

I even have 2 opposites in our family. Once daughter loves her comforts, technology and clean living while the other loves the birds, climbing trees and can't keep her shoes on.

Together she and I have been watching birds and trying to the best of our ability to identify them.  For a few weeks in August and September there seemed to be a bird festival in our backyard!  We were seeing 7-8 different birds at a time in a matter of an hour of bird watching.  It was truly amazing.  It felt like we were at a bird sanctuary.  We tried our best to take some pictures so we could search our bird book later to identify them.  Here are some of what we captured.

This is a ruby throated hummingbird.  One day I was watering my grass with an sprinkler that rotated because us country people don't usually have sprinkler systems.  To my surprise a large bug came zooming through the water.  I thought it was a cicada or some really large buzzing thing I'd never seen before.  When it came in for a shower again, I realized it was a hummingbird!  I quickly ran out and bought a feeder and shortly after we had 4 different hummingbirds fighting over the feeder.  I've learned they aren't prone to share so while one guards his food, the others try to chase him away so no one really gets anything to eat!

 So during our bird festival we counted 9 hummingbirds!  They were swooping and zooming all over the place!

The cardinals out here seem really red for some reason.  We had these when we lived in the Dallas area but they didn't seem as red.  Maybe because of all the green grass and trees around here they just look brighter.

One day as we were bird watching we saw a bright yellow bird.  He stayed in the tree above our fountain and he was so small that it was hard to get a good look at him.  Day after day we would catch glimpses of him until he felt comfortable enough to take a bath in our fountain!  It didn't take long before he brought all his friends too.  We looked in our bird book and found that he is called a Yellow Warbler.

Aren't' they beautiful! The next bird I have a picture of I think is a sparrow. These birds have the prettiest song and sing very loudly!  I heard her singing and couldn't believe so much noise was coming from this little bird.  She has built a nest in our tree so we regularly see lots of sparrows flying back and forth from our feeder to this tree.

This is the red bellied woodpecker which we think is a funny name because his head is red, not his belly.  This is the best picture I could get of him.  We've seen him several times.

Ok, this is enough birds for one day.  I'll end with the black-capped chickadee.  They are another real cute, small bird that love our feeder.  Pretty common here just like the house sparrow.

Now that it's October, we aren't seeing very many birds.  The black crows are still around and the bluejays. Even the hummingbirds have slowed down in coming to their feeder.

That is ok, though, because we still have our chickens to watch! I look forward to Spring to see what kind of birds God brings our way.  Hope you enjoyed my bird post.

Resourcefulness continued . . .

 I want to continue this idea of resourcefulness that I spoke of in my last post.  The idea of taking something that someone else might consider trash, and fixing it up to make it useful and enjoyable to look at.  This is my definition of resourcefulness.

There is a story behind this porch swing.  It actually has some sentimental value to me.  We bought this when we lived in Denver, Colorado about 15 years ago.  I had always wanted a porch swing and we proudly hung it on our back porch.  I remember sitting with my neighbor on this swing talking and laughing as we watched our kids play together. I have pictures of my two older children sitting in this swing in their pajamas, eating ice cream cones when they were 5 and 3 years old.

When we moved to Texas a few years later, we brought the swing with us, intending to use it at our new place.  Well, you guessed it, we never found a way to hang it up.  We had no covered porch and weren't handy enough to build one of those free standing frames for it.  So it sat in our backyard in the weather getting more and more beat up.  It actually sat for 11 years!

We just moved after 11 years to a ranch style home away from the hustle and bustle of Dallas, TX. We live an hour East of Dallas in a small town of a little over 3,000 people called Wills Point.  It's one of those cute towns you drive through on road trips to your vacation spot.  My husband said to me the other day when we went to town, "We live in one of those towns.  Can you believe it?" I said, "What do you mean, one of those towns?"  He said, "One of those little towns that we always drive through on our way somewhere." He's right, and I can't believe it!

