Family

Sabbath

1 CommentApril 26, 2012

Six days ago I wrote to you from high above Mid-America on our way to the West Coast. Here I am again – Same 737 with the blue and orange seats, same flight attendant (Armando with the cool glasses), same playlist of timeless Any Grant songs, opposite flight path. It’s like the past six days didn’t even happen. Tomorrow we’ll wake up in our own beds in Mayberry and have cereal and toast like every other day. We’ll probably walk to town for lunch and at some point maybe take a bike ride. Then on Friday we’ll drive to the airport to do it again, this time Minnesota.

It’s not that simple though. Our family didn’t just check another road trip off of our list. We experienced new life in a place we’d never been. We immersed ourselves in the culture of the Silicon Valley, where only 5% of people go to church and where only half of those living there speak English at home. We made friends with the brave men and women who are laboring there, away from their families, to build a solid foundation for an influential Kingdom community, even amidst $3500 per month rent payments. We broke bread with a few special South African families and reminisced about the Cape Town summer. We listened to them talk and delighted ourselves in their accents. We played on the beach in Santa Cruz and saw the Otters play in Monterey. We visited some friends who we hadn’t spent real time with in nine years and it was like we’d never been apart, proving again that the Kingdom of Jehovah knows no boundaries in relationships. And over the weekend we led Jesus’ family into a time of worship, which included moments of sweet rest that they were so desperate for.

At the hotel, Oscar served us breakfast every morning. His oldest son will go to UCLA next year on a scholarship, his ten-year-old is in Mexico with his mother. He hopes to see him someday. Its a long story; it usually is. This Oscar knelt by our table, the same one we sat at everyday, and asked if we could be friends. I told him that we already are friends and we exchanged numbers. He hugged the kids and we said goodbye, hopefully not for good.

So much happens in a week, whether we’re travelers, or laborers at home. That’s why we have Sabbath – to reflect and process what just happened. Experience without reflection is worthless.

They just turned the lights off on the plane and my kids are transfixed by the glow of the laptop and an episode of the Backyardigans. Jennifer is chatting with the girl beside her and I’ve got a little time to think. We live in a time when we have to take Sabbath when we can get it. My heart is aching about something and hopefully, with the help of these old Amy Grant songs, I can figure it out in the darkness of the airplane.

Lead me on, the place where deliverance comforts the seeking,

Saved by love-
Jeromy

Jeromy Deibler (FFH)

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Family, Sabbath, Travel@10:38 am

Thirty Thousand Feet

1 CommentApril 20, 2012

This letter comes to you from thirty thousand feet above America’s Heartland. The kids and Jennifer are together in a row across the isle. I’m listening to songs on my iPad and trying to figure out when we were last in CA. It’s been a while. The clouds are stretching out in long billowy rows and we are chasing the sun to the coast. Almost everyone is on an electronic device (including my kids) and paying no attention to the beauty going by out the window.

I’m listening to a playlist of Amy Grant records and wishing that we’d been around the music scene when she was making those first ground-breaking records. But in 1982 I was eight, and all I could do was listen. We played a show with her five or six years ago in Houston and she was incredibly gracious. It’s weird to think that much of our success is because of her pressing forward into the unknown. She unknowingly created an entire industry. Then we got angry when she wanted to keep moving forward. Shame on us.

My friend Omar came over to the house yesterday morning to talk to the guys and I about the state of the Middle East. Omar is an American born Lebanese super hero who is a former Delta Force medic. He’s also an expert Bible teacher, a classically trained opera singer, a concert trumpet player, a practicing ER doc, a father of four, a husband of one, and an expert on end-times prophecy and all things Middle East. He also has great hair and a perfect tan. I’m a guy with a buzz cut who plays music.

People like Omar and Amy Grant make me feel silly for the relatively small life I lead. But this is what God gave me. I’m pretty sure Amy Grant didn’t set out to create a music genre and I know Omar didn’t plan to effect as many people as he has. They were just living out their journey and God did what He wanted.

As I ponder this I look across at the little boy who thinks I hung the moon. A while ago he and I were talking about God and how He’s all around, and we can sense Him and see what He does, but we can’t see Him. I told him how we don’t really know what God looks like. Then he says, “Daddy, you look like God.”

Heaven help me. How this boy sees me is going to shape how he sees the Living God for his entire life. That brings me back to reality and reminds me to journey well and not worry about changing the world. If, as I travel, God chooses to leave a world-changing wake behind me, that’s His choice.

