Outcrafted by my vintage sewing machine

I am probably the luckiest girl I know when it comes to sewing machines. My mom got an awesome new sewing machine a couple years ago and inherited a sweet 1950's Singer Featherweight sewing machine. She decided to give her extra couple of sewing machines away to her daughters. I didn't want to sounds totally greedy, so I bit my lip, but I WANTED that Singer with all my heart. The other one is a Kenmore and it's awesome as well, all made of metal and probably about 20 years old, but the Singer....oh man.

My mom decided to go get both machines all tuned up and fixed up for her daughters and then she decided to give ME the Singer and my sister the Kenmore. I think my sister's pretty happy it turned out that way, too. The Kenmore is a bit more modern, and she's a modern gal. I am vintage to my old fashioned little core.

Here it is!

With it is the pattern I have cut out and am working to make.

Singer Featherweight that has been passed down from my
grandmother to my mom and now to me. Amazing beyond belief.

 At first, I thought a glass of wine just classed up the experience of sewing on such a machine. No I didn't drink the whole bottle, it was an old bottle and I had one (albeit rather full) glass of wine for the evening. The beer was for my husband.
As I continued to tangle myself up in the machine and sew things to the machine itself, the wine became more important for me not going crazy. What do you do when a machine that is so beautiful will not perform. To add salt to the wound, the company that tuned it up included a little strip of stiff cloth with it that had neat rows of stitches to prove the thing worked. Just not for me yet.

Here is the maddening path of the thread.

First look is not so bad...

 Still alright, yes?

 Stunning little machine!! Wind on little thread.

 And ready to make a first stitch to draw up the thread, right?

 Wrong!

Not sure how well you can see this, but the thread is hopelessly tangled. My bobbin is sending thread out at the right time, and sometimes I can even catch it and send it on up to the platform above. Nice, right?

Well, but it is taking the thread from the top and winding it around the outside compartment of the bobbin and making a mess. The thread breaks and the piece of fabric is sewn to the machine. SAD!

Drink a sip of wine, and carry on.

Doesn't get any better. I have decided to look on the internet for tutorials for how to help this machine and have dumped the contents of its box onto the floor to look for a user's manual, ha!

 No dice.

This mess keeps happening and I used basically the entire bobbin.

As I went to look at the sewing directions, I felt instantly insulted by the fact that it's called "Simplicity" and I can't seem to figure out the machine, let alone see if I can assemble the skirt (whose directions might as well be written in Gaelic for all the sense they make to me).

I have this image in my head of myself as a person who's pretty much home-made, if you know what I mean. Not like, sheltered and never gets out of the house, but like "Oh that's a really cute outfit," "Oh thanks, I made my jacket and found the scarf at a second-hand store. Want to come over later and pick raspberries and have homemade yogurt?"

I would never make such dumb conversation, but you know what I mean. Eat from my garden, make some of my own clothes, find things at antique stores, and put flowers on the table from my yard. (Also, being a person who makes her own wine would be pretty sweet) But the foibles with the sewing machine have instilled doubt in my heart.

There's the insultingly-named pattern and the lovely machine that will make me really cute clothes. The machine has all those amazing little clicks and things that make it sound really, I don't know, authentic. Anyone notice in the background that the glass of wine has gotten a bit more empty from my trials with the sewing machine...yeah.

After another sip of wine, I threw my hands in the air and decided to go to my kitchen. I found a tutorial online for how to grow a pineapple, but I didn't have my pot of soil prepared, so I stuck the top in water...which I learned is a bad idea. It molded today. The pineapple did have roots and things like the tutorial said it would. They were smaller on this pineapple and I am guessing it's because the poor thing was fairly green. Better luck next time.

I also decided that we would try growing avocado seeds. I've done it before, but have never had the space or time to turn them into plants. This time is different. We've eaten a ton of avocados lately because they've been dirt-cheap, so we had a TON of seeds on the counter and I decided to try making 4 of them into a plant; I figure, one HAS to work. We shall see. I changed the water in them today and will show you if I get plants.

