Category: my little family

the little white house

MarthaKimball11 Comments

I stumbled on this song months ago and knew it gave words to our one-day new home.  I knew we would probably end up with an old home, a fixer upper, and I find beauty in that.  In living new fresh life in old walls.  Consider playing this song as you scroll through these pictures.  It’s somewhat of a blessing I’ve been humming over this new home.

These pictures are from our first time showing the kids the house, after we had keys in hand.  We didn’t want to show it to them at all until it was officially ours, because the process had been difficult for them when offers on previous homes had fallen through.  We opened the door for the first time, they ran in squealing.  Brandon carried me over the threshold.  It was a sweet, sweet moment after a long wait.  And how appropriate that we closed on the house and took the kids to see it for the first time on the first day of Spring!  I kept thinking of these words:

My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my beautiful one,
    and come away,
for behold, the winter is past;
    the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth,
    the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
    is heard in our land.”
Song of Solomon 2:10-12

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And so, we get to move in and watch everything come to life, turn green, blossom and shine.  We feel full of hope for what is ahead, seeing God provide this home for us in His own time and way through miraculous means.

Brandon and I have been working all week getting things ready and clean, and we emptied out our storage container yesterday into the home.  I took the kids this morning and began unpacking a few toys for them to play with as I set up the kitchen.  They were so excited, seeing our things again and seeing the home begin to take a bit of shape.  The furnace decided not to work the day after we closed, so we are still working on getting that taken care of so we can move in officially.

Our last home had the numerical address 23 and for a long time now I have been clinging to Psalm 23.  As we’ve walked this journey with Phoebe and her health battle, as we’ve admitted to ourselves that we have a chronically ill child, as I’ve fought gnawing fear in the dark of night, Psalm 23 has been a constant companion and comfort.  It was always familiar but now it is personal.  Now it is like a sharp sword in my hands against the darkness.  When I saw that our house number on this new little white house was 623, I thought immediately of Psalm 23:6 and looked it up.  How fitting it is.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever.

This is His promise to us in this life, isn’t it friend?  No matter what we are walking through, whether joy or pain in our current circumstances, surely GOODNESS and MERCY are gonna follow us everywhere we go.  AND?  We might have just bought our first home, but our hope isn’t wrapped up in these walls, thankful though we are for a place to call home.  We are always a bit out of place in this world, always a bit left longing for the house of the Lord.  Always pilgrims until we make it there one day.  We are gonna make it there one day, friend.  We are going to dwell with Him in HIS house forever.  If the joy we feel in buying our first home is only a foretaste of that joy, oh what great joy it will be!

I can’t wait to share more of our journey as a family in this new little home with you, readers!  Let the years we’re here be kind, be kind.  And may our hearts like doors open wide, open wide.

ps.  Thank you to so many of you who have prayed with us and for us as we walked out this long journey and as we continue to face battles and uncertainties ahead.  We couldn’t have done it without you!  Specifically our families, our parents, my parents for letting us live with them in the interim and bring a whole lot more noise to their lives, as well as our church family and specifically our life group.  Kim + Time, Heather + Chris, Kevin + Mary Lynn, Tessa + Rod: you guys are OUR PEOPLE.  You have blessed us with scripture, prayer, encouragement, meals, muscle and brawn.  You are teaching us what it means to live as Christ’s hands and feet here and how beautiful it is to live knit-together lives.

 

snow and sweaters

MarthaKimball2 Comments

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We saw (maybe?) our last snow of the season on Sunday morning and felt again the child-like wonder and awe that always comes over us all with new snow.  My sweater had been finished for about a week but I hadn’t worn it because I’d been recovering from the flu and just wanted to save wearing it for the first time for when I actually felt normal.  It’s the first sweater I’ve knit for myself so I was a bit nervous I would mess up the sizing.  I slipped it on Sunday morning and Brandon snapped a few photos of me (sorry for the crazy lighting) and then we went out with the kids for a walk in the snow.  The arms are a tad bit long, as I added about 2 inches of length to both the body and the sleeves, but I’d rather them be long then short.  It truly is so cozy and warm without being too heavy.  I loved every minute of knitting it.  Totally easy, relaxing, and simple.  Shepherd’s wool is so squishy and soft and just 100% wool.  The colorway, “sea breeze,” makes me think of the ocean.  I could definitely see myself knitting it again.

