Wedding of Daddy Lucas and Ruth

  Today was a happy day for Jonathan's father!

Not many men dare to get married just before they turn 87 years old!

But this one did.  

It was just a small, private wedding with family members and a few friends in the parsonage basement gathering room.

Granddaughter Rebecca lighting the candles. 

I thought Rebecca was beautiful. 

There was quite a boutonniere-pinning ceremony at the last minute.

Sam must have forgotten his comb!!!!! 

Since the other girls were involved in music, Crystal's grandpa asked if she would accept the honor of pinning on his boutonniere, and after pnning her own father's boutonniere, Crystal got to go back where her grandpa and the pastor were waiting

to try to pin their boutonnieres on, too! 

My turn, I guess! Dear Katherine! This wedding came together so nicely because of her quiet, helpful, creative help.  

Crystal's cousin Candace had driven from Missouri here with her, and Jonathan's dad had invited her to come to the wedding, too! So she helped with pinning corsages on the girls and videoing the wedding.

I caught a couple snaps of the girls practicing their wedding music in the hall. 

Last minute practice! Then the girls went out to the gathering room and began the prelude with "Blessed Assurance" and "As the Deer."

Then "Love Divine" was the cue for the men to get ready.

Pastor Kearney coming in...

... to the tune of "Canon in D."

Daddy Lucas about to pop his buttons!

Ruth lost her last sibling just a few months ago, but she had a cousin who lives in town and who was willing to come in with her and "give her away."

The vows.

 

The wedding ceremony was extremely simple and brief. Within minutes, they were pronounced man and wife.

And the kiss.

After which Jonathan's dad and Ruth had asked if Jonathan and I would sing an old love song called "Together."

After the loss of Mama and one and a half years of loneliness, the word "together" means so much to Daddy Lucas. 

It also means a lot to Ruth, who has never been married, and to whom it means so much to actually have a family to be part of now!

I love her already!

I remember how much the word "together" meant to me when Jonathan finally arrived in Kiev, Ukraine, and how bad I felt when he flew back to the States after our six week courtship, so that he could work and get ready to provide for a new wife.  

Will South Dakota Feel Like Home?

 

Before our last trip to South Dakota, I prayed for peace about moving there. This whole thing has seemed so surreal to me that it has been hard to feel sure that this place in South Dakota can truly be "home" to us. It might be God's will, based on what Jonathan feels, but does that mean it will feel like home? Can I be at peace?

After slogging through snow and gumbo, dry paths and willowy river banks for two and a half weeks, this still unfinished house in South Dakota was feeling more and more like home. It is still majorly primitive, but we are getting used to it, and finding a sort of routine.

And then one morning as I was working in the fifth wheel, most likely cleaning up after breakfast and thinking about a lunch menu, I saw this dove sitting outside my window. 

And I remembered my prayer for peace about this move and about this new home place.

And God sent a dove of peace to perch right outside my window! 

Small thing, perhaps, but not for me. Small things can mean a lot. 

And it meant even more when we had finally worked through an enormous amount of rigamarole to find a spot that the postal service would approve to put our mailbox (big enough for packages since our lane is too long for the postal carrier to deliver).

No, the postal service said, we may not put it at the end of our driveway because it was on a steep hill that was too close to a curve, and the road is a major route for semis. Here's one passing just after we set up our mailbox.

The postal service wanted us to set our mailbox way down the road, across the river, and way back inside a gate on someone else's private property by an already existing mailbox.

Excuse me??? 

Finally, we worked out something with our postal service that worked for both them and us.

I can have a nice walk through fields, hills, and draws to get to the mail box.

High fives!  

And having our own mailbox does wonders for me feeling like this may become "home" again after all.

"Resolved to Proceed"

Those first two days up there were cold and miserable. But Jonathan and Danny built up the fire and started right to work.

Jonathan got almost all the plumbing in, especially all the drains, and most of the water pipe, too.  

Danny helped finish framing--even into the evening hours which we lit with big lights connected to extension cords.  

More plumbing. 

All on his own Danny reorganized the basement and swept it up, me helping as I was able.  

Danny climbing across a steel beam to pay Jonathan a visit!

One highlight was when Jonathan would roast some of the big jar of organic, raw cashews he'd bought from Costco. 

A snack that even I was allowed to eat!

This is the kind of serving dish a man comes up with while his lady is back at the 5th wheel! 

For a week and a half Jonathan, Danny, and I worked there by ourselves, but then Tim and another young man came up for a few days. Tim and Danny put up the fireproof drywall between garage and house. This will help the house stay warmer at this point. 

Jonathan cutting gas pipe. He put in nearly all the propane pipes for our stove and dryer.

The young men dragging a dead tree up to the house to saw for firewood. The fire was eating up wood like it owned a sawmill!

Last Monday Jonathan took Danny to Rosebud to unload drywall and other materials for the remodel job there, and they worked there all day. It is a pain to have to unscrew the boards over the basement door every time they want to unload things into the basement, but because of rampant vandalism we have to unboard the door and then board it back up after each work day. It's one reason we chose to not live there but instead to find a place in the country off the reservation.

