Surprise...this just in-------

So--this will not be my typical post.. ;) This is just a WOW, let me real quick grab a sec. to share a quick update about our journey~~~~
Ray has been approached about helping a new church plant...Ray has prayed and asked a few local Pastors/friends to pray & share wisdom..Ray has felt a peace and said YES...
(and by saying yes to this--by default he says no for now to other things)
I am in shock..this is absolutely crazy (but God is in the crazy business)..I am still trying to catch up to what all has just happened...
So for those of you just getting the news, you're in good company!
Please pray for us as this news, while great,wonderful, humbling, amazing..will also cause pain for us and others..it will unleash, as I am already seeing, tons of warfare...it will add another huge layer to our already crazy life ;)
AND I also know God is in the Kingdom business..it is an honor to be asked to help with a church plant...it has put a smile on my husband's face I haven't seen in a long time..we are 'wanderers' and we seem to just 'Go' where we can be used...we want to see His kingdom advanced and for folks to know about a Love that never fails, a Savior, a God who redeems, and that maybe the glimpses of heaven on earth will give people a Hope that one day all will be set right ....
I have no idea where this next step down the narrow road will take us but I am following my leader and my God and I know that His ways are not mine...that's where faith comes in & I want to recklessly live out all that He has for my family!!

Can you believe that's all I'm gonna type..surely a record!!!

~~~
I crumble at Your kiss and grace
I'm a weakling in the dust
Teach me how to cling to You
With all my life and all my love
Father come to me, hold me up 'cause I can barely stand
My strength is gone and my breath is shot, I can't reach out my hands
But my heart is set on a pilgrimage to heaven's own bright King
So in faltering or victory I will always sing

And on the road to beautiful

My seasons always change

But my life is spent on loving You

To know You in Your power and pain

You're my portion in this life
You're my strength now in my fight
And to You I pledge my heart
In the pain and in the dark I'll love You
I'll love You, I'll love You



I'll love You... 

Repeat:Repeat

Broken record. I feel like I am constantly saying the same things over and over and over... There is truly nothing new under the sun.  I want to give an update on our life/living/dying situation & as I re-read all my old blog posts I see that , well, there's nothing really new to say...   

So I won't bore everyone with a uber long post about the same old same old :)  I will just jot down a few random things and call it a night.. (Of course anyone who knows me knows I truly do not know how to 'quickly jot down' anything but it sounds good right?)

We are moving..WHAT? Do you find this hard to believe? When I say, after each move "If I ever have to move again.." HA, how many of you laugh and say, yeah right..   It seems that we are officially wanderers. With no clear place to call HOME. Each time I move I really want to believe it will work this time. That we will unpack and settle in and we will just BE.

So, since that doesn't appear to be the reality I get to live in at this time let me tell you what we are up to:

 1. As of tonight the wonderful (she says with a slight smirk) City Council has decided the fate of our City's Police yet again. My husband has a job --for now. 2. Since my husband still has a job he is eligible for off duty work as an officer. (We sometimes get notified of 'Courtesy Apartments' that are available to Police. These are apartment complexes that will give an Officer a reduced or free apartment in exchange for that officer providing 'Policing' for the community. ) We are as of this weekend going this route again. We have prayed and sought God's plan for us & this is the choice that gives my husband peace. We can no longer afford the town-home BECAUSE of all the repairs and moves. We are going farther and farther into a deep dark hole with each passing month ... 3. We are doing this as a major step of faith as we still need to rent or sell the town-home.   (Which has passed the air sampling tests)

The following is just a free flow of my random odd crazy thoughts about all this:

• I feel like we have really been learning that this world is not our home! With all the moves we have had to slowly learn  that some things are just not forever and some things are not worth getting to attached too. That just because I am in America or a Christian certainly does not guarantee me a 'dream home' or money in the bank. The less attached we are to the trappings the better. The more we spend on & are attached to worthwhile or eternal things, like. humans :) the better!!
• I feel like this will be a freeing thing for us as Ray has decided this time that once we leave we will never come back--no-matter-what. I want to believe that..I want to see this as a 'crossing a Jordan' of sorts. We can't go possess what is ahead if we are always looking back.
• I am looking at the coming year as a "year of pursuing holiness" for our family. In every way. I feel like we (or others--like the toxic home) have polluted our bodies and our minds....our lives in the last few years... and the rush of all these moves has left me ten steps behind all the things I want to be doing with my family. I want to see us examining every area of our lives and deciding if the things we are pouring into us are 'clean'..are they holy..are they pure???  I know that I am not the wife and mom I want to be and I see things in my children that I want to see changed as well. I am sure Ray would agree that there are things he wants cleaned up and purified --in him and in us.
• If we have moved roughly 15 times in two years and about 20 in 5 years then I have probably logged about 20 weeks JUST packing and unpacking ... maybe more.. can you imagine? This move has really hit me really hard thinking of all the time that has been stolen or given away to MOVES, time that I could have been doing so many other things with....  My homeschooling has suffered, my quality time with each kid has suffered, date nights have suffered...time to GIVE AWAY has suffered. 
• When I think of all the instability the moves have caused it really hurts my heart. Especially for Levi, he is one of the main reasons we make this move other than for the  financial. He has not slept in his room in the last 8 months more than a handful of times. He has serious fear issues and would rather sleep on the couch outside my bedroom than be upstairs where his sisters are. In the apartment he will have a bedroom that joins his sisters and is only a short walk to mine. No stairs!
