...continued from last time

...continued from last time....

....well, there we were....homeless (without insurance)......

i'm not sure how to continue...

we stayed at my in-laws' house (james' dad and step-mom) for a couple of days until we could find someplace to stay longer-term.

my memories are kind of broken from this point. i can't really remember what happened in which order, but i do remember that my aunt and uncle in conroe offered for us to stay in their spare bedroom for a couple of months, and we moved in on January 1, 2001.

i also remember going back to the site of our house and digging through the ashes. we found bits of things that we recognized. we found our wedding picture completely undamaged (that was God.) we found my childhood stuffed animals and pictures that had been protected under a fire-retardant feather bed james' mother had given us. we found enough bits and pieces and some dishes i thought i could salvage to halfway fill our trunk.

we didn't find the cats.

we did find the dog...and took him to aunt glada's. (that's the aunt whose extra room we were staying in).

i remember having to make myself never go back there again--to the site of our house that is.

i remember when we found out that those tools that had been saved by being at a jobsite had all been stolen--all of them.

i remember knowing who did it, not being able to prove it, and having to forgive.

i remember an outpouring of kindness from people i didn't know, showering us with dishes, clothes...whatever they could find.

i remember most of all knowing that God's hand was on us...that He had provided for us...i remember a sense of peace even though neither of us had a job or any way to support ourselves...

i remember the day that i went back to our ashes about a week after the fire and finally cried...a lot

i remember realizing that when God gives you things, you should use them instead of hiding them in a box in the closet waiting for a nicer place to use them....you might not have them later....His gifts are for now

i remember that i'll never forget the beginning of 2001...and that God never once left me alone in it...i'll never forget that.

to be continued...

(please let me know if you're reading my autobiographical bit of blog; it will encourage me to continue. 8) )

an autobiographical bit...if you're interested...8)

It's a good life...


For anyone who's interested, here's a snippet...life in Beth's world...and an abbreviated (or not so abbreviated) autobiography of the last decade.

I've now been married for seven years....to well, my perfect match from God. It took a long time, but we're finally, wonderfully moving as a team and following God together. It's a truly wonderful thing!

We moved back to Texas on oct 31 1999. We had barely been married a year; we were about to get evicted from an expensive apartment that we couldn't afford anymore (a few bad choices), and we stuffed everything that would fit in our buick lesabre and drove....less than $300.00 in our pockets home to Texas. On the way, at a gas station in Texarkana, i lost our only set of car keys by flushing them down the toilet...on accident of course...so that was a small set back.
Finally we arrived in Evergreen Texas on i think november 2...we stayed in a trailer on my in-laws' property for a few months until we could get our own place and jobs, etc.
We did that, and lived life sort-of normal for a while, though away from my Christian parents and without a home church, spiritually--doing quite badly.
Near the end of 2000 i quit my job to work full time for our business. James is a good cabinet maker, and we had decided to go into business; it was a very slim living, but we were going to make it work.

At the end of the year, we were pretty much out of money...bidding jobs is a risky business, and we were losing money fast; we had a cold snap, which is fairly rare around here, and we had run out of gas to run the heater. On December 27, we had both stayed home with a cold and were sleeping the day away in our cold house when whatever we were using for a space heater caught our bedroom on fire. We were renting an old house, and once our bed caught fire, which was right away, the whole house went up in flames very quickly. You really can't believe how quickly it happens until it happens to you.

When my husband woke up and saw the flames at the end of the bed, he woke me up (i was dozed of in a chair across the room) tossed me the keys and told me to move the car, which i did. My husband, while i was doing that, took one quick walk through the house, trying to grab a couple of items of sentimental worth, got out of the house before i even got the car moved, and we couldn't go back in again. The house was completely filled with smoke, and almost completely engulfed in flames.This is one of the most significant moments in my life....not so much because we lost everything, though that has many lessons.....but because in the story of my life, this is a turning point. I journaled that day, on a piece of construction paper i found in the car ( my journal burned, of course ), that i knew it was God's hand in our lives turning us around. We were going in the wrong direction, and He had to bring us back.
God is so faithful.

A loss like that is a very strange feeling...i remember standing in front of our house after the fire department had come and said that it wouldn't be safe to look around in the ashes (for anything salvageable) until the next day...my husband and i looked at each other...we were hungry...so we went to get something to eat...what else is there to do? There was no crying, no exclaiming, just one (truly 60 seconds) moment at a time.

We were extremely thankful at that moment that our tools (livelyhood) had escaped the fire since that had been at a job site--safe and sound.
So we ate in our dirty, smoky pajamas, at a local restaurant. We stopped by James' dad's house to see if we could stay in their spare bedroom. I took a bath. My sister-in-law said she was sorry about my house (nobody ever knows what to say in times like that). Someone suggested calling the Salvation Army to see if we could get some clothes.

And the next day, we got a copy of the Huntsville paper for a souvenir. A picture of our burning house was on the front page. Then we went to the site to see if we could salvage anything--and hopefully find our cats who had quickly run (we hoped) once the fire started.
We salvaged a miracle from the place that had once been our bedroom closet. Of all the things in our house that had burned, broken, and melted, including dishes (our trash can that had been about 15 feet away from the house had melted into a puddle), our pictures and my childhood stuffed animals had been preserved. God has a funny way about Him...i still tear up thinking about it. He kept for us some of what was dear to our hearts and eliminated everything else...forcing us to depend solely on Him. What a truly loving Father!!!

Well, that wasn't short, and i'm not nearly done....i'll write more tomorrow or later this week.

God has done great things since then.....

Tune in next time.......
8)

burning the candle at both ends

Bedstejoy said that she doesn't know how i burn the candle at both ends. 8) This is it.
When you wait upon the Lord, He will renew your strength.
I just rest in Him; it's His candles that are burning; my resources are not what's being used up; His resources provide everything needed.
In the picture, it looks like the candles are about to be all gone, but what you don't see is that when you rest in the Lord, the candles grow; they are never used up.

i told my friend yesterday, who was about to go in for the sixth day at work this week to complete about 80 hours and was very tired--that i love the moment when we think we can't go on, but we go on anyway...because that's the moment in which God provides strength and shows us Him Self in supernatural ways and allows us to complete the task at hand.

Praise the Lord.

That's why i'm a happy clam. 8)

A Sad Encounter with Depravity

Yesterday, in court, my heart wept as i listened to the honest testimony of an almost 17-year old girl who defended herself before the judge in tears, saying, "no one has ever talked to me about that!"--meaning purity and sexual relationships.
She testified instead that she was born to a relationship outside of marriage, she became sexually active when she was 12, and her mother got her on birth control when she was 13. What appeared a hard girl at first, wept bitterly when confronted with the morality of her actions.
Often, you don't know who to believe in court. People lie so very often. But as i listened, i knew she was telling the truth...not that it was a good excuse, but...
her mother talked to her---about not getting pregnant. And the reason it didn't cross her mother's mind to talk to her about purity or abstinence is that her mother has never understood those things either.
So pray for a family i cannot name--that God will intervene...
My heart weeps for them.

Today's Most Cool Quote

...A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

C. S. Lewis
Mere Christianity