After exercising my thumbs of unknown color, I decided to bake something. Bran muffins sounded good. I used a generic "All Bran" box recipe and added dried dates and currants and went without the egg substitute (used a whole egg instead) and without the nuts. They were good!
Then I saw the amazing lavender chocolate my husband bought me a few days ago. We love lavender. At our wedding, we had our guests throw dried lavender instead of rice or bird seed, and now we're hooked for life on lavender. We've tried lots of different kinds of lavender chocolate and candies and such. This was by far the best we have had. The lavender was very distinct, but not overpowering. YUM. We found it at the register at Cost Plus World Market. If you like lavender at all, get this, it's amazing.

After a piece of lavender chocolate and another sip of wine, I went back to the machine, finished the glass of wine and gave up on a skirt for the night.

If I find a decent tutorial about how to fix my present conundrum, I'll let you know.

Happy Saturday to you!

Garden Time!

As a combined effort to avoid over-processed foods with mystery sources and a desire to do something productive with my yard, I am going to have a garden this summer. We're also in the process of making a spreadsheet (yes, Dad, if you're reading, I said spreadsheet) that helps us find Farmer's Markets throughout the summer (and winter, there are some excellent winter Farmer's Markets). I figure, we should be able to eat local pretty much all summer.

This is my garden when it was a dream, really a figment of everyone's imagination. My parents came to help put this baby in place. That's them in my enormous back yard in the figment of a garden. The garden goes here mostly because the corner to the right of what you can see has some trees that we plan to tear out, and we also buried my dear childhood dog, Allee, in that area, not a great place for gardening, ya know? The tricky part about the south side of the yard is the shadow you can see running the length of the yard. As the season goes on, I think this shadow will shrink a bit as the sun begins to move a little differently in the sky, but we still accounted for the shade in the digging of the garden.

These are some of the things I've planted by now. The green things are herbs mostly: thyme, basil (x2 because it is so yummy), hot oregano, chocolate mint, and a goji plant for indoors. The other two green things are asparagus plants. I guess these guys take 2-3 years to get to where they produce asparagus, but once they start, they are unstoppable. They'll grow for like 20 years. Hope everyone loves asparagus! Then, I planted some bulbs of garlic, elephant garlic and onions. I also planted some carrots I started inside several weeks ago. Hope those babies make it! They said they were alright in this zone at this time of year. Oh, and there's also rhubarb in there. An all-time favorite of mine. And for those of you wondering, yes, I can count...most of the time.

What do you attack such a garden with? Well, I would like to tell you we used a tiller, but being broke, we did not buy or rent one. We don't even have a lawn mower right now... Anyway, back on topic, we (my dad, actually, as shown in the picture) used a pickaxe. My dad did most of the breaking of ground, my mom and I did a lot of the shoveling and weeding. With a yard that's pretty much a blank slate (as seen above), there's not much in your way but weeds. They were impressively established having gone years without being challenged, but they eventually gave way. The wood lying on the ground is from the fence breaking in the wind. It is going to need to be replaced this summer. Our house is a constant project that we love very much and are also hard-pressed to keep up with right now. We're always gettting a little further in things, but it's so old and hasn't been really cared for in so long, it's a lot to bring back up to speed.

There's Jason, my husband, and mys sister, Kirsten finishing the tilling. Her dog, Saoirse really enjoyed the yard. After the garden was in, she seemed to particularly enjoy barreling through the poor new garden. She's a rescue pet, can we blame it on that? Probably not, she's just a dog. The garden is starting to shape up in this photo. You can see the difference between the garden and the weed-yard we keep. Some day, we envision sod and REAL landscaping, but I am getting ahead of myself, as you can see. This is today and this is phenomenal progress. Day by day.

