Hello, again...Hello

After over three years of total blogging silence, I have decided to dust off my pen and blow open the pages of my personal journal to friends and family once again.  Some may remember that I once had a xanga blog called Mommy of 10? I don't even know if it can be accessed anymore. If anyone can, let me know. But this is a new blog for a new time and a new life and a new reality.

Oh, somethings are and always will be the same.
 I do LOVE my sweet Jesus. I eagerly await the day when I will see him face to sweet shining face=)
I love His Word and thirst for it as I do for ice cold water.
I love my unbelievable family...no one on this earth has ever been blessed with so precious a candelabra of bright shining lights around their table as me.
I love my calling...the undeniable beckoning from God to "follow Him, that He would make me a fisher of men."

I love big things like nature and streams and rivers, autumn and winter, mountains,Colorado, waterfalls, horses, Holmes County Ohio, rain-- thunderstorms,especially, the ocean, although it really scares me, too.
I love little things, also. Like knitting and sewing (especially baby things), baking(especially chocolate) and reading. I especially love reading to my children. I hope there is always someone to read to <3
I love pumpkin scones, harvest days, setting suns and rising moons. Gingerbread, chicken and dumplings, apple pie, homemade ice cream, fruit salad, real lemon-aid, ice tea, and CHOCOLATE anything!

I love important things like saving faith and the doctrine of grace. The lost who don't even know they are.
I love pastors and teachers and everyday people who tell the truth, without glamor or pretense or flash.
I love the unpackaged, no brand, make-up free stories of peoples' lives.
I loved feeling babies squirming in my belly, giving birth, nursing babies, wearing babies, everything about babies and children. Lots of you know I even really, honest to goodness, love potty-training. Even wrote 2 songs about it ;) And how many others can actually say they have successfully potty-trained 11 children? (Sorry I digress)
I love everything about being a mom---even the heart wrenching, heartbreaking stuff. Jesus is in it too.
I love the millions of children that nobody wants that break my heart.
I love being here. Now.

Some things have changed since I last told our happy little stories. We are all older, more interesting, the kids are more talented and beautiful then ever before.
      I don't know how many know but a couple years ago I started having seizures randomly. Some seizures were worse than others but I figured it was something to do with my lupus and the extremely stressful events that were going on in our lives at the time. Long story short: after the seizure's increasing strength and frequency + tests and hospitalizations, on Dec. 21, 2009 I finally ended up crashing the Jeep into a guardrail on a highway on the way home from an appointment. I had had 2 grand mal seizures at the wheel. I remember the window being smashed out by a huge flashlight before the fireman pulled me out of the car. I saw my husband running across 3 lanes of traffic only to be caught up into a waiting line of 3 firemen who held him back. It was unreal. It was like being in a scene from ER. I had 2 more seizures in the ambulance and 2 more in the hospital that night. I lost my driver's license and thus began yet another journey to find the magic cocktail of seizure meds that would bring my seizures under control.

There is so much more to tell. And please do NOT for one moment think that this is going to be a downer. Far far far far from it. My life, my story, my family, everything I have and don't have is a miracle from God.
There is so so much true, pure, joy in my heart--that no one can ever, ever take away me. And it's being added to daily--moment by moment, in fact!

In my old blog, that's probably where I would have signed off. With some chirpy little comment and a cute little wink. Always smiling--soldiering on :) But right here, right now, from this day forward, a few hours before my fortythmtnmtnmtnmtnmtnmtnmtnmtnntmntmnm birthday I want to honestly say that there is other stuff in my heart living beside joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, love, and all that good stuff. There's stuff like pain( real  physical pain--we call 'em 'owies')and other kinds of pain. There's disappointment, grief, hurt, abandonment, betrayal, sadness, and shame. And guess what? All of those things are in the Bible, too.
Those guys who were so great and everything in the Bible? They had some not so great things happen to them, too. But they glorified God with all their hearts, souls, minds, and strengths.
And that's what I'm fixin' to do.

So, as for me, here I am, just as I am.
Real Life. Real People. At the Niemans.
<3 Lisa <3