Saying goodbye to an old friend

1090 South Ave. Apt 4 has been one of best places we have ever lived.  So we decided as a family to do a top 10 list of why. (After just eating Salvatore's pizza on the empty front porch.)

*The person's name following the comment is the one who said it not the only one who agrees with it.*

10. Saw Wood chucks in Highland Park (Caleb)

 9. Leaves from the Lilac festival (Lydia)

 8. We got to go to the Library a lot (Hannah)

 7. Highland Park and Highland Bowl (Caleb)

 6. Close to movies in Highland Bowl (Hannah)

 5. All sleeping in the same room (Lydia with Abigail's agreement)

 4. The city skyline out our window (Sonja)

 3. Less than a block from the Hospital, the Library and the park (Sonja)

 2. Watching people skate on the pond from the house during the winter (Sonja)

 1. Lots of space for all our stuff, a huge closet and the enclosed front porch. (Sonja)

To continue the list: being close to the museum of play that we could even walk(Sonja), Friendly neighbors (Sonja), Sophia the neighbors' cat (Abigail), a big kitchen (Sonja), watching the cars go past (Caleb), could walk home for lunch (Glenn), lots of space (Glenn),.

Just because we are saying goodbye doesn't mean we are ready to leave. Blugh!!!

With a Little Help from Some Friends

Today was "move the big stuff day" at the Maas household. I woke up totally not ready for it and tried to work and didn't make much progress. I had been informed that I needed to send out an email to ask for help from our Adult Bible Class teacher and I reluctantly did late last night asking for help at around 1 since that was when I thought one friend was going to be available.  I am super woman and I feel that I should be able to do it all on my own and I also feel guilty asking people to help us move because we move so often! Anyway, I sent it out and an engaged girl from our young marrieds and engaged class came. I hadn't really gotten a chance to get to know Kirsten before but it was so much fun to get to know her while she helped carry our stuff downstairs to the Burb and into storage and into Lishawa's house. I was so glad that she came because she was a huge help!! Our friend Zach from community group also came which was super helpful and Brad also came for the last load. Another huge help today was my friend Rebecca who has 4 kids of her own under 6 took my kids to the Museum of Play for a couple of hours to play so that we could haul stuff without them underfoot. It was amazing how much we could get done without them (not that the kids ever cause big problems but they are kids and do kid-type things often). We are so thankful for so many people who have helped us through this move and for the prayers that have sustained us.

Now I am tired and sore and we are still at the "yucky stage" of moving. The kids are sleeping in a tent in their room tonight and Glenn and I are on the floor in ours. I thought that it would be better because then we can just wake up and start working without having to wait until everyone was up and then get them ready to go out the door but I am sure I will wake up sore, just like when we are camping since we are sleeping on our camping mat. I think that it will just make sleeping in a real bed again all that much more sweet when I finally do it again. Got to go to sleep so we can hopefully get done tomorrow (I don't know if we have ever been able to get done moving a whole day before we had to move out but I'm hoping that it will be the case this time!! Every move gets a little bit easier. Maybe someday I will even like moving. 

Before going to bed (I mean floor) I will end with a quote from Epictetus, "I am always content with that which happens for I think that which God chooses is better than what I choose." Oh, and another good one from Calm My Anxious Heart "If we are to find contentment in the midst of trial and uncertainty we must accept our situation as being purposely allowed into our lives by a personal and loving God."

Blessings and Bummers

There have been so many blessings this past week I just wanted to write down a few:

1. We have sold several things on craigslist – our couch, a desk, a bike, a bed and someone is coming to buy another bed this afternoon. We still have 2 things out there so if anyone wants a heavy roll top desk (that we love, just being nomadic it is not appropriate furniture for us to own) and a tall road bike.
2. We have moved 2 loads to our storage unit and a load of dressers and stuff over to Lishawa's.
3. A friend brought over food on Thursday which has lasted us several meals so I didn't have to think about food, yeah!
4. We are making some serious progress on packing. I really think that we will get it done (until I walk into our bedroom or the kitchen, those are both still really scary!)
5. The kids have been amazing... entertaining themselves (puzzles have been their favorite thing the last couple of days), helping carry things out to the Burb or the dumpster, doing dishes, making us laugh. I am so thankful for them!
6. Glenn's back is feeling a little better (now if he can just make it through today without hurting it worse at work!)
7. We had a fun day on Friday at our friend's house having a yard sale. Though we didn't sell much it was so nice to get out of the house for the day and just relax instead of pack!
8. It has been rainy a few days as we have moved stuff and the rain has held off while putting things into the Burb and into storage.
9. The storage place has an elevator!
10. Glenn's essay is almost done.
11. God has been encouraging us through His Word and also My Utmost for His Highest has been really challenging the last couple of days!