 

carrying on

MarthaKimball2 Comments

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Buds rise quiet and swell on the branch.  It’s the first week of March, everything and everyone is anxious for spring.  Some days it’s already been in the low 70s, sunny and warm, and the next day it’s back in the 30s.  It’s still technically winter, but spring presses in, trying to burst forth.

It seems like a fitting analogy for my own season.  For this wait.  Last weekend we packed our home into a large box, essentially, and closed it up, everything on hold for now until we close on our home at the end of this month.  We moved our bare necessities into my parent’s home nearby and have moved in with them for the interim.  Such wild grace to us, this welcome mat extended to our family, the carving out of space and sharing of everything so that we can walk through this transition with as much normalcy as possible.  Because we are here with them, my mom has been helping out even more than normal with my day-to-day tasks.  She watched the kids while I went for a run the other morning–such a gift to a momma who normally squeezes in my workouts in the house during the kid’s nap time (necessary but terribly boring sometimes).  It does my soul good to get out on a quiet trail and have the solitude of the woods.  As I was running, enjoying the movement of feet and legs, the filling and emptying of lungs, the way the wind sounds moving through winter limbs and pines, I was aware of a hush of waiting.  I don’t know really how else to describe it, only that I felt my own soul’s wait as I felt the natural world waiting in the dormancy of winter for spring.  Everything is still alive, though it has the appearance of death.  Everything is holding life though it has the appearance of barrenness.  But the life cycle demands that death and dormancy must happen so that new life can burst forth.

We resist our own winters.  We resist periods of death and dormancy and waiting.  We resist pain of any sort, of course.  Yet it is good to remember that it is necessary, this winter, so that spring can come.  And spring will come.

Behold, I am doing a new thing;
    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
    and rivers in the desert.

Isaiah 43:19

We are in this beautiful and awkward season of in-between.  Our home packed up, waiting for the word that this home we have been working toward will in fact be our own.  We haven’t shown the home to the children yet.  They’ve ridden out this transition well, but not without some tears and questions and some “I wanna go home!”  Meanwhile we are in a period of waiting for answers on Phoebe’s health.  She is nearing the end of this three month elimination diet, and soon we will do more blood work and likely another endoscopy.  All around the same time as our closing on the home and moving in.

How appropriate it seems, that our own family story would coincide with the seasons, the melting of winter into spring.  I can’t help but also think of this lenten season, the time during the church calendar when we remember Jesus’ death and sacrifice for us so that we may that much more enjoy and celebrate the resurrection (Easter).

So we embrace this season of holy hush, the waiting, the discomfort of it, because we know that our own spring is coming.  All of the details of our story may not work out perfectly and our circumstances may continue to prove difficult, but we know that somehow God will be faithful to us and will provide all that we need.

And so we carry on.  We receive the gifts of this winter season as it comes to an end.  We enjoy this special time with my parents and sharing life together.  We keep on with school, with our piles of library books, with knitting and other little family rhythms.  The kids find new trees to climb and places to make a fort.  We look for the early signs of spring, the blooming forsythia, the green pressing up through soil.  We pay attention to the birds, noticing how gladly they sing.

all things new

MarthaKimball7 Comments

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January slips by quiet.  The world is all in a rage, my head spins with it all.  My own little world hidden in these four walls spins, too.  We begin packing.  We are moving from this rental because our landlord plans to sell it to a friend next month.  We plod along with schooling, with work on Phoebe’s health.  It seems most days I can barely keep up with the demands.  The kids and I have been sick for the last couple of weeks with a bad respiratory virus.  We’ve been inside and home more than usual, letting them rest and heal.  On the sunnier and warmer days, we’ve been out, walking our usual routes in the neighborhood.  I’m saying goodbye in my own slow way, imprinting things in my memory, detaching, shifting.  I’m thankful for some time left to do that.

