Costa Rica update

 So, these are the walls. The walls that the powers that be at Hogar De Vida, the orphanage in Costa Rica that I'll be going to in February, have decided we should paint. Yeah, a little intimidating for sure!!

You know how you have thoughts in your head about how things should be? Well, this is nothing like anything that was in my head!!!

I do have to say that there will be a team coming in January from another church that will prime them for us, so they will be white. That I can visualize for sure. However, the enormity of their sheer size. My goodness!!! Each panel is at least

6ft x 6ft!!. The one really large one, they have opinions about what we should do on it. Oh boy, opinions equal expectations. God what have you gotten me into???

One thing is for sure, God is stretching me this season. I feel like this is a lesson is trusting Him. At this point, I feel like I truly have no other option. I do not know what to do with these walls. All I can do is trust that He will guide us. I have an amazing team and they all have creative minds and I have no doubt that they will have ideas I have not dreamed of and that God has had control of.

We have begun our meetings as a team, which just makes this all so real. This is really going to happen. I'm trying to really lean into the excitement of the other team members and just really glean and learn from each of them. Especially those that have been there before, that are already familiar with the wonder that is Hogar de Vida.

A little bit about this place we're going; Hogar de Vida means, Home of Light. It is located in Atenas Costa Rica.  There are roughly 30 children from infants to about 6th grade that call this place home. They've been taken from homes that were anything but light. Here at Hogar de Vida, they receive shelter, education, nutrition and most of all love. This is a place they encounter Christ and His love. I find it just amazing that there are people that are able and willing to take these children in. That seems like such a huge daunting task to me. My heart would shatter into a million pieces for each child every time. How do you work past that? I'm so grateful that God has put people like Tim and Dena in the position and the calling to do this and for all the people that work there day in and day out loving on these children.

I guess also, since I have your attention I should mention that this trip will cost about $1500.00. I fully trust that since this was God's idea He'll make sure that I raise that amount of money. However, I do have to do my part and ask for the support. I must stress though that it's not just the monetary support I so very much need but also the support of your prayers for myself and our whole team.

Anyways, if you do want to donate, you can always send a check to:

Lakeland Community Church
N3181 Hwy 67
Lake Geneva Wi 53147

Please just put "Costa Rica" in the memo of the check  but not my name anywhere on the check.

Or of course in this age of fabulous technology you can always donate online using THIS link, there will be a place to put my name in.

Of course all donations are tax deductible, just let me know and I'll be sure to get you a tax form if you let me know.

I'm looking forward to the rest of this leaning experience. I believe that in this, God is going to reveal Himself in little pieces, layer by layer and if I'm not trusting in Him and paying attention I might miss something. You can bet that I am hyper-focused on Him right now. I don't want to miss a thing!!

the little things

If you know me at all, you know I love my husband. There are not words in my vocabulary to accurately describe how much I love my husband.

There is just something so incredible about our marriage and if you would've talked to me about what I thought marriage would be like before I was married, our marriage is NOT what I would've described. This is totally not what I had in mind. I don't think my mind could've fathomed something quite so wonderful.

Just a little background on us; we met in school, begun dating in our senior year. I am not shy now, nor was I then. We hung out with the same group of friends but weren't exactly friends ourselves. However, one day I just plopped myself down on his lap. He didn't say so then, but I later learned he didn't really think that was okay. LOL. I'm so glad I did it!

We dated for a little over 5 years before getting married in May of 1991. It snowed on our wedding day. Thank you midwest weather for forever keeping us on our toes. It was lovely and full of residual effects from the 80's, big hair, poofy shoulders on my wedding dress, the whole 9 yards, well, minus any fluorescent colors thank goodness.

We have been married now about 23.5 years and it's been good. I let you in a little secret, we don't fight. We never have. So you may say, oh well that's not healthy, you need to do that. I think we would if we ever had anything to fight about but we don't. One thing we do really well is communication. We talk, we share and we compromise and we are respectful of one another.

I'd love to tell you our marriage is so awesome because we've always put God first. We haven't. We've always believed in God, but up until about 7 years ago He wasn't really part of our marriage. I can tell you though that since God has become the center of our lives, our marriage is even better, everything is better.

If I had one thing to share to other married couples it would be to do the little things. The little things that don't really seem like a big deal to you, but to your spouse can mean the world.

For example, Jerry always goes to bed way before I do, almost always asleep before I get into bed. However every night when I go to get into bed, he's fluffed my pillows for me. It's not really a big deal, I mean it takes nothing to fluff my own pillows. Yet he knows it's something I like to do before I get into bed so he does it for me. That little gesture just means so much and shows me that he loves me.