 One last piece of grass/weeds to remove. We'll probably have a lot of weeding to do this season, but it's alright. Gotta start somewhere. I planted a garden in Bissau. It's a photo in an earlier blog on here. I was tending those poor seeds until my last day on the continent. Apparently, they have indeed sprouted. I just need to call someplace home, so this is it. I am growing my own food in my yard this year. Maybe next year, I'll try a winter garden. I hear those can be extremely successful, and besides, how rewarding would it be to still be eating food from your garden in December?

 It's all tilled and the plants are ready to go where they are meant to be. I'll get you some pictures of my indoor makeshift herb garden some time soon as well. I bought a few more things for it today. It's seriously absurd that for the price of a container of an herb at the store, you can buy an entire plant, and if you care for it properly, you'll have those herbs for a long time. Genius, I say. I also am amazingly fanatical about perennials. How brilliant is it that even in Colorado, things can live through the winter and make more fruit and such the next year?!

This is me planting the first thing. Anyone who knows me well won't be surprised that it was garlic. I just adore garlic. I have been hearing tales that garlic shoots are a thing worth noshing, and can't wait to have them growing in my own yard.

Root part down, pointy part to the sky, about a few inches deep and voila, garlic.

To the left is the garlic going into the ground. Um, yes!!!! I am intrigued to know how to pick garlic and how one clove turns into an entire harvest and all that. The elephant garlic was planted as one clove (yes, that is ONE clove) and the others were to be planted as an entire head of garlic all together. Wonder what's going to happen. Will we get one head of garlic per thing planted? I certainly hope it somehow multiplies. Just ONE garlic would be kinda disappointing for this kind of work.

There it is all lovely in the ground and about to be buried. Later, it will hopefully be like 10 heads of garlic that are eager to be eaten! One can dream. It seems like garlic farmers would go out of business if you needed an entire head of garlic to get one in return. Surely, there's better stuff to come than that.

This is the garlic securely in place and the asparagus waiting to be planted. Those things will turn into an entire BED of asparagus. Again, I totally don't get it. Those plants look NOTHING like asparagus, and they also look nothing like photos you see of growing asparagus. I am guessing that's the miracle God performs in the dirt. This wispy thing turns into a stalky enjoyable food item. Side note: I have been much in love with asparagus of late. I want it all the time. There's something satisfying in eating those green spears. They're tender and flavorful. Yum. What's your favorite veggie?  

 Oh, to completely take a tangent here, those hands belong to my sister, and she is consuming a San Pellegrino Limonata. It's like sparkling lemonade, except amazing in every way. It's made with real lemons and tastes like summer in a can of goodness. Drink some. You will be glad you did.

My sister helping me plant a row of onions. We talked about the value of having rows of things with trenches beside them for the water to go in. Who knew it was so funny that the garden is laid out this way. My dad has always used a hoe to dig the trenches, and he did this time as well. Then, you kind of make a furrow (seeds don't get planted that deep anyway) in the top of the mound and put the seeds in and then close it back up. I really enjoyed having my dad and mom there to help me with my first garden. Some of my best memories growing up were of being in the garden with them during the summer.

There it is after an entire day's work. The lumps closest to the camera are for asparagus and garlic, the rows have carrots and onions, and out of your view is the rhubarb. It later got moved because it needed more sunlight and is now quite a happy plant. This is a good day's work, and was lots of fun. I have high hopes for this little plot of land and hope to show bountiful pictures of the products. If not, maybe it will at least be entertaining. Since taking this photo, I have added rainbow swiss chard, kale, and collard greens to the garden.

Fun is in the dirt!



I'd love to know any new tips on gardening that you have. I am a newbie and am seeking wisdom. I will show you my indoor garden next time!

To heal or not to heal

Really, it's my choice. I get to decide every day if I will embrace my life where it is and let God heal my heart, or if I am going to indulge in destructive or empty soothing. I can choose to open my Bible and read it, then work out, eat well, and pattern a healthy day, or to sink back into myself and fall apart.