For many years, since college really, I’ve leaned in close and quiet at the beginning and end of each year.  Many people make goals and dream dreams, and I’m all for that, and often have a few quiet goals of my own.  But the passing of each year heightens my awareness that time is slipping by, speeding onward.  My life is being spent faster than I realize.  What interests me most in the reflection on that is what the Lord is doing in these days.  In the last weeks of December, I’m prayerfully asking Him to direct my steps in the coming year, specifically in the Scriptures.  I seek a word form Him, usually a theme for the coming year, something He is going to teach me from scripture, something He wants me to attend to.  Last year He led me to Psalm 93.  He seemed to say that the coming year (2016) was going to feel a bit like being in a tumult of rising waters, but He reminded me that He sits enthroned above the waters.  He is sovereign and mighty to save.  That scripture ministered to me over and over again in the year as we faced one of the hardest years of our married lives.  I think it’s what kept my head above water.  I felt a bit of trepidation asking Him again this past December what He would say to me about 2017.  The week of Christmas we received some of the worst and scariest news yet about Phoebe’s recovery/health and also flooded with medical bills we have no way to pay.  At the same time, our landlord called to inform us we had two months to find a new place to live.  I have cried a lot of tears.  I have been brought low, back to the painful and sweet place where I remember that my God is sufficient, He is all I need, He is my strong refuge, my reward, my shield, the lifter of my head.  It’s that place where whatever my heart is set upon gets sifted and my soul remembers its true end.  I am made for God and nothing else will satisfy.  Not even a secure home to live in.  Not even the basic finances we need, or the health of my child.  He is able to provide these things, and I am confident He will take care of us.  But my heart cannot be set on my changing circumstances.  They are fickle and uncertain.

In the tumult of these emotions and the quiet place of just being laid bare before the Lord, He spoke to me Revelation 21:5:  “Behold, I am making all things new.”  He kept speaking it to me everywhere I would turn, though my heart resisted it.  Resisted hope.  Hope is painful!  It’s easier to brace for disappointment.  It’s part of why it’s been hard for me to write about it on the blog–there’s a part of me still afraid to hope.  What does He mean that He is making all things new?  Will we see our girl finally turn a corner this year and truly and fully recover?  Will we find a home that we love, a place to raise our little brood, a place to set down roots and live out the kingdom?  Will we find some rest this year from the onslaught of difficulty?  I can’t say.  Maybe we will be made new, even as our difficulties continue.

We walk quiet through the familiar trails, children happy to be in the sun and fresh air.  Everything seems colorless, bleak, brown.  Winter.  I breathe deep.  It’s bleak and barren now, but spring is barely a whisper on the wind.  It will burst into color soon enough.  One way or another, all this death, destined for a resurrection.

looking back

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I feel sort of silly posting about Christmas, but a blogger friend reminded me recently that we blog in part to keep a little family scrapbook.  I sort of hate how quickly everything moves, everyone always looking ahead to the next thing.  We can’t help it.  In some ways it is our nature, our way of hurrying on ahead of the unpleasantness of the moment we’re currently in.  Casting our eyes onto the hazy future that looks so much more appealing than this dreary now.  Anyway.

So here are some snaps from our Christmas of 2016.  A sweet little Christmas it was.  Being that we have two kids’ birthdays that week, we try to keep things really slow and minimal in terms of festivities we are running around to.  Brandon’s sister came to stay with us for Christmas weekend, which was a real treat for us and the kids!  She surprised us with an awesome family gift of a telescope.  We are really excited to play around with it more, especially as we talk about constellations soon in our homeschool co-op.  We decided not to do any gift opening on Christmas Eve.  We had a quiet evening together instead, and did a little singing by the candlelight.  Christmas morning the kids slept in until maybe 8 am I think, until we finally went and woke them up.  We hadn’t put any gifts out around the tree until after they were in bed on Christmas Eve so that little hands wouldn’t be messing with presents, and we hoped it would be a delight to them to see how full the tree was with presents.  Brandon and I tried to buy each child only one main Christmas gift and then fill their stockings with little fun and practical things.  They were completely showered by grandparents and aunties and uncles.  Our parents absolutely spoiled Brandon and I, too.  I know gift-giving gets a bad rap in our day and age, and in some ways we wrestle with that as well.  How quickly our hearts make Christmas about someone giving us something!  Or about getting that “perfect gift” for our kids.  There may be some years ahead where we choose not to exchange gifts.  For now, it is really the only time of year that we wrap up gifts for one another and it is such a joy to give to do so.

