Church Family Philosophy #2: When you hear the sound of hoofbeats, think horses not zebras.

You can find Philosophy #1 here.

Isn’t that a great saying!? While I have been dubbed unflinchingly optimistic by my hubby (a title that came about a few years ago when I was convinced that we only had an hour left in our drive and we definitely had at least three… I haven’t been able to shake it, apparently he’s noticed some trends :), I tend to occasionally focus on worst-case scenarios. Actually, I would say we both have these tendencies. It’s very easy to see negative possibilities for any given situation, and once we get focused on them, it’s hard to convince ourselves otherwise without some prodding from the spouse (watch out if we go down that road together! Who’s going to talk us out of it?? :).

I came across that little phrase a few days ago, and decided it was here to stay! Maybe I’ll needlepoint it on a pillow :) Right after I put my dishes in the dishwasher (ahem..). So, when we hear hoofbeats, we’ll think horses.. unless we’re in Kansas with Ian’s Grandpa Jay. In which case, it’s very likely to be zebras..

Well, it’s been a while! We have been doing all kinds of crazy things and have all kinds of crazy updates.

First of all, my hubby spent the first week of September in ROME! Which no blog reader knew because I wasn’t allowed to post that he was leaving because he didn’t want anyone to know I was home alone and come ‘get me’. I did not love being here by myself (which I think is a healthy sign that I’m in love with my hubby!), but I survived and spent a couple of evenings with a dear friend whose husband was also in Rome.

Someday, Ian’s going to post about that trip to Rome and the wonderful life experience that it was.. Someday.. Maybe you guys could help me out here and hound him with phone calls and emails until he does.

Although, he kind of has a legitimate distraction right now, being that he suddenly became a PHD STUDENT last week! Everyone say YAY!!!!! God is good and we are going to be hanging out here in little St Andrews for three more years. He has been accepted into the PhD program, has a multitude of supervisors (aka 2 of them), and has just taken off for an Arche meeting for the day. He is very excited most of the time, with the occasional ‘I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M GOING TO WRITE ABOUT MAYBE THIS IS A MISTAKE WHAT I AM GOING TO DOOOOOOOO!!!!!!’ moment (capital letters for emphasis, I actually can’t remember a time my hubby has yelled, he’s a very level headed man.. at least on the outside :). After I finish my chant of ‘horses, horses, horses’ to him, I remind him of how he wrote a whole proposal about what he was going to write on, so actually he does have some idea what he’s going to write about, and that he doesn’t have to do it all tomorrow. So he can just take a deep breath and relax.

I don’t know if this has crossed your mind yet, but this new development gives you AMPLE opportunity to start planning a visit to the one country we all know you’ve always wanted to visit! :) I know, shameless.. While there are significant challenges involved with living here, as often as we have questioned it in the last week neither of us can argue with the clarity that this is where the Lord wants us. There have been developments over the past 1.5 years that have made the thought of the Lord not wanting us here an impossible one. We know the Lord has placed us here, and we know He will provide for us here.

As for me, well, I work. :) Hence, the lack of posting. I head out to work in the mornings for 7.5 hours of staring at a computer/wishing I hadn’t messed up again/hoping there’s some way no one will notice I messed up again/enjoying my coworkers, I get home around 5:45, maybe help fix/eat dinner, work some more, take some breaks for hubby time/running/not staring at a computer screen time, work some more, go to bed. There are some things I slipped in there that need elaboration.. Like how we RUN now.. whoa.. We’ve been bad this week, but overall have been very consistently running in the evenings and working our way up time-wise. There’s something about the cool salt air that Ian’s lungs like because he’s had no signs of asthma and we have no idea where his inhaler is.

Also, how I MAYBE help fix dinner. Yes folks, my husband is amazing. Maybe it’s because somewhere in his psyche lies some guilt about how is wife is ever-working to help pay for his schooling, but really I think it’s just because God put such sacrificial love in his heart. Did I mention he’s amazing? I can’t remember the last time I loaded the dishwasher, and I’m eating off of clean dishes. Any time we need to clean, it’s immediately a team effort to get it done more quickly. I don’t even remember how to cook chicken pot pie anymore because someone else keeps making dinner for his wifey who comes home with NO desire to spend an hour making dinner when she needs to finish that brochure, and do another ad, and edit the project she’s trying to wrap up and, and, and... (I do want to mention here that we have way more variety in our diet than just CPP, in fact, I LOVE the developments we’ve had in our dinners lately, that’s just the one I actually can’t remember how to make). AND he never even complains when I ‘sneak’ out to the couch to read a few blogs while he slaves away in the kitchen. We all know I would complain. And I would do it loudly until he came into the kitchen to help me :) The Lord is still working on my sacrificial love.

Ian does occasionally express those feelings of guilt, but I must say I am loving life right now. I really enjoy working at West Port. I have bad days, but who doesn’t? I really like coming home to my computer to work on evening projects, and love the fact that the Lord has blessed me with WONDERFUL people to work for in the States. I love being goofy all evening with Ian and making our precious moments together fun and interesting. While we can’t be as social at the moment, we are looking forward to Bible studies starting again next week and hopefully getting into a solid weekly routine so we can have a little more social activity. I love that there are new people in town that we are befriending and growing to love! I love the fact that we’re going to get some BIRDS! Turns out those cute little budgies (aka parakeets) are WAY less expensive than the cute little cockatiels. We’d much rather have a doggie, but the dollar/pound exchange is just not allowing for that. And, budgie kind of rhymes with doggie, which is good enough for me :) You can bet there will be pictures on that joyous day.

I’ll stop now.. If that felt long, just pretend like you read a bit of it every day for the last two weeks. That’s less than a paragraph a day! See? Wasn’t that easy? :)