Well, the last year has taught me that it is entirely possible to fall apart and not break. I am not the one holding the pieces together, God is. Sometimes, we have to break before we can really heal, too. I am used to relying on myself for most everything. I am pretty determined and motivated when it comes to challenges I perceive in my life. I've always pushed hard to be better than the standard and to rise higher than just enough. And I have finally reached a point where I cannot move forward on my own power any more. That's the best place of all to arrive. It means that you stop and let God have you finally.

We perceive loss as something terribly wrong. Really, it's part of life. Loss is part of existence. The past year of my life has been a momentous occasion leading to a lot of personal loss at one time. Counting the losses isn't important, but letting them mark you and make you stronger IS important. Letting God hold your heart and give you strength you don't personally possess is the key.

Today, I went to the OB-GYN and had a very interesting visit during which I learned that I have a single uterine fibroid tumor, and the lactating that began in September FINALLY stopped! The lactating started when I had a miscarriage and didn't stop for some reason (possibly due to the tumor, possibly something we'll never know). The doctor said the tumor probably won't prevent us from getting pregnant, but it's known that they grow more when exposed to estrogen...and I have plenty of that going on right now, so she wants me to get it checked out every year just to make sure it's not getting crazy. We're not trying to get pregnant now, but that doesn't mean we don't hope to have babies some day. I also know we want to adopt, and as one of my friends has said to me, "Maybe this means we're supposed to adopt more people than if we were able to have kids." It's true. God has plans and we live them out. His plans are good and we are meant to trust them. That doesn't mean it's not hard. The same friend also shared that she knows several women who've had fibroid tumors and also have had children. God brings encouragement when we are hard-pressed to move on.

I spent most of this week worrying about the news I would hear at the doctor today. I kept reading on medical blogs that the only cure for fibroid tumors (really) is to have a hysterectomy. You can have them removed before trying to get pregnant and you then basically hope the baby grows faster than the tumor and that the tumor doesn't take up the baby's space. That on top of still trying to process the miscarriage we have been through has been a lot. The thought that my body might just kill babies is heavy. But it doesn't mean I can't heal in the middle of it, and healing looks different for all of us.

I crank up my "inspirational" music category and I lie on the floor and listen to it, or I go to the gym and RUN because I am free to do so and it feels so amazing. I am going to process all there is in my bag of the past to work through and I am going to become stronger, more beautiful, more unique, and more wise from the experience.

How many people can say they moved around the world to find out they had reached the end of themselves? Well, that's my story, and we each have a story that makes us unique. Those stories can break us to bits, or we can become whole in the middle of them. That doesn't mean we don't break anyway and then become better than before. In my weaknesses, God can show through.

I got a surprise today at the OB when I went in for the ultrasound. The woman asked me to drop my pants and put on a gown....for an ultrasound?! I thought that was an on-the-stomach kind of thing. Turns out, it's a whole lot more invasive these days and no one told me. The surprise was the final straw for me. I cried throughout the entire appointment. I mean like full-on sobbing. The poor technician kept explaining it was standard procedure and I kept telling her it wasn't her fault and wasn't even really just the single event. I finally just looked at her and said, "If you knew what my life has been like in the last several months, you'd know why I am crying. I just can't stop it." They wanted to know if I've been a whole lot more emotional lately and I had no idea, so much has been going on, it's hard to even know. (And, PS, for any of you who haven't had an ultrasound lately, if they say "pelvic ultrasound" go ahead and ask what that means, I was totally blown away and wished someone had told me. I think knowing would have made it not a problem.)

It struck me that in the USA, we are SO uncomfortable with tears. We don't know what to do, they just don't happen openly in our culture. I was SO embarassed that I cried and began to wonder why. I think I needed to cry, just get it all out there and let it go a little bit...but seriously, in public? Guess I had no choice. I decided to add it to part of how I am healing. Letting the tears go was the best thing today. Tomorrow it will be different. I think part of what we need to do is let each day be wholly different than the day before and accept that we need different things at different times and that's alright.

