To Care and Not to Care

"If a bird abandons the eggs she has been sitting on, she prevents them from hatching, and in the same way monks or nuns will grow cold and their faith will perish if they go around from one place to another." -- Amma Syncletica I used to be deathly afraid of buying a house. Of having a fence and a two-car garage. I saw the feigned satisfaction of my fellow society with their fences and two-car garages and accruement of "things you must have" in order to be considered as a stable, responsible  person. Stable and responsible. It was (and still is) really confusing. Who doesn't want to be considered as stable and responsible? I did. And I still do. But what happens when such words carry so much weight with my identity, and I observe other people who describe themselves as such, and I want nothing to do with them? Or at least their idea of responsibility and stability. They looked frazzled and exhausted, making sure everyone around them knew that they were r...

For at least this past year, I've been wanting to try and put into words the beginning of a dream and how that dream became a reality. I'm not the best writer and I know that shouldn't matter but I always let it get in the way of me writing anything. The other struggle for me is that I have a lot of input in my life and not a lot of output. I love gathering information, thoughts, pictures, stories of purpose. But the thing is this, they're starting to get all muddled and I'm forgetting what their purpose was in the first place. And I really don't want to forget. I don't want to forget what my and my husband's dream was and how suddenly we've found ourselves doing a little bit of what we were made to do. So with this written piece of transition, this blog will take on a different purpose.  Our house now is serving as a space for sabbaticals and rest for people involved in the never-ending work of the Gospel. These are people who have been sent out b...

well...after a brief hiatus (or not so brief depending on your definition of brief) we are back in business. that is, the business of restoring this crazy house. making all things beautiful. but as most of us know, it's not all beautiful. with our anticipation of our dear friends arriving from the philippines in 3 days, we are hurriedly making the downstairs master bedroom into a livable and clean room to live! which means, no more storing 20,000 gallons of paint, sheetrock, old chairs, black walls and God knows what else. it is turning into a place of rest. we also find time to record ourselves while installing carpet... one other thing we did today is paint... and (finally!!!) take this busted door going into the above bedroom. cut out the broken glass and reframe it with some plastic we had. and that's it!

We found these little treasures buried in the databases. In these two videos, you will witness jay and ben working together at their finest. It was taken back in August earlier this year, and we were really excited because it was our last demo in the entire house. I am so glad we've taken videos along the way. I look back at some of these and cannot believe how far we've come. Literally and figuratively. (Everything in life is a moment to learn right?) This next video was also taken in August of this year. Ben and I had been working all day and hadn't seen luke in a while. I just thought he was hanging out in his room. But no. He was taking out all 4 of the giant "monster bushes" (that we despise) from our front yard. With a shovel. And his sheer man-power and wit.

Greetings from Downerson Manor! Hmm... Down-erson. Even that name strikes a sort of melancholy chord as our house is no longer defined by two couples joined together for the purpose of flipping a house. Truth be told, the mission of this house and the very people who now reside in it has changed quite dramatically in the last two years, and a new chapter is unfolding right before our eyes. But more on that later. For those of you who don't know me (or perhaps just don't know me well), my name is Debbie Sue... or around here I'm usually some variation of Debs, Debster, etc. I moved in here temporarily in February 2012 to escape an unusually sick house and find some peace and quiet for my body and soul. In April 2012, I came home to four giddy smiling faces, a bouquet of flowers and a formal invitation to become a part of this family. I cried... of course (as I'm totally the resident crier, but not the only one ;)... and then joyfully settled right in to my closet...

When suddenly you are seeing something that wasn't just there, and feeling something that only a second go was something else entirely, and it all sounds a little bit different, the air, just like that, cleared up, there is no dust on the ground or the dishes or the pillows, and smells have left and are replaced by no smells or different ones, and you are suddenly nostalgic like crazy for one second ago even though it was particularly miserable, you long for the past because nothing was all done yet and there was such wonder to look forward to, and now you're in it and you're resting and even though time, with all its minutes and months, make that second feel like a century, it's still time and your memory still turns it into a dream that is on continuous loop everytime you sleep and these days you've even begun to daydream it. We're all hoping to be done soon and we stop and imagine what it will be like. Ben and Janell and Jay don't get angry all too ...