For now , Lord, lead me on to the place where the river runs into your keeping.

Chasing the Son-
Jeromy

Jeromy Deibler (FFH)

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Family, Travel@1:12 am

So This Is What It Feels Like

2 CommentsNovember 29, 2011

I’m at Cracker Barrel this morning. The other worship leaders from Fellowship and I meet here every Tuesday at 730am to talk about life and Church. I’m an hour early this morning to write and have a couple minutes alone. The coffee is good here and the fire is cozy and Willie Nelson is singing Jingle Bells. The kids begged me to turn on football last night at about seven o’clock and it wasn’t on yet so we ended up watching America’s Funniest Home Videos. I fell asleep about halfway through the show and never really woke up after that, so at five-thirty this morning I was wide-awake. While I was in the bathroom taking the handful of pills I take for MS and the related symptoms, Sadie-Claire came in fully dressed in her ballet outfit ready for a recital. I put her in bed with Jennifer and showered and left.

I’m tired from the drive home yesterday from St. Louis, where we spent the Thanksgiving weekend at Jennifer’s family farm. Our DVD player in the car stopped working so we had to talk to each the whole seven hours. Jennifer’s whole family was at the farm for the Holiday and it was a nice time, except for Sadie’s few injuries. She and her cousin Joshua collided while dancing around the shopping mall on Friday morning, busting her lip. Then, later that same afternoon, she and Joshua were playing baseball with a stick and a pretty big rock and she was hit in the face by the first pitch on the same lip. It was pretty swollen for a while. This all happened while Jennifer and her two sisters were out finding Black Fridays sales. This is them picking out hats…

While I was sleeping last evening, Jennifer was busy on her laptop trying to find the perfect advent calendars for Hutch and Sadie. I’ve been pushing hard for us to celebrate the whole Advent Season this month instead of just focusing on Christmas morning. The dictionary definition of Advent is “the arrival of something awaited (especially of something momentous)”. We’re trying our best this year to remember and celebrate the longing the Jews had for their most-awaited Messiah and his arrival. I want us to join in that some longing in some way.

When I was young I didn’t long for Jesus to come back at all. There was too much life to be lived and my sketchy images of Heaven didn’t seem very appealing. I remember older people talking about how they wished for Jesus to come back and not understanding the hurry. I wanted Him to wait at least until Jennifer and I were married and we’d had sex. Then, after we were married, I wanted Him to hold off till we’d had kids. Now, at thirty-seven, I think I’m beginning to understand. The realization that life is broken, I am broken, has settled in and has produced the flicker of longing for the suffering to end. So this is what that feels like.

Our friends, Jon and Alli, who you probably know from our concerts (Big Jon is our guitar player), emailed again last night with more hard news. After loosing Alli’s dad a few weeks ago to a sudden heart attack, they had to say goodbye to Alli’s aunt yesterday. It was her dad’s only sibling. The hole in their family this holiday season will be even bigger than they thought, especially with the absence of the baby they lost a year ago. They understand the longing.

Jesus probably won’t come back to make everything right in the world between now and December 25th. He’ll can still come to us though, each of us, as we stop long enough to see our brokenness and long for Him to enter it. He may not fix the brokenness the way we’d ask Him to, but He can give us something else in the middle of it while we wait. It’s both now and not yet.

We celebrate the now but not yet during the Advent. Jesus came to us, He comes to us, and He’s going to come again to us.

Peace and Rest,
Jeromy

Ps. I’m going to be sending you a few emails over the next few days about ways to get the free music I want to give you. Like I told you a while ago, I’m not going to use this blog to sell you stuff. This is no-strings-attached.

Jeromy Deibler (FFH)

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Family, Kids, Thanksgiving@3:35 pm