Today, I choose to heal. I choose to run, to work in my garden, to spend time in silence, and time with my music blaring inspiration into my ears. Thank God for His provision.

In this scatter-blog, I also want to say a word about Guinea-Bissau. It's a small country in West Africa that I am smitten with. God loves that country powerfully and I know it in how He's let me love the place. Today, they had a nasty military coup and our friends are there in the middle of it. We have dear African friends in the middle of it, as well as some who are out of the country and are as blind and worried as we are, and American and Brazilian friends there as well. Please pray for God's protection for the children of the orphanage. Pastor Felix is in the USA right now, he left Bissau yesterday for a chaplain training in Virginia. We know the church must be needing a leader and he must be concerned for his home. We know God loves Guinea-Bissau and wants to see it whole.

Thank you for reading, thank you for praying!
Erica

First food post! Avocado pasta

So, since I told you I am on a journey for health, I should also tell you I've been doing a lot of research about how to eat and feed the body rather than my face. :) Since starting this healthier diet, my nails have gotten stronger, my skin has been clearer, and I have had nearly abundant energy. Green smoothies have been a really easy way to get veggies in first thing in the morning. It also has changed the way we feel about how food tastes. I've noticed that when I skip veggies and fall back into bad eating habits, I get sick easily and get tired and feel yucky. Since February, our diet trends have been increasingly more healthy and each day I learn a little more about what to eat and how.

Today's little slice of yumminess was an avocado pasta recipe. I found it on Pinterest, like most yumminess out there.

http://www.blissfulbblog.com/blog/2012/2/16/blissful-eats-with-tina-jeffers-creamy-avocado-pasta.html

I followed the directions at this blog, but changed a few things. I used one more avocado than they called for, I also probably used a bit more spinach, we didn't garnish with basil and cheese and I used a box of noodles, no idea if it was a pound or not. I wasn't particularly worried. Oh, and I used three jalapenos instead of 1/4 of one. They're early in the season, so they weren't hot at all, but added a nice flavor.

Avocado Pesto Pasta just after I made it.
I am no pro at photos, but it looks pretty tasty.

This meal is gluten-free. I used Quinoa noodles. I have a picture of the box of noodles above. We get them at Whole Foods and find them more hearty than regular pasta and really prefer the taste. They have just as many carbs (which our bodies need anyway, just in the right distributions, and not simple carbs, but I digress), but they're more work for your body to break down because they're not made from just wheat flour.

Anyway, this meal was amazing. I could really taste the fresh flavors. I have a really REALLY small food processor, so this took like 3x as long as it should have, but it was really pretty easy anyway.

Enjoy!

My yard before anything got done to it. It's not the best view of the yard,
but you'll see how different it looks in later pics.
This is one of my main projects for the year.

Sprouts growing on my window sill. We have covers
for them so they are in their own mini-greenhouse, but
we got a little mold, so they're airing out.
These little guys are Cantaloupe. They are supposed to grow
indoors until July when we can plant them here.
All around them are tomatoes, jalapenos and celery.

So, this (to the left) is my BIG project for the year. That and my garden. I am giving gardening a good old first-run this year. This weekend, we're breaking ground on it. Can't really plant much more than carrots until after the frost. This last week, we got a decent frost and our yard looked like it had been attacked by the laundry. We covered everything and it made it just fine, but there's no reason to make it harder on ourselves. :) The garden is starting indoors. We got these little pallets. They're really brilliant. You sprout seeds in them and then the containers come out and you can plant the plants and reuse the containers. The tray on the bottom lets the plants drain and then these plastic covers convert it into a little greenhouse biodome thing. It's excellent. We have lettuce and carrots and cantaloupes sprouting right now and several more on the way.