In our house we take medicine, some of us more than others, because of this we have those daily pill containers. I fill his up every time I fill my own. It's not really a big deal, but I know he appreciates it and I'm happy to do it because it makes him happy. It takes me literally 5 minutes to do it.

Something we've been intentionally doing lately is leaving each other little unexpected love notes. They're not long lengthy mushy gushy things, just a couple sentences here and there tucked in places you don't expect to find them. I LOVE this.

So what "little thing" can you do for your spouse today?

Letter to Mom

There are those times when I think, oh, I need to tell Mom....and then I remember she's not here to tell that too. This is not one of those times. I am ever so painfully aware that she is not here for me to tell her. There's so much I want to tell her. Yeah, yeah, I know, she knows, I can talk to her anyways, blah blah blah, it's not the same and anyone whose lost someone close knows that. I can't see her excitement or hear her laughter. I can't hug her, it's not tangible

Sometimes I'm afraid I look like a hypocrite because until she got sick I didn't have the greatest relationship with her. That 6 months healed a life time of hurts and disappointments. That's the Mom I want to tell things too.

I want to tell her about Costa Rica, I'm not so sure she'd care much about that, but it's kind of a big thing right now in my life and she'd care about that and she'd want to hear about it when I got home.

However, mostly, it's Kellie's wedding. The one thing I remember so clearly the day they told us she wasn't going to get better, the day the doctor said she had cancer and it was incurable, I remember thinking, she'll never see my daughters get married. Now here I am faced with just that. Oh, she would have been so excited! I just know that my phone would have rang often with her wanting to know the plans and share ideas. I'm sure it would have annoyed me at some point, but I'd welcome that now. In talking with my Dad the other day he said she talked about that, how she wished she'd be able to be here for that. This one will be hard because it's the first one, but, I don't imagine the others will be much easier. She loved all her grandkids so much. She would've had joy in this.

I have twinges of frustration with God for taking her so she couldn't be here for this, but I wouldn't want to lose the gifts He gave during her illness and death. We all grew so much in that time. Wounds healed, love was shared, and there was joy in the sorrow. I want to imagine that she's up in heaven watching but the joy of this would pale in comparison to the joy of praising her heavenly Father. I don't want to imagine taking that away from her.

I do so miss her.

My Journey to Costa Rica

As I mentioned in my last post, this missions trip in February to Costa Rica is a bit of a stretch for me. However, God in His awesomeness prevails and I am stepping forward in obedience to His calling.

This trip is taking up a lot of head space I'm finding and we haven't even had our first planning meeting. I don't even have a full team yet. Of course that might be part of the head space problem as I pray through and try to invite and encourage the people that I feel God calling me to ask to come along on this adventure.

Some of the "big picture" stuff is mostly ironed out and since I'm a "big picture" person, I have some peace in that. No longer am I concerned as to where and how the paint for this endeavor is going to come from. God graciously has set people in place for that. I love how when I surrender it and just let Him handle it He sets things in my lap so nicely as if to say "finally Lisa". You would think that with all my experience with trying to control things and how well that doesn't work I'd learn to give it up sooner, but I just can't seem to get that through my head. Also, how silly of me to stress about it in the first place because as my sweet friend Naomi reminded me, God isn't going to call me to go paint murals and then not provide the paint for which to do it with. Thankfully I'm not much of a details person because I've have a sneaking suspicion that none of those are going to go as planned anyways. LOL

As I've been trying to process through all of this I've been really seeking and calling out to God to help me sort through all these emotions. I've been spending a lot of time in my art studio which is a place that I find His presence to be so overwhelming. Often times I just soak in Him while I'm down there and it's beautiful. I've been asking for a heart of desire for this trip, and again my sweet friend Naomi keeps telling me I'm excited for it I just don't want to say it out loud, I'm not so sure about that. I have however, through all this seeking and searching and learning, come to discover that although I may not be excited to go to Costa Rica with all the bugs, I am truly excited to see what God has to show me through this entire process and specifically while I'm there. This is the perspective that I can completely wrap my head around. God's blessings are abundant and lovely and how could you not want what He has in store for you?

I had coffee with another sweet friend (I'm blessed with a lot of those :)) Noelle, who just returned from her trip there. I asked her what she thought of it and she gave the most beautiful description of it and it has been comforting my heart ever since. She told me that it's like "a blanket of God just lays over you". What an amazing word picture that is! I just can't get that idea out of my head, it's such a glorious description and I'm anxious to experience that for myself.