12. Having Karen's car has been a huge help! We took the back seat out of the Burb and filled it with stuff and put the kids in Karen's car and off we went. Not sure how we would have managed without it. Thanks Karen!! The Burb is also a huge blessing (except for the 10mpg thing)

There have also been a couple of bummers:
1. While moving boxes into storage the band of my engagement ring bent, possibly beyond repair. It is a pretty thin band and Glenn is surprised it has lasted the last 11 moves without this happening :) It is put up for right now and we'll address getting it fixed after things settle down.
2. Our microwave died. It was from my mom's book order points that she used to replace mine that she had used in her classroom since I had won it at Project Graduation so it has lasted us 9 years so that isn't too bad. It still has dead cochroach shells in the LED from our first apartment in Chattanooga. The light blew on it last week and ever since it has been a bit smoky inside after I heated something and smelled really hot and sounded funny. I figured for safety sake it would be best to just throw it away instead of having it burn our house down! This is the perfect time of year for a microwave to break though because I am sure that they are on sale for back to school, just not shopping for that right away either.

Well, a quote from WOLBI sounds appropriate right now, “I will not quit, by God's grace I can do it!” 3 days to go.

We're moving??

Well, this week has been fun... oops, I am supposed to be packing!! NOT having fun. Oh well, it will get done :) Monday we spent the day at the Museum of Play with my friend Jenn and her girls who came up from Fillmore to spend the day with us. They had never been there before and it was fun to see the place with new eyes again :) After we got home we ate quick then headed out the door to go to a meeting at my director's house. She has 4 kids about my kids ages so they ran and played for another couple of hours. It was no big surprise that the girls all fell asleep on the way home. I am really enjoying my new business. I am making money doing nothing but having fun at parties and talking to people. Works for me. I get paid to go to girl's night out parties :)

Tuesday we actually worked and got our dressers unpacked and moved over to the Lishawa's so we'll have somewhere to put our clothes and also moved our bikes into their garage so they were no longer in my kitchen :) Also we sold our couch. I think that we paid about $5 to rent it for the year, not too bad. Bought and sold on craigslist... love that site (though not as much as Glenn :)

Today I worked a little bit in the morning then went to the movies with the kids while Glenn stayed home to work. We watched Arctic Tale this week. There was some amazing cinematography. It was fun to watch. Then after a quick stop at Wegmans we headed home to eat something and get back to work. We missed our Summer Reading program on Monday so we went today and stayed longer than we planned but at least we got there dry and walked home dry because the storm started right after we got there and ended just before we left. (These pictures from the library are actually from last week when they had a Tales with Tails event not from today but they are from the library.) We love our library and we are going to miss living less than 2 blocks from the library!! After we got home I made pizza - it was nice to have real food. I have been struggling with the whole feeding a family of 6 and packing thing so the pizza tasted really good after oatmeal and pancakes and cold cereal the last few days :). Over the last few weeks since dad died and while packing our community group and others from church have brought us some meals which has been such a blessing! I am looking forward to eating more regular food again instead of whatever random items are left in our pantry and freezer that I am trying to use up.

Tonight someone came and bought our corner computer desk. The only other big thing that we have to sell is our roll top desk. I love our roll top desk but it has gotten pretty dinged up over the years and moves that we have owned it. The people on Craigslist who have asked about it wonder how old it is and I have no idea b/c I bought it from my aunt Alyce about 7 years ago and I have no idea how long she had it but pretty sure it was from the Ye Olde Barn so that has got to be at least 13 years old. We're also doing a yard sale with a friend on Friday but I am not exactly sure how much we are bringing because we have given so much away already but I am sure I will find more as I pack and sort.

We decided to rent a storage unit about a mile from here for the next 3 months and just bring clothes, school stuff and a few kitchen items I can't live without (mostly my PC stuff that has made my life so much easier). It is a 10x13 and costs only about $15 more than the storage place that we had rented while house-sitting in Houghton which we didn't think was bad!

