Prayer Needed, Plus a Short Rant

Remember our dear friend John Fawcett? He has an aggressive metastatic cancer in the bones, which has considerably weakened him. You can read an update on John's condition, and a lovely, Scripture-laced list of the prayer needs of John, Margie, and their young children Charlotte and Josiah on Margie's blog here.

She also has posted pictures from a Garden Prayer Walk that two lovely lady gardeners from our sending church initiated for them, to solicit donations as well as focused prayer for them. Praise God they are surrounded by a community that serves and blesses them so creatively and lovingly!

Thanks so much for your prayers--however specific or brief they may be--for this family.

In other news--and y'know, posting this alongside John and Margie's needs, this seems so trivial--we lowered the price on the house again yesterday. We're now down to $299,900, getting us below that $300k threshold, so I am hopeful for more showings this week...and would you pray with us that soon, we'll have an offer? We're not eager to drop our price much further, and it's doubtful that the market will pick up much in the fall, so it kinda feels like it's August or bust. (Of course, the Lord can bring a buyer any time He wants, but we have to exercise practical wisdom and do our part, in prayer and otherwise.)

On a mere human level, this would be a great weekend for us to have lots of showings, as we will be gone. (I can announce this because our next door neighbor is as reliable as a watchdog for keeping an eye on the place--one of the blessings of living here that I am at this moment giving thanks for!) So we will leave it in great shape and pray for lots of traffic.

Do you know how difficult it is to keep a house with 8 people CONSTANTLY CLEAN and CLUTTER-FREE (there's another "C" word that means painting it all a light color, but I can't remember it--all tips from an article my father-in-law mentioned to me yesterday). Not just "pretty clean" either, but "Q-tip clean," according to the article.

I was glad to hear it, because that's exactly what I've been spending my summer doing--driving myself and my family crazy trying to keep a house in pristine condition. Do you know our windows already need to be washed again? That the basement already needs to be painted again? (Okay, it's nothing like it was, but still, those boys will touch the walls with dirty hands and swords, and when the Dwarf was practicing his whip-cracking in the basement, the whip made black marks all over the ceiling!) That the carpet needs to be cleaned again? (Chicklet4 decorated the stairs with fortunately faint purple crayon the day after we had the carpets cleaned, and yesterday Bantam2 removed his diaper and did the dirty on the carpet in his room--and it was not the easily-picked-up kind. Sorry if that's TMI.)

CONSTANTLY CLEAN AND CLUTTER-FREE. In my heart of hearts, I've always thought it would be wonderful to have a house like that. Now I'm thinking: What an insane way to live!