So This Is What It Feels Like

3 CommentsNovember 18, 2011

My Sadie-Claire turned four years old this week. She wanted to have a dance party and Jennifer threw her one that she will always remember. I left the house at four o-clock that afternoon to take Sadie out to get her nails painted and kill time so Jennifer could set up, and when we got back home an hour later the house had become a dance club. Purple streamers and balloons were hung everywhere and twinkling lights refracting off the disco ball circled the room in soft bubble shapes of blue. Sadie was impressed. Later she told us that it was exactly what she wanted.
The kids all danced and beat each other up with balloons until it was time for pizza, then more dancing, then cake and presents. A little later Sadie did something that she’d never done before and we’ll never forget. She told Jennifer that she wanted everyone to sit and watch her do a special ballet dance in her new black ballet outfit. So we put on a slow song and watched in amazement as she danced around gracefully like no one else was in the room. It was like watching time-lapsed photography of a flower coming out from the ground and bending towards the sun. Jennifer and I had seen this Sadie, but no one else had. It was the first time we’d ever seen her come out of herself in front of anyone and really enjoy others enjoying her. I videoed the whole thing on my phone, peeking over the lens several times to see all of our friends watching and videoing and enjoying Sadie as well. I was so proud. I looked hard at Jennifer to see if she was crying. She was holding it together. I was struggling. I just kept thinking of the day she dances one last dance with me and then spins away with her new husband. I hate him already.

As I replayed the video before bed I realized that I’d crossed over into a new life, a life in which I’m not nearly as concerned about my own success as I am of my kid’s, a life that is consumed with pride in my kids and their achievements instead of my own. It’s happened so gradually over the past eight years that I didn’t even notice. But now I see it – I must become less and they must become more. It’s the way it’s supposed to be.
I’ve seen our parents show this kind of pride in us, they still beam when they come to one of our concerts the way I do when Hutch does something amazing on his bike and I notice others watching. I’d noticed it, but I didn’t understand it like I do now. So this is what that feels like.

Jennifer and the kids are helping her sister Jannell with her garage sale this morning and Sadie is there in that same black tutu trying to stay warm. She hasn’t taken if off since the party on Wednesday night. She argued with us about wearing it until we just caved in and put clothes on her over the ballet suit. Jennifer was there only minutes until she was down to just the tutu again. She has her mother’s will.

May you live fully awake and alive today, Jeromy

SO THIS IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE is the newest blog series from Jeromy Deibler. To receive all posts and free music please click “subscribe” at www.ffh.net.

Jeromy Deibler (FFH)

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Family, Future, Kids@2:37 pm

Merridee’s Monday

1 CommentNovember 15, 2011

Hoosier Edition

I was planning to write this letter yesterday, but by the time afternoon came and I was alone I couldn’t muster up the energy to do it. We (FFH) spent this past weekend on tour in Indiana and it was more tiring than normal. The concerts were a lot of fun, but the weekend was grueling. Hutch and Sadie-Claire were with us this time along with the other guys in the band, our tour manager Ally, and my mom, who came to help with the kids. We were nine in all. Jennifer and I decided several years ago to take the kids along with us when we’re going to be gone for more than one night. They usually roll with it pretty well, but for whatever reason, they were more high maintenance this time than in the past. As I type I’m taking long breaks to think about them and what’s made parenting such a labor lately. A couple of my friends are feeling the same way. I guess it’s normal. I’ll brood on these thoughts and then all of a sudden Sadie will come dancing through the kitchen in her ballet outfit twirling like she’s on stage in front of thousands, or I’ll hear Hutch playing quietly in his room pretending to blow something up, and the heaviness will lift and I’ll remember to be thankful. Forgive me Father for loosing perspective.

As I spin the wedding band around on my finger I ponder the road we’ve walked to get here. It doesn’t feel like sixteen years since Jennifer and I were married. So much has happened that we’d have never expected. All of life is like that, that’s probably why Jesus told us to only consider today. Even our best laid plans for tomorrow can be thwarted in a heartbeat, or the absence of one…

Our shows this past Thursday and Friday were promoted by our friend Tom Roberts and his family. We first met them many years ago when we played at his church in Anderson IN. We remember it well because of the bright blue wall-to-wall carpet that blanketed the sanctuary. Tom later moved on from that church and booked us for concerts in other places. This past weekend he was joining FFH with CSI (Christian Services International) to bring awareness to the Bell family and their work with unseen children in Kenya. What most people didn’t know was that Tom and his family we’re dealing with unseen hurt of their own. This past summer, their son Jeff went to bed feeling a little sick and didn’t wake up. His brother discovered him in the morning and the family’s world was turned upside down. Things went from normal to tragic literally overnight. After the concert on Friday I spent a couple of minutes with the Roberts’ listening as they recounted what happened. The hurt was still fresh, still very near the surface. They remembered Jeff with joy though, and told me of miraculous things that happened as a result of Jeff’s passing. I marveled at their sprit and their faith as they laughed and cried at the same time. It’s amazing how joy and sorrow can fill up the same teardrop.