• When I think of the financial craziness this has put us in it also makes me very sad. At this point it doesn't matter that Ryland never took ownership of what they caused ... What matters is us chipping away at the debt and our reliance on our own selves in times when we maybe could have had more faith and not ended up in such a mess. I hate that we are not able to pour into the 'others' of this world  as liberally as we once did and desire so much to do so again... I hate the thought that we are just not able to make ends meet on just Ray's income.  I hate that not once but twice we have had to drain our savings to pay for 'house stuff' when we had plans to surprise Kaitlyn with a car 'soon'..
• As I am packing I am looking around and saying HOW do I still have so much STUFF? What an indicator of our heart. Gross! I hate the things that 'keep me'. I want o learn to live with way less and yet have way more--way more of the important things. Moving from a 4 bedroom town-home with a 2 car garage to a 3 bedroom apartment with no garage is helping me to weed through and decide..Is 'it' really worth it? I want to embrace the 'wanderer' that we are becoming and be free to GO when God says GO... this packing a bazillion boxes is for the birds! 
• The apartments we are moving to are near the beach. We have been told for years that with our toxic bodies and Levi's Aspergers we need to try to live near the salt air. We just could never find anywhere at the beach that we could afford for a family of 6 that my husband would actually feel ok leaving me home alone at... It makes me sad that we weren't desperate enough to just live anywhere, safe or not, but I have to trust my husband and honor his heart.  This apartment should NOT be ours. We went and checked into the job (courtesy officer) a few weeks ago and out of all the apartments in the city it was closest to the beach (five minutes away) and really a nice complex. I told the Lord we didn't deserve it (we don't) and I would live wherever He wanted.  I was sad anyways when the manager let us know that Ray worked on the same shift as the current officer and she needed to hire someone on the opposite shift. Long story short the manager emailed us the next day and said the current officer remembered working with Ray in training and went to bat for him...he got the job. 
• I am going backwards now..to the statement about taking a year to pursue holiness. Moving to this complex will cost us. Ray will have to work on all his 'off duty' days. This will greatly limit our coming and going. No trips, no super late nights, no visiting family out of town without some major fanangling. Ray will have a much longer drive to work which means that much more time at home for 'just us'..me and the kiddos. We already miss him about 1/2 the year with his crazy schedule. BUT I know that pursuing holiness means discipline and seeking to do hard things... You can't pursue holiness that easily if you get to do whatever you want whenever you want. And when Dad's around life is so much more of a party.   We will also move away from some of our best buddies. We will miss being five minutes from them. It will cause us to take our friendships more seriously and not so 'for granted'... 
• Remember these are just the random thoughts..no particular order and no real reason for writing except I just wanna vomit it out and be done...so thanks for indulging me.  One of the things that makes me the saddest is we are moving further away from 2MM (2nd Mile Ministries, an urban holistic ministry we have been partnering with for several years now. My heart was screaming THIS IS THE YEAR WE WILL MOVE TOWARD DOWNTOWN AND BE CLOSE TO 2MM!!! all this past year. I just new we would be near Brentwood. And yet, we will now be farther away than ever. I can not convey the pain this alone causes me. BUT I must believe that the timing is not right, or not yet...
• The previous bullet is where I mostly am right now personally.. I am at a place where I am just trying to rest and believe that God will speak louder than our selfish desires..that IF and WHEN He is ready to move us into more of a missional/ministry life again HE will make it obvious and HE will make the way. I second guess what we are doing all-day-long. Did we somehow miss God, are we sposed to still live in the town-home, are we sposed to be moving to the Brentwood area now? Why can't He spray paint me a sign in the sky with bold colors..   This is the way Reeves family, walk in it_____!!! More than anything I just want to be pleasing to HIM and deep deep down I want to believe I will choose His ways over mine and I will live out what really really matters...no matter the cost...
• For now, I cling to the fact that He knows we need to get well..we will take this year..or as long as He allows to get CLEAN, to get healthy and whole again, to pursue holiness, to find out what really does mark us as HIS!!! I want my life to shout I am the King's and His ways are so so so much better than any I could contrive or you could contrive and HIS ways lead to LIFE and not death.. to FREEDOM and not bondage...to LOVE and not hate!!!  Do I falsely think we will be sickness free, sin free, burden free..no way... BUT I do have a feeling in my gut that this year will be a difference maker for the Reeves... I do feel that we will love God with more of us by the end of it.. I do know that if we choose to have FAITH and not doubt we can do anything according to His purposes for us !!!
• What will I find at the end of this year... NO IDEA.. If I could figure out God and put Him in a box and write up a little formula.. oh ho ho my friends, I would be the next "Make everyday a Friday" wonder... I have no desire to 'figure it all out' .. I just want to walk one day out at a time, placing a little more faith in Him than I do in me, or Ray, or Sheriff's or churches or City Councils or money.. I want to spend time with my kids enjoying simple things, I want to do art & dance with my beloved 2MM kids, I want to date the man of my dreams, I want to breathe salt air deeply!!! I want to worry a lot less and laugh a lot more! I want to sew, I want my 19 year old to teach me to decorate cakes, I want my son to not be afraid of 'things that go bump in the night' but to be afraid of not living for 'so much more' than what his little 10 year old body has already seen, I want us all to learn to play an instrument & sing really LOUD (my voice has been gone for may many months due to the toxic house), I want to share the HOPE of my God more recklessly and passionately than I ever have before.... I want to be closer to the path of adoption, I want to care more about what others need than what I want, I want o look back in one year and say Jam up--we DID it guys, we made HUGE changes, we worked HARD and we have come so FAR!!!   I want to feel CLEAN and healthy and whole and as close to 'Holy' as a family should be who are walking humbly, loving mercy, and seeking justice for the 'others' around me...  Hmmmmmm, I think that is all....

