Delighting in the Sabbath

"If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the LORD's holy day honorable,
and if you honor it by not going your own way
and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,

then you will find your joy in the LORD,
and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob."
The mouth of the LORD has spoken.

-Isaiah 58:13-14

I have never been good at making myself do things, especially things that are good for me. I don't drink as much water as I should. I'm not nearly as good as I should be at working out. So it's no surprise that the thing that would be good for me spiritually - setting aside a day for God - is not what I do. Instead, I do exactly what the above verse says I should NOT do. I go do "as I please."

I could try to list the reasons that I don't set aside a day for God, but none of them are any good because I shouldn't be trying to come up with reasons at all. It should not be a debate. I need to spend at least one day a week with God.

And while I do feel like I'm getting closer to God by listening to the Bible while I drive in my car, I think that that's still a way of fitting God into my life instead of fitting myself into the life that God has for me. I need to make more of an effort to go God's way instead of going "my own way." So this is my commitment to myself (and the handful of people who actually read my blog) to be better about setting aside at least one day a week for God.

An Update on Our House

We have a signed contract. We had the inspection. The sellers fixed the few issues we found during the inspection. And then we hit a roadblock...

The bank sent out someone to appraise the property's value to figure out how much they were willing to loan to someone buying that house. They appraised the house for twenty thousand dollars less than the price we have on the contract with the sellers.

If the sellers were willing to accept that price, it would be great for us because we would get to pay twenty thousand dollars less, but the sellers won't agree to that price. And we can't magically come up with that much money. So the only step we were able to take was to appeal the appraisal.

We appealed the appraisal over a week ago and we're still waiting to hear back from the bank. But we've heard from our relator that he has never heard of an appraisal being overturned. We're still hopeful because we LOVE that house, but we're also looking at other houses. At this point, we haven't found a house that we like as much as our house (or I suppose I should say our "almost" house?) so we're more than a little frustrated.

I even had a dream about looking at houses and accidentally standing our relator up for an appointment that he'd scheduled, which (for the record) didn't actually happen. We're going to look at four more houses tomorrow night, two of which we've already seen and are possible back-up options if we aren't able to get our house. We'll have to see what happens.

Look what we just bought for our new house

That's right. Kissing Dutch people! Those of you that were at our wedding know that we had kissing Dutch people as our cake topper since we met in Holland, Michigan. So it only seems appropriate that we would have some kissing Dutch people for our yard as well.

They will definitely be getting a fresh coat of paint as well as some personalized touches (the boy will be blond and the girl will be brunette), so they should be much cuter when they actually reside in our yard. I will definitely take a picture once I have them repainted to show you!

Have you seen this movie?

Because if not, you need to. We finally watched it this weekend and absolutely loved it.

My favorite part is when Maya Rudolph's character, Verona, talks about how she had a orange tree in her yard when she was growing up. Her dad always went out and looked to see if there were any oranges on the tree, so one day Verona's mom takes her and her sister out to the orange tree early in the morning and they hang all kinds of fruits on the tree. Then they hide and wait for her dad to come out and look at the tree. When he sees the fruit, he believes it for a full minute before he figures out that it can't possibly be real. From that point on, Verona says that sometimes a member of their family would go out and hang fruit from the orange tree.

The thing I love about that part of the movie is that it seems exactly like something my family would do. We have had a number of continuing jokes over the years. One of the longest running ones was a rubber spider that made appearances in various places around the house to scare me and my sister - but mostly me... For some reason, to me, these continuing jokes are one of the things that remind me of the importance of family.

Frustration

I thought it was about time that i gave you a glimpse of our house, but I can't get the pictures to work. They're too big so when I put them in a post you can only see about half of them. Does anyone know how to fix that?

Review of my goals: February

Even though it's a little late, here's my review of my goals for February.

1. Read (and record and reflect on the books i read)

I have been doing really well with this. I think I got through at least two or three books in February.

2. Read the Bible. That's right. The WHOLE thing.

I have had a breakthrough. Did you know that you can get the Bible on CD? That's right. The version i have from the library is split up into several volumes and i'm listening to volume two. So even though i'm only partway through Genesis in my reading, in my listening i've made it through the last half of Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and i only have a few chapters of Isaiah left. The thing i really like about listening is that it forces me to listen to every single word instead of skimming over the parts that i know really well, which i know that i have a tendency to do.

3. Write letters.

I wrote birthday cards for February, but haven't done my birthday cards for March yet. I will definitely get on that!

4. Spend ten minutes a day moving my body.

I've been doing awful at this. I've just started to work out again in the last few days, but i think now that the weather is getting nicer, it will definitely be easier to get myself moving.

5. Commit to following my bliss, meaning that i'm going to stop doing things because i feel like i should but because i want to.

Andrew and i bought a house! That's a huge part of following my bliss because i can't wait to start living in a place that we can paint!!!