Some of my very favorite memories growing up are of gardening with my dad and picking strawberries with my mom. My dad did all the hard work (tilling and fertilizing the garden and he dug the furrows and little holes for the seeds) and then he'd tell us how many seeds per hole in the ground and we'd plant them and cover them up and water them with him every day. Later in the summer, of course, it was my dad doing the weeding and us eating radishes, cherry tomatoes, strawberries and raspberries in mass quantities, but we were "helping." Gardens are for eating, right? Well, my dad and mom are coming for Easter and they're going to help me start my first garden of my own this weekend. It's going to be really fun.

Yes, my husband routinely closes his eyes for pictures and the dog usually looks away, that means we have a LOT of pictures like this. This was one of our early hikes this year. We are looking forward to getting a lot more of these in!

My other favorite passtime lately has been the hiking of the amazing and lovely hills that I live near. I am thankful for the mountains and for the chance to enjoy them. We have our tent ready to go and plan to spend a weekend out camping soon. Hope you are enjoying Spring.

Remember the mantra and live each day a little better than the one before.

God bless you.

Getting right down to where I've been

Hello to all of you.

Before I really launch this blog, I should give some background and history. I intend this blog to be a place where I share my experience as I journey every day towards health and wholeness. I need to find who God made me to be. I need to sing when I am alone, I need to dance in the rain, and run races just because I can. I need to live my life instead of letting it fly by while I work in the wings. I've spent 27 years of my life slaving away to please some unknown factor. I think at the bottom of it all is me. I have been working to earn my own approval, and as my own worst critic, I have driven myself beyond reason to achieve something vastly and ultimately unachievable.

And I am done! I am free, but a change like that doesn't come easily.

My dog, Sheba and I in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa

This past year has brought me to the absolute edge of myself and beyond the brink of anything I thought I could survive. I'd actually had nightmares of this exact situation unfolding....and then it did. Several of my friends and family have followed my blog postings at www.thefeuchts.com and know what the last little while has been like, others of you probably have no idea.

When your bike breaks down in Africa, you walk.

Brief synopsis (as brief as it can be): My husband and I got married three years ago and basically immediately started working on plans to move to Guinea-Bissau, West Africa to work as missionaries. Since the time we decided to go, absolutely everything about our vision, project, and even the organization we went with has changed. We ended up moving there in September after long, hard work to produce the funding needed for such an endeavor and all the "normal" things you do when you're moving yourself, your spouse, and your 100lb dog (did I mention our "little" pup is a rescue pet?) to Guinea-Bissau as the first people on a project and first missionaries with a new organization. Everything was new, and everything was like wading through frozen molasses. We pushed through. That had been my outlook for a long, long time. Honestly, as long as I have been alive, I have expected to need to "beat the odds" in life and I have seen it as my responsibility to PUSH as hard as I could to make things happen.
In September, I finally made it to where I had been going for years. In September, my life felt like it took off and was just beginning. And then a couple weeks later in September, the unthinkable happened.

I     got      sick.

Not like a cold. Not like anything ever before. My body just refused to keep on going. I had been in West Africa for a month out of 48 months I was planning to spend there. A month later, I came home.  My life stopped moving.

The farthest West you can get in Africa

I have not ever had a moment where I didn't have a project, a challenge to overcome, a difficulty to push through, etc. I had FINALLY made it to Africa where I dreamed of being, and it felt like the continent had somehow spit me out and I was back home in a sad daze. The thing I had the entire time was confidence that I was not ever outside God's plan, no matter how far outside my plan I had arrived. Aside from that, I still know almost nothing, but I am certain that He holds me every day and that His plans for me are good and right and that He has never let me go.

I came across Exodus 14:14, which in its entire context is medicine to a hurting soul. Just the verse says,

"The Lord will fight for you, you need only to BE STILL."

I have never EVER been still in my life. I finally hit a junction where I had literally no other choice and I fell into stillness that began to heal my heart.

Poor large dog doesn't really fit in that space. She's a trooper. This is on her way home.

