It’s been a good chapter, though – my favorite so far. It hasn’t only been idyllic days on the porch swing, though. It’s held trial and tribulation and faith-stretching and faith-growing, disappointment and joy and heartache and illuminating moments and too much time spent wallowing in self-pity. (A second spent is a second too much!)

There are slightly over two weeks until we have to be out of the house, and as of today, we have absolutely nowhere to move to. It could be a frightening thought, save for one other, far stronger – God will provide. Not might, or could, but will. If that isn’t comforting, I don’t know what is. Granted, it might not be in the way we want, or expect, but

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

Personally, I’m excited to see what’s in store for us.

We had perhaps ten minutes of panic apiece, and then. . .Peace. Maybe even a little joy. Our Father’s got the situation under control–in fact, He’s orchestrating it. Who on earth knows where we’re going, but at least we know it’s going to be because He sent us.

I talked to our property management, and it looks like as long as nobody wants to rent our house between today and the end of the month (for a lease starting September,) we’ll be able to stay in the Little White House through September if need be, so that gives us at least a little bit of a safety net.  But I have no idea where we’re going to go. I started to search for apartments and houses-for-rent today, and it seems as if everything in our price range has evaporated right off the market.

And yet still–Peace. Excitement, even. Can’t wait to see what He does!

It’s a little sad. These first months have passed away like golden dreams and I don’t want them to be over yet. There’s a great deal about Our Little White House to mourn the loss of. . .

Starry skies viewed from our own back-lawn–Panama–our big, airy windows–our dorky yellow stove–the porch: it deserves a paragraph all its own, for the sunny afternoons spent reading on it, and the chilly nights spent thinking–the creak of the porch swing–privacy–a little plot of land of our own to tend green and growing things–the neighbors we’ve grown to know and the regular passerbys we recognize and make stories about–being walking distance to the grocery store, post office, library, and two different used bookstores among other things–being walking distance to parks–the cute, old-section of town–wood floors–our charming 1910-vintage house–the creepy, dusty shed–the white-picket fence–the chorus of crickets–and the train whistles! Oh, the train whistles!–springtime lilacs–our mailman, Patrick, with the safari-hat–a pristine lawn of snow in the winter–tramping downtown on snowy mornings before the snow has melted off the sidewalks. . .

Oh, there is much to miss, and dreams to be left behind us. I’m not sure what the fate of this blog shall be now that we are leaving the Little White House. . .but no doubt the adventures shall continue wherever we find ourselves.

To the new tenants of the Little White House: “Tread softly because you tread on our  dreams.”

In other news, a gross carnage came to pass in our gardens, connected with this house-painting.  I went out into the yard after the deed was done, and discovered that Grandpa’s hostas had been trampled. And, in some instances, painted snowy white. My poor darlings’ stalks are broken, and their leaves torn. I up-ended an entire pitcher of water over each of them (I’m finding it impossible to water anything too much in Colorado–the sun and heat seems to scorch everything,) but I think there shall be no return to glory this season.

I don’t know what to do if we move. I suppose the hostas shall have to be left behind–we’re looking mainly at apartments, and you can’t really make a hosta into a houseplant. To have to live in a place without springtime lilacs, too, rather breaks one’s heart. But we shall do what must be done.

I have to confess, the Little White House gardens aren’t doing so well. They seem to invite calamity. The other week, or kind, generous lawn-mower mowed right over the top of the green beans and reduced them to bloody three inch stumps. And the peas seem not to appreciate the heat, because though they were producing proper pods to begin with, they become more mutantly by the day. The hydrangeas are doing middling at best; I think the one in front died. And those vicious sweet peas which I tore and dug out of the side garden have come back and taken over once more. It seems like they’re the only thing that will grow properly–but no matter how I thin them, they turn into a jungle anyhow.

But at least we’re still the Girls of the Little White House. Because Brown House totally doesn’t have the same ring.

The girls of the Little White House could perhaps use your prayers.  It’s hard to know where to begin in explaining all of the changes and opportunities that have come knocking over the past couple months…I think our silence was inspired in part by the fact that we received some valuable reproof–that we were portraying our lives here as almost unrealistically idyllic and lacking in real content in such a way as to cause envy and stumbling in our readers. (Looking back, though, I think we’d all have to agree that our “honeymoon” months were rather unmitigatedly idyllic, to be fair.)

Now, though, what’s going on in our lives is often so nebulous and intangible that it’s hard to put into concrete words. However, I shall try.

These are times of glorious upheaval.

Awhile back, through prayer, Grace received the call and direction that she ought to apply to volunteer at the Amani Baby Cottage in Uganda–the month “September” was weighing on her heart, and in seeming coincidence, that was precisely the month that they most needed volunteers. With trepidation, excitement, fear, hope, and a big sense of purpose, she applied. And she was accepted.

