Amanda

Death of the body comes to all of us at some time in our lives. After all, the price of sin is death. Unfortunately, death has come to a loved one all too quickly.

Some of you may have met her at my wedding. She was a bridesmaid, walked down 3rd. She was Amanda. Amanda was 24. Amanda had potential. She had so much to live for, a family who loved her deeply, including an extended family who felt she was more of a sister than a cousin. A boyfriend who also loved her. She would have married and had many children. Now I know that you always see these things mentioned with the death of one so young, but it is so true. Amanda committed suicide after a 4 year struggle with addiction to prescription medication.

I remember the good times with her. I remember the trip to Manistee, where I swear my Uncle must have hated us! :) If the truth be told though, I think he enjoyed the torture we put him through. “Are we there yet? What time is it? I have to go to the bathroom!” There were 6 phrases that we repeated ad nauseum for probably an hour. One for each kid. Yes, my uncle took 6 children, all under the age of 10, I believe, on a road trip by himself. Boy was he brave.

I remember the Christmas trips, where we stuck together almost like glue. We were the only two girls after all, out of what was at the time, 7 grandchildren. We were seriously outnumbered! Lauren joined us later and it was a few years before she was able to enter into the games with the girls.

I remember the playing Barbies! Neither one of us could give up our childhood toys until we were well into the teenage years!

Then things changed. I first noticed it when I was 21, she would have been almost 18, or maybe she was 18. It may have been the addiction, it may have simply been a personality conflict, I don't know. I just remember the sudden change in personality towards me. Lauren was 12 by then, and it was suddenly Amanda and Lauren, with me as a third wheel. Which, if I think about it, was only natural. I was about to enter into the adult world, I was no longer a child, I was about to enter an entirely different part of my life.

It saddens me that we drifted apart, for whatever reason. We may have had our differences, but she was family, and no matter what, I would have fought for her. The Amanda I knew in the early years is not the same Amanda who showed during our last few encounters.

I find anger to be a comfort. The anger masks the pain. The anger keeps my shoulders back and my chin up. The anger gives me the blind determination to never put myself in a situation where I will ever cause my family this much pain. If you are considering suicide as a way out, wake up. Be real. Do you really believe that the people in your life think they would be better off without you? Do you know what suicide says to those who are left behind? That you didn't care enough about them to fight for your life, to stick around, to love and to be loved by them. Life is not all about you. And death is not all about you.

Be wary of drugs, all of them. They all have their evil. Watch your children, watch your friends. I can only pray as Andrew and I look at starting our family that God will watch over our children and keep them from the evils of this world. I pray that our children will be born with a strong sense of self, a strong will (yes mom, I want them to be stubborn and willful, after all it served me well, even if I will have to fight them tooth and nail).

I'll leave you with these parting words, taken from the cover of her funeral bulletin, which I can only find myself wishing that Amanda had taken them to heart:

Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. Because He lives all fear is gone. Because I know He holds the future. And life is worth the living, just because He lives.

Christmas in Iowa - 2007

Well the holidays are almost over. Just one more "holiday" to go, and Andrew's birthday (29.....he's almost old!) We went to Andrew's family for Christmas and spent the day with Grandma Shirley and all the cousins. Thought I would post some pictures for you.



Here's Grandma Shirley and Andrew!



And Nathan. If any of you remember him, he was the ring bearer in our wedding. My, what a difference 4 years makes!



Well I hope you all have had a wonderful holiday! Merry belated Christmas, may you know the reason for the season and have a wonderful New Year!

Oh my gosh, we are finally finished! :)

Ok so after two years, and a few soap operaish moments (ie Andrew trying to chop his arm off with the chop saw, instead of the piece of wood he was attempting to cut), our basement is finally finished! Unfortunately, I don't have any before pictures (bad me! I have an excuse. I didn't have a camera until July of this year!!!) So you'll just have to use your imagination as I describe how it USED to be.

When we moved in back in November of 2005, you would walk into the room and half of the room was just the cement wall and the other half was covered in the 70's most popular style of wood paneling! The stairs were completely closed in so you had about a doorway's amount of room to get into them and it was just one big huge dark, dirty room. The furnace and hot water heater were just sitting one side of the room, completely open.

So we decided to take the one big room and give us 4 smaller rooms. One room became a storage area. We moved the washer and dryer hook ups to a different corner and made the 2nd room a laundry room/utility area. The third room enclosed another small storage space while closing in the hot water heater and furnace. The largest room is now our third "living room." We already have a family room and formal living room upstairs. Our already large 1700 square foot house just became an even larger 2000 square foot house. Yikes. I don't know what to do with all the space! We already got lost in all the space we had before. We also knocked out half the wall along the stairway in order to make a nice bannister area.

Adding all of this space also allowed us to move the office from our third bedroom to the basement. So we now have two guest bedrooms! :) I am so thrilled. It looks wonderful. Andrew did the bulk of the work with help from my father, his father, our friends Mike, Paul and John, my mother and I. So... Here are some pics!