~~~A definition I found that I love and is the idea of what I mean by Holy, not holy like 'holier than thou'..THIS kind of HOLY>>>>~~~Holiness is the virtue by which we make all our acts subservient to God. Thus holiness or sanctity is the outcome of sanctification, that Divine act by which God freely justifies us, and by which He has claimed us for His own; by our resulting sanctity, in act as well as in habit, we claim Him as our Beginning and as the End towards which we daily unflinchingly tend. ~~~ 

(Disclaimer: please read my previous posts if you have no idea what I mean by our 'toxic home' and to see my heart in that I realize our reality is STILL nowhere near the reality faced by millions daily.. I do not live in the dump. I am not widowed, I am not trying to live on less than 2 dollars a day....  I am constantly reminded that there is ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS someone who is wayyy worse off than we are in many ways.. I want my joy and devotion to God's Kingdom to shine through in ways that would help the 'least of these'.. all my ramblings are foolishness in comparison and if all I do is clang around and whine and have no LOVE to spread I am worthless... so take my words for what they are worth, not much, may my actions shout much louder and be worth much more :)

No, this isn't the most well,thought out, grammatically correct, most-sense making blog ever..   I am full of excuses as to why, SUPER bad headache, gotta pack tomorrow, don't care, do care but too tired to care, need sleep ....  Anyways, I am grateful that you took the time to read... Grateful for any advice you may have on our goals for the year... 

~Special Delivery~ aka Where are we now??????

