an autobiographical bit...if you're interested...8)

It's a good life...


For anyone who's interested, here's a snippet...life in Beth's world...and an abbreviated (or not so abbreviated) autobiography of the last decade.

I've now been married for seven years....to well, my perfect match from God. It took a long time, but we're finally, wonderfully moving as a team and following God together. It's a truly wonderful thing!

We moved back to Texas on oct 31 1999. We had barely been married a year; we were about to get evicted from an expensive apartment that we couldn't afford anymore (a few bad choices), and we stuffed everything that would fit in our buick lesabre and drove....less than $300.00 in our pockets home to Texas. On the way, at a gas station in Texarkana, i lost our only set of car keys by flushing them down the toilet...on accident of course...so that was a small set back.
Finally we arrived in Evergreen Texas on i think november 2...we stayed in a trailer on my in-laws' property for a few months until we could get our own place and jobs, etc.
We did that, and lived life sort-of normal for a while, though away from my Christian parents and without a home church, spiritually--doing quite badly.
Near the end of 2000 i quit my job to work full time for our business. James is a good cabinet maker, and we had decided to go into business; it was a very slim living, but we were going to make it work.

At the end of the year, we were pretty much out of money...bidding jobs is a risky business, and we were losing money fast; we had a cold snap, which is fairly rare around here, and we had run out of gas to run the heater. On December 27, we had both stayed home with a cold and were sleeping the day away in our cold house when whatever we were using for a space heater caught our bedroom on fire. We were renting an old house, and once our bed caught fire, which was right away, the whole house went up in flames very quickly. You really can't believe how quickly it happens until it happens to you.

When my husband woke up and saw the flames at the end of the bed, he woke me up (i was dozed of in a chair across the room) tossed me the keys and told me to move the car, which i did. My husband, while i was doing that, took one quick walk through the house, trying to grab a couple of items of sentimental worth, got out of the house before i even got the car moved, and we couldn't go back in again. The house was completely filled with smoke, and almost completely engulfed in flames.This is one of the most significant moments in my life....not so much because we lost everything, though that has many lessons.....but because in the story of my life, this is a turning point. I journaled that day, on a piece of construction paper i found in the car ( my journal burned, of course ), that i knew it was God's hand in our lives turning us around. We were going in the wrong direction, and He had to bring us back.
God is so faithful.

A loss like that is a very strange feeling...i remember standing in front of our house after the fire department had come and said that it wouldn't be safe to look around in the ashes (for anything salvageable) until the next day...my husband and i looked at each other...we were hungry...so we went to get something to eat...what else is there to do? There was no crying, no exclaiming, just one (truly 60 seconds) moment at a time.

We were extremely thankful at that moment that our tools (livelyhood) had escaped the fire since that had been at a job site--safe and sound.
So we ate in our dirty, smoky pajamas, at a local restaurant. We stopped by James' dad's house to see if we could stay in their spare bedroom. I took a bath. My sister-in-law said she was sorry about my house (nobody ever knows what to say in times like that). Someone suggested calling the Salvation Army to see if we could get some clothes.

And the next day, we got a copy of the Huntsville paper for a souvenir. A picture of our burning house was on the front page. Then we went to the site to see if we could salvage anything--and hopefully find our cats who had quickly run (we hoped) once the fire started.
We salvaged a miracle from the place that had once been our bedroom closet. Of all the things in our house that had burned, broken, and melted, including dishes (our trash can that had been about 15 feet away from the house had melted into a puddle), our pictures and my childhood stuffed animals had been preserved. God has a funny way about Him...i still tear up thinking about it. He kept for us some of what was dear to our hearts and eliminated everything else...forcing us to depend solely on Him. What a truly loving Father!!!

Well, that wasn't short, and i'm not nearly done....i'll write more tomorrow or later this week.

God has done great things since then.....

Tune in next time.......
8)