Irish Babies

Irish babies are cut of different cloth than American.  They warrant unique and special treatment as you will see below.
They're far too royal for diapers...they wear 'nappies' instead.
Opposed to American babies who get gas...they simply have 'wind'.
When the wind produces some substance, they have a dirty 'bum'.
He doesn't use a pacifier, it is a 'dummy' for sure!
Not only are they royal, they also are quite sturdy.  They don't scream or cry, they are very prone though to 'shout'!
Nathanael's father doesn't say 'good boy' or 'big boy'.  No, much more is expected out of him as Jordan says in an upward, Irish lilt, "Good man!"
And, believe it or not, they don't simply use a blanket to keep warm, it takes a 'rug' to do the job!
My!  I must say that Nathanael is a wee pet. 
Seriously, it has been a great time thus far!  We have enjoyed visiting with Jordan and Naomi and her mother, Hazel.  Hazel is on medical leave so we get to see a good amount of her.  Last year, she was quite busy with wedding preparations, of course, so we couldn't visit as much.  Today, we also visited Naomi's grandparents.  That was a sweet time.  Her grandmother has advanced Alzheimer's but her caregiver said she is always in a pleasant mood.  That's the way to be!
Jordan and Naomi are such solid, secure parents.  They don't at all seem stressed by their new job and are enjoying Nathanael well.  It is good to see and gives one anticipation for the future good things yet to happen!  Jordan is already having family devotions with a children's Bible story book, and he is coaching Naomi well in how he wants Nathanael trained!!

Nov. 28th

Heading to Ireland today to see our newest grandson, Nathanael Jordan.  So kind of Jordan to marry a sweet Irish lassie so we just 'have' to travel to Ireland now and then! :-)  In reality, it is intriguing to watch God's will unfold as we wonder what each new season of our children's lives will reveal.
I am homesick and excited both at the same time!  I don't think I would be attempting a trip like this without Mikah and Morgan's help back at the home front!  So blessed to have my mama traveling with me.

Preparing for Christ's Birthday

Tonight we are decorating for Christ's birthday.  There are several things to love and appreciate about these actions.  One is the frequent reminder they are to the birth of our God come to earth as a helpless child.  Each time we look at the decorations, we are reminded of the 'Reason for the season'.  I truly don't think I would focus on Christ's birth as much without all the efforts we put into Christmas.  I believe the Lord knows our hearts and how easily we forget and get caught up in earthly, day-to-day routines.  No wonder He had the Israelites use feasts, symbols, and review to help drive into their hearts all that He had done.
Secondly, it is soo wonderful to have family traditions.  As we're decorating, I can feel our hearts being bound closer together and tenderness toward one another growing.  Memories are very sweet!  We're making them tonight.  I'm also remembering the times when Jordan, Jake and Morgan helped us decorate...and missing those times!  What would I do without Mikah, Ariana, Jasmine, Chet and Don here tonight to fill the hole that has been left?  Yes, my heart still aches at times for our 3 children who have left the nest.  I cannot argue that they are following God's will and blessing my heart in that way...but it was so sweet to have them here!
We had a grand Thanksgiving at Mom and Dad's.  I so enjoyed visiting with different ones...Melissa, Simonne, Marilyn, Jenn....  God is good!
A sweet and funny thing this week with Jasmine.  She loves to shop and I was going to Grabill to pick up a few things and told her she could go along.  She got very excited and grabbed her coat and shoes!  She talked my ear off in the car!!!!  I finally told her to hush after a few stops.  However, I discovered another Amish store called Katie's Country Corner.  How neat!  Big fabric section (wish they had colors other than black/blue!:-)).  Small section of furniture with Shipshewana quality.  Big housewares section...and a dollar store upstairs!  Well, I was finding some things I had been looking for.  I gathered up something here and something there as I went.  As I came to the stairs back down, I turned to make sure Jasmine was following me...and she was right on my heels...and she had followed my example too.  Her arms were full of things she thought she needed too!  A bag of balloons.  A couple baby doll bottles.  A package of glue sticks (oh, she LOVES those).  I could only chuckle and ask her to give me the things to put back.  How simple it must seem to watch adults stroll through a store and effortlessly pick up this and that...and walk out of the store with them.   Hmmm...we have it pretty good here in America.

