you know what the problem is with having 15 year old cars?

well, duh. they are 15 years old! *sigh*

just thought i'd see if you were on your toes today. ha.

you've probably noticed my blog has been hijacked by all the crafting that's been going on around here and i haven't shared a whole lot about my personal life lately. but you should know, life has been CRAAAAAZY! (why do i have britney spears playing in my head now?)

but we're all still alive, so we've got that going for us. :)

october swept me off my feet, twirled me around blind-folded, and abruptly dropped me back down to reality and i'm just now getting my bearing straight again. twirling can make a girl dizzy, ya know. seriously, things around here were on autopilot or survival mode--whatever you prefer to call it. i'm so thankful for a husband who meets me halfway.

between car repairs, freelance deadlines, working a part-time job, and health issues i don't remember much of the last six weeks other than how delicious the oatmeal raisin cookies are in the lobby of the Hyundai service center. NO, i'm not making up these car problems just to eat more cookies......no, i'm not. those there would be some very expensive cookies. ha ha.

to put it bluntly, 15 year old vehicles kinda suck. but for us, they are a necessary evil right now.

in the past 6 weeks we've spent more time and money repairing vehicles than i ever want to spend again. every time i get in the vehicle to drive i hear...cha-ching! i feel like Ralph, the service specialist, should be part of the family as much as i see him these days. i've surely paid for his entire Christmas and funded his family's summer vacation at this point. we're on a first name basis, ya know.

one week it was the sensor, the next it's a resistor switch for the air/heat blower, 2 days later it's the blower motor, then the right front ball joint, and NOW it's the plug wires and spark plugs. and that's just *MY* car. *sigh* the other car has been the alternator, the plugs & wires, brakes and the exhaust. oh, and i can't forget the timing belt and a coil we just forked over $700+ for yesterday. OY!

my poor dad. when my name comes up on caller ID i wonder if he hesitates before answering thinking "oh no, now what?" he's amazing, that dad of mine. if he can fix it for us, he will. always offering his spare time, without complaining. if he can't he'll offer his advice on where to go or if it's worth it to put more money into it. (hi dad! i love you and all you do for me!)

we've played musical vehicles lately too, with family members.

all of this just reminds me that every single big or little thing....everything....that happens in my life is perfectly orchestrated by the One who loves me more than anyone else. everything. i just have way too much proof. mind boggling proof.

do you ever evaluate the things you've been through and the changes that have come to be in your life and wonder how things could have been different if things in the past never came to be? if not, i challenge you to think about it sometime.

i know i haven't told this story yet: so, last week, doug's timing belt broke while driving on his lunch-hour on wednesday. so he had it towed to the repair shop and a friend was passing through and able to bring him home. coincidence? perfect timing? it's all in the perspective. anywho, his cousin loaned him her SUV for the next two days. so friday, doug went from work to get the girls, then picked his cousin up to bring her over to our place for dinner and a movie, and the plan was for her to take her vehicle back home afterward.

after getting the girls from school, and picking her up, the vehicle in front of them slammed into a deer. the deer stumbled, got back up and trying to escape slammed right into the passenger's side of her vehicle leaving a huge dent while the antlers left deep scratches from the front all the way to the back of her vehicle.

so yeah, hitting a deer sucks too. but hitting a deer in an SUV, compared to a little Ford escort meant the difference in a dent and scratches versus an outcome that could have been SO much worse. God is good. even in the difficult times.

thank you God for perfectly orchestrating every detail of my life....even the inconvenient ones. thank you for disabling our 15 year old car for a week and keeping our family safe. thank you for spurring me on to contact a member of the Little Yellow Bicycle team to express interest in doing work for them years ago. thank you for allowing them to see talent in my work. thank you for giving me calm nerves on camera so i can provide income to my family. thank you for that one person from Michael's seeing a training reel during a sales pitch at a trade show. and thank you for the income you provided when they loved the video and placed orders for additional kits meaning they needed videos for every kit. thank you for allowing me to have the time that one evening to apply to Fiskars. and thank you for providing me with the ability to make decisions on how to best present my work to them for that application. thank you for all the extra income you provided in the month of October so we could pay for all those car repairs without incurring any debt whatsoever. thank you for a dad is able and willing to help us do DIY repairs to save money. i'm so lucky you use him to help me keep everything in perspective and to gently remind me....things could be so much worse. thank you for the cascade of events that make up my life. for every little seemingly mundane little thing has a purpose that in retrospect becomes crystal clear. so, just....thank you.

what's even more amazing? we were seriously waiting on pins and needles trying to see how God was going to redeem this situation and show us He's the one in control and continues to provide for us. if you've been reading for a while you might remember the timing belt on doug's truck breaking months back. and as it broke it bent rods and such. the estimate for repair was $1,800. it was a no brainer for us to sell it to the junkyard. so when his vehicle broke down, days and days went by with them saying it was the timing belt but let us take it apart to be sure. we waited, expecting to hear the same high estimate for repair. we made plans to sell it to pick and pull and stressed over what to do next: finance a brand new vehicle or spend a couple thousand on a used one---a couple thousand that we didn't have at all. then, we got a call two days ago saying it could be fixed for less than $600. in the meantime, we were driving my dad's vehicle which he needed back yesterday. guess what. our vehicle was ready yesterday.

and once again, i knew every little thing was gonna be alright. God is good. proof once again that He is faithful to provide for my every need.

