Final Exams

Studying for Final Exams have meant forgoing the following:

-A milkshake
-Archery practice with Lela Grace
-and Emperor's New Groove.
-snuggle time

...and thats just today. Summer, come quickly.

ps. how many families do you know with an archery range in their back yard? its a new addition. (new as in, this morning). Compliments of Joseph and Lela Grace who have both recently developed and interest in the sport, and thus bugged my parents sufficiently to build a target. I'm definitely the worst archer in the family, judging from the 10 minutes I took to go out and get a little taste. They whooped me.

Loving the World

"If you love everything you will percieve the divine mystery in things.

Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day.

And you will come at last to love the whole world with an embracing love."

~Father Zosima from The Brothers Karamazou~

(This quote was in my church bulletin this morning. Honesty: I have no clue who Father Zosima is. But his quote made my heart sing.)

Thoughts on special needs

I've been, as you can tell, thinking a lot about special needs. Down Syndrome in particular. This thought struck me the other morning in the shower. I forgot it then, but then remembered it while studying for my finals. (Okay, I guess that was totally unnecessary information...hmm...) Anyway:

Why are the lives and stories of people with special needs so attractive and universally heart warming?

Why do so many families of people with disabilities radiate with the joy that that person brings to their life?

I think,

That when the human-ness of a person is limited

The Image of God is usually easier to see.

There is your daily dose of Audrey. Seriously, can you beleive nobody has adopted these kiddos? They're BEAUTIFUL! They're practically edible, just waiting for soembody to hug them so hard they can't breathe!

But seriously, that thought has really helped me to understand a lot of things, because, the hard parts about disability (it is called dis-ability, after all), are effects of the fall, so the brokenness isn't what we celebrate and love.

Its the life.

I just found out that I'll be getting to see a lot more of my little down syndrome buddy (who I really need to give a blog name) this summer. I was planning on keeping his older sister and three older brothers while mom took baby to therapy one morning a week. But his mom said that she worked it out for someone else to come then so that I can babysit when he is home! She is going to teach me how to do some therapy work with him! Ah! I'm SUUUPPPPEEERR excited. He and the other kids are all about the cutest children I have ever met.

So you know what this means for you?

Pictures! Hopefully I'll be able to get quite a few of this little bundle of adorableness!

May I?

May I rant for a minute? I promise to be concise and logical.

Yeah. Right.

Today, some friends of mine and I were talking at school. Our conversation got cut short or else I would have told them some of the things that I'm about to tell you. We started by talking about motherhood and how much we couldn't wait to have babies and be moms. That morphed to talking about giving birth and about how some people were afraid of the pain and discomfort involved with pregnancy and I, of course, said "Well they can adopt!" Surprisingly, even amongst my dear, dear friends, this proposal met with some hesitation.

"But, most people really want to have their own kids. You know, they really want their own. They don't want to just adopt them and not get to have their own."


Their own?

Friends, may we examine this phrase? (I know that I'm preaching to the choir here, and I of course wasn't surprised to meet this kind of doubt about adoption, but I was surprised to hear it from my very close friends, who, you know, come to my house, and, you know, hang about with Mez and TeeGee, and, you know, know what I'm passionate about.)

My own.

"Is Ephraim My dear son?

Is he My darling child?

For as often as I speak against him,

I do remember him still.

Therefore My heart yearns for him;

I will surely have mercy on him,

declares the Lord."

~Jeremiah 31:20~

In the old testament, Ephraim was often a foreshadowing of the church. A symbol of God's people of the New Covenant. These questions? They're rhetorical questions. "Is Ephraim My dear son? Is he My darling child?" Rhetorical questions drive the hearer to want to scream "Yes! Yes, of course!"

Do you hear the tender, fatherly affection?

Secondly:

"...and Mattan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations."

~Matthew 1:15b-16~

This is the genealogy of Jesus. The Lion of Judah. The root of Jesse. The one to sit on David's Throne. This is the child of Rahab and Salmon, and of Ruth and Boaz. This is the promised Messiah born in Bethlehem. This is the Christ.

"When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus."

~Matthew 1:24~

Jesus was not the biological son of Joseph. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. This we know.

SO. If Jesus was not really Joseph's own son, if his earthly adoption was not, in fact, a real or effectual thing, then we've been wrong all these years. It wasn't Jesus, it was his younger brother James who is the Messiah! James carried the blood line of Jesse and David.

But adoption is of the Lord. Established and exemplified by Him. Evident in the life and heritage of His own son. Jesus, was adopted.

To doubt that adoption makes a child YOUR OWN, is to doubt the promise of the Lord and your sonship (daughtership) to Him. We are adopted children of God, made heirs with Christ, who is the eldest of many brethren. Shall we doubt that we are God's dear sons and daughters, shall we doubt that we are His own darling children?

I have decided what my thesis for next year will be. I had already thought it out and had come up with eveything but the 3rd proof. Today, I've chosen a third proof. My thesis statement:

Adoption is the surest way to counteract abortion in a culture because it upholds the sanctity of life, speaks to the needs of the mother and the child, and is an effective way of grafting a new member of the family into the covenant family.

"But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of His own inheritance, as you are to this day."

~Deuteronomy 4:20~

Dear Jeeves and Wooster,

You make my life so much better. Thank you,

-Audrey-

My Brain...

I called some friends to see if they wanted to go exploring with me down town.

My friends' mom thought that we would die in the raging river of main street.

We stayed home.

I wonder about my brain sometimes.

Flash Flood 3

...but I think Michael and Julia understand Noah's flood a heck of a lot better than most four year olds.

Sherlock Holmes

"No girl wants to marry a doctor who can't tell if a man is dead or not."

Flash Monsoon 2

I started this post this morning to announce that the water was mostly out of our basement, the creek was going down and the rain had slowed.

I would now like to announce that neighborhoods (not ours) are being evactuated, my bedroom is once again a lake, and the crick's a risin'. I'll be darned if I've ever seen anathing lak this in awl my lowng years.

Can you imagine 40 days and 40 nights of this ridiculous buisness?

One of my friend's front yard is gone, and another friend went swimming yesterday. In a feild.

And you know things are bad when your church is cancelled.

BUT THE DITCH IS ROCKING!

Flash Flood

We've had one.

More like a flash monsoon, really.

This is our basement. Inside our house where we live. In about 2 inches of water.

3 inches. And, all in a matter of 2 minutes. Not exagerating.




Bedroom sweet bedroom, why puddlest thou? Why be thou soakest, all mine belongings? Why bubblest, thou water, out of my floor?



I wish I had pictures of what outside looks like, maybe tomorrow. We usually live two doors down from a creek. Today we live 2 doors down from a raging river, which extends a foot deep into our neighbor's basement . We got soaked running around picking everything up off the floor, darting around the neighborhood checking on everybody, and digging a ditch.


You heard me. Digging a ditch. In the thunder storm. All day.



Most of the water was pouring into the basement for the part of our yard shaped vaguely like a bowl. So my wonderful father, who is absolutely amazing in a crisis, sees the situation, discovers the source of the problem and he and Joseph get our the shovels and start digging to direct the water away from our house, while Lela Grace kept the twins and mom and my grandparents and I tried to salvage our belongings which were floating out the door.



It was quite an adventure.



An adventure that really drove home to us the many ways that God blessed and provided for us.

An adventure that allowed us to get to know our neighbors in a whole new way.

An adventure that made memories (and chocolate chip cookies).

An adventure that renewed for us the power of the Lord


An adventure that reminded us of the promise.

"This is the sign of the covenant between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant that is between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth."

~Genesis 9:12-16~