Curb Appeal (Home Tour)

/ abby hummel

Most of the time I feel pretty discouraged about how much work there is left to do on our house, so in celebration of our 3rd year here, I’ve taken a bunch of pictures to record what we’ve done so far! And first on the agenda? The great outdoors. I’ve gotta say, we must have a great eye for living potential because these before shots from three years ago are really bad.
Here’s what we started with for “curb appeal.” Note the leaning trees, huge bushes, random rocks and lack of grass.

Realtor shot from the street.

We took out those ginormo bushes by the driveway and felled a few trees before my college BFF Esther dubbed this area the “stake-burning piles.”
 After those were out, we had a great feeling of progress, but still no grass to speak of. The trees didn’t get enough sunlight, the garage color was awful, and also, the apple tree was out of control.

Thankfully, it’s looking a little better now, because we took out more trees, Aaron has put forth massive effort on the grass with multiple reseedings and custom grass blends for our shady yard, we overhauled the “retaining wall,” and I stained the peachy colored bricks. We still need to decide if we’re going to put one more layer of stones on the hill or trim the weed barrier so it isn’t visible. The rest of the grass should fill in soon, too.

We’re still in the “Progress” stage, but everything out front is coming together so far! We have some big projects for the other side of the driveway… there is a steep path by the garden (we call it “the incline of death”) that needs some attention, so hopefully we’ll get that solved this summer!

finishing the tile! (kitchen, pt 9)

/ abby hummel / 1 Comment

It’s been a while… we misplaced the camera cord, and then my favorite free photo-editing website  became part of  the “Google+” social network and went berserk, losing some of the best features in the process, which made me dislike Google+ more than I already did. Yes, I’m a little bitter. And to think all this frustration took energy that should have been channeled towards house projects! For shame.

Well, the last recorded kitchen update had us with half the tile laid and no grout, like this:
We grouted it right away, and then had to take a little unscheduled break in the tiling for a minor freak-out while deciding what to do about  Aaron’s job offer in New York, but we got busy with the rest of it on another sunny weekend. And when I say “got busy,” I mean that I spent hours chipping out the old cork flooring and ended the night with five blisters on my hand. There are no pictures of this process. I was in a hurry, and my goal is always to get the project finished, not just get a good blog post out of the whole deal. I also have no pictures of Aaron with the tile saw, but rest assured that he slaved away to get everything cut correctly while I spread the thinset adhesive and laid the tile in place. As usual, we are modeling superior footwear safety measures during all construction projects.

It was so fun to see everything start coming together. I’m amazed at what a difference the new streamlined flooring made! You can see that the first half is already grouted while we’re laying the second half.

I started talking about my dreams for the bathroom overhaul on the schedule for this fall. Aaron looked at me like this:

Finally, we got all done:

The tile floor was a little higher than the previous cork/linoleum/carpet combo from before, so we had to make the back door shorter.  This was the perfect opportunity to use the antique plane Aaron’s grandpa passed down to us earlier this year.
 And then, just when the dining area was completely tiled and we could shut the back door again, we proceeded to cover most of the new floor. This is where things got, if you’ll pardon the pun, a little rugly. Since we don’t want our table or chairs to be scooting harshly along the floor, we decided a rug was needed right away. First, I got one rug that was the perfect style, but was a foot too long.

Then I couldn’t find anything in the right size that looked good. Rugs are expensive, and I have West Elm taste with a dumpster-diving/hand-me-down budget. As we often say to ourselves, “Wal-Mart clearance shoppers can’t be choosers.” After driving all over looking at what was available, I picked up this yucky, boring, dull, “off,” brownish one because the price was right ($19.99) and I have some DIY ideas up my sleeve to jazz it up in the future.

For my records just as much as sharing with you, for the floor we used “Rialto White” 12′ and 6′ tiles to make this pattern. For the counter’s back splash grout, I used a mixable recipe and I thought I just hated the grouting process. I would not recommend the Spectra-Lock Stain Proof mix-it-yourself grout to anyone. It was sticky, it made the tile shiny, and my hands are itchy just thinking about it.
 Because I was unhappy with that experience, I shelled out an extra $6 and tried a different  pre-mixed style for the floor and I really LOVED IT. For the kitchen floor we used TEC Sanded Premixed Grout in Vintage White. It went on and wiped off smoothly without adding any unwanted shine to the tile themselves. I think there was a lot less waste with this kind, too. If we do more tiling, which I’m hoping is the case (hee hee), I’m getting this kind again.

