Do Not Worry

I'm clinging hard to the promise Jesus makes in Matthew 6 right now-- you know, the one about not worrying about tomorrow or food or clothing, because if God takes care of the birds and the flowers, He will most certainly take care of you.

The day before Thanksgiving and for much of Thanksgiving day, it rained here. Hard. And when I went to get something out of Cate and Brennan's closet on Thanksgiving Eve, I noticed the sleeves of some of the clothes were damp. Yeah, we had a leak. Awesome.

We had this happen once before in the spring. Eric patched it up, it was a relatively dry summer, and we never thought about it happening again. Until now. Because it also rained hard earlier this week. And leaked again.

A couple of weeks ago we shelled out a little over $900 to keep our 9 year old trusty Dodge Neon running. It was that or buy a new car. No way we were taking on another car payment. So we made the repairs and are hoping to get through a couple more years with that car. Thankfully, it can stay parked in our garage for most of this winter since I won't be venturing out with two kiddos on my own for several weeks.

Now it's a roof. We had one roofing company come today to assess the state of our roof. Some more are coming next week. The company we had today is one of the most reputable, yet most expensive, in our area. The news they had wasn't too bleak though. Yes, the roof did need to be repaired in the leak area. But there really wasn't any damage or anything to our roof (the last time it rained hard here, back in the spring, could have caused some damage-- and it did to many homes-- but thankfully, it didn't damage our home). Yes, we are going to have to put a new roof on our house in the next couple of years because of normal wear/tear on the shingles. But...the last roofing job was done well and there is only one layer of shingles, which means we can "re-roof" (put new shingles over top of the old ones). This is much cheaper than tearing off the roof, re-doing the tar paper, and laying new shingles.

We're still getting more opinions, but we're confident that at this moment we'll only have to pay a small amount to have the roof repaired. My dad put a roof on the house in Hudson that I grew up in (with tar paper and all) and is confident that come summer time, we can do the "re-roof" ourselves. Eric will gather a bunch of friends, pay them in food and beer (after they're safely on the ground), and we'll get it done. Luckily our house is only one story.

I used to be a worrier. Two years ago...heck, even a year ago, car repairs plus a roof repair would've sent me worrying...like up all night nauseous worrying. Especially given that I'm going to lose about 6 months of pay when I'm on maternity leave. Oh, and the fact that we don't use credit cards...haven't in three years... made our last credit card payment ever last month (it's about small victories). So there is no "emergency card" to put something like this on. But as my faith has grown this year, I've learned to cast off that anxiety and fear because I know it is not of the Lord. I know God will show up. We'll get the necessary repairs and look forward to a re-roofing party this summer.

So as I'm off to enjoy my weekend which includes art class with Cate, church, and visiting a Christmas attraction or two around town, I'm casting aside what little worry has crept up inside of me and am clinging to Matthew 6. I'll leave you with pictures of playing in the leaves-- round 2. This was our biggest round of leaf-gathering. All of the leaves are down now and we'll probably fill one more big brown lawn/leaf bag with the stragglers on the next mild weekend day. Enjoy the big pile o' leaves-- Cate sure did.
She rocks! She even helped put them in a bag-- filled up 3/4 of one bag all by herself! And as she is so my daughter, here she is taking a picture of me taking a picture of her.
When I get some time I'll have to look for the picture she took of me. If it's not too horrible, I'll post it. But given the angle her camera is pointed at, I'm going to guess that her picture doesn't even include my camera or face but is more around my midsection.

Have a great weekend!
~Melody :-)