(As I’m getting ready to post and send this letter I receive an email from Tom…)

“Jeromy, I felt you really struggling with the loss of our son, Jeff. Believe me, it was a CRISIS of Faith! I was at a crossroads of Belief. Did I truly believe what God’s Word says? We have had many people come to us and say that they have never seen anyone with a faith as strong as ours going through something like this. This is what I know….it has nothing to do with us. Jesus is carrying us through this time. We would not make it otherwise. Nothing, absolutely nothing, has to do with our strength. Left to ourselves, we would have been a total wreck. One day I was talking with God about this so called strong “Faith”. He just reminded me of the story about Doubting Thomas… Remember this was after the resurrection of Jesus

(John 20:24-2924) Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” 26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” 28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

So God says to me, these small little trinkets of treasure that I have shown you the last few months to comfort you and to show you just a very small part of how I am using Jeff’s passing for my Glory….remind you of something Thomas? It is the one ………who never sees any fruit……..any sign that He is using a situation for His Glory……and still continues to hold on to the Faith……that is a strong Faith. Pause…………….He was right again as always. Tom

Have a peaceful week, one day at a time-
Jeromy

Jeromy Deibler (FFH)

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Family, Kids, Marriage, Travel@2:26 pm

Merridee’s Monday – Halloween Edition

CommentOctober 31, 2011

Merridee’s Monday 2011.10.31

The bakery is quiet this morning, a stark contrast from this weekend when the line was around the building. Our little town’s streets swell up by an estimated 40,000 people this same weekend every year for Franklin’s annual Pumpkin Festival. We rode our bikes into town for the festivities but decided after a few minutes that we like the “normal” Franklin better. Star Wars costumes were hot this year. I think most of the Empire’s young forces came to Franklin for the festivities.

I mentioned on Facebook last night we aren’t a Halloween family. I certainly don’t judge those who participate, I certainly did when I was younger (I remember going to the Church Halloween party as Dracula) But Halloween scares my kids, and for that reason we just ignore it as best we can. As I was leaving this morning Hutch was making himself a Clone costume to wear when his friends come over tonight for a sleep over, so it’s trickling into the family slowly anyways.

Jennifer’s friend Karen called yesterday and asked if our kids could come over and play so that we could have a date night. We gladly accepted and dropped our kids off at dinnertime and went to our favorite restaurant for our favorite carrot cake. While we were there we talked family business, like where we’d spend Thanksgiving and what we’d do for our anniversary, and how we need to stay out of Target because we spend too much money when we go there. When we left we had some time to kill so we went to Target. Again we spent too money on things we didn’t know we really needed. It was nice though. The Halloween decorations were all but gone and Christmas was being hung all over the store. That, coupled with the chill in the air got me in the Christmas spirit. I can hardly believe Christmas is only eight weeks away. I feel like summer is just now ending. The older I get the faster it seems to get and I sound more and more like my parents did when they talked like this.

It’s been fun getting your Christmas memories and stories in the mail (email). Please send more of them to www.FFH.net. We’ll pick a couple to share with the whole group just to keep getting us ready for the holidays. This story comes from Tanya Davis, one of our subscribers. I wish we had pictures of this!…

When I was a teenager, we lived in South East Texas. My dad would take vacation at Christmastime and we would chase the snow. One Christmas in particular, we used a family friend’s tiny miners cabin in Lake City, Colorado. We loaded down the car and headed to the mountains. We stopped in New Mexico to fill up the car, which was a diesel. The station owner assured my dad that his fuel was safe for high altitudes. The diesel jelled right at the crest of Monarch Pass in Colorado. The parts to fix the car had to be ordered and a blizzard in the forecast. We spent the first few days of vacation in the middle of one of the worst blizzards in a dirty little mobile home next to the gas station/mechanic shop. Due to the blizzard, there was nowhere else to stay. We ate Hershey bars, beef jerky, and scrambled eggs. There were people stranded everywhere. Several 18-wheelers had gone off the side of the mountain and so we were thankful we had a place to stay with a heater and Mom’s ever present can of Lysol spray. When we ran out of our meager supply of food, my mother and the station owner’s wife locked a bread/snack truck driver in the back of his truck. He was delivering a load to the resort at the crest of the pass. They refused to let him out until he agreed to sell them enough supplies to last a couple of days. We finally made it to the cabin to find the water frozen and no heat. The waterbed in the master bedroom was frozen solid. You would think we would have just given up and gone home. Instead we trekked up the mountain and cut a Christmas tree and a couple of men from the town delivered propane and thawed out the cabin. Their wives brought us supper. Throughout the rest of our stay, the neighbor’s sons took us up on the mountain in snow mobiles, we learned to cross country ski, ice skate, and was invited to spend Christmas Eve at the towns potluck at a small church. We spent 2 weeks there and went though 85 pairs of sock. My mother believed in being prepared. There were only about 45 residents that year in the whole town. We took a sleigh ride on Christmas Eve. It was snowing and the lights were twinkling all over town. When we got back to the cabin that night, we watched ”The Christmas Gift” starring John Denver for the first time. It has become a family tradition. It is just not Christmas until we watch that movie. We even have a backup copy. Before bedtime, Dad read the about the birth of Christ from the Bible and we read How the Grinch Stole Christmas and we all took turns reciting The Night Before Christmas. At some point, Dad slipped out and rang the same bells under the window that he rang every Christmas Eve to signal it was time to go to bed because Santa was flying over in his sleigh.