It was a time for rejoicing, and we were so glad and proud and pleased for Grace. But it was also a little hard not to worry and be selfish–three months in Africa for a girl with Grace’s health trials and tribulations were not something to be taken lightly! What if she got sick? What if she decided to stay and mother the Ugandan orphans forever and we never saw her again? What on earth would we do without our giggly, serious, fun, caring, hard-working, dorky, level-headed, inspiring Grace? But we worked hard to set aside our doubts and selfishness and be the sort of supportive, encouraging friends she deserves.

Almost concurrently with her acceptance at Amani, though, opportunities of another sort starting opening up for Grace. It was hard for her to consider giving up Amani after she had received what had seemed to her such a specific and certain calling to it, but she sensibly is leaving it in the Lord’s hands. In order to go to Amani this year, she would have needed to raise a substantial amount of money for a plane ticket, and at this point, the deadline for that has passed, so it’s looking like she won’t be going to Uganda this fall after all. (She might go next year instead, though. We’ll see.)

If you were thinking with a sigh of relief, “Oh good, we’ll get to keep her!” think again. I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say at the moment, because Grace’s “Other Opportunity” isn’t entirely off the ground yet, but I’ll try to give you the gist of our situation. There is a discipleship project of epic proportions that is underway in a town about half an hour from our present location. Grace’s parents are to play a really important role in it, and shall necessarily be locating to live on-site so that they can devote their lives and all their attention to it. Dad has, I think, another year left till his retirement from air traffic controlling, though, and Mom needs someone to be learning alongside her and working with her while things are getting off the ground.

When our lease is up in August, Grace will not be signing on for another term; for various reasons, she’s going to have to move back in with her parents. Her parents will probably be re-locating half an hour away as soon as possible. In many ways, this doesn’t sound nearly as scary as Grace going to Uganda, but somehow. . .

It’s a very bittersweet time for all of us. Change and uncertainty are sweeping in through every door, and sometimes it feels like the Devil is unleashing as many demons of fear and doubt as he can possibly spare for such a small group of people. Are Bex, Abby, and I going to lease this house again? Or should we move to a safer area, since our house parents are going to be farther away? Should we move closer to them? What about the commute to our jobs? Could we get our lease here lowered to month-to-month to give us more time and options? What if Mom, Dad, and Grace don’t have time for us anymore? What if we hardly ever get to see them anymore? And Grace has a whole other school of worries all to herself.

It can feel like circumstance is setting up a wedge in our lives to drive us apart, and I, myself, am struggling with a particularly nagging fear. Always, I’ve struggled with the feeling of not belonging to anyone, of being on the fringes of things, and this upheaval is bringing it all to the front again. It’s so easy for me to see Grace’s leaving as the beginning of an exodus. Here she is, off to do the Lord’s work and knowing what she has to do. Suppose next year it’s Bex discovering with a sense of purpose that she’s to do the Lord’s work in Timbuctoo, and what if the year after that, Abby gets married and moves to Venezuela? It’s so, so easy for me to feel left out and fear that I’m going to end up alone. That I’ll never be any closer to knowing what I’m to do than I am right now. That always, always I’ll be weighed down by uncertainty and directionless. That I’ll be forgotten.

I think, with allowance for personal variation, that’s kind of what we all are struggling with right now. And a great deal of it is silliness, granted, and even more of it is pure sinfulness–to forget even for a moment that our Father in heaven is loving us and has His hand in all of this, and will NEVER stop guiding us and caring for us. We all know, too, deep down, that our friendships with each other are going to last. Undoubtedly, we’ve been put into each others’ lives for continued encouragement and blessing, and I know that we’re just going to grow closer through the years–never further apart.
But all the same, I think we’re having a little bit of a tough time right now. It’s so easy to falter and become overwhelmed. So if you think of us, say a prayer or two. It would be so much appreciated.

In this time of uncertainty, we have to remember to stick together, keep the lines of communication and sharing open, and tirelessly encourage each other. Pray that we’ll be able to keep doing this.

And perhaps in a few days I’ll come back with a lighter update pertaining to some of our recent adventures and domestic delights.

God bless you!

Update: Grace just got home from speaking with our landlords, and once our lease is up, we will be on a month-by-month basis here.

The pea plants, in other news, are flourishing, and I crafted a trellis the other day by screwing hooks into the overhang of our shed’s roof, and stringing twine down in a triangular fashion to a metal rod laid on the ground along my row of peas. It was uncharacteristically handy of me, and I’m proud.

There are mysterious shapes looming on the horizons of the girls of the Little White House. . .