These pictures are of Julia staining our old porch swing.  It looks so much better with a coat of stain.  At this house, we do have a covered porch with a good solid beam for hanging swings like the one we already have.  Rich bought the screws and the chain and hung it a few weekends ago.  It looks out into our front yard where we have a tire swing and a horse shoe pit.

Already, even in August we have sat out there in the evenings and watched the guys play horse shoes.  We had to pull out a few hedges to hang it far enough away from the windows under that solid beam.

We have started school up this month and Micah often picks to go do his reading lesson out here on the swing in the morning.  I was so excited to use this for the first time after so many years.  This is our Colorado swing that has relocated to Texas.  It holds many memories and will hold many more in the future.  My two oldest children are now 19 and 16, the ones who sat in their pajamas and ate ice cream on this swing. 

I look forward to making some memories with these two little guys out here on the front porch! Who knows, maybe Rich and I will grow old here in this house and as our nest gets emptier, we will sit out here and drink our coffee together.  Or just maybe we'll rock our grand babies out here someday or spend holidays with company sitting outside enjoying the countryside.  The possibilities are endless!

Putting the Lodi Stamp on our New Home

I realized I'm really into resourcefulness. I love to take old things

and turn them around into something useful. Why buy new when you can recycle something old and give it new life!  I would actually classify this as a hobby of mine. 

Since moving recently to a new house with all kinds of new features, I've gotten to practice my resourcefulness.  There are many changes we want to make around here and one was our mailbox.  It was this ugly purple color. Instead of buying a new one, I dug out of my cupboard all the non-washable paints that I could find for my artistic daughter to create something beautiful with.  

 We looked at a bunch of decorated mailbox ideas online and picked this bicycle picture in front of a white picked fence.  Julia practiced painting it on a paper plate first.  It's easy for her to sketch almost anything with pencil but quite another to use paints.

 This is how it came out on the actual mailbox.  

My other daughter really hated the purple still and felt we should get rid of it.  Plus we wanted to do something else on the other side.

So I found some more paint out in the garage and she painted the whole thing plus added flowers and our name to the other side.

Not bad for an amateur artist.  I think she should start her own business taking old mailboxes and making them new!

I love giving projects like this one to my kids.  It gives them something constructive to do.  Anthony's project was to hang a tire swing (previous post) and this was Julia's project, to paint me a new mailbox! I'd say she did a pretty good job.

This afternoon I gave her another project, refinishing our porch swing.  Once we get it hung up to show how resourceful we've been, I'll post about it.  Stay tuned!

Medicinal items to keep on hand for unexpected illnesses

There are a few supplements and medicinal items that I found to be extremely helpful this year.  These things have kept me from running to the doctor needlessly when I don't feel well.  And therefore I have avoided the antibiotics that they pass out so easily.  I have to insert a little disclaimer here to let you know that I'm not against antibiotics or medical help when necessary. They are so helpful when in desperate times and in need of some desperate measures to find healing.

Usually it is not recommended to "self diagnose."  But I disagree!  I do this all the time with the computer at our fingertips and so much information out there. It's saved me many times from wasting money on doctor visits and prescriptions and wasting time waiting to be seen only to be guessing along with the doctor about what I might have.

I think God is pleased when we use the brains he gave us to learn new things. He created our bodies in such an incredible way and meant for our bodies to be able to heal themselves. For example, our immune systems are there to fight off disease and keep us healthy.  Bleeding for example is God's way of cleaning out our wounds. Fevers are another example of the bodies way of telling us something foreign has intruded.  There is a battle going on but the fever is fighting for us, not against us. As a mom of a large family, we've had our share of illnesses and I've been forced to learn a lot about how our bodies function best. 

 These are just a few ailments I've had that I've been able to self diagnose that I can remember off the top of my head. Maybe they will be helpful if you are experiencing any of them.