Here is a picture of Lydia and Abigail... maybe we have done too much this week. Also, if you would pray for Glenn. He hurt his back today moving Lydia's trundle bed. I see a lot of box moving in my future :)

It's Official

We don't know what we are doing! Big suprise?? :)

Actually, we do know a small part... Today we left our kids at church and skipped Sunday school and went to Dunkin Donuts with Brian and Kristina and talked logistics. They are leaving tomorrow for two weeks of vacation. During that time we will be moving into their home for (most likely) a couple of months. The guys are pretty excited about the idea... us girls are going into it with a little more fear and trepidation.

This morning at church was the second part of the Fork in the Road message. It was really good. He talked about Abram (which totally makes sense but for some reason I was surprised) from Genesis 11:31-12:9. Abram was living a pretty comfortable life and God asked him to leave and he left. He never settled anywhere. There was no proof that he was going to be OK except God's promise in Genesis 12:1-3. Why would he do this?? Hebrews 11:8-16 gives us some insight... he was looking forward to a city with a foundation whose designer and builder is God. Abraham never saw any of the promises fulfilled that God had made. Hebrews 11:13 said that he died in faith.

Toby called Abraham a "City Watcher" and gave us a City Watcher's Creed:
1. "This world is not enough."
2. "God will keep His promises." When I trust God He is going to give me something so much better, something I could never get if I tried doing it on my own. I am working through Becoming a Woman of Faith by Cynthia Heald and this morning there were two quotes that I came across as I was reading that really impacted me. "Anytime we exercise our faith, no matter what our circumstances, God Himself becomes our reward." and then a quote from Oswald Chambers, "Assurance of faith is never gained by reserve, but only by abandonment."
3. "I can wait for God's timing." If you have known us or been following our blog long you know that this is a tough one for me. Toby gave an illustration of telling his son to wait and showed of picture of his little boy with a look that said, "but Daddy... I thought you loved me." I struggle so often with waiting. God rarely has our time frame. He so often tells us... "wait." God knows what is best for us and when it is the best time to give us what we want/need.
4. "It will be worth it." What is coming is so much better than what I am giving up.

I can testify to this - it will be worth it. I know I think often... in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years I will be able to look back and see what God was doing. I can do that today. 5 years ago we were preparing to move to Houghton for Glenn to finish his Bachelor's degree. I didn't want to go to Houghton. We could not provide for ourselves in Houghton. We could not do it on our own in Houghton. We would have to trust God and that is what He wanted us to do so we did. We had 2 kids and a 3rd on the way and we moved out in faith and God blessed, He provided - housing, food, friends, a church family, our every need and lots of added wants. He blessed far beyond our expectations, rarely providing in ways that I would have thought of, but He met our every need.

The same God who did that is leading us again. Where or how I don't know at this point but I am willing to follow His lead where ever He takes us. Thinking about this message today on the way home God really convicted me of where I was placing my security for our future. I wanted to get into U of R for so many reasons and so many of them were selfish reasons. I was wanting to take care of myself. That is not what God wants. He knows what is best for us. It is not in finding our security here on earth but in keeping our focus on Him and knowing that our future in secure in His hands.

Abraham's legacy in the short term wasn't all that thrilling - 2 sons and enough land to be buried in, nothing compared to Cain's great civilization. Ultimately though Abraham's legacy, because of the choices he made to trust God and His promises, is Jesus Christ. God promised that all the nations of the world would be blessed through him (Abraham). Jesus is that blessing. I have salvation and the promise of a future in heaven because Abram chose to trust God and step out in faith.

What will my legacy be? God doesn't ask everyone to leave and wander the earth and trust Him like He did for Cain and Abram but I really believe that that is what He has called Glenn and Sonja Maas to do. Is that comfortable? No. Will it be hard? Yes. Will it be worth it? Yes! Does it mean that we will never live anywhere for more than 2 years? Maybe. :) I want to leave behind a legacy of faith. I want my kids to know that God will take care of them and that it is worth the sacrifices to trust Him because He loves us and knows best. We will always be weird - aliens, strangers, exiles, because our true home is heaven.

I'm scared to be homeless but God has provided a temporary place for us to live and He will take care of us. One thing I think that God is really working on me right now is humbling me. I have never actually done it on my own but I have always felt like I have and now, having no place to call the Maas home is really difficult for me. (Brian said we should call their home the Lishamaas'). I am excited about what God is going to teach all of us through this time though I am really nervous about the actuality of the whole thing.