“Sometimes we need to know we’ve been delivered TO someone not just FROM something” So, I am sitting trying to think best how to give an update. (Thanks for asking by the way, don’t we all want to know someone is out there thinking of us, caring how our life is going..) So, my quote up top here is what is really resonating with me right now. We as a family have not yet been delivered from the Toxic nightmare (read earlier posts for the full story of what that means) BUT I know that one way or another ultimately we will be…whether here or Heaven..so I’m not here to give some wonderful update about our great health, a huge lawsuit win, or a great new safe home to move into.  But to know, as the quote says, that my focus can be on the Someone who delivers, rescues, redeems, has helped me to regain my perspective. I am a follower of Christ, I believe in the One True God and I have Hope because He is my Hope-giver!  HE, God, is what gives my life it’s purpose and He is what I have been delivered TO from oh so many things in the past. Often He tells us to ‘remember’, to rehearse in our mind, to recall the things He has done, to purposefully tell the ‘lies’ the Truth.

Many many many times, way more than I care to admit, I am forgetful. I don’t remember and I focus on what is in that moment stealing all my attention. Right now it is STILL the Toxic nightmare. This ‘season’ that is apparently not going to go away is constantly in the forefront of my mind. It sucks away wayyy to much of my day and it threatens to do me in…. I forget what all He has delivered me from and how much better my life is when my focus is on Him and things of eternal value.

So, before I give a quick update let me say this...mostly we are, as a family, trying to really navigate WHY we are here (on planet earth). What our purpose is, how we can best live that out & how we can move forward in a way that keeps our focus NOT on our circumstances or what we’ve been delivered from or need to be delivered from BUT on the Maker and what He considers important, valuable, needed…. Focusing on the Lover of my Soul & how I can grow in my relationship with Him & lead (with Ray) ,my family in loving Him with EVERYTHING!

 We have reached a decision that is incredibly terrifying to me as a mom but it is really the only choice we appear to have at this time. We are choosing to move home. We have been in the midst of more tests, more moves, more issues these last months and now the time has come to just call it quits….there is no more money to pour into a lawsuit that is ‘promised to take up to two more years just to really get started. It is promised to cost us more than the house is even worth to fight Ryland, it has now been promised that it will take thousands upon thousands to make the home ‘safe’ according to industry standards, for our particular family...and all that money could be spent in vain because there can be no guarantee that our ‘hypersensitive’ family won’t still get sick there.

We feel that at this time our best choice is just trust a family friend to come in and help us do a few ‘healthy’ upgrades to our A/C system and yet again just put the fate of our family back in this Ryland home (which is ultimately JUST trusting God no matter what....) Here is partly why…we are getting sick everywhere we move now. We are obviously not going to have an easy time of it anywhere at this point. As I sit here typing, I literally have a nose that is leaking like a faucet, a migraine headache, I am tired & I have the itching/scaling rash on my eyes. Many of my family’s symptoms have returned since living out of the town-home. Getting much worse since this last move from upstairs to downstairs. (I scraped an inch or more of sludge out of my A/C closet when we first moved in here...gross…an average family could probably live here and be fine..not the ‘freak show’ Reeves though!) And we are just tanked financially, Ray is working off duty jobs just to pay the bills & sometimes that is just a juggling act of who may not get paid ..yet..we are still committed to paying every bill that has resulted from this nightmare. We just can’t go into any more debt or sink another dime into trying to solve the overall problem from 'out here'..we need to be home and slowly making changes to the home as money allows.

I wake up many days and compare my crazy life to those who are in true poverty not just physical sickness/financial  bondage. I think of the statistic that every six seconds a child will die of preventable/treatable things. Those mommas would LOVE a way out, right this minute…many will not see an answer though. There is nothing that makes my family a special case. We do not deserve being rescued any more than millions of others today. Many more families than you know live in Toxic homes or have run from them and there is no ‘safe’ house waiting for them. Many have paid thousands upon thousands with no lawsuit win waiting on them to recoup all the debt. Many people today are homeless and/or jobless..there will be no rescue for them by days end either.