 I've treated the beginnings of pink eye by flushing the eyes with contact solution.

 A friend helped me diagnose a boil I had on the side of my bra line (which I'd never had before). She recommended a high dose of probiotics and hot compresses. I'd had it for a week before I even showed it to her. She told me that it was an infection under the skin and that I needed a strong immune system to fight it off. I took probiotics, stayed away from sugar and did the hot compresses every morning and night. I never had to see a doctor because within 3 days it was better.

 One time last year, I had strep throat and was put on antibiotics because strep can be very serious. After I finished the antibiotics, I felt better for about a week and then it returned. My throat was killing me again!  I drank my usual apple cider vinegar tonic because I knew that this vinegar is supposed to be able to kill bacteria and went to bed praying for God to take it away. I fully expected to have to see the doctor in the morning and do another round of antibiotics but instead it was better!  I drank ACV all day the next day and never had problems with it again.  Hallelujah!

Most recently I had a UTI (urinary tract infection).  I'd never had one of these before either.  I knew it must be either a yeast infection or a UTI.  I looked them both up online and decided according to my symptoms it was a UTI. The recommendation were to drink lots of water, take high doses of vitamin C, stay away from caffeine and sugar, and make an apple cider drink and sip on it all day.  I did this for a week!  Whenever my symptoms went away, I'd stop and then they would come back so I decided I needed to stick to it a few days after my symptoms were gone to completely kick it. I was so grateful I never had to see a doctor about this and blown away again by these natural methods of curing oneself!

Vitamin C (1,000 mg), netiwash pot, Braggs organic apple cider vinegar (with the mother in it), acidophilus  blast

So now here we are as to why I'm writing this post.  I'm in the middle of another ailment new to me and I'm seeing success although, I'm not out of the woods yet. Because I feel so much better, I'm ecstatic that God continues to help my body heal and fight off infections, naturally without the help of antibiotics!

About a month ago I developed a cough.  No other symptoms, just a wet, croupy cough.  After about 2 weeks I began to also have a bit of congestion.  Because I felt great and never had a sore throat, I felt it was due to allergies.  I'd been spending a ton of time outdoors and when our air conditioning went out for three days, we even slept with our windows open. By the third week, I took a turn for the worse and woke up one night freezing.  It's the middle of August in Texas! Why am I cold?  My head was heavy, my body ached and a few minutes later I was hot, throwing all my covers off that I had so carefully put on a half hour before.  "Oh no" I thought, "I have the flu!"  I slept pretty much the next day away.  I couldn't stand up for more than 10 minutes without needing to go back to bed.  The second day, I was a bit better but still very fatigued and had a lot of pressure in my head.  By the third day, I began to wonder, if I didn't have the flu but an infection of some sort. I just moved to the country an hour away from where we used to live in Dallas, Texas.  I didn't even have a doctor yet and my old doctor wasn't practicing anymore.  I kept thinking, maybe I have pneumonia since I've had this cough forever.  I didn't want to think about it.  Then it dawned on me that I might have a sinus infection!  When I did the research, I realized I had 9 out of the 10 symptoms!  So I began an intense regimen.  I started taking my probiotic 2 TX a day on an empty stomach, I took 3,000-4,000 mg of vitamin C spread out throughout the day, I made my apple cider vinegar drink that I always revert back to to fight bacteria and you guessed it, I did the neti-pot wash.  I'd never done this before but had one of these in my medicine cabinet.  I watched a video online of how to do it and read the instructions on the box.

I'm sold on this thing and might just have to do this weekly for allergies to wash out the pollens and dust from my nasal passages.  It is no piece of cake and is kind of gross but I had no idea I could get the actual infected mucus out of my nose this way. And if it's not enough to get that gunk out, remember that if you add colloidal silver to your saline solution you are killing the bacteria that has penetrated the lining of your nasal passages. If you don't have silver, you can open a probiotic capsule and pour it in your solution as well.  They say if your snot is a yellowish/green then you have an infection.  Just think of all those times you had head congestion and couldn't sleep because you couldn't breath!  Going through an entire box of kleenexes didn't seem to help and there you lay breathing through your mouth hoping to catch a few zzzzz's!   Bet you didn't know that you could heat up some warm saline solution (salt water) and pour it through each nasal passage and get complete relief!