Getting Ready

It's less than a week now until I get to go to Ireland with my mom!  Preparations are necessary!  I spent some time last night making Ariana's school schedule for a couple weeks, and her babysitter and med instructions.  We are using our babysitter lots the month of December.  I'll be in Ireland 10 days and Mikah will be in China for 3 weeks.  Plus, where Mikah and I work, they need a lot of extra help since we're filling in for each other and there are others taking time off too.  Not to mention, we just took on a new client!
Today, I am taking the van in for a tire repair and oil change, making some pies and getting ready to head to Kokomo this evening for Thanksgiving.
About a week ago, I was sitting in prayer meeting again being thankful for a local body of Christ.  It is like an anchor for our family.  It has great value in our lives and in the raising of our children.  One of the senior saints was sharing that night about how  Christians in America tend to try too hard to be nice.  Instead of obeying God and ruffling feathers, we put the premium on being 'nice'.  There's a lot of truth to that.  May God help me - I know I have felt years of pressure to conform to making people happy and I have also experienced 'abrasion' when I haven't made people happy.  May I only please the Lord...which will bring ultimate joy to all those who are hungry for truth.

Monday's Musings

We had a good day of school today.  Ariana is doing well on her Spanish and really whipping through her math and English paces!  We're reading out loud, Eric Liddell, and that is very enjoyable!  Mikah has agreed to do some schooling with Jasmine each day.  We've been working on ABC and 123 identification.  What she's really advanced in is her homemaking skills!  She loves to help around the house...and she's great at knowing where everything is!
Jordan called this morning and got me thinking about seeing them at the end of this month!  So I had to ask Mikah to play her special wedding piece arrangement of "Praise My Soul..."  It about brought me to tears!  I am so blessed to have her around to play and sing so beautifully.  BTW, she and Morgan did an exceptional duet at church yesterday too!

I have told Ariana that she could get an email account so that I can write her when I'm in Ireland.  She is so excited and started thinking of names for her email.  We talked about simple ones like "alitchfield" and fun ones like "guatemalagirl".  Then, in the middle of church, she whispered, "I know what I want my gmail to be!  "JordanandNaomi"!  I had to smile and told her we would talk about it after church...  :-)  That's sweet!  I must say every one here loves them so much!

So exciting that I get to see Jordan and family the end of November and Jake and family the end of December.  Can hardly wait!  It will be great to see how much Rees has grown and changed!

Revival Service with Youth

I wish everyone could hear the message we had last night.  Bro. Sankey preached on having the peace of God in our hearts and what that means.  He spoke on prayer, praise, clear conscience, criticism, getting out of our comfort zone for God and other things.  I appreciated how he said it's not enough to have a clear conscience - we need to have a healthy conscience to begin with.  The devil can give us all kinds of 'impressions' to confuse us and our flesh can excuse truth so easily.  Get into the Word to develop a healthy conscience!
We had the youth from our area at the service.  It was a blessing to see them respond to pray at the altar and to testify.  There probably should have been more adults there as well...but God only knows.
Yesterday was my birthday and I want to share the birthday card ARiana gave me.  It was made out of 4 or five sheets of paper put into a booklet with stickers she had.  It was a book of 'poems'. This is what they said:

"Flowers live and flowers die, but you and me are side by side forever."
"Mom, we are like two flowers growing side by side learning how to love and help each other."
"Mom, our family is a bunch of flowers.  When times are rough, we stick together."
"Mom, we are both different in many ways, but when it comes to love, we are the same."
"Mom, when times get tough, we have a joy, forgiveness and love."

This gift so touched my heart.  It's the first card she has made me which does not refer to the darkness of her past.  If she feels as secure in our home as this writing indicates...it would sooo bless my heart!!
Blessings!

