A Time of Refining

Well, the story stopped at us moving to the Kahoka (north) site.

As I mentioned this was not our plan but God's, and boy what an amazing crazy plan it would be.  It would be a time of refining.  Refining our marriage, refining us as new parents, refining Kirk's building, refining our church experience and knowledge, refining us to be more dependent on God. 

As do many who have survived the refiners fire with new shine and shape, I must be honest at this point and tell you that although now I can look back at those six months as a wonderful time of making friendships, learning, and growing.  At the time I was horribly depressed, home sick, and learning the first rule, I feel, of home parenting, marriage, raising kids.  (Rule 1: Life will not go the way you plan very often.  Enjoy when it does, and make the best when it doesn't.)  At this point we were still newly married.  We had gone from a very small house to one with seven bedrooms, five baths, and a HUGE kitchen.  Most of all we went from being surrounded by people we knew in a fairly populated part of the country to Northeast Missouri.  Affectionately called here as NEMO.  Although not quite North Dakota, NEMO is as close as I ever want to get.  This was the setting that refined me to stand alone as a grown up, and to cling to God and my husband.   

For the first month we had no kids, which made the days long and mind numbing.  By nature I am a busy person who likes to have stuff to do.  I do not like to detail clean, and so keeping house didn't take me real long.  There were projects of course, but when you have the whole day four or five days a week you get them done quickly.  Especially if my hubbie is working on them with you.  Kirk worked on a new chicken coop for site that was started after we got kiddos, and helped to keep us busy and gave great reasons to make extra trips to town.

It reminds me of the experiment the March girls try in Little Women.  They take a whole week to just do as they please.  Finding in the end they are very unfulfilled, grumpy, and at a loss of what to do.   So many days I would call my mom to tell her how horrible it was.  Thank goodness she is a strong women, and even though she missed me kept telling me to get out, get involved, make a schedule for myself, and pretty much pull myself together.  Now I look back and think of a thousand things I could do and enjoy if life would slow to that pace again.  Really I could do it for a few days, but would again seek out things to do, people to meet, and places to go.

One set of home parents began to have some health problems, and so we were called upon to help the other houses who needed to go with them, attend to other family things, or just needed some time off.  Also, a month after we arrived our niece was born, and we were able to go be at that wonderful time.  There were other times over the next several months that we were able to help with kids who were in trouble and needed a place to be for a day or help on a trip to the library or nursing home.  There were nights we stayed at houses while parent were gone.  These were the times our child care experience was refined.  The best were the nights we were invited to play cards or eat supper, and could see experienced parents at work.  The priceless experience of having our parenting refined before even getting kids.

In February we got our first two kiddos.  Both were boys who had actually been at Shiloh before.  They fit well with us, and are still in touch to this day.  Stephen is currently in the United States Army, and we are proud of him.  These two taught us much with love and grace.  We also got a girl within a few weeks, and a third boy shortly before school was out.  All of them taught us so much.  From consistency does matter, to how to play hot potato on the trampoline.  How to count a kids underwear to make sure they wore a new pair everyday.  Where to check for stolen goods.  To watch if notebooks are changing hands, its never really homework.  Most importantly we began to understand why there are so many strange rules, like asking to go to the bathroom.

Through this whole time we learned a lot from training, from life experience, but most of all from the great set of home parents we served with.  The Penfields specifically had a real impact on us.  Their own personalities are a lot like Kirk's and mine so we felt that many of the ways they dealt with things fit naturally into our parenting style.  We also learned at the church we served at.  It was a larger church, and so we got to see worship on a large scale, small groups, Sunday schools, and many other things that would later help us in our lay leadership positions.  Our spiritual refining happened not just at church, but in the everyday as we learned more and more to trust, rely, and cling to God. 

Finally in around March we got to talking to a family at the Clarence site.  They wanted to move up to Kahoka for the on site school.  We wanted to move down to the Clarence site.  So we went to our boss with a plan to move our two homes over Memorial Day weekend.  Much less daunting for us as newly weds with four kids, but still crazy none the less.  After much asking, requesting, begging, pleading, and a ton of whining he agreed.  We planted our gardens at each others house, moved things when we could, and on Memorial Day 2005 the great switch took place.  Two large moving trucks, vans, cars, etc. were packed, and we waved as we passed each other. 
So we began yet another leg of our crazy adventure.