I was surprised this year with how well Christmas morning went.  We had a Christmas a couple of years ago where everyone single one of us cried that morning at some point and it took us awhile to recover the day.  We were bracing ourselves for lots of squabbling and grumpiness and dissatisfaction, but our children really enjoyed themselves and watching each other open gifts.

When the kids woke up we let them open stockings.  Daddy read them the Christmas story from the bible.  Then we had breakfast, a yummy gluten-free coffee cake with eggs and bacon.

We filled their stockings with some gluten-free chocolates and candies, new wooden brushes for the girls (because they are always stealing mine), a wooden snake for noah, new water bottles, a knitting fork for phoebe, a small set of blocks for philippa, a lacing toy each for phoebe and noah, and bonnets for the girls.  Phoebe has loved hers, Philippa still won’t let me try hers on.  She’s not a big fan of hats or hair ties.  But I plan to use them a ton in the summer as they offer such great coverage!

After breakfast we began opening gifts.  They received so many fun things from family members: new dresses and tights for the girls, a new sweater for noah, a toy plane and matchbox car semi truck for noah, lots of crafty things like a beginning knitters kit for phoebe and beeswax modeling sheets (since we can’t have play dough in the house).  A toy drum and tea set for philippa.  Some new books.  Our gift to Phoebe was an indian dress-up costume and a nice bow and arrow set.  She has been obsessed with playing “indians” (I’m sure that is not PC to say anymore) since reading Island of the Blue Dolphins and the Indian Captive earlier in the year.  We gave Noah a big truck that carries a yellow excavator on the back.  It was Brandon’s idea, I thought it was a bit redundant but he informed me that a boy can never have too many trucks.  We gave Philippa a wooden dollhouse.

Brandon really loved the hat I knitted for him, and I’m relieved that it fit and that he likes the color and fit of the hat, being I wasn’t able to try it on him.  My parents gave us a gorgeous pottery dish set made by a friend of theirs.  Eight new plates, mugs, and bowls!  It got me really excited about moving and hopefully buying our first home soon.  I’ve packed them away for now, to wait until that day when we can open them in our new home.

As the Lord would have it, I was reading to the kids in our bible study time this morning from Luke chapter 2.  We were reflecting back on the prophecy in Micah about a savior being born in the city of Bethlehem.  Caesar Augustus ordered a census, which caused Mary and Joseph to have to make the long trek to the city of their family’s heritage.  Bethlehem.  Virgin Mary, pregnant with the Son of God.  Making it to the city of Bethlehem just in time for that baby boy to be born.  Because of the order of the Roman governor.  According to the timeframe and perfect foreknowledge of our God.  In the fulness of time, at just the right time (Gal. 4:4) the Savior was born.  God’s time and way works within and through the circumstances of human history.  It bends and obeys Him, unbeknownst to it.

So even know, with January well under way and my mind full with what is ahead in the year 2017, Christmas still teaches.  In the fulness of time, at just the right time–God will work for you and for I in the very human circumstances of our lives.

every impulse to pray

MarthaKimball2 Comments

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“Always respond to every impulse to pray…Where does it come from?  It is the work of the Holy Spirit (Phil. 2:12-13).  This often leads to some of the most remarkable experiences in the life of the minister.  So never resist, never postpone it, never push it aside because you are busy.  Give yourself to it, yield to it; and you will find not only that you have not been wasting time with respect to the matter with which you are dealing but that actually it has helped you greatly in that respect…Such a call to prayer must never be regarded as a distraction; always respond to it immediately and thank God if it happens to you frequently.”

