catch up

Another month behind us. Each day seems to fly by!

Multiple times I've attempted to post something, anything, but have been unsuccessful thus far. Here's a bit of an update on what's going on with us...

• We had the privilege and pleasure of spending a week in Southern California in late June! It was such an encouragement to see family and close friends. We got to take part in celebrating our sweet niece's 1st birthday and Spencer was in a wedding of some friends from high school. We kept the rest of the week pretty low key, as I wasn't feeling very well. While Spencer ran around helping friends prepare for the wedding, I hung out at my parent's house and slept a lot. Our apologies to those of you who we couldn't visit or spend time with--we truly wanted to see as many of our dear friends as possible, but were limited due to my health. Despite remembering to bring our camera, I didn't take ANY pictures! When I'm not feeling well and am in a social situation, I often don't remember/ feel up to taking pictures. I'm sad about that now, wishing I had photos of our time with our loved ones. Oh well. It was still a great time :)

• Spencer's working full time for our landlord this summer. Repairing, mowing, chainsawing, building, digging, plumbing and electrical, flooring, etc. We're both so thankful for this job--flexible hours, a fair and generous employer, good pay, and the actual work is fun and interesting to Spencer--God has provided for us so graciously! Although on break for the summer, he's still doing school related stuff, as he has quite a bit of data to process and analyze from his research cruise in May. He and his classmates are working on writing an abstract for the paper they plan on presenting at an oceanography conference in the Fall. As I type, he's sitting next to me happily playing around with and programing data... My husband is such a cute scientist!

• I admit that this summer has been quite difficult and painfully lonely for me. I find myself looking back on last summer, when my health began to go downhill, and become discouraged that I've made very little progress since then. Feeling horrible the majority of the time and not knowing why can be so frustrating! I do, however, have "okay" days here and there, and the frequency of those "okay" days seems to be slowly increasing, which is encouraging. I've been trying so hard to have an optimistic attitude and often tell myself and others that I'm slowly getting better, because I really think I am. But then soon after I report that I'm doing better, I promptly have another bout of feeling miserable and being barely functional and often don't have the energy to re-update people that I'm doing worse again and need help, prayer, etc. So frustrating!

It's been a rough time for us with me being ill, but we take joy and comfort in the fact that God is sovereign and good. He has been so faithful to provide for us and we rejoice in seeing the fruit that is being born out of this trial. Praise the Lord for showing us such mercy and kindness! His grace is truly sufficient.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.