I did this once the first day and twice the second day.  I haven't yet had to do it today, the third day, because I don't feel congested.  Yesterday I felt so much more energy than I had felt in a week, that I really began to be excited that just maybe God was healing me through these methods!  Today I feel almost normal. I'm still taking the probiotic, drinking ACV, and taking the vitamin C.  It's such a great feeling when you can live life again.  My two sons birthdays are this weekend and I really wanted to be able to celebrate with them.  One is turning 6 and the other 13.  It's really no fun when life is happening without you while you are miserable in bed.

A few details to end this long post about health:  Vitamin C is an anti-inflammatory supplement that goes right through you.  You process it through your kidneys so it is best to take it sporadically throughout the day.  I take one when I'm sick at every meal and I buy a very high dose because you cannot overdose on this supplement. I was told by my doctor that I can take up to 6,000 mg a day usually without incident.  More than than can cause diarrhea so if you experience loose bowels then back off of it a bit.

My apple cider drink that I love to sip on all day is:

2 cups of water
2 tablespoons of ACV
2 tsp of truvia, honey or a few drops of stevia
I like to throw in a 1/4 cup of frozen berries
squeeze the juice of 1/2 a lemon
a chunk of raw ginger ( about the size of your fingernail)

Blend this up in your blender and then strain out the pulp before adding ice.  Store the leftovers in a jar for later.  You can double this recipe to make up more if you like it.

Just had to share what I'm learning and my excitement about natural things that actually work!  I hope this will help someone in the future with an ugly ailment that needs to be overcome!

This city girl has been countryfied!

Most of you already know that we have moved to the county.  I think blogging about our experiences will be a great way to log the changes that are happening as well as my thoughts about it all.  I have lived in the city all my life but I grew up in Modesto, California. It is a very agricultural town with many orchards surrounding it.  One of my best friend's family growing up lived in the small town of Ripon on a farm in a big ol' farm house.  I loved going out to her house to spend time in her screened in porch or playing around in her barn or just running barefoot in the grass.  Her mom made the best home cooked food and freshly squeezed lemonade.

My whole life I've loved the county or the idea of country life.  I grew up watching Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons! Who wouldn't want the joy of running through fields of wildflowers, climbing trees, having farm animals as pets and swinging on tire swings.  Now that I have children, I want that for them.  Nature is a beautiful thing to behold and living in the city makes it awfully hard to appreciate it. 

Well, we didn't move way out in the middle of nowhere.  We are only an hour from the big city of Dallas and all it's conveniences. Being fifteen minutes from Wal-mart makes life a bit easier. We aren't farmers by any stretch of the imagination but more like country bumpkins!  We did purchase a small parcel of land that we can do what we want with.  The kids have room to explore and see a bit of God's creation.  Our neighbors aren't squeezed in right next to us instead they have land too and are doing their own thing.  Raising cattle is popular or having a donkey or some goats.  We get to enjoy their livestock too because their pasture buts up against ours.  I could go on and on about the pluses of country living but I'll save that for another post.

I really wanted a tire swing.  My kids love to swing but I didn't really want a rickety swing set that would rust in the rain and that they would grow out of in a couple of years. So I stopped at a tire store yesterday and asked the greasy looking tire guys who were sitting around doing nothing, if they might have an old tire for a the purpose of a tire swing.  To my surprise they did have one and gave it to us for nothing!  Score!