Martin Lloyd-Jones

I just wanted to write a quick post to thank so many of you for praying for our Phoebe girl, and asking you to continue.  I read this quote last week in Missional Motherhood and have thought about it so often since.  So many of you have contacted me and told me you are praying, and friends, it is helping!  Phoebe has eaten some things this week that she hasn’t been willing to try since infancy (scrambled eggs!  chicken!).  But we need your prayers to continue, for her, for our family.  So many pressing needs.  It is with humility that I ask for your help by way of prayer, knowing so many of you are facing your own insurmountable challenges and heart aches!  Sending much love and thanks to each of you. ❤

 

the night raccoon

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The boy who doesn’t like opening presents, who hides from his cake and goes under the table when people start singing him “happy birthday.”  He likes a small and simple day.  We let him open a few gifts from grandparents in the morning before daddy left for work so he had a few things to play with.  We walked to the park and he tried out his new crossbow.  Daddy came home from work early so he didn’t have to wait too long for the rest of his presents.  He requested pancakes and bacon for dinner, which was a thrill to the girls.  So we had that plus chocolate birthday cake.  He opened his gift from us which was a drum set, and it definitely was the highlight of his day.  We were so happy to be able to surprise him with something so unexpected.  He loves drumming and had asked for a drum awhile ago, and usually can be found beating to the rhythm of music with two railroad track pieces on the couch cushions.  I didn’t finish his sweater in time which is a disappointment, he even asked about it, but I’m almost done with it now and will share pictures soon.  I really can’t believe how much he’s grown in the last year and how he has transformed from a little baby to this big gangly kid.  So weird.

I left his cake on the table after we enjoyed some so that we could bathe the kids and get them to bed.  Usually Brandon and I will shower and get in our jammies after the kids are down.  We came out after our shower and Noah was standing at our door (out of his bed) with his hands in his mouth.  Brandon noticed he was all chocolatey around his mouth and at first told him he was going to spank him, then he started smirking and said, “well you’re just so darn cute and it is your birthday, but get back in bed.”  We were chuckling that he would get out of bed knowing we were in the shower and go sneak a bite more of his cake.  Little did we know until we came back into the kitchen what he had actually done.  (I wish I had thought to get a picture of it!)  His cake was scraped nearly clean, covered in little claw marks everywhere.  He had literally licked the icing off the entire cake.  Three days later on Phoebe’s birthday he snuck out of bed and licked the icing off of HER cake too, even though I had put it higher on the counter.  So he’s become a little night raccoon sneaking into our kitchen after bedtime.  He is quiet, this one, but mischievous.

 

where we are

MarthaKimball12 Comments

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I’m packing up Christmas today and trying to tidy the house.  I needed a silly happy picture to add here to cheer up this post a bit.  I’ve dreamt the last two nights about packing boxes.  We have to move out of this sweet little home and we don’t know where we’re going yet.  God knows, and it is all in His hands.  So it’s a bit bittersweet, our last Christmas in this house that has held some very dear and difficult years in our family story.  But we look to what’s ahead and we fix our eyes on eternity’s shores and we smile.  We’re just pilgrims here, anyway.

I wanted to write a quick post to update you dear loved ones on where we are with Phoebe.  I’ve posted a bit about her health here and on other social media outlets, mainly because I have felt that God has called our family to live this story openly.  To share as much of the process of it and the aching unknown of it as we can because, friends, this is life!  So much uncertainty!  It would be far more comfortable for me to share with you all the tidy finishes and the nice happy endings, but so many of you are in the middle of your own unknowns.  So many of you are facing unfamiliar terrain, loss, grief, hurts, bad news of your own.  Those of us who have lived just a little measure of time here on planet earth know what it means to suffer.  You just can’t get through life here unscathed.

I don’t know what the end of this story is going to be.  It hasn’t gone at all like any of us expected.  Even her medical team is finding her case to be perplexing.  That’s never encouraging.  How will God work this out?  How is He going to provide for us?  What is His purpose in this?  Purposes, rather, because I know He is working on so many levels.  Why has He entrusted this to us?  I don’t know.  But I believe He wants us to make Him known in it, to share how He is caring for us, how He is carrying us, how He is sustaining, how He is providing, how He is meeting us and satisfying us even in this painful reality.

I hope that brings hope to you, dear reader, in your own aching unknown.