One last quote from my book, "My greatest moments of doubt come when I question God's ways.... God challenges me to keep going into a land flowing with milk and honey, but... in my "little" faith I doubt the goodness and faithfulness of the Lord. I believe that He is always with me, but when the winds begin to whip up the waves, I cry out for the Lord to wake up.... I need not doubt His word, no matter what the circumstances.... This is faith - trusting God with my past, present, and future even though, logically, I should trust no one but myself. But if I do rely on my own insight, I will spend my life risking nothing, depending only on what I can see and touch. I will be my own rescuer. I will listen to my doubts, debate God's ways, and cling to my own understanding- and suffer the consequences of these choices by dwelling in the wilderness, living in fear, and going under in the storm." That last part is not how I want to live. I want to live by faith, Lord help me to trust You! You will keep Your promises, I can wait for Your timing, it will be worth it.

We must have no friends... or enemies for that matter

We had stir fry for supper tonight. I love stir fry in the summer with all the yummy fresh veggies from the garden - green peppers, zucchini and summer squash in particular. Since we didn't know where we were going to be come harvest time we didn't garden again this year so I bought some zucchini from the Public Market to put in our stir fry. Glenn's comment was, "We must really have no friends or enemies either if we had to buy zucchini." It made me laugh. For years my source was Grandma Hansen's amazing garden. Which make me think of how depressing her back yard looked when I drove by her old house last time I was in Waterloo. Grandma was an amazing gardener and you could never visit her in the summer without her giving you bags and bags of produce!! So yummy! I miss her so much, and not just for her garden!

In other news I think that I know the basics of what we are going to do for school this year. This week I have been in a battle against the dining room (which has also been our school room). I have been given a bunch of homeschool stuff and I needed to sort through it to see what I would be using this year and what I should get rid of, etc. I have been dying to get it packed but just when I thought I might be making progress it would be time for a meal again and I would have to find the table and go and make something for everyone to eat I would get into it again and then it would be meal time again. Maybe we should have fasted this week :) I doubt that that would have gone over well. I think that I probably should have stayed home more this week and not have done so many outside of our home things but they were fun memories and this week was Caleb's birthday and there were special events at the library (which we are going to miss SO much, I don't know if we will ever live so close to a library again!) But we have 11 days until we have to be out, so much to do but it will get done, even if I give up sleep for the last week (which I am sure I won't do b/c I would be WAY too grouchy to deal with and I won't subject my family to that :)

City Building??

What to do? What to do? This past Sunday's message was really challenging to me. An intern that had been at North last year came back to preach a couple Sundays on A Fork in the Road. It was a real challenge to me. First he talked about 3 Obvious Truths that drive us:
1. We are finite creatures
2. We are dependent creatures
3. We are vulnerable.
Ouch on all three. Basically we are needy and we have a choice to make as to where we are going to turn to get our needs met.
He talked about Cain. I have heard the story of Cain and Abel from Genesis 4 tons of times over the years but I had never looked into it like we did this Sunday. We all know... Cain doesn't bring the right sacrifice, God is pleased with Abel's and not his; God asks him to obey but Cain takes matters into his own hands and kills his brother; God punishes him and tells him that the ground will no longer produce for him. End of story right? I had never seen God's punishment as an invitation but that is really what it was. God takes away his normal way of life and tells Cain to be a restless wanderer on the earth.... ultimately He is saying - trust Me for your every need, I will take care of you. Cain has a dilemma: Do I trust God? He decides - No, I am going to take care of myself and builds a city. It looks great from the outside the first great civilization but it is in a collision course with God and since it is based on violence in Genesis 6 God's has no recourse but to start over with just Noah and his family.
We were given the 21st century City Builder's Creed:
1. I can't count on God
2. I am on my own
3. So I will take care of myself
4. I don't need God.
What about me?? Do I trust God or am I coming up with some other way to take care of myself because I don't think that He is going to come through for me? Bring it down to real life.... last night I was looking online at apartments... Is that city building?? I know that I CAN count on God. I am NOT on my own, GOD will take care of me, and I DO need God. What is the next step? God asked Cain and later Abraham... "Step out in faith... I will take care of you... I will provide all that you ever need.... Trust Me." Abraham did, Cain didn't . It makes me think of a Sunday school session we had with the kids a while ago that I blogged about here. As I read that I was challenged again: What about me? Am I going to trust God? Living by faith is scary but I know that God loves us and has good plans for us and will take care of us. I can trust Him.