A smile at Starbucks

I walked in tentatively to Starbucks.  Wearing a rediculous pair of shiney red jeans and a sweater from Gap in an attempt to make the pants look less like club pants.  Why did I wear these?  Why did I pack them?  I look like such a dork!  They didn't look shiney when I bought them, and I wanted to branch out into different things... Nope, I'm just a blue jean girl, I need to stop pretending!

I slowly take off my vogue sunglasses, which ussually make me feel more confident, but today just add to the, "Ahhh, where can I hide" feel.  I step up to the counter, and the sweet guy behind the counter makes sure to get my name right on the Starbucks cup.  Normally, I don't care, and I didn't today, but he was just so kind.  We smile and laugh about complicated names.  Then he accidently puts my change in his tip jar.  Than we just crack up.  It just made my day to laugh with a friend.  Well, he is now, even if he wasn't before.  If you are about to all my husband and tell him I was flirting at Starbucks, rest easy, my new friend is gay.  I can't wait to get coffee next time though.  Get another coffee and a laugh.

So, I will forget about myself for the rest of the day and I will make other people smile.

We have a dresser

Holy cow.  I've been working my butt off this week!  I would be working now too, except in have such a horrible headache that I can't do anything but be still.  I do like to take take a sabbath on Sunday, but somehow I can manage too.  I feel like God was reminding me that this is not a recommendation, but a commandment by forcing me to sit still.  I have never understood that commandment.  Jesus did heal on the sabbath, but does that mean we are now permitted to go a million miles an hour on that day?  It seems like it is the most disregarded commandment.  I guess that is why I don't really follow it.  Isn't that awful, we are not meant to have a peer pressured faith.

Moving on, or back, the house is coming together.  We bribed a friend today to help us move our dresser in.  We are having him for dinner tomorrow.  Speaking of our dresser, I went with Nik to our storage in Bozo yesterday... Holy cow!  There is so much junk in there.  And in this case I really do mean junk.  There is quite a bit of wonderful finds (the dresser of course, my clock that my grandpa G made, a butter dish, mattresses and who knows what else that we haven't uncovered yet), but we will be having a garage sale this summer.  I cannot believe we acquired so much in only two years in Bozo.  Wow.

So we have a dresser again.  I would really like some couches though.  A sofa to sit on.  I might write a ode to a sofa.  So far, we have comfy folding chairs, which are great, don't get me wrong, but it's been over a month of folding chairs, and well, didn't I just tell you I've been working my butt off?  This butt would like a sofa.

I still love Big Twig!  I love not living in a city!  I love having a small community.  Might send my son to the next state over to find a wife, just to make sure he's not related to her, but love, love, love this town.  I hope that never changes.

Still traveling

I am doing more traveling now than I was when I was an expat.  We use our suitcases to travel to Billings, Bozeman, and the ranch every week!  In a way, I love it.  I don't have to live in a city any more to enjoy the benefits of one.  Of course, traveling so much can be wearing, but, eh, keeps you young right?  We rush, rush, rush to pack food, clothes, diapers, milk, meds, snow clothes, and other things we might need for the day or over night, than we get to relax when we get there.  That is except for all the errands that must be taken care of in the city or the work that needs done on the ranch.  I love my busy life.  That's not to say I don't get exhausted, but it's nice to have so much to do.

It's not that I didn't have a lot to do in Doha, but going to the store seemed more exhausting than here, even with the store being over an hour away here.  Funny.  I guess part of it is, you never knew if the shopping trip would be successful, or more precisely, more often than not you got home empty handed in Doha.  Looking for the ingredients for that recipe, either takes all day and every grocery store there is, or it takes all day and every grocery store and you still get home having to make something else.  Ya know what I mean?  A different sort of exhausting.

Well, my hubby just got home with an ingredient I forgot for tonight.  

At the end of a gun

He held his fingers like a gun to his own chest as he told me was shot at point blank range in the chest.  The "mugger" didn't wait for him to hand over his money, he seemed more interested in beating and shooting him.  The surgeon who put him back together said he should not have lived long enough to get to the OR.  But God decided he was going to live.

There is so much more to his story.  I met M and his wife at my best friend's house before her wedding last week.  We all stayed up late talking about our experiences at the end of a gun.  Dispute his experience being extremely more devastating than my own, it was amazing the shared experiences and feelings we have had.  Seeing "our guy" everywhere, taking to insurance or people wanting a bill paid and how painful that experience can be, panic attacks when you don't feel sacred, and so much more crap.

I feel like God ordained that conversation.  It was so healing to talk for hours with someone with a similar experience.  It was similar to the expat connection, but stronger.  I will be praying for M and his family for the rest of my life.  I hope I get to see them again, but it was a huge gift from God to be able to have that conversation.  It took away some of the pain.  I also feel enabled to share my story now.  I have in the past, but now I feel like God can use my story.  It's not just something I need to get over, get past, but something that makes me who I am and who I am for God.  I have been through a terrible experience and God can use it in more than my life, but others lives.

God make me a servant, faithful and true