And So It Begins

I was overjoyed, when we thought we had a serious offer, to know that I would not have to “show” the house … needing to keep it in a continued state of neatness lest a realtor stop by with a prospective buyer. Now it begins! We listed on Tuesday and have an open house already this Sunday.

So after putting in a full day’s work we’re coming home each night to sorting, storing, cleaning and primping, and selling items listed on Craigslist. On Sunday I posted the 16-foot rowing scull and immediately received two inquiries. The serious buyer finally arrived on Tuesday night at 9:30 from Niagara, Canada! He was towing a trailer with a quad behind a huge pickup truck, on a buying trip to the States. After an hour situating and tying down the boat and all its pieces, the poor exhausted fellow was facing a four-hour drive home. We hope he made it safely!

Tomorrow our realtor comes with a photographer so we spent the evening de-personalizing and de-cluttering. We hope they don’t open many closets! After all, how many people store wicker seat cushions in the foyer coat closet?

On a side, but related note, while Facebook chatting with Cosmo’s new “daddy” today, I realized how fortunate it was to let him go before the selling madness began. Cosmo is doing well and, according to Matt, the “king of the castle” in his new home. I’d say he was fickle to have forgotten me so quickly, but Bill says Cosmo would need a brain in order to forget! I miss that big guy.

In My Easter Bonnet...

Growing up in the late fifties/early sixties I remember when women and girls wore bonnets and pretty dresses, and the mothers all had corsages on Easter Sunday. The effect at church was like a garden, maybe similar to the garden where the two Marys went on that first Easter Sunday to mourn for their Lord.

A shout-out to my friend Michelle-Reneé and her daughter Tasha, who were beautiful in their Easter hats this morning. Hats are Michelle-Reneé’s signature, setting her apart from the crowd. Even though bonnets have, for the most part, gone by the wayside, it was still a big deal to get a new dress for Easter even as an adult. But I feel a little bit guilty today for wearing slacks – for a late Easter (the latest it can be on the church calendar), it was chilly and rainy today and somehow a sleeveless dress wasn’t going to cut it. Thankfully, God doesn’t care what we wear to church. He’s only interested in our hearts.

Strange to think this will be our last Easter in Pittsburgh and at the church we’ve called home since 1993. Thirty years is the longest either my husband or I have lived in one city, but pulling up these roots isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I think we have to thank technology for that – it’s so easy to keep in touch with friends and family all over the globe. A happy and blessed Easter to my globe-trotting friends Cathy and Charlie Kelly, celebrating Down Under.

Not According to Plan

You may have heard the statement “If you want to make God laugh, show Him your plans.” And while He’s laughing we’re crying!

Given the day off in observance of Good Friday, I had many plans for the day here at home but instead I’m banished from the house for most of the day while the “mold man” treats the attic. It’s one of the few items on the long inspection punch list that we can’t fix ourselves, and for that I am blessed! Blessed because Bill knows how to make or repair just about anything, blessed because he has the health and energy to undertake these projects, and blessed because he is willing to do so.

But the flip side of that coin is that it never ends! If all had gone according to our plan, I would be spending the weekend packing in preparation for the move to our summer home on the boat and Bill would be putting the coat of anti-fouling paint on the hull. The unrelenting rain and chilly weekends this month put the kibosh on boat work. The termination of the sale agreement postponed the frantic need to sort and pack and contact moving companies. And I can’t do much needed house cleaning while mold spores are being sucked out of the attic today. I think I hear God giggling.

But the house will sell at the right time, Bill will have a good sunny day to finish prepping the boat, we’ll pack and store not a moment too soon and life will go on, more or less according to plan.

I firmly believe, and take comfort in knowing, that God’s plans are better, bigger, more exciting and more expansive than my plans. One of my favorite verses (which also happens to be my niece Shannon Wetzel’s confirmation verse) is from the prophet Jeremiah: “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”

I know God is smiling!

Stuff Part 2: Communefx Cause 2011

That old adage “One person’s trash is another’s treasure” will ring so very true for a former co-worker next weekend. My company is hosting a multi-vendor yard sale to raise funds for the mounting medical bills of a cancer victim, and to support the fight against cancer in general. My associates have been bringing in their “stuff” for over a month, filling up our warehouse, in hopes of generating a lot of money for this family. A special shout-out to Carrie Baker and Wendy Martin for their very hard work organizing and publicizing this event. You gals rock!

As I sort through and price my former treasures, I can’t help but say a prayer for the co-worker’s husband and ask God to give Tom healing, strength and comfort.  One of the writers of the Psalms tells us this: Our comfort in our suffering is this: Your (God’s) promise preserves our life.

I know that it’s extremely hard to hear these words, believer in Christ or not, when you or a loved one are suffering terribly. But it is a very real comfort when others reach out to help those suffering or in need. So, here on earth we do what we can, in His name or not, to ease another’s burden, while our Father in heaven does hear the cries of His suffering children and comforts them in ways we don’t know.

