Following the Father

May always seems to be a busy month, and this May is no exception! My poor site has been woefully neglected of late because of it. Short posts are better than no posts I always say have recently determined, so that is what this one will be!

My youngest sister always makes life interesting so I'll just give you a few quotes of hers from today.

I'm walking through the living room when Mercy calls out quite loudly, "There's a father long leg in our house!"

Samuel said in his very big brotherly way, "You mean father long legs?" (emphasis on the plural) I was just going to let it go and store in my funny memories but with that

know-it-all tone from my highly intelligent little brother I couldn't help but turn around and say, "You're wrong too." and continue on my projected path toward my room. Never one to pass up information he followed me and demanded to know what the name really was. I told him... and that was that.

"Mommy!" The call came echoing down the hallway from the bathroom.

"What!" came the call back.

"There's no placemat on the floor!"

Mental note, buy a really big placemat to replace the bathmat that should be by the tub. (which was in the wash by the way)

Right after that last quote Mercy asked Mommy, "Were cars invented before houses?"

It is times like that when my poor homeschooling mother needs to just plug her ears and hum Jesus Loves Me.

I won't bother mentioning all the times I've embarrassed her about the things I don't know.

Blessings!

~Elizabeth

Here is a selection of my favorite senior pictures that got taken last week.

~Elizabeth

Ok, so we've jokingly said that this state has the strangest weather in the U.S. as it can change from the 70s to 30s almost over night, but everyone seems to claim that about where they live!  So now that we're in about a foot or  more of snow and it's almost April I'm thinking I should write a poem about this!  The drifts that we've collected around our house are completely shocking!  You can't see the railing on our deck.  It makes it very hard to try to estimate the actual amount of snow fall we are having.  Thankfully though my parents were out in this yesterday because of a doctor's appointment out of town, it was early on enough that they could get home.  It was slow going though, and they were diverted off of the interstate because of accidents from the ice.  Here it is snow, wind, and more snow, but not really any ice.

I'm now about 3 weeks into my apprenticeship with the midwife M.  She's amazing at what she does, and I feel very priveledged to be able to watch her and learn from her.  I know now that this is a much better first step than training at a birth center or pludging into a medical program.  I've been to 3 prenatals and postpartums at her place where all her ladies come for their appoitments.  I also have been to 2 births, both ending up on the same day.  We were at the one laboring mom's place for about 12 hours before she finally had her baby the next morning.  She was a trouper and has a healthy baby girl now.  The other mom also had a baby girl, but we were only there for the evening, and not all night for that one!  I thought the long one was a great first time for me though.  That's midwifery for you, you stay with the mom for everything, not burst in to catch the baby when it's "time!"

Though we were hoping to go visit my uncle, aunt and cousins today, obviously with them living 3 hours away that's not going to happen!  We're postponing the trip to next week when hopefully we won't have blizzard conditions stopping us!

~Elizabeth 

I'm trying yet again to update on some recent things that have been happening with me in regards to my desire to learn midwifery.  I tried multiple times yesterday to post something but kept being interrupted for many reasons, and then so many things would happen before I'd get back to it that by that time things had changed so much that I needed to rewrite the update!  Then when I finally did finish typing something current last evening, the computer froze up and the server timed out on me when I tried to post it and I lost the whole thing!  So... I gave up.

Here's the bullet points of this week's major happenings for myself, starting Tuesday.

Tuesday:

I spent alot of the afternoon researching midwifery internship/apprenticeship possibilities.  It was hard to find anything that was near us, and even if I was willing to go the distance, it was very pricey and the people in charge were not Christians and the theology that you feel on their website was questionable.  God then prompted me to specifically google midwives with our state name, and see if I could come up with a list of certified midwives in our area.  Though I didn't find a list, I did find a midwife's profile on a website giving a bit of information about herself.  She's a Christian, has a large family, and has been practicing for 22 years.  When I was reading about her she sounded familiar and I vaguely remembered some friends mentioning her several months ago.    I excitedly e-mailed her explaining who I was and asked if she had any suggestions of where would be a good place for me to start and if she knew of any people I could contact.

Wednesday:

I got an e-mail back from her which said to call her so she could set up a time to meet with my parents and I.  This wasn't the response I expected, it was much better!  I called her later that day and talked with her briefly.  She said she'd call me back to set up a time since she was rushed at that point because she was in a class.

Thursday:

The midwife called that morning and we agreed that Mommy and I would meet with her at her house later that morning.  So that's what we did, and we talked for a good hour and 45 minutes.  We were encouraged by that meeting as it is obvious she is a solid believer in Jesus and his importance in every part of our lives and we gained alot of information about her and her midwifery practice.  The end result of that meeting/interview was that I will do a trial apprenticeship with her for a couple of months, and if we both still feel that I'm called to this area we'll continue from there.  My first step will be going to her house next Tuesday to meet some of the mothers she cares for and watch her do prenatals.  (She does prenatals every Tuesday in her home, but the births take place in the family's home)  I'm still trying to catch up to all this!  I went from dreaming about this hopefully happening some day on Monday, to being an apprentice on Thursday!

