Memories

The other day I was thinking about some things we had lost in the fire. Then, the Lord pointed out to me that we have a lot of new memories made since then.
The day of the fire was an absolute whirlwind. We were ministered to almost immediately. (Maybe now would be a good time to share that. *SIGH*, here we go.)
Gypsygirl came downstairs from her room and said, "Daddy,there's a fire in Farmerboy's (not actual name ;) room." Of course, we bolted upstairs and sure enough, there was fire climbing up one of the walls! I ran and grabbed Nae Nae out of the bed , woke Farmerboy up and told him to take his wool blanket and try to put the fire out. I will never forget the look of horror on his face.
'da Dad told me to get the other children out of the house, so they all grabbed a blanket and went outside. I ran to our roon picked up Bunny,wrapped her in a blanket, grabbed our quilt and the telephone. When I got outside, I could see that the fire was actually on the exterior wall of his room. There was nothing 'da Dad and Farmerboy could possibly do. I called 911. When they asked for our address I just went blank. We had a rural route number, and they wanted our new E-911 number, which we had received about a week or 2 previous and I didn't have it memorized. So, I described it the best I could. It took 30-45 minutes after that call for them to find us. Anyway, 'da Dad came out and told us to go to the van. He ran back in and grabbed some clothes and my dayrunner,and no one went back in after that point.
After the firecrews showed up 'da Dad sent us to the neigbor's. He had been on a trip and the children had been doing his chores,so we had access to his house. Farmerboy started a fire(in the wood stove) for us and then he and 'da Dad went back over. I sat ther watching our house burn down, trying to comfort our children, and keep bunny asleep (yes, she had slept through all of this!). I started praying. I just told the Lord that it was allin HIs hands now,that we could do nothing for ourselves. I just had peace, God was going to take care of it. Oh, it hurt,to see all the work my husband, father,son,cousin,friends had put into it go up in smoke. I just knew God was sufficient. I thought about all the stuff we were losing. Heirlooms, years of homeschool books,on and on......I did cry, but after that I was just totally numb.
I made 3 calls. One was 911, then once we got to the van I called, by cell phone, my neice and my parents. That was about 3-4am. I called those people b/c I figured all of our friends,family, and church would find out. I was right.
So, the Red Cross came and talked to us. One of the volunteers had been through a fire also, so she had some good counsel to give. After that, my parents,brother , auntie, and our friends started showing up. One sister brought me a gift (tea,goodies) and a cup that said"The mighty oak tree was once just a nut that held it's ground." I love that. We received so much love and encouragement from frirnds, family,neighbors, and yes, strangers.
This seems so inadequate. I just can't say enough about God's goodness to us, and how He used and still uses people, especially His people to meet our needs and to push along. There are so many time we would have just given up, if hadn't been for friends loving us enough to give us a nudge.
Back to the ranch...........new memories.....
-my dad fixing up a place for us to sleep the first night, and buying us stuff for breakfast the next morning
-special people who donated our new beds ( not mentioning more,you know who you are)
-quilts from others (one from Costa Rica)
I could go on, and on. The point is, we still can have memories, they're just different ones.
Also, we worked on painting the exterior doors yesterday. All the children had a hand in it, some literally. Bunny, 5 minutes into the operation stuck her hands into the paint pan! Thankfully, Lionheart caught her just in time! Red, Belle, and Nae Nae did the "X" and triangle parts of the doors with a brush, and then, Ms.Petite, Lionheart,Gypsygirl,and I did the rest with rollers. We went with a medium gree color called "Summer Ivy" from WM colorplace. They look really nice. We bought 9 lite windows to put in the doors.
After that we worked on the garden. It is coming up very nicely. The children found and harvested our first zucchini. That will probably be part of lunch today.
When 'da Dad got there we started measuring for the downstairs wiring and planning for heat registers upstairs. The plan is to work on electrical this weekend. I'm very excited.
Need to go. Have a blessed day!

Mark 1-3 Wonderful Grace