The road by mission headquarters still has snow piled in massive piles.

Again another storm came in before we left. The days were pretty miserable, but we just kept working. 

I kept thinking about the motto of my senior class when I graduated from Allegheny Wesleyan College, the words of William Bradford. 

"Committed to the will of God, and resolved to proceed."

We're no William Bradford, but the words of this motto are helping to hold me steady. 

Simply committed to the will of God," come snow, come wind, come weather,

come cancer, come hardship, come storm,

"committed," and "resolved to proceed."

Our House Is Under Contract!

Three weeks ago as we were getting ready for yet another work trip up to South Dakota, we were dealing with one house showing after another. One of the showings lasted and lasted.

I ended up driving back from the park where we'd gone for the hour showing but saw that the vehicles of the realtor and the interested people were still there. So I parked way down at the end of the circle out of sight but where I could see when the vehicles would leave. We were hungry and it was well past supper time.

Minute after minute went by, and I was about to start the van and drive around to give them a hint that they were way overstaying the one hour showing. I took a picture of our house from a distance away.

There it is.

 But I didn't. And I'm glad, because those are the people who made an offer on our house!

But we wouldn't know for sure until several days later. 

In the mean time, I was so overwhelmed with keeping the house spic and span for showings while trying to live an already very busy life

that I decided it would be better for me to pack up and go to SD with Jonathan and leave the house perfect for showings.

So that is what I did.  

I took some pictures of our beautiful home that Jonathan built us 22 years ago.

Here is the cozy, de-cluttered living room.  

Jonathan doing a repair.

Danny spreading fresh crushed concrete where the drive was extra muddy this year.

And then a couple days after we left for two and a half weeks in South Dakota, the showings suddenly dried up.

But all at the same time, an offer was made.

We counter-offered, but due to special reasons given, decided to accept the original offer. We felt we didn't have much choice.

So we worked through a number of online details and our house is now under contract. 

We are to move in early May.

And the Refrigerator Quits Working

This morning, I am ashamed to admit, I was about to host my own pity party. 

Last Sunday I was pitching in at the last minute to tell a story to the whole kit and kaboodle of native children at the Winner mission church, (how I love to help in that way!) but this Sunday I was back home in Colorado trying to find my way around my own kitchen

in which the refrigerator had just decided to quit working.

My tailbone was still hurting from ramming it into a sharp corner in the travel trailer in South Dakota a few days ago while I was trying to mop up the gumbo-muddy floor, and the injections I've been getting for my cancer were really, really sore and uncomfortable. 

There were welts with rash where the injection sites were.

I was behind with a cancer treatment and had too much to do so I had to stay home while Jonathan took off for choir practice. 

The choir is practicing "The Hallelujah Chorus" for Easter, with Carrie playing the piano accompaniment, and I would have loved to be part. But I couldn't. 

I hurt, I was sore, I had too much to do, and my fridge had quit working. 

The worst part was watching somebody else right under my nose get to do what I love to do and can't do.  

I love music, guys, and I have to stay home making stuff for another miserable cancer treatment.

I was focusing on that instead of on how Jonathan had plowed in and cleared the whole freezer for me so that we could keep things cold in coolers while we defrosted the freezer to see if that was the problem.  

Usually I try to do all the kitchen work since he works all day to take care of me and the family, but today he got right in the middle of the mess and helped.

I was focusing on the clutter on the counter instead of--well, something more cheerful. 

I realized I was about to host a pity party.
I was really sinking into envy about something I wished I could do but couldn't while somebody else got to breeze along as usual. 

Should other people stay home just to join my pity party just because I have cancer and can't do the things I like to do?

Should I expect others to hover over me cooing their condolences just because every time I sit down my tailbone reminds me it hit something sharp a few days ago?

 

My kids are trying to be patient with me, even as I am with them. 

Rose let me know she was so glad we had come home, as they were getting lonely here. 

That totally cheered me because I was afraid they were just glad to be rid of their old mom who has cancer now, and then I come home and fall apart and they have to be patient with me and try to get me cheered up again.

If I fall off the cliff into a grumpy spell, it sometimes takes me a while to get out of it.  

But Rose's kind words pulled me right out. 

I am thankful I could still go to church, even if we did start a little late. I was pretty whoozy, and I was having a hard time getting up and down in church.

Sore tailbones and welts with rash, and weariness with overwhelm were getting to me. I was having a hard time paying attention to the sermon.

And then the preacher was getting ready to serve the Lord's supper.

"We don't come to the Lord's table because we are worthy,"he said.  "We come because we are forgiven." 

The rest of his message about Saul's conversion and St. Augustine's conversion and about our own conversions went sailing right over my head, but that one sentence, I could get.  

"Not because I am worthy, but because I am forgiven."

When the bread came by, I took my piece.

I'm not supposed to eat gluten, but I took a piece of bread.

I wonder, Lord, when I cannot eat gluten because of cancer, is it okay if when the time comes to partake of the bread, I just touch it to my lips and give it a silent kiss

to thank You for forgiving someone so unworthy as I?