After getting home that afternoon from that meeting we started trying to think through the details of what needs to happen for this, and one thing that is extremely obvious is that I need to get rid of my permit and move to my license already!  You wouldn't believe the challenge it is to get the required hours for a permit in a small town.  Especially night hours, as I don't go anywhere at night without my big brothers being home!  But I finally had them so we called the DMV to see when would be a good time for me to go in for the test.  They said better do it today or it won't happen for a couple of weeks as one of the employees will be gone for the next week at least.  SO... my dad called work and got permission to come in late, my mom took care of Baby B. for me, (he came earlier that afternoon after we got back) and my dad and I hoped in the smaller van to rush to the DMV!  We actually only had a small wait compared to when I’ve been there before.  I took the test, passed it, and now I have my license!!  Alot can happen in one day!

Friday:

I'm just trying to process all that happened yesterday and this week in general.  Obviously God has this already mapped out.  I just need to keep taking one step at a time!

~Elizabeth

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

I did NOT just spend almost 40 minutes looking through other peoples highly clever and funny Not Me Monday posts.

I did NOT have a cold all last week that I just got over but did church nursery duty on Sunday anyway, 'cause surely after a week my sniffles shouldn't be contagious!  After all I did NOT want to bother calling someone on such short notice to get them to take over on my last Sunday of S.S. nursery duty! (that part is true!)

I did NOT flat our REFUSE to go driving one eveing last week with my mom, even though I need the night hours if I'm ever going to finally get my license!  After all I was NOT sick and my head wasn't hurting, and I wasn't feeling dizzy.  Nope not me!  I sure did not say "NO" rather emphatically and rudely when it was suggested.

I did NOT use my cliche with my sister again of not "smelling" her paper when she writes for schoowork.  She does NOT after all bend down so low to her paper when writing that surely her eyes must go crossed  (yet she has perfect vision).

I did NOT think unsweet thoughts about a member of the family who thinks it is her duty to almost always do the opposite of what is asked or desired of her to do.

I did NOT watch Fireproof last night with my parents and cry several different times.  I do NOT think that if I watched it every evening this week that I would cry at some point every time.  (Wonderful Godly movie, make sure you get it!  It is now on DVD)

I do NOT wish to have children from all around the world when I'm married, and I do not wish to have so many children that we need a 15 passenger van to haul them to church!

I am NOT sad that my older brothers have to be at school most of the time, (especially Josh since he can't come home on weekends, being in another state) and not being able to have fun with me/us.

I do NOT need to get off the computer and get something constructive done.

I did NOT do anything wrong this week and acted pleasing to God in every way shape and form!  cough, cough

I am NOT having loads of fun with this post and do NOT want to do it again next Monday!

~Elizabeth

As you've probably noticed I'm switching alot of things around and changing almost everything in my site.  I still haven't finished with all that I'm wanting to do, but I'm slowly getting there.  I've decided to stick with this Webs site builder and blog for now.  I don't think any particular company is perfect and has exactly what I want, so I'm doing to just try to make what I already have work!

This week I've been lugging myself through a head cold.  It started out as just that faint "sick" feeling, where you just know something isn't quite right.  Then the next day I got the deep chest cough type thing, then my head got full, then my nose started in, and... you get the idea.

Grandma has had something too, so I probably got it from her.  I'm hoping that it won't get everybody before it leaves!

I've been reading some Frank Peretti the past couple of months for the first time.  At least the adult ones I'd never read before.  I've now read The Prophet, This Present Darkness, and I'm currently reading Piercing the Darkness. They’ve all been thought provoking and I’ve enjoyed them so far.  I'm told some of the ones he wrote later were too over the top for many, but I know God is definitely "over the top" so I'll save my opinion until I read one of them!

Josh lost his phone a few days ago, unknown to us, until a young lady calls us asking how she can find the owner of this phone she found.  It's pretty comical now that it is all resolved.  She called "Home" in his contact list (us) and also looked him up on facebook.  God was definitely looking out for him as she said that the area where she found his phone while walking across campus was not her usual route that she takes.  I'm glad God's got his back since his mom and sister don’t about things like that anymore!

Ben's home from his apartment at school for the weekend, her arrived at his usually time this afternoon.  He usually comes in the early afternoon Friday and stays until late Sunday afternoon.  His apartment has been great for cutting down on his commute from home to school, and home to work everyday.

With all the major health issues my mom has been going through our whole family's (the ones in the house right now) diet has taken a major turn too.  My mom has always been one to cook and serve quality meals and been wholesome in the what everyone gets, but it seems with everything having additives and artificial substances now that we've had to become even more strict.  Nobody really minds though since the healthy stuff usually tastes good too!  We recently made a trip to a bulk food store in a town about half an hour from here that others had been telling us about.  We hope to be able to go once a month to stock up.  It's run by Mennonites and they get most of their stuff from neighboring Mennonite farms.  I'll share a few nutritional things we've found out along the way in other posts when I think of it.  Some things have been rather surprising but make sense when you think about it!

~Elizabeth