Phoebe was diagnosed with celiacs disease a year and a half ago, after feeding issues and growth issues since basically day one of her sweet life.  It was a relief to finally have an answer, scary and difficult as that answer was.  We have continued to wait for the response to the gluten-free diet that we should have seen with Phoebe, but it hasn’t really come.  She has had spurts of growth, then she will lose weight again.  She has spurts of a better appetite, then she will refuse foods and seem more tired.  She has basically all the same symptoms that she had at the beginning.  People kept telling us to be patient, that it can take 9-12 months for the gut to fully heal, but we passed that mark and Phoebe seemed to take a turn for the worse.  We recently had more blood work done and her results showed a fairly elevated level of antibodies.  This would normally indicate that she’s been ingesting gluten somehow.  However, without belaboring details, we are 99% confident that she has not.  Thus they wondered if the tTg could be inaccurate and ordered another endoscopy and colonoscopy to also check for Crohn’s disease, another autoimmune disease.  We just received her results a few days ago.  The doctor found blood speckled all through her stomach and small bowel, which she believes is irritation from stomach acid.  The other parts of her body seem normal, but her small intestine is showing severe active celiac.  This is terribly discouraging to me, because her body is acting like she is ingesting gluten, and is attacking itself as if it is, but she isn’t.

At this point, we wonder if she is experiencing a cumulative build-up effect of eating trace amounts of gluten which  is allowed in gluten-free products.  We will probably pull out all grain and dairy from her diet and see if she improves.  The difficulty with this is that phoebe is the pickiest eater ever, and she has never really eaten meat or vegetables.  We do regularly work with her on this, and have also worked with a feeding team in the past to help her, but have never made much progress.  She will try very hard to cooperate and it usually ends with her gagging and then vomiting.  Grains and dairy  and fruit are the bulk of her diet, and to take more away is very hard for a 6 year old.  We fear that she will just stop eating, as she has done in the past when we tried going grain and dairy free.  If this is the case, we will start a feeding tube.  If she still does not improve on this diet, then we will have to begin steroids and immune suppression.

This news has felt devastating because we have worked so hard and sacrificed so much in the past year and a half and it feels like we’ve made no progress.  Of course, we have made a lot of progress, but in my heart I was hoping we would be seeing improvement by now rather than still grappling with unknowns.

So this is where we are.  No clear answers yet but at least a direction to pursue.  For those of you who want to pray along with us–pray for us as we break this news to Phoebe.  Pray for her to be willing to let go of a lot of her new favorites and learn to like other things.  Pray for this route to bring answers very quickly as I don’t feel we have much time to wait for improvement.  Pray for wisdom and guidance for us and her doctors and dietitians.  Pray for provision for us.  Pray for me to be joyful and focused and lighthearted as we move forward, rather than weary and heavy as I feel right now.  Pray and watch with us for healing, total and complete.

So many of you love my girl so much and so well, and I can’t tell you what that means.  We will keep you posted as we go!

God is our refuge and strength,
    a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
    though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
    though the mountains tremble at its swelling.
(Psalm 46:1-3)

my strawberry girl

MarthaKimball2 Comments

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She tells me her phoebe sweater is one of her favorite gifts and she’s been cozying up in it every day at some point.  The yarn relaxed so much after blocking it that even though I made a size 6 for my petite little 6 year old, it still is quite big and will fit her for a few years if she takes good care of it.  I loved knitting it and am so glad it is cozy and warm and a cheery red for her.  It reminds me of the bright red cardinals we see flitting around in the drab winter scenery, little spots of color in the long winter.  The bonnet was one of her stocking gifts, she has asked for one for months.  I think this one is so cute and it will get lots of wear.  We gave her the book “Phoebe’s Sweater” along with it, which has the knitting patterns in the back.

Her birthday this year was really calm and quiet and peaceful.  She wanted to open all of her presents before daddy went to work so we let her.  We gave her a violin and the sweater I had knit her.  Brandon had picked out a special necklace for her, it looks sort of “indian-ish” so it goes well with her latest imaginary play.  She had a few other gifts to open from her grandparents.  She wanted to go to the park to play, the one that has swings, so we spent the morning there.  The weather has been fairly mild lately so it was really nice to be out.  I let her skip her “quiet time” after lunch and we worked on her new legos and then snuggled and watched a christmas movie.  I baked her cake that morning, a gluten-free funfetti cake with my own buttercream icing and I covered it in strawberries because she loves them so.  She was soo excited about her cake, as you can see.