well hey there. wanna read?

man. has it been a while since i've posted or what?! let me catch you up.

it starts here. new chaos.
when i posted last, i think that we were in the midst of figuring out when we would move and i was figuring out a toddler's new nap life. and i did all of this napping research (mainly because we were in napping hysteria and i was losing my mind with a sleepless child) and learned that this whole sleep transition could take two to six months. i was confused. all of my friends were like 'oh yeeeaaa, she'll be sleeping 2-3 hour naps in a week. well, two months later and we're just getting there. some days it's an hour and a half...some days an hour (sigh)...and some days two or three hours. so we're doing well. now.

but it started here:
the day that she decided that her green crayon was her favorite. i told her that she was not allowed to eat her crayon but coloring with it was ok. she agreed. but as i stood in the bathroom and was greeted with a toddler who said, "i eat cay-on mommy!"...i knew that she either was being defiant or hadn't understood our earlier agreement. either way, i laughed inside, and sat her hiney in hallway timeout where she kept insisting it was time to "git up mommy?" ...after a kiss and hug and a teeth washing that left the toothbrush green, we moved on. as we're continuing to do daily.
this summer has been full of lessons all around the board. in our marriage and in parenting. and i'm learning - relearning - some essential truths.

and those truths start here:

and here:
in the obvious gifts that God has given me. my family. my two brown-eyed sweeties. and now, our new house. our promised land straight from the hand of God. and i mean that. the enemy was working hard to get us to not close on our house. but close we did. only we ended up closing on our old house two weeks after we were scheduled to. oh y'all, it was a war and God won and we declared that we are NOT grasshoppers! and we will not be afraid because our God has gone before us and declared this life, this land, is his gift to us and we will walk forward in it with thanks and bless others because He blessed us.

isn't that something?
isn't this something?

and can i tell you somethings that might seem silly to you? well you can't tell me not to, so i'm going to. it actually smells like home. isn't that weird? i mean outside does. and it's not that i was trying, or am trying, to recreate my childhood home but there was something so incredibly sacred about that house and land where i grew up. and still, i can hear the sounds of the bugs in the woods. i can feel the wind and see the sunrise that i looked at every morning as i got ready for school. and as i stood in my backyard the other day, i had to catch my breath. i heard the bugs again. (y'all are saying, "ashley, we call those crickets." but it's not crickets. it's a special chorus that sings at night. and it's here.) and the wind, it blows just the same as the lane i grew up on. and after the grass was cut the other day, i nearly cried. i swear that if i closed my eyes and opened them, i was going to see my dad walking towards me all sweaty from working outside, and i would see my mom bent over plucking weeds and my brother washing his tan ford ranger. but i opened and all i saw was green grass. our green grass. on the street where God planted our new roots. and in the yard where loralai will look up and see her daddy all sweaty from working in the yard, from building her swingset. where she'll see her mama planting flowers and working in the garden. where she'll play with her brother or sister. where the dogs will play and love will grow. and she'll get to smell and feel the same love that God gave me when i was just a girl - only on a different street, but in His same creation. isn't it beautiful?

don't you ever just look at the sunset and think - vladik sees that.

vladik is my dear friend's belarussian son. he comes to stay with her family for six weeks in the summer to recover from nuclear fallout. and while getting fat on wholesome foods and being taken care of by doctors who donate their services, he hears the word of Life. God spoke to sweet Vladik for the past two years (and surely the prior 8) of his life through Carie and Mitchell and all the believers who loved on him while he lived in north carolina. and five days before sweet Vladik was scheduled to fly back to Belarus, he accepted Jesus as his savior. i'll never forget the phone call from Carie. she was crying like a little girl - more like a mama who just witnessed her first child accept salvation. i can't imagine the fullness in her heart - but i could hear it in her voice and i couldn't help but laugh a giddy little laugh with her. ...and so the search was on for a russian bible for vladik. Carie kicked herself for not having gotten him a bible prior to his coming this summer, but i'm certain that God didn't urge her to get the bible so that she could see a miracle happen. because after all, watching Him intervene in our search for a bible was WAY cooler than going to the bookstore and picking one up and wrapping it in pretty paper.

follow this: carie calls and says that vladik is saved and asks that i'll pray with her that we'll somehow find a way to get vladik a russian translated bible so that he will have a version of the Word that he can read. after searching for a few hours, online, for a bible, i called her to tell her what i found. but we were discouraged because it was going to take at least 4 days to get here (and that was the overnight system). weird right? after i hung up with her, i had a major ah ha! moment. God reminded me of an old friend. a friend of my dad's. my dad and mom had a couple that they were good friends with - they had a cottage at the river near ours - so we grew up with them - and their daughter became a missionary. can you guess where she does her mission work? eastern europe: bulgaria, poland, russia. I couldn't believe i hadn't thought of her sooner. so after emailing her to ask her if she knew where we could find a bible to have overnighted, she emailed me back. and i mean RIGHT back. i hadn't talked to her in years and God reconnected us in an instant. what i didn't expect was what she did for vladik. she found a bible. the correct translation (because she knew what translation was correct having lived in that area). and had it overnighted to carie's house. the part that, at first, made us sad was that it arrived just hours after vladik's flight left. but the beautiful part. oh just wait...

our fear was that stuffing a bible in a ten year old's travel bag and making it through customs into a dictator-led nation would make for trouble for our sweet vladik. so God eased our fears, calmed our hearts and did something even greater. he delayed the overnight, missing vladik's delivery and instead is going to deliver the bible by other means. Vladik's translator from 2008 was in raleigh this summer. so carie and mitchell delivered vladik's bible to that translator who will enter their home country with the bible - able to defend why she has it if asked in customs - and she will take a two hour bus ride out into the country to deliver the bible to Vladik. can you imagine a bible being hand delivered to you by your sister in Christ? or by your sister in Christ whom you've never met but has poured God's ministry into your country for years (years, even, before you were born) only to see the fruit of her labor coming to light?! can you imagine the conversation that will follow as the translator enters Vladik's home...that the translator will get to smile as she hands Vladik the bible and tell him how God used his people in extraordinary ways simply because God loves Vladik SO much that he wanted him to have a copy of His word.

now that is love.

and when loralai woke up from her nap on Sunday afternoon and the first words out of her mouth were "wadik? wadik home?" I said, "yes baby. vladik went home." and so we prayed for him. we asked God to form Vladik's heart after His own - and to protect him and seal him with His word of life.

God's creation - i stand on it and breathe it in and smell it and smile knowing that the promised land given to us is a reminder of how much He loves us. and i look at the sunset and i see the stars and i think 'vladik sees this too'.

God, you are everywhere.