 I do not like the state of our dying, decaying, sick world...I do not like having a body that is becoming ever sensitive to everyday things that will always be around me. I don’t like, in fact I hate to think that my son will get sicker than he already is when we move back home… I also don’t like to think of kids with cancer, people starving, children with worms in their bellies and worms in their feet, millions being sold into slavery, kids being tied to beds and left to die because  they have ‘aged out’ of the adoption system usually because they have Downs or some other medical need that makes them 'unwanted' & even though my people (Christ-followers) profess pro-life,we are mostly pro-our life and sorta pro-birth (after the baby is here we don't really do anything to help or rescue them, right? Big finger pointing at myself first) …….there are many many MANY MANYthings I do not like…but I can’t blink and make it all ‘ok’ or GO AWAY.  There is not always a magic answer or maybe there is and we just aren't willing to see it or make it happen....I don't know.....

For us, like I said in the beginning it is more now about finding our family’s heartbeat…what spurs us on each day…we can’t keep focusing on this toxic nightmare, we can’t keep living in the ‘tempoary’..we need some kind of strong footing again, we need a purpose, a plan…we need to pour our lives into things that matter, forever things….we need to put our focus back on the Someone who we were many many times before delivered TO, He is what gives us our meaning…. I am thinking right now of the verse ‘What does the Lord require?’.. And He tells me in His word that He wants us to Walk HUMBLY, to Love MERCY & Seek JUSTICE…& I am thinking of what I learned this past week in my Mercy Triumphs Bible Study..'A person can live with pain a whole lot easier than they can live with purposelessness'....

When I think of that verse & saying.. I immediately think that if we can’t escape the decay, the dying, the people in need of rescue ALL around us..I think that we have more than enough to do to be the hands n feet of our God and that part of the ‘why’ in us going through so many battles is to SEE what it is like to wish desperately for a deliverance and wonder when one may come..

In our twenty plus years together Ray and I have walked out some pretty crazy times, we have ourselves been desperate many times. I want to be on the end of providing now. I am NOT saying we are going to be well all of a sudden and not have house issues. I am not saying my Aspie kids won’t have wayyyy more needs than I feel qualified to handle, I am not saying eating our way out of ALL this debt won’t be overwhelming. I am just saying we are in between a rock and hard place. We feel there is no other choice but to ‘go home’ AND at the same time I am saying the home will NO LONGER be our everyday all-consuming subject…

There are needs all around us, true needs, marriages falling apart, orphans needing care, kids needing to learn to read or paint or dance, hungry mouths needing to be fed….and on goes the list….WE (the Body of Christ) are supposed to be the one’s living out His redemptive story and helping Him BE the rescue plan for the world. IF that is our focus and we are pouring our lives into others then I believe we will find healing, maybe not the physical kind, maybe we will face way more sorrows as we move home, BUT I want my kids to know that we are living for Something and Someone that is much more important and worthy than what this temporary life is calling us to believe….

Sick houses, toxic houses, they are real…and many are suffering…we will more than likely now live out our lives with insane reactions and illnesses to ‘stuff’( I alone have MCS and just going to the grocery store or my friend's homes with candles burning makes me incredibly sick sometimes). Some of those reactions could be deadly. I can’t pretend to know what will happen as we move back home in a few weeks . I can’t pretend it does not freak me out..big time. I can just walk it out one day at a time…begging God for His kinda peace....one that can’t be explained….

So, that’s kinda it…no real answers..or true smoking gun to say exactly how all the mold spores got where they got (lotsa theories, lotsa possibilities but no 100% guarantee that would get us an easy win)…no BIG great ending to this story...no ‘happily ever after’ has come our way..no million dollar lawsuit and “boy did we showed Ryland” to report…

More questions than we have answers at this point, more fears for my kids as we move home ‘again’, more money spent on a home that may still make us very sick….

Sorry if this is kinda all over the place..I just wanted to get something out there in writing to everyone that’s been asking…

I know what we can use though..PRAYERS and loads of it…we are truly seeking HIS will above ALL, we are open to HIS plans and His purposes…we do not wanna make any mistakes and go even half a degree off His path….we covet your prayers..we want our lives to count & be an offering to Him for all He has done, to point others to the Hope that can only be found in Him…all of this will one day be gone, we want to store up our treasure in Heaven…we want to be found faithful as spouses to one another, as parents to these kids and hopefully more and  to be faithful to ‘whatever’ He asks us to do…..loving HIS redemption story in our life and ready for the next chapter..to Him alone be the glory!!!!