This “Vintage White” color is a little “yellower” than I would have chosen, but the tile has a slight gray tint and they balance each other out to mimic the carpet, which was our goal! We are so happy it’s done!

(If you want to catch up on our kitchen project from the start, you can see all the posts HERE!)

And on another house-related note, this week is our 3 year homeowners anniversary! Our potential moving scare gave us a chance to pause and reflect about what we have going on with our house, so we have culled a little furniture and finished a few other “little” projects that have been waiting around forever. We also did a bunch of spring cleaning, gardening, and organizing. It’s such a good feeling… and there are pictures to share, so stay tuned!

A Cruel Month

/ abby hummel / 5 Comments

April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain…
– TS Eliot, The Wasteland (“Part 1- The Burial of the Dead”)

I’ve never really understood much of the TS Eliot poem “The Wasteland,” to the point where I’m usually not sure the author even had a logical meaning that anyone was supposed to comprehend. This is totally sour grapes on my part, of course. He just means something I have not yet grasped. So I get lost in every attempt, but I keep coming back to these words because some of the imagery and the opening line, “April is the cruelest month,” resonates so clearly with me.

I have had many good Aprils, particularly 1986, when I was born, and the month is not always bad to me. But rain falls on the just and the unjust alike, so I have seen some cruel Aprils. The worst of them were five and six years ago, when Aaron and I were dating. During the first April there was much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, since I was dreading his departure for a deployment to Iraq. (In addition to the cruel April business, Eliot’s poem also says “I will show you fear in a handful of dust,” and confronting the dust-to-dust nature of this all was, indeed, terrifying.) When his pre-deployment training began I didn’t know we would have a brief summer reunion and thought we had kissed goodbye for the year. The day after he left I threw myself into a heap on my bed, surrounded by some girlfriends, and declared “I am being ripped in two!”

"kissing the war good-bye" was above my dorm dresser. also pictured: valentine's flowers.

the "birthday jar" I sent Aaron for his 22nd birthday. I was sick so my mom snapped this while I was in bed.

The second cruel April was a year later, and I was tiredly, anxiously, wearily, fearfully awaiting his imminent return home. It was an awful year in so many ways, and some days it seemed like every breath was a reminder of how fragile we all are. There were funerals, injuries, battles, sickness, nightmares, care packages, letters, emails, and lots of crying (on my part). The experience was more harrowing for Aaron than for me, of course, which appalls me a little to this day.  It has been said that “the darkest hour is just before dawn,” and those words were remarkably true for me that year. Sometime in February, I broke down with a friend while we were leaving the music building. I had been counting down to a rough estimate of Aaron’s homecoming date, and I remember sobbing “There are 73 more days! I can’t do it! This is impossible!” Then it felt like everything was downhill from there, and the last few weeks of deployment were full of insomnia and grotesque nightmares whenever I could get some sleep. I knew after all the difficulty of that year we were not home free yet. Nearly every day I heard people saying “You must be getting so excited!” and I just wanted to scream that he was still in danger and something could still happen to him and there is nothing exciting about someone you love being in a war zone, ever, even if they are scheduled to come home soon.

Then (At last! Finally!), five years ago today, the cruelty of that April came to an end and he was returning home. At that point, I almost wished my insomnia would have stayed a little longer since I was studying, writing, and practicing like crazy at the end of the semester, trying to work ahead as much as possible. Several professors graciously adjusted my scheduled finals so I could celebrate this homecoming – one even handed me an exam, winked, and told me to bring it back before graduation. Grace upon grace.

waiting!

Aside from the homecoming, which I have written about earlier, my favorite memory of this time came a few days later. Aaron was safely home, and the family sat on the couch praying for his upcoming TV interview. His mom asked that God would give him words to speak to the reporter, and his brother interjected, “English words!”

at last!

at last!

