Things are heating up!

In so many senses of that phrase.

Including...life at work for P. He's living under many microscopes at the moment with many tests coming his way to see if he will abandon his course, but he's hanging in there and asking for help from the one place he knows it comes from.

Including...our house. It's literally 80 degrees in our house with the A/C working overtime, ceiling fans on high, etc...we think it's coming up through the beautiful 1940s pine floors so we're either going to have to foam the underside of the house to close up the gaps or put carpet back in. I think J would like option 2 better now that he's pretty mobile and on the go most of the time.

Including...our pantry! A mouse chewed through the line that runs water from the water heater to the ice maker in the fridge and the only way we knew was when I decided to deep clean the pantry last night and discovered mold growing on all my cake mix boxes and taco shell boxes! DISGUSTING. We had to remove all the shelves, rip the sheetrock out about halfway up the wall, remove the laminate, linoleum, and sub-flooring, and we're going to have to treat the studs themselves. I'm so glad we found out that there was a problem before the wall caved in! Stupid mice.

Including...the tests and trials in general that are coming against us as a family and as a body. We know that we lose our lives in Christ and entrust ourselves to Him, there will be things that come against us. If we perservere and endure, we grow. The outcome is good when we stick it out and pass our tests. So, that's what we are asking for...strength to endure and wisdom to know how to handle everything that comes our way.

Including...others around us. This ties back into tests and trials, but as the weather heats up, tempers are flaring up left and right! Thankfully, I haven't had to endure a face to face flare up yet, but I'm ready to just step away from Facebook until things cool down. While I'm not on the giving or receiving end of ANYTHING, it's such a discouragement to see people lose their peace over something and then spew all over their friends causing the weaker ones to become inflamed as well. This leads to no good things and rather than continue to observe or end up "un-friending" a LOT of people, I think it's just easier to use Facebook as a place to post pics of J for P's family right now. Too many temptations to get involved in things that are none of my concern and too much opportunity for unnecessary battering of the soul.

Stay cool, be at peace, let not your heart be troubled, and endure as a good soldier of Jesus Christ!