Things have changed through the years. My dad is in Heaven now. He died from colon cancer in 2002. Mom reads the story of the Christ child now on Christmas Eve and the grandkids like to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas but we still take turned reciting The Night Before Christmas. My sister’s husband and my brother ring the bells outside now and it is still as mysterious to the little ones as it was for us when we were young. The Christmas before my dad died, he bought me a book of a collection of Christmas stories because it contained “Yes, Virginia There is a Santa Claus”. It is a treasured possession.

Memories of that Christmas in Lake City still linger. For us it was the best Christmas ever. We laugh about mom “hijacking” the bread man and my brother taking a flying leap to jump on the bed and landing on a solid block of ice. Yet, when the jingle bells tinkle outside on Christmas Eve, we are taken back to the sleigh ride through the snow and the quiet calm of a Christmas Eve in a beautiful mountain town that will linger forever in our hearts.

Jeromy Deibler (FFH)

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Family, Halloween, Merridee's Monday@11:43 am

Merridee’s Monday

3 CommentsFebruary 7, 2011

I didn’t make it in to the bakery this morning. It’s twenty past nine and I’m still in my PJs. I decided to go ahead and write my letter to you from home. Jennifer is trying to get back into the groove of homeschool after being iced-in St Louis last week. I’ve not been sleeping well and had a long weekend leading music at Church so this week is getting of to a very slow start. Plus, it’s another freezing day outside and we’ve had it up to here with the winter. Hutch is saying that he is sad but doesn’t know why. Jennifer is trying to read the first lesson and Sadie-Claire keeps interrupting her. I’m trying to not get aggravated. I don’t know how she does this like she does. The kids just ate and they are already asking for a snack. I get annoyed and Jennifer tells me to chill.
I hope you guys have a great week. If you live in a warm spot pray for those of us less-fortunate souls who do not. Here’s a hello from us at the homeschool table…

Jeromy Deibler (FFH)

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Family, Homeschool, Kids, Meridee's Monday@12:21 pm

Meridee’s Monday

CommentJanuary 24, 2011

I’m getting late start this morning. Hutch was awake with the stomach flu last night so Jennifer was awake with him while he got sick, all seven times. She let me sleep through most of it so I tried to give her a couple hours this morning. The kids were loud though so she’s probably still pretty tired. I had a list of things to accomplish and was ready to hit the ground running when she got up and got going. (This weekend was restful but I’ve got a lot to do this week before we go out of town on Friday) Right before I was ready to head out the door, Sadie-Claire asked me to help her get dressed. She hung on to me like a tree frog as I carried her upstairs and when I laid her down on her bed she wouldn’t let go. We hugged for a while and in those seconds my heart changed. I didn’t want to go get things done anymore. I just wanted to stay and cuddle and hug and help Jennifer with the kids and spend another day in my PJs. I let Sadie pick out an outfit that probably doesn’t match and said goodbye to my peeps and headed out the door.

The life of an artist is unusual in so many ways. There are so few guidelines and boundaries and even fewer rules. This, what I’m doing right here, writing my blog, is “work”. Meetings and coffees and worship planning sessions are “work”. Rehearsals and writing sessions and recording session are all “work”. Even listening to music, for me, is sometimes required “work”. Tomorrow night, for “work”, I’ll play music on TV. To someone with a normal job this may seem completely unrealistic, but it’s been my life ever since I quit college eighteen years ago. In God’s kindness this has been the only “real” job I’ve ever had. But on days like today it is hard. If I had a boss or an office or a board meeting I’d have to go to work. But I don’t, so I battle with balance and what to do. When Jennifer and the kids are home doing things that seem so much more important like home-school or taking care of one another I feel silly leaving. But I have to.