Works of God

Seeing God move and work in service again tonight, makes me thankful for men and women who can tune into the Spirit enough to be used of Him.  Not just having gifts and abilities, but a heart tuned toward the Lord.  The message on taking up our cross and yielding all to Christ was clear and powerful.
It was a joy to hear Pastor Clark share how God is working in a young man's heart at the school.  A young man who has a very difficult home life and who had never touched a Bible until going to this school.
Also encouraging, was seeing young people/children in the service obey God.  There's a row of 5 girls ages 10-15 ? who sit right in front of us.  They are responding so well to the move of God....testifying, lifting hands of praise and going to the altar when needed.  This has been a blessing to Ariana.  Our church and another church are joining together for this revival so the other girls are from the other church.  It helps me to see Ariana right in there.  She can't hardly contain herself.  She is praising the Lord frequently through the hymns and sharings.  She told me tonight she wanted to run around the church.  She also wanted to go to another room just to 'scream'. :-)  We really trust the Lord to have wisdom in how to guide her in these areas.  She is much more emotional and expressive than the rest of us Litchfields and we want her to be herself...with discernment!  I was also sitting there tonight thinking, "I'm surprised Ariana is getting anything out of the service tonight, the way I've had to scold her today."  I felt the Lord reminding me then that I had similar feelings when our other 4 children were younger.  I love to be at peace and, believe it or not, giving firm instruction is disturbing to me...so I often was surprised when my kids were as resilient as they were and responded to the Lord as they did after what they had to hear from me sometimes (truth, but not easy).  I need so much more patience now than I did then...good thing I'm older!  I am trusting the Lord!  Even with my brutal honesty, I am picking up from Ariana that I still am nicer than some adults in her past...thank God.

Apples and God's Moving

We had a good service Tuesday night.  Bro. Sankey charged us to have a listening ear toward the Lord.  Morgan sang a beautiful solo of a hymn arrangement.
Today, we made applesauce with the apples I purchased.  It was great to have Mikah and Ariana's help!  We put up about 3 dozen quarts - a good supply for the year.
There was a time of disciplining with one of the children which left me wrung out and hurting.  It is a real battle we wage and boy do I feel it sometimes!!!  The Lord has put in me a determination to do what I can to allow Him to have the upper hand and not the flesh which is trying to rise up.
Tonight was a truly good service!  We could feel the devil fighting.  Andrew was trying to pump us to obedience the best he could, but we weren't responding all too well.  Bro. Sankey got up to preach and one lady stood and gave a heart felt testimony.  Things began to move then and there was testimony after testimony with a couple confessions.  We could then feel God's presence with it.  Bro. Sankey ended up exhorting rather than preaching and there was a time around the altar.  I was thankful for his sensitivity to the Spirit during the meeting.
It is GOOD to have the presence of the Lord!!

Tuesday, November 8th

I worked last night.  What a blessing to get paid to sleep!  Not to mention how cooperative and upbeat my client tries to be.  I felt God encouraging me as I did the preliminaries to be hired at this work.  It truly has been a blessing.  I am a mom who was hired by the recommendation of my daughter.  Mikah already worked for Seasons and they were more than happy to hire me because they liked her so much!!  Praise the Lord!

Today, I am having Sarah Paulus with me to home school with Ariana.  I hope to do it for a day a week or so.  The Pauluses are one of those one-of-a-kind families that you never can quite get over how wonderful they are!  Truly one of the blessings of our obedience in moving to Fort Wayne.  Joanna needs to finish her naturopathic studies so I'm hoping that she'll have some extra time today to work on that while I have Sarah.  Ariana also loves having another girl to school with.  It has been fun!  It is great to have a Christian young lady for ARiana to spend time.  She really appreciates it.  She has some non-Christian friends over sometimes and it's really hard for her to learn the social skills she is behind on when there are inappropriate things going on.

Our church is having revival services this week and I am excited what God will do!

New day

I start this blog to give me opportunity to muse and to record what is going on in my life and in my heart.  FB is not adequate for true musing...you have to keep things short.

I title this "Trust in the Lord with all Your Heart" as this seems to be the theme of my life...especially as a mom.  I am trusting Him many moments during the day to give me direction on how to both love and discipline.

I suppose the same could be said of my interactions with my husband and with others around me.  Trusting Him to help me know what to do and how to respond.

May it be all the more so!