new job for Zach

Zach has found a new job! We are so excited! He starts on Monday. I have known the guys that he will be working for a long time. What a huge answer to prayer! Thanks for everyone who has been praying for us!

Yesterday, church was absolutely awesome! I was pretty frazzled when I came in—Zach wasn’t feeling up to coming, and I had already gone to a volunteer orientation for church, then back home to get Isabelle, then back to church. But it was well worth coming through all of that to hear what Pastor Furtick had to say. The title of the sermon series is “The Dip.” It’s about all those valleys in life that we go through, when we are discouraged, disheartened, and in disrepair! Yesterday, he spoke out of 1 Kings 19. Elijah has just come from a huge triumph—at Mount Carmel he showed all of the idol worshipers just who God was and what He is capable of. Then he receives a little death threat from the queen. You would think that he would have said “Bring it on! (snap)” But instead, he ran. The theme: when you are in a dip, don’t dig yourself deeper. One key thought I got through this sermon: The goal of the enemy is to get you to distort the dimensions of your dip. Another key thought: The opposite of prayer is worry. The last one: you need to have perspective. We think that our problem is the biggest problem ever, until we can step outside of it and remember that our God is bigger than that.

Wow. I am a self proclaimed worrier. I come from a long line of worriers. It was awesome to hear this sermon, with so much fear all around me right now. Zach has made little progress in finding another job, and it’s pretty gloomy altogether in the construction industry, where both of us have our careers right now, as well as our entire country. But the opposite of prayer is worry! If you are worried about what is going on in your life, or if you know you are going through a dip—I highly recommend checking out www.elevationchurch.org and watching Pastor Furtick’s sermon series over the last couple of weeks. It truly helped me gain perspective. Hope it helps you.

Conversations with Pooh

This week has begun in quite the crazy manner. After raining over 2 inches yesterday, it proceeded to sleet and then snow starting around dinner time last night. So we woke up to a winter wonderland this morning. The good news: since Zach has not found a job yet, he is home with Isabelle (her last day at the daycare was Friday), so we didn’t have to worry about the delayed opening. The bad news: I had to drive in the snow by myself to work. But I managed to get to work all right, no mishaps. Anyway, I was working away when Zach called me up around mid-morning. “I have to tell on your daughter,” he tells me. “Uh-oh!” I say. Turns out it was cute, not bad. He heard that she was awake from her nap, so he went in to get her up. She was sitting up in her crib facing her stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh bear, just chattering away. When he went to pick her up, she grabbed Pooh, so he brought her and Pooh to the bonus room. She ate snack with Pooh sitting there facing her, like he was a guest to tea. I know this is normal, but it was the first time we had seen her do something like that. We thought it was pretty cute.