At the beginning of December, with doctors completely stumped, my husband and I decided he should come home. We spent a total of two months on separate continents before we were reunited. He began the process of leaving a life we'd only just set up. I continued to remember being a prospective missionary and being told a story of someone who had done all their fundraising and got to the field and shortly thereafter had to return home because of the wife's health. I remembered hearing that story and feeling my heart flip and squirm and stop for a second at the thought of that happening. That story had haunted my fundraising and my sleep and everything until it actually became MY story and I watched the fringes of my own life come unraveled and break away in a strong wind that surrounded me.
At the end of December, my husband, my father (who had gone to Africa to see this country we loved and to help my husband with the process of moving back home), a great friend, Fernando, and our 100lb dog were in a car moving between the borders of three African countries in zones currently torn by guerrila warfare. My husband got out of Guinea-Bissau a DAY before the country's roads were closed down because of a coup attempt. At the same moment, I sat at a doctor's visit that radically rocked my tattered world to its core.

In September, I'd had a feeling, like a whisper, in the back of my head that said something terribly wrong had happened inside my body. In December with my family strewn across the globe and out of communication, two different doctors confirmed that the whisper had been the truth. I had been pregnant....about two months along....and lost the baby in September. We weren't trying to get pregnant at the time, but so many things haunted me; some strange, some standard, all areas deeply hurting. I had flushed my baby down a toilet in a country that doesn't have a sewage system and I had no idea where the pipes I flushed had taken my child. Had my ambition, my insane inner drive to accomplish something, been the thing that killed my own child? How does someone tell her husband over a bad Skype connection that she miscarried his child. And is there any way to KNOW months later and across the world if this is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what really happened.

No.

 I haven't shared that with the world publicly, but it's freeing to have it written down. It's one of the truths of my life and it makes me who I am today. I don't owe it to anyone to share that, I want to share it because I believe that our weakest, most painful moments make us stronger in the end. I believe that sharing this with other people who have had similar experiences is healing for all of us. Why is it that when our hearts break, we seek isolation? Why is it that when I hurt the worst, I don't reach out and ask for help? I don't know.
I am moving through stages of acceptance of many things. I spent years driving my entire existence to move to one of the world's poorest, most underdeveloped countries so I could make a difference. I had lived there in 2007 for half a year and vowed to go back and change the place. I had faces, names, and known needs in my hands just 8 months ago and I walked out. Had this been God's will, or my own? Was it God's plan all along for it to go this way? I don't know. I may never know and that is alright.

Back on the same continent again after 2 months

Meeting my husband, my dad, and my dear world-traveling dog (who saved our lives in Guinea-Bissau, and for whom I am extremely thankful) at the airport was surreal. I remember feeling so disconnected and so unfamiliar. My husband lost over 40lbs in Africa and when I saw him again, it was like meeting a stranger. My Dad had returned my family to me and it meant the world to know he would literally go to the end of the earth to help bring us home. I saw God the Father reflected in my dad's heart for us.

Since then, we spent a month (the sixth month out of the last year and our ninth since getting married) without a home; living with parents and friends. We bought a house in 2009 about 9 months after we got married, and it took us about 3 months longer than we expected to get the house, so we were "homeless" then, and then again for 6 more months while we left the country and then tried to settle in West Africa and then moved home. We had months of having a home in there, too, but it was a long (and circular) road.

This house we bought (I will have to tell you about it in another post some time) is a tremendous blessing. We live in our home again and are enjoying simple things like watering the plants and not working feverishly on projects. My husband, Jason, is still looking for a job, and I am confident he will find the right one at the right time. Right now, I am recovering, I am spending time looking for things that bring me health and wholeness. Everything from learning how to eat to feed my body to planning house projects and a garden. I plan to post my experiences as I journey to wholeness and joy here. I intend to share my garden, my home, my cooking adventures, new yoga experiences, my life lessons and experiences and I hope you'll read along and share your life with me as well.

This is my mantra lately:

"Each day, I am a little more whole, a little more settled and a little more myself. It's a baby-step process and I am getting where I should go in no particular hurry. Each day is a gift and I am thankful for it." ~ From me.