I've kind of decided to blog through this journey here, partly in the hopes to clear out some of that head space, but also to share this journey with those of you that care to join me. I hope you'll read and learn and enjoy right along with me.

I'm going to Costa Rica

Would you just look at that??!!! In my humble opinion there is no reason on this earth to have bugs that size!!! It's not okay AT ALL!!!! Where can you find a bug of that size you ask, well Costa Rica of course. So why would someone who is deathly afraid of bugs larger than a dime that cannot be stepped on without making a disgusting, horrible noise, who cries at even the thought of having to be in a country that these things live, be going to Costa Rica?  Well, because God thinks it would be a splendid idea, that's why. I on the other hand am not so sure about that. So here's the story of how I came to the conclusion that bugs or no bugs, I'm going.

I remember well the Sunday that Pastor Josh introduced us to the the orphanage Hogar De Vida through a video he showed at church. I thought, oh my goodness what an amazing place to go and serve and make a difference and love on those sweet children. Then it happened....the part of the video that showed a tarantula crawling out of a hole in a wall. Nope, not going to serve and make a difference and love on sweet children. This was CLEARLY not a place for me, this was a place for OTHER people to go to. I would happily pray and support them from the good ol US of A.

We've sent several teams over there since the showing of that video and without fail many have returned glowing and changed and swearing they never saw bugs and telling me I should go. However, just cause you didn't see them, doesn't mean they aren't there.

So fast forward to last year when my husband faced his Nineveh and went to Costa Rica. He came home with this "thing"about him that I couldn't quite put my finger on but was so very jealous for. So I asked him about the bugs, because of course he wouldn't lie to me, and he didn't. He shared a story of a very large spider that was in the bathroom. The bathroom of all places, you can't NOT use the bathroom. So however jealous for that "thing"he had, I was given pause by the whole giant spider thing.

Well, this past spring we sent another team, a team of guys to do tech stuff, some I'd call friends, others I'd call acquaintances. When they returned every single one of them in a span of about 3 weeks came to me and told me I needed to go there and paint murals. HA!! Yeah right, I've never painted a mural in my life, and lets not forget the bugs of extraordinary size that live there. Move along!!

Enter God....a God who is relentless, who doesn't give up when He has something He wants you to do, something He wants you to experience, something that is part of your path. Oh I wrestled with Him, I told Him NO, I cried at Him, I begged Him even, and God in His greatness wouldn't budge. Costa Rica was every where I turned, I'd wake up in the morning and it'd be in my head, I'd go to bed at night and dream about painting murals in Costa Rica. I'd go to the store and Costa Rican products would beat me about the head. It wouldn't go away!!! So finally, I gave in, I told God I would go. However, I thought, the next trip I could go on wouldn't be until next summer and possibly He would forget or I could bargain my way out of it by then. I also falsely believed that my agreement to go would mean the end of the daily beatings of Costa Rica. That was not the case!

Shortly after I agreed, God began to strongly press it upon my heart that I needed to tell Pastor Josh about this idea of God's. I thought how silly, it's a year away!! His wife is getting ready to leave on the most recent trip to Costa Rica and he's about to embark on 10 days or so of being a single dad. Why on earth does he need to know this now, it can wait. However, come that Sunday in church I felt if I didn't go tell Josh I needed to talk that I was going to burst, literally! Josh indulged me and we set up a meeting for Monday.

So we sit down and the first words out of my mouth were, "I'm supposed to go to Costa Rica", to which Josh replied "What?? This was what was so important you had to meet me now? That's a year away!!". So then I began to fill him in on God's ideas and suddenly the reason for the urgency became apparent as we discussed. Many plans to make but mostly the need to go during dry season, which is NOT in the summer, it's in the winter, which will be upon us before we know it. The time to announce this and move forward with it is now.

So many have asked and I have asked myself, is my fear of bugs REALLY that extreme that I would not want to experience this. I'm not gonna lie, that's huge, just like the bugs, however, as I've prayed and sorted through all these emotions I'm dealing with I've come to discover that it's much more than just big bugs.

There are a lot of things that give me pause, I'm not afraid to fly, it's just not my favorite, and that's a lot of flying. I also remember how difficult it was for me to be away from Jerry when he was gone, so that of course gives me pause. However,  in my searching, I have come to discover what truly is my biggest fear.

My biggest fear is the changes and growing and learning that God is about to spew all over my life that scares me the most. My life is good, I am happy, joyful even. I know from past experiences that when God decides I need to learn and grow, my life gets messy and complicated. I don't like messy and complicated. Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware that when all is said and done and the dust settles I will be much better for it all, it's just the getting there that makes me weak in the knees.

