"Be not simply good; be good for something."

Hey blog friends!
Did I tell you I'm a "runner" now? No?
Well, that's because I think I actually walk faster than I run.
Seriously.
I run a 14 minute mile.

On a good day. 

Recently a friend posted this photo on facebook, and I am pretty sure it was created just for me:

But that's okay, because, as they say, a mile is a mile, right?

I started a Couch to 5K program several months ago, at the end of April. It's an eight week program. I think I am on week, like, 497. In my defense, I really did start from the couch, straight up lazy butt.

Anyway, I haven't ACTUALLY hit the 5K mark. I've gotten close, but never made it.

Alternately, I have spent a lot of time lately thinking about my birthday coming up in a couple of weeks. I am not a huge fan of birthdays anyway, I think they are kind of embarrassing, all those well wishes for basically doing nothing. I mean, really, all I did was enter the world, which admittedly, didn't require a whole lot of effort on MY part. I am turning 29 this year (for the first time), and I just have been feeling like I want to do something GOOD for my birthday, and not "good" like I-want-to-sit-in-my-house-while-Rob-takes-the-kids-out-and-gorge-myself-on-cake-and-Kit-Kats-while-I-watch-too-many-episodes-of-Grey's-Anatomy-and-surf-Pinterest "good" (because, let's be honest, that does sound like a pretty sweet way to spend a day...). I mean I want to accomplish something for good. I want to make my birthday a celebration that shows that one person can make a difference.

And so, the other day, while I was staggering my way through the last 1/2 mile of my 2.64 mile run, I saw some signs for a local 5K the very weekend following my birthday. All the funds go to help building a hospital in rural Kenya, and so, I will be running for GOOD as my birthday present to me. I have little doubt that I will come in absolutely last. But I also know I can finish it! I'd like to enter the race at the $100 level. And that is where the shameless part of this post comes in.

If you are willing and able, will you help me help Kenya? All the proceeds from the race, as well as any money raised beyond the entry cost, will go to Going Beyond Borders, the non-profit receiving the proceeds from the race.

I figure if I can get just a few people to help out, something amazing can happen! And I can't think of a better way to celebrate my birthday and thanking God and the world for the very blessed 29 years I have enjoyed than to give to those in need and accomplish a very personal goal at the same time.

If you are able to donate, please go here. Every little bit will help!

Thank you for stopping by!

{Digging Potatoes}

Well, we must really live in Idaho, because today I went out and dug up potatoes. This was a first for me, and I actually enjoyed being out in the co-op garden, alone in the sun and breeze, just me and my thoughts.

One thing about potato digging though: it is HARD work. When I left the garden with my little bucket of taters, I was covered in dirt and ready for a forty-year nap. I like picking lettuce, or tomatoes, or squash. I like picking berries or pulling beans. These things are easy work--you use your eyes, pull the prettiest, plumpest fruit, and stay relatively clean. Potatoes are different.

I don't know anything about potato growing other than what we've been told by some Idaho folk and what we've managed this season, but here's what I've got so far--when you plant potatoes, you plant them in mounds. (And here in the high desert, in our poorly funded student co-op garden, that mostly means planting them in a bed of sandy, rocky, dirt.) And then you let them grow. For the most part, you just kind of leave them alone. And then you wait. You wait until they shrivel up and die and you think the rot and the bugs are just around the corner and you're pretty sure you messed up and that God shouldn't trust you to tend to things when He's better at it anyway.

And then you stick your hands in that dry, rocky, hard-as-can-be dirt, you push aside the old dead plant, and you start digging for the roots.

Potatoes can grow deep, well below the mound you made for them, deeper into that thick, dense, desert sand. If you're lucky, and if you dig deep enough, you'll dig up some beautiful gems--small ones, big ones, all under that rotten, rocky mess, emerging a few at a time as proof that there is something bigger than you at work under the soil.

The Mister and I are often described as "poor as church mice." My father has used that phrase on us a few times, and our church leaders too. When we started this journey, we knew it wouldn't be easy. And to be honest, sometimes it is a little staggering to think of how far we still have to go. At times, it's easy to think of what we've given up, of the things (all that old STUFF) we could have if we were living the same lives we decided to abandon. If we let ourselves, it would be easy, after a long week of endless studying for him and nearly-single-parenting for me, to look at our lives and see the shriveled up plant of what we used to have. It would be easy to forget that we were led here and that there are greater forces at work. The trick is remembering that we're still digging; we're still reaching for what comes out of that pile of dirt and dead.

So we keep digging our potatoes. We may come out dirty as hell. We'll be tired and our muscles will ache, but after the ache we'll be stronger for our efforts. We'll have grime under our fingernails and dents in our knees from the rocks we knelt on, but we'll have what we came for. We'll leave behind a pile of rubble, but we'll know the love of God and hold it right in the palm of our grungy, weathered hands.