Heartache No One Sees: Faith Blog Hop

Welcome to the last stop on the Heartache No One Sees Faith Blog Hop. :) (my appologies for posting late!)

if you are hopping with us you should have come from Kari's blog.

if you're a daily reader and just happened to find this post first, you can start from the hop from the very beginning at Paper Tree House Studio.

by now you know the purpose & the prizes.....if not, click that link above and read all about it over at the Paper Tree House Studio blog. :)

for completing the hop and leaving comments along the way, you'll automatically be entered to win prizes. i'd love to have you as a regular follower of this blog too.

In order to qualify for the GRAND Prizes just leave a comment on my blog and become a follower of this blog (if you are not one yet). If you're so inclined, also become a follower of paper Tree House Studio on Facebook so that you can stay updated with our challenges and contests. It can be very humbling to share our hearts with the world, yet the Bible says that our troubles come so that we can console another going through the same thing. My prayer is that the Lord would use this for His Glory as He heals all of our hearts.

GRAND Prizes:
Paper Tree House Studio: Cuttlebug V2 Machine
Scrapbook News and Review Magazine: One Year Subscription
Bella Blvd.: $45 retail value worth of their yummy product
Echo Park: Love Line
Scrapbooks & Stuff: Cricut Your Story
Punky Sprouts: Sweet Mini Book
The Paper Blossom Shop: $25 gift certificate to their shop.
Bonita Rose Life.Love.Color.Art: Seat in her self-paced Color 2.0 workshop

Here is the list of bold and beautiful women that were willing to lay it all out there:
My Paper Tree House, Nana Campana, Rebecca, Sueli Pinheiro, Kacee, Jessie, Selina, Arlene, Natalie, Christel, Bonnie, Dolores, Kari, and Tania.....that's ME!



Here is my story:


if you've been a reader here for a some time, you know that i'm one of those participating that is quite open about the trials we face.


if not, the short of it is this:

i have a 6 year old daughter named Emma, often referred to as Spidergirl, who struggles with allergic reactive asthma when exposed to over a dozen environmental allergens. normal every things, like grass, trees, dust, mold, cats, dogs, hampsters, horses, cockroaches, oak, and on and on. she spent the first 5 years of her life battling chronic ear infections, strep throat and upper respiratory illness with many trips to the ER for breathing treatments. thanks to weekly immunotherapy injections (aka: allergy shots), she's been somewhat healthy....until her recent trip to the allergist. she also suffers from esophageal reflux disease. between these two conditions, she takes 3 medications on a daily basis.


i have another 9 year old daughter named Ashlyn who struggles with Sensory Defensiveness (a Sensory Integration Disorder), extreme anxiety, pediatric migraine, and an autoimmune condition called Morphea. she's on chemotherapy for the Morphea and daily medicine to counteract the side effects of the chemo.


and i, myself, have a number of health issues that i've learned recently are all attributed to an autoimmune condition called Rheumatoid Arthritis.


SO.......
i'm sure you can only imagine the amount of doctors visits we attend. so, yeah. we have a lot of trials on our plate. i mean, afterall, my blog address says it all: through trials, i am being purified.


and that's what i humbly believe.

i find myself unconciously singing "i need Thee oh, i need Thee....every, hour i need Thee" or resting in the assuring words of "His strength is perfect, when my strength is gone. He'll carry me, when i can't carry on."

i've had a number of people email or comment upon hearing my story saying....."you are such a strong woman." but honestly, my strength is in the Lord. it is God who carries me through on the daily.

so then, what's my heartache that no one sees?

beyond what i've already shared there is one struggle that leaves me ripped wide open on a daily basis. one that i'm not quite ready to be as open about. mainly because it's one that i'm still trying to find the words to describe.

what is it? well, it's the strain all of these things have caused and continue to cause on my marriage. marriage is hard enough with dealing with these things, don'tcha think?


thank God, thank God, thankkkkkkk God, i have a husband who's in it for the long-haul.


but i have the typical nature of a mother still embedded deep within who just wants to hurry up and fix all these medical issues and make it all better. sometimes i let the anxiety-induced fear of what tomorrow might bring grab hold of me and let anger well up inside of me. that doesn't bode too well for an already chaotic household with my daughters sensory issues.

i feel like i fail every.single.day. as a woman, when you can't just fix it and make it all better, it's a hard pill to swallow. am i right? well, for me it is anyway.

but, God gives me hope.

• i still have the hope within me that this story and these struggles aren't my 'forever.'
• i still have the hope within me that ashlyn will continue to grow out of some of her unpleasant defensive behaviors and i'll find her pleasant to be around all the time.
• i still have the hope within me that i'll be able to let go of how i thought my life should have played out.
• and i still have the hope within me that someday i'll be able to embrace how my story is being written.

if there is only one thing i know to be true.....it's that God is good, people! He will meet you where you are. He'll dry up your tears. He'll empower you to use your heartache for His glory and share your heartaches that no one sees.

He'll even show you how to find joy in the journey and how to expect the unexpected. life is all about the unexpected detours. you can read more of my story and our unexpected detours here.

i found it so ironic that the first thing i heard as i was typing out this post, was this song called Stronger by Mandisa.

take a listen. i'm sure you'll find encouragement in the words.