So with a heart of obedience that I'm praying desperately to become a heart of desire, at the end of February I will board a plane to Costa Rica. I want to apologize in advance to the team that joins me, I will cry and I will probably cry a lot...daily. One thing I do know with great certainty, that God has brought me to this, He will see me through this and when I come home, I too will have that "thing"


P.S. prayers and donations greatly appreciated :)

The Journey of Art

So things have happened to my art in the last couple years and even though it's MY art I just seem powerless to stop it. This is a photo of my very first canvas ever, last I knew it hangs in the bedroom of one of my pastors daughters. Could have moved on from there I suppose, who knows. As long as someone is loving it. 

If anyone knows anything about me and my art they know that describing my art as "cute" is as good as an insult....or at least it was. Sigh. Something has happened and I cannot seem to produce things that don't scream cute. 

This is a piece I did earlier in the year, what the heck is that???? Yep, it's cute. The birds are cute, the flowers are cute, the hearts are cute, just cute threw up all over this piece and I was powerless to stop it. Furthermore, it sold!!

As I looked back over my art blog I find pieces that I've done over the years that I just love, love, love! 

This is one of my most favorite pieces I've ever created. I put it in the frame top of a trinket box that I altered. It ultimately ended up going home with a couple at one of the art fairs I did several years ago. I had such joy in this sale because the couple spent a considerable time in my booth and chose carefully and deliberately what the wanted to take home with them. This isn't cute. This is charming, and touching and beautiful and lovely, anything but cute. 

So what happened?? Well, I got healthy, mentally and physically healthy. At least that's what I'm going with. I can remember being in therapy shortly after my mom died and complaining to him about how I hated where my art was going. Years previous when I'd been in therapy I turned out pieces like this.

A piece that was so full of emotion, a piece that truly spoke of my soul and the turmoil I was in at the time. My art had feeling and gave me such release that I HAD to spend time in my studio or I would internally combust if I didn't get it out. 

Now, there is no turmoil, only joy, and contentment. No deep brooding emotion and pain that needs to be conveyed and spewed out onto canvas so I don't choke on it. I've discovered that joy makes art that looks like this. 

 When I showed my therapist recent pieces I had done, he was shocked to see how my art had progressed. Then, as I expressed my disgust and frustration with it, he said something that struck me, and I at first rejected his idea, but as I processed it more in the days after I think he may be right (that's why I pay him the big bucks right?), he said "I think your art may be more you than you think it is".

So I guess what I'm saying in all of this is, I'm embracing cute, if cute means that I am in a place of health and joy then I'll take it. So go ahead, call it cute, I'm sure it'll grow on me :)

Rough day.

Just was going about my day at work and all was just so good. I love my job. I came up from downstairs and around the corner into the front part of the store and there she was. This beautiful, tiny little woman shopping with her granddaughter. What made her different, what made her stand out to me, was the fact that she was bald, and that she was wearing a scarf. That tell tale sign of cancer and chemo treatments. It was like all the air was sucked right out of me. It physically knocked me backwards.
It's not that I haven't seen anyone going through chemo since my mom died. However, today it was too much, I'm just too raw.

There's this "holiday" coming up that seems to be accosting me at every turn. TV ads, facebook ads, spam emails, Pinterest pins, in store ads, radio ads. It's every where!! I cannot escape the fact that a week from tomorrow is Mothers day. Mothers day, like birthday's was never a big to do in our family. However, this year I feel like every where I turn I'm being reminded that I don't have a Mom. I'm trying to focus on the fact that I am a Mom, but I just cannot seem to shake the other sentiment, that I don't have a Mom anymore. I have awesome kids who love me, and I love being a Mom. Yet it's all over shadowed right now by the fact that my Mom is gone, that I don't have a Mom to say Happy Mothers Day to.

So today was not a good day, today was a hard day, an exhausting day, a day of lots and lots of tears. A day when I really, really miss my Mom. A day when I wish I could call her, could hear her voice, could hear her laugh, could hug her. Today is a day that I am painfully aware of the giant mom sized hole in my heart. Yes, I know she is in Glory and I'm so happy for her, however, today I'm missing her, painfully missing her.

Yes, Mothers day is a week from tomorrow, however, hug your mom, talk to your mom, tell her you love her, every day, not just on Mothers Day. I try not to have regrets, try not to live in the wouldda, shouldda, couldda moments, but today I just can't help it, it's looming large.

If you still have your mom, go call her, tomorrow isn't a guarantee.