We already had rope in the garage so I assigned the job of hanging it to my oldest son, Anthony.  He loves to work on projects and fix things so this job was perfect for him. It took him awhile since he had a tall branch to figure out how to get the rope up to.  I pulled out our knot-tying book and it came in real handy!  Finally after over an hour of working on it, he and his younger brother figured it out and produced a "countryfied tire swing!"

So far it is a hit!  My prayer is that this will provide hours of fun and memories will be made for the future.   Anything to get kids outdoors and away from the T.V. and computer is worth the investment. And really, it doesn't take much of an investment to come up with some simple things like this to have some summer fun. The hardest item to come by for this is the tree to hang it from.  If you live in the city, you can be creative.  I've seen tire swings at parks these days and they aren't hanging from trees. 

I'm not going to promise that I'll be blogging regularly even though that's my goal.  Life for me is getting back to normal these days so it is possible but I'll refrain from making promises.  If I could just figure out how to make these short then I might actually be able to find the time!

Love,

Kristin

Heaven Cried today

Today as it rained, I wondered if God was crying with us.  We went to our first funeral of the New year to celebrate the life of 13 year old Lydia Kizziar.  Even though I did not personally know Lydia very well, I've known her family for just about 10 years.  We used to go to church with them when Lydia was about 7.  She was quiet, the 4th child of 5, and always wore her blonde hair pulled back tight with barrettes.  She followed her 9 year old sister everywhere.

Then when that church disbanded, our paths crossed many times.  Her family had ours for dinner and we had them for dinner too.  The girls had Valentines Parties and we were invited.  Every  couple of weeks their Mom would come over to pick up her milk and her kids would swing on our back porch and run furiously around our yard playing chase.  My Olivia took violin lessons from a teacher they recommended and we would see each other at lesson time. Then a few years ago, 4 of us Moms decided to get together occasionally for lunch and Lydia's precious mommy was a part of that group. As our children grew, they didn't see each other as much but we kept in touch through these lunches and would share our mommy moments, lessons, and funny stories about our children with each other.

January 4th, just a week ago, we got a call.  A mutual friend was on the line and through tears he told us Lydia Kizziar died.  What?  Our mouths dropped open.  Everyone gathered around Dad, who was on the phone, and tried to make sense out of what he was saying. When he hung up he told us, "Lydia had the flu and they took her to the hospital and she died today."  Everyone began to cry and we all struggled to pray for them through our tears and choked sobs.  

Since then we've had a week to process it all (really, to turn to God for answers).  Her death is so sad and every now and then it just hits, that she isn't here anymore.  Death is such a morbid word.  We think of it as so dark and lifeless but as I pondered Lydia's death, God showed me that she didn't die. Because she was a believer in Christ, she passed from this life to the next. Almost like she fell asleep not to wake back up for us but to Jesus instead.  Lydia is more alive in heaven with Jesus than she was here on earth!  He has raised her to life with him in glory.  

Being shocked by death is so brutal.  I mean, if you know someone is sick and dying, you can prepare yourself for their passing.  If they are getting old, you know one day they'll die soon and it can still be a shock but not as much.  But for a teenager to die so suddenly is hard.  

I was comforted to think about how God knew she would die on that day and the exact minute she would take her last breath.  In fact, when she was born, he knew she would live to the young age of 13.

He gave her to her family to raise and instill morals and values, to teach his word to her and they did.  At this young age, she loved God and wasn't afraid to die.  She knew about her eternal home and is now there dancing with Jesus.

Today was a sad and hard day but one I can rejoice in.  Lydia's funeral was packed, standing room only, with friends, family, and fellow believers who came to pay tribute to a young girl who lived life to it's fullest. As it rained and heaven cried with us,  I thoroughly enjoyed worshipping God together.  Lifting our voices to heaven, agreeing with the truth that IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL. I do believe, God cried with us today.  We needed His comfort and reassurance that he loves us personally.  And through our tears of loss, we can at the same time rejoice that we are His.

How can a funeral be a good experience?  When you know Jesus, it's makes all the difference!