Snow!

We had our first snowstorm of the year on Thursday! Didn't amount to much, but I love inclement weather! Everything but regular boring old rain. That's just boring. Freezing rain is expected today. I'll post some photos if it gets to be anything good. Too bad it's cancelled our Christmas party for this evening, but oh well. A nice day to just sit inside and look at all the pretty snow and freezing rain!

I have to brag.

Andrew just landed his student teaching assignment! He begins January 7, 2008! I am so proud of him and know that he will be the best teacher! He will be working with a kindergarten class at a school near our church.

Yay!




My Hero.

So it's been awhile

Ok. I realize it's been almost a month since I last posted. But you have to forgive me, I've been incredibly busy!

To start, at the end of October and the beginning of November, I had a total of 2 weeks out of the office and away from home. So I get back in town, for the first full week in the office and at home and catch up. Then I have a half week because of the holidays. One day of the holidays was spent with my parents and brother, then one day with some of Andrew friends from out of town, then 2 days up in Iowa with his parents and to see his grandma who is unfortunately in the hospital. We found out that week that she broke her knee and had a softball sized tumor in that area! It also unfortunately came back that it was malignant. But at last word, they found that it was just localized to that area and have since removed the tumor, so the hope is that all is out now and she will make a full recovery! We are continuing to pray for her, but at this point in time it appears all will be well.

So I get back from that trip and then I have to leave immediately for Huntsville for business for 3 days. So that puts me to the end of November already! And immediately upon my return, I am working like mad in my family room and my basement! For Christmas, my parents have completely remodeled my old wood paneling room. (pictures will be posted as soon as it is completed!) And our basement is at the point of needing carpet so we had to do the last minor detail work (staining the bannister, painting the doors, painting the trim, covering the ugly poles in the middle, cleaning it out of all the junk that has been used to work on it).

And now, I have to find the time to sit down and write out a Christmas letter (We've been married coming up on 4 years and have yet to send out Christmas greetings) and create an invitation to our New Years party!! Oh and somewhere in the last month, I had to go visit friends of ours who just had a baby! Well I didn't have to go, but who can pass up looking at little ones?? I won't say it was easy keeping the green eyed monster at bay, because it wasn't, but was worth it in the end.

Yes I still struggle with the whole miscarriage thing. I keep thinking that I'd be 6 months along now and probably showing. Every time I hear of another pregnancy successfully carried to term, I want to just cry. But my day will come and I am determined to leave it in God's hands and rely on Him to provide us with the children we want when the time is right. There must have been some reason that I had to go through this and I am just waiting on God to show me why.

Andrew is still looking for a place to student teach. We are praying it will be this spring so he can start teaching his own classroom next fall. I am keeping up the hope!! Pray for him on that! He is down to his last "class" before student teaching so it is very exciting that he is just that close to being done!

Well I think I wrote a book trying to catch you all up on the King's. Next blog will be with pics of my new family room and basement!

New Orleans Volume 3, 4 and 5!!

Yes, I know. You can yell at me now, I can take it. But I have a good reason to have not posted the remaining reports until now. That is I was soooooooooooo exhausted from sanding, painting (well priming) and ripping up floors that the last thing I wanted to do at 9 at night was think! So please accept my sincere apologies. Here are the updates!

Well Wednesday, Thursday and Friday consisted of the same tasks as before. We began priming the house on Wednesday while Leanne and Dennis continued sanding and adding more mud to the already indecent amount that was currently on the walls. Of course, this was after Leanne took off the 3 inches of mud so that Dennis could add the final coat. Three of us went off to a different house to install cabinets, so that left 8 of us to finish up in the shotgun house. We finished by Thursday afternoon.



On Friday, since we finished early on the shotgun house, we headed to a different house that was right behind one of the canals that broke. Forgive me please, I don't remember which one it was. This house ended up being placed on cinderblocks to prevent further flooding should an event of Katrina's magnitude strike again. However, judging from the water line on the house, it seems that this area also received 6-8 feet of water before it was all said and done.



We spent the morning here pulling up the original subflooring. Boy was that fun! Destruction has an odd way of being much more fun than construction! :) Don't ask me why, it just is.













And last, but not least, here is a photo of most of the crew. This crew was the one that worked in the houses.




Linda's phone-dialing skills have been given a workout, as she's been spending most of her time contacting clients. She's heard some really heartening stories as well as some sad tales. Over and over again she has heard how much people appreciate the work of the volunteers who come to help them. It is good to know that we really do make a difference in the lives of people.

Peggy and Joyce served us just wonderful meals. They received a much deserved break on both Wednesday and Thursday nights as the church provided the meals that night. Neither one was as good as the food that Peggy and Joyce cooked up for us!!

We all arrived home safe and sound on Saturday evening. We were all exhausted but gratified by the experience of helping to return two more families to their homes. There is much to be done still, and we are looking at again going back next spring.