The Stuff of Life

Downsizing is fraught with decisions. What to keep, what to sell, to give away, to pitch out. Professional organizers have all sorts of rules of thumb about decision making but I found this weekend that the pointer finger works better: this one stays, that one goes…and let my husband move it!

But, really, it’s the heart that drives our decisions, isn’t it? That imperfectly handmade pottery bowl can hold loose change and safety pins forever as far as I’m concerned because I dearly love the person who gave it to me. On the other hand, I don’t need to keep four corkscrews even if all of them were gifts too.

Comedian George Carlin had a riff on “stuff” and noted that a house is just a place to keep your stuff. I now have a whole room full of stuff that will be eliminated in stages, beginning with a garage sale later this month and ending with the garbage man prior to moving. (To my Facebooks friends, that’s in addition to the stuff I posted for sale on FB.)

Lest you think that I made Bill do all the work, I kept track of the 363 steps I took from attic to basement and back, trying to put it all in one place for this photo. Better than a Stairmaster workout! Sad to admit, there’s still much, much more to add to the pile.

All these one-time treasures soon to be trash. I can’t help but contrast this to something that two guys named Matt and Luke quoted about stuff: “The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.” [The Message] Where do I most want to be?

One disappointing note of news: the rush to rid myself of stuff is gone. Our buyer backed out of the sale today. On the bright side, there’s another chance that the right buyer will love the contingency: Ocie (Outside Cat).

Pure Grace: The Back Story

There's almost always a pretty good story behind the one you hear. If you’re are wondering what woman in her right mind would willingly downsize from a walk-in closet with room for lots and lots of shoes to a shipboard clothes locker the size of a shoe box, here's the back story.

In 2006 I hit a milestone birthday and celebrated with a girls weekend away in Santa Fe, NM. While I was taking in art museums, galleries and lots of shops, my romantic husband was busy planning something big...really big...like 47 feet x 14 feet of floating big.

My 50th birthday surprise was a 1985 Harbormaster houseboat that needed quite a bit of TLC, but we agreed to give house boating a try for a year or two. Bill wanted to name her the Katherine Ann. While I wasn’t keen about that idea I did like the double meaning of my name and what it represents. "Pure Grace" honors my husband's parents, whose Will generously provided the funds for this purchase. Their gift to us, like God's gift of eternal life through His Son, is pure grace.

1962 -- Bill gets navigating signals from the helm.

However, the real story behind the back story is my husband's. When he was in junior high school his father felt that Bill and his brother needed to learn all the trades ... electrical, plumbing, welding, carpentry … so together they built, from scratch, a houseboat. The "Barrels of Fun" launched in 1960 and cruised the Des Plaines and Kankakee rivers for several years. From that time on Bill was hooked like a fish.

Stay tuned for more Adventures in Pure Grace!



For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.



City on a (Cardboard) Hill

Okay, so Chattanooga isn't really built on a cardboard hill, but it is full of hills, lots and lots of hills. And it does sport a few "cardboard hills", places where children of all ages enjoy the pleasure of sledding without snow.

There are so many similarities between Pittsburgh and this nearly southern city called "rock dwelling". Chattanooga, the fourth largest Tennessee city with a little over half a million residents in the metropolitan area, is also known as the Scenic City. It's almost equidistant from Nashville, Knoxville, Atlanta and Birmingham and for most of my family, just an 8-hour drive (hint, hint). Lookout Mountain is a popular tourist attraction that my family visited more than 40 years ago.

On a recent trip to check out marinas and housing, Bill and I met a lot of very friendly folks, many of whom were transplants from cities north and south (South Bend, Pittsburgh, New York, Atlanta, Miami). We were immediately welcomed by our realtor, Diane Burke, who spent most of Saturday taking us on a circle tour of the suburbs. Blessing: when asked whether there were any churches of our denomination (Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod) in the area, Diane replied "Mine!"

Two of the five marinas we visited are "5-anchor", coincidentally (or not) owned by the manufacturer of our houseboat. Blessing: as Harbormaster owners we were put closer to the top of the waiting list for a slip. Both marinas are in sheltered coves in park-like settings. We just have to get used to living under a cover, much needed against the hot summer sun.

One of my favorite contemporary Christian bands, Third Day, has a song called City on a Hill. The end of the song includes the following lines:

And I know that our salvation isn't based on the things we do
But it's only given by the grace of God
By the sacrifice of Jesus, and if we really did believe
We were born to share this message with someone

I was reminded of this song when we met some boaters tied up at a downtown dock. Under the name of their boat (Ultimate Therapy) was the notation Romans 11:36. I asked Jason Monday why that particular verse and he promptly quoted: For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.  Blessing!