A few moments ago, Bex popped out onto the porch with three tubes of toothpaste inquiring which I claimed, for they were organizing the bathroom “instead of going out to party;” and awhile before that, a little old man in a green cap strolled by on the sidewalk. We tossed hullos across the yard, and after he passed, he looked back once more over his shoulder. I was still smiling faintly after him, and he smiled, too, though sheepish at being caught. I’ve never seen him before–which is odd, because we’ve been here long enough to recognize so many of the people who stroll and bicycle by, and he had the slow, careless air of a regular.

I love the way the tall pine tree across the street stands up darkly against the evening sky. It reminds me of a lone pine standing up in the middle of a Minnesotan cornfield I once knew, a black sentinel against a rose-red sunset on the distant horizon.

The days are passing quietly enough here. Yesterday, though, a basket of petunias from Grace’s parents, that had been hanging quietly and well-behavedly from a porch-hook ever since its arrival two weeks ago, suddenly and inexplicably fell twice in one afternoon; and the second time, the pot cracked.

I’ve taken to living out in the garden. . .I’ll spare the lengthy enumeration of my plantings, though, for rumor has it that it’s already contained in an entry Bex is working on for this journal… But I will say that my grandmother sent me a box good old Minnesotan dirt in the mail, and next to our shed I’ve put the descendant-root shoots of a snowball bush that once lived on my great-grandfather’s farm. And three of my grandpa’s hostas have been transplanted into our side garden. I can remember, as a little girl, watching him carefully dig up and split hosta plants before bedding them back down; the way he firmed the soil around them and sculpted a well around each plant came back to me, and I found my small, white hands doing what his stocky, tanned and weathered ones once did.

There was some catalyst in the past five minutes that cleared the ceiling of the sky, and even from our porch, bathed as it is in pinkish-yellow light from the streetlamp, I can see stars twinkling.

Reader, you’re here. Across the porch, our rocker is gently rocking, and I think it must be you.

That’s how long we’ve been denizens of Patty’s Place. (Plus one day!) A quarter of a year. The time goes by so swiftly – I woke a few days ago with the morbid thought that someday we’ll all be old and gray, sitting around a porch in our rocking chairs, holding bright-eyed grandchildren spellbound with tales of the good old days, when Grandma was a girl. 

(“Were you ever a girl, Grandma?”)

Grace and Bex have been gone on a visit to North Carolina for a week, but they’re finally back! It had been a wee bit quiet around the house with the two most outgoing girls gone, but Rissa and I managed to rattle along together pretty comfortably. It’s seriously awesome to have them back again, though, filling the house with laughter and chatter.  *happy sigh* 

We were supposed to be in the middle of a snowstorm of epic proportions right about now, but at the last moment it fell through and just turned into a sloggy, thick, white sort of rain. Once we’d decided we’d actually really enjoy having a snow day, the prospect of up to twenty-four inches of the white stuff was pretty exciting! So it’s actually disappointing that winter seems to have abandoned us for good. 

I’ve been trying to get back into the swing of writing. It’s a trifle difficult without the luxury of my own laptop, but I manage to pound out a few hundred words every once in a while, and every few hundred words is just that much closer to a finished manuscript! Although…if you look at the prose in this post, it’s easy to see the quality of my writing isn’t precisely anything to boast about.

This is just a note to say that the sun is shining brilliantly today, and we are an island in a sea of white, and I am listening to Dvorak (loudly) as Abby clinks silverware and rustles papers in the next room, and icicles are falling off our roof with a pristine, metallic slash and clatter much like I imagine the guillotines of the French Revolution must have sounded.

Passersby on that busy thoroughfare reported that it looked like faces had been drawn on the balloons in permanent black marker, ranging from the typical Smiley to one that curiously resembled Eeyore. Their motives were, at that point, unknown; their appearance, however, was mischievous enough to unsettle Loveland’s rush-hour commuters.

Investigation has brought their errand to light. Between the hours of three and four this morning, a weary man was returning home from a night-shift of work. He trudged (at least, we presume his step was not sprightly) into his kitchen. A yellow balloon with an Eeyore drawn on it was taped to the countertop; this was the first sign that something was amiss.

The yellow balloons grinned out at him from whatever cupboard he opened. One was in the shower caddy, another in the refrigerator; the girls had not even omitted to bug his clothes dryer. Further inspection turned up a smiling card on the refrigerator, and cheery notes left on every notepad or otherwise writable surface in plain view.

Cheer was inescapable: when he looked out his kitchen window, even the house next door had a smiling yellow balloon hanging in the window directly opposite.

The girls’ mischief ended there, but they, too, were in for a surprise. When they awoke this morning, stumbled into their kitchen, and peered around the smiling balloon they had hung from the light above the window, they observed a message written on what appeared to be napkins or paper towels taped in the window opposite:

“YOU GIRLS ARE THE BEST!”