I meet with seven guys on Wednesday mornings. They are all recently out of college and are beginning life as artists and professional musicians. They worry about money and motivation. Three of them are just married and they watch their wives go off to work and battle to find their normal while trying to play any gig to contribute. I tell them that they can’t look at life like other working guys, the ones who get a check every week. Those guys can go to the bank and deposit money for something they did or built or a service they provided that week. We can’t, it’s not our normal. We are like farmers. Our work comes in seasons and our income usually does to. We begin songs or play music as a farmer sows his seeds, and then we work the soil as we wait. Like the sower in the Bible, we spread seed on all kinds of soil. Some of it falls on the rocks or among weeds and we never see anything in return. Sometimes it falls on fertile soil and we get to see some returns, or in our case royalties. Either way we keep creating, playing gigs, writing songs, having coffee, spreading seed and working the soil. And hopefully, in God’s kindness, he lets us reap enough to keep planting. If not we get real jobs.

Jeromy Deibler

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Artists, Career, Family@2:35 pm

Merridees Monday

CommentSeptember 22, 2010

Good morning. I hope this letter finds you well and rested. (That would at least make one of us) It’s been over a month since my last blog post and I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to complete my thoughts right now but I’m at Merridee’s with Hutch for lunch and he’s consumed with the LEGO website so I figured I’d at least write to say hello. I also want to say thanks for your prayers over the past few weeks. The adjustment to apartment living has been rough but we’re making it work. There’s still been no forward motion in the mold removal from our house because of legal red tape, which as it turns out is a special reddish duct tape kind of stuff that is inpenetrable with out a lawyer. And even then, cutting through it takes time and patience and a special knife that only a few lawyers know how to use. (in God’s grace it seems like we have one of those) Meanwhile, Jennifer has begun homeshooling Hutch in our living room / dining room and I’m doing what I can to help out. I have to admit, she’s been amazing through this whole thing. She went to the trouble of decorating one whole wall of the apartment with a chalkboard and special artwork and neat school stuff so Hutch would have an inspiring environment to work in. I complained most of the time she was getting it ready because I couldn’t see the sense in spending the money for stuff that would be temporary. She was right though and I’m so proud of her. She doesn’t have time to read my blogs so she won’t know how I’m bragging to you about her but I just can’t believe how the Lord is using her in our kids’ lives.

Sadie-Claire will be three in November and she is plannning to begin dance class right away. She dances most of the time she is on her feet. She is consumed with shoes and sparkles. Hutch is in his third week of Hip Hop dance class so he is popping and locking every times he hears music. We are a family of constant motion and Jennifer and I are in a constant state of overwhelmed-ness. When the kids go to bed we usually sit together in a trance. Then we go to bed.

Living in our apartment does have an upside. We’re situated right in the middle of Cool Springs where all the good restaurants and stores are. We can ride our bikes to Borders and Starbucks and dozens of other places. McDougals Chicken is my new addiction. Not their chicken but their soda. Their ice is just a tad bigger than Sonic’s and their diet coke is really burny. Plus, they have free soft serve. When you combine the three everything is right with the world. I’m averaging two diet-coke-ice-floats a day.

This morning I was reading Jesus’ story about the two men who built houses, one on rock and one on sand. I noticed how the exact same weather came to both. I also looked up “house” in my Strongs and found that it can also mean “family” or “household”. I started to question where I’d built my (our) “house”. I’m praying we’ll stay anchored to God and each other during this and we’ll realize just how firm and dependable the rock really is.

I hope you have a great week full of revelations of God and His Greatness.

Peace and Rest,
Jeromy

Jeromy Deibler (FFH)

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Family, Meridee's Monday@2:54 pm

2 CommentsAugust 26, 2010

Friends, we’ve been talking this week about our families, specifically our grandparents. Our first Travelers IRL post was on the subject of honoring and cherishing our older generations and we’ve gotten several really neat responses. Here are a couple videos of my grandparents. One of the videos is my Ma Maw (Leah) showing us around the Lancaster (PA) Central Market. The other is a conversation Jennifer recorded of my Pa Paw and I a few weeks ago. Please forgive me, but I couldn’t bring myself to editing it.