Wow, it’s been a busy couple of weeks since I last updated our site!   I find that I am not as strong as I was hoping to be at this point, but at the same time we are doing better at home life than I had hoped for.  

Our little house and it’s inhabitants are humming along about as well as I could expect for a family with five children seven years of age and under (especially a home where the Mommy is forever taking naps!)  I am grateful to the Lord for my sweet, helpful children.  

Today, if you had poked your head in around 10:45 AM, you would have found Noah vacuuming, Kate dusting, and Shaina helping Wes with his little chore of wiping off the chairs.   They are such cheerful little chore-do-ers!

We’ve had many adventures over the last few weeks... a few picnics, and Nathaniel took the children into the country side to pick me wildflowers, my very favorite thing.   I got to take a NRA “bear protection and awareness class” that was terrific fun.   The culmination was shooting at a moving target of a bear as it charged towards you.   My first shot went through the heart... hurray!   We’ve had LOTS of company, everything from ministry work teams up here for short term missions to little neighbor girls for a tea party.   It’s been busy but good.

Nathan and I both have had some dreams and vision revived of ministries we had hoped to see take place here in Alaska.   More about that in another post, but I am excited about the fact that God still wants us here in the North, and has a reason for it!  

Sometimes it feels like life and laundry and cooking and cleaning and diapers and Wesley-dumping-a-whole-bottle-of-shampoo-on-the-baby-while-he’s-sleeping-in-the-crib-and-now-ISN’T-sleeping-anymore has a way of keeping you from REALLY connecting as a family.   Nathaniel and my heart-talks are snatched here and there when we really should be sleeping and listening to the children share their little perspectives always happens while in motion.   “Here, walk with Mommy down to the laundry room, I really do want to hear about it...”

I remember walking into a restaurant the night I was diagnosed with cancer.   I was literally shaking with fatigue, in my third trimester, an entire day without food isn’t a good thing, and those tests had seemed endless.   We collapsed into a booth and cried most of the meal.   That poor waitress!   Nathan looked at me and said, “Today changes every day hereafter.   I’ll never take you for granted again, we’ll make the moments count.”   I expressed the same sentiments, and I meant it with all of my heart.

But we don’t do it.   Crisis doesn’t change the rat race of life, and once it catches up to you it is so easy to just succumb.   But we have changed... at least a little.   We’re fighting to remember how desperately we wanted to savor each other when all seemed lost.

All that to say that we’re leaving.   We are outta here!   We are crazy.    Totally crazy.   We’re taking five children to a remote refuge cabin that we just learned has had the windows broken out of it.   That means no screens either.  (Have you ever seen an Alaska mosquito?   They have to register for air space at our airport when they fly!)   Yup, the Hobbits are going camping!

We’re hauling water, two pack n’ plays, a port-a-potty, a ton of food, and everybody’s silkies and snugglies for a weekend camping excursion in the wilderness.   We need time to enjoy our children, look in each other’s eyes and really listen.   We need to make memories that no matter what tomorrow brings will linger even in the littlest minds.   Well, maybe.  That’s kind of longing of a Mommy too in touch with her own mortality!

I’m so excited, and so tired at the same time.   The last of the cookies are coming out of the oven and I’m off to bed.   In the morning we’ll pack our jitney and load it on to trailer and head out about 50 miles out of town.  There are so many things that could hinder the fun... bugs, bears, cold, diaper rash.... but the hope of just marinating in each other’s presence apart from the pressure of home life is just about irresistible!

Will you pray for us, as we become a wilderness family for a few days?   I feel my own weakness so keenly, and know that unless God has mercy and keeps us safe and happy, this could be a nightmare.   But it could also be a beautiful chance to just be a family and learn and work and play together.   That is what I’m dreaming of.   I promise lots of pictures and a full report when we return!