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined."

This is perhaps the best Thoreau-ism of all time. It speaks to me louder than any other tidbit the man wrote in Walden (and believe me, there are gazillions). In fact, I have, since visiting Walden Pond at age 19, kept a framed version of those words in my home.

And yet...
               and yet...

My husband and I, we hadn't been living the life we imagined.

The Mister and I are sometimes referred to as optimists, hippies, free-spirits, etc. All of these words in some way or another really just mean that we are dreamers, at least to a degree. We imagine a better life for our family, a better world in general, an unconventional style of living for ourselves. For one reason or another though, we have always had a tendency to simply go with the flow. This hasn't always been a bad thing--we have been presented with many wonderful opportunities and have lived a happy and comfortable life. We have a joyful marriage, delightful children, and a peaceful home. However, in spite of all this, we weren't living the life we imagined. And we were sort of circling around our dreams, not walking confidently toward them. An opportunity would arise, and providing it made sense, we'd take it.

Turns out, we're kind of chicken.

For several years now, I have been teaching high school. And although it is a job I enjoy, and a job which I know I am very good at, my heart wasn't totally in it. After I had my daughter, this became even more apparent, and through my pregnancy with my son, I knew that what I really wanted was to simply be a mom to my children. At the end of the last school year, that opportunity became a reality. Originally, the choice had been made for me--like many of the choices we had fallen into over the years. My position was no longer available, and it seemed to make sense. However, as more positions opened in my district and I was being offered them, the idea of staying home became more and more difficult to wrestle with. I was no longer forced out of my position; I had to make a choice. Ultimately, we decided that we would somehow make ends meet, and followed the very strong spiritual promptings that I should leave teaching. It was one of the first real "leaps" we had taken in our marriage--a first, confident step in the direction of our dreams, and the catalyst for the pathway that opened up for us.

Over this past summer, we received a major shock. My husband's own teaching position--a position which had literally fallen into his lap--was in serious jeopardy. He had been teaching woodshop at the high school level for the last few years. And while he enjoyed it greatly, he had originally taken the job in hopes that it would open up his schedule a bit more, allowing him to finish his own college degree. However, what we really ended up doing was enrolling him in a lot of classes to keep up with his teaching requirements, which hardly pertain to what he really wants to be when he "grows up." At any rate, at the end of summer, it became very apparent that the work he had put into maintaining his teaching certificate may have turned out to be in vain. We were, quite simply, put into a tailspin as our sense of security, our ability to provide for our children, and our general complacency went out the window.

We struggled through those few days. We wondered why, in His infinite wisdom, the Lord would have prompted us so strongly for me to leave my teaching position, if this was coming down the pipe. We wondered why He prompted us so strongly to push my husband through a series of summer courses for his teaching certificate that were intense--academically and financially--if there would be no job for him to use them. Finally, once the shock began to wear off, we got down to business and started addressing the situation. We turned to the Lord and quit asking "Why did this happen?" and started asking "Where do we go from here?"

We started looking for jobs (hard to come by for teachers at the end of summer) and exploring options. We asked ourselves the questions that really matter--what do we want most?--and came up with nearly identical answers--space for our kids, simplicity, nature, and for my husband to finally be done with school. We realized the things we wanted most, were things we didn't have.

The idea of my husband going back to school came up, and while it seemed crazy--to pick up our kids, sell everything we owned, and go back to the poor student lifestyle--it became apparent that this was precisely the opportunity we had been given. The Lord, in His infinite wisdom, had given us a chance to really make our choice--not to fall into something, but to make a choice. We realized that my husband could continue to pursue teaching--something he enjoyed, but wasn't his dream--, or he could go back to school and live the life we imagined. And we KNEW that whichever choice we made, things would start to fall into place, because both were equally worthy in they eyes of the Lord.

Once we chose to send my husband back to school, miracles began to happen. The night we decided, we both came up with the name of the same university--a place neither of us had ever given much thought to. That night, I found a job posting at the university that fit my skills perfectly--it would also provide free housing and income. Those summer classes he had taken for his teaching certificate? They put him over the edge to qualify for a full-tuition scholarship, thanks to his perfect grades. The impending move let us start letting go of the things we thought we needed--we were finally starting to kick the consumer habit. He was able to keep his teaching position through December, accepted to the University for January; I got the job (hooray for a place to live and income); some dear friends approached us about renting the home we own in Arizona.

The list of blessings goes on, but suffice it to say, once we started asking the Lord the right questions, the "why" became apparent. Here was an event, originally seen as disaster, that instead turned out to be a miraculous gift. He knew the desires of our heart--He knew of the life we had been imagining. And all He wanted to do was give us the confidence to head that direction.