It’s interesting to unpack important lessons after trials like this. A few weeks into that summer, I sat with a family friend and watched Aaron perform important ushering duties at his sister’s wedding. (It was on a beach, and I remember him saying, “oh… sand…”) Someone remarked to me that Aaron’s presence here was proof of God’s faithfulness to us, and springing out of the growth and learning of the past year I had to correct them. Yes, God is faithful and gracious, and we received our loved one back from war… but a terrible outcome for that year would not have changed God’s character. I am so thankful that divine faithful character was expressed in this way, but I can’t pretend God “owed” us this safe homecoming. Things could have taken a tragic turn and that April would have been crueler than all the rest, and we could been weeping through a “the Lord gives and the Lord takes away” sort of lesson in it all. But for whatever reason, that was not the case, and we now reflect on this with humility and gratefulness:

 “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?” – Romans 11, niv.

“The LORD has dealt bountifully with you. ” – Psalm 116, esv.

Some of these Aprils have been cruel, but I am grateful for what has sprung out from that.
Welcome home, five years ago today.

a well-examined birthday

/ abby hummel / 16 Comments

There is a certain realization that comes upon a person examining life on their 26th birthday: I am no longer in my early twenties; I am closer to 30 than 20. While I know, deep-down, that this is good, exciting, and normal, it is a little unsettling. So I have done some thinking about the next four years before I hit that big milestone and come up with a list of 30 things I want to do or accomplish before my 30th birthday. Planning like this can be a dangerous thing. Life is very much out of my own control and for as much as I plan, I can’t guarantee that  circumstances will fall in line with my plans. But it also seems wasteful to live without intention and dreams. So, in whatever ways I can make things happen, which may be not at all, I have thirty goals – some big, some small – for the next four years of my life. It is my intention to complete this stuff before April 12, 2016, but, to quote our favorite online hunting show, Midwest Whitetail, “We’ll see what happens.”

1) Figure out gardening. (Spoiler alert: this is in progress already because it might take all 4 years to turn my black thumb green.)
2) Learn Greek. I own the books and I’ve played around with this on my own, but I get distracted while writing out the alphabet. The shapes are pretty and they make me think about other things. I might need to take a real class if I want to make serious progress. I swear, some days it  is no small miracle that I can get anything done at all.
3) Grilling. I should figure out this miraculous thing that occurs when I hand raw meat to my spouse and he magically turns it into a delicious main dish with appealing crosshatch lines.
4) See the Grand Canyon.
5) Get back into the Guitar. I have played guitar for about 10 years, and I always get to the point where I really get the hang of playing bar chords without having to look at what I’m doing… and then forget about it for months. Also, I should probably learn to read tablature notation. This is very important, because it occurred to me that God may call me to a Bluegrass ministry, and if so, I should be prepared to follow.
6) Make and can salsa from our fresh garden tomatoes. [Done! Summer 2012]
7) Finish the Lord of the Rings books. [Summer 2012. Slogging through some parts of Return of the King is the killer, but totally worth it.]
8) Go Camping. Tents. Campfire. French press coffee. ROASTING S’MORES.
9) Real Vacation. This means no cooking and sleeping in real beds. [Mexico, 2013.]
10) Leave the Country. I have been to 23 countries, but not in the past 6 years. [Mexico, 2013.]
11) Go out with Aaron while he is hunting.
12) Go fishing and catch something I can eat.
13) Read my camera manual so I can take better pictures. 
14) Keep my car. I can’t control if it gets run over or something,  but I want to keep it as long as possible!
15) Become a parent (and save extra money in case this means pursuing an adoption.)
16) Keep my closet photo-ready for a month.
17) Get my PhT (“Put him Through”) so you all can send your Christmas cards and wedding invitations to Dr. and Mrs. Hummel. [December 6, 2013!]
18) Get nice family pictures of us. 
19) Visit a winery and go on a tour.
20) Finish my wedding scrapbook and then stop pretending like I care about this hobby enough to make time for it and get rid of all my stuff. (We have been married almost four years.)
21) Try downhill skiing.
22) Learn 4 new challenging piano songs. At least one a year.
23) Make donuts.
24) Buy a new couch that I love. I need to love how it looks. Probably from a real store, unlike our current furniture. [Update: Possibly off the agenda until 2017 or later.]
25) Have a house with a real guest room. You know… one that has a bed for company instead of a Craigslist couch that is, I promise, actually pretty comfortable.
26) Get the hang of cookies. I have had a few successes and a lot of failures in cookie-baking already, but I’d love to find consistent success. I have a feeling it may be connected to my current disdain for strict recipe-following.
27) Go shooting with Aaron.
28) Do another photo-booth with Aaron because the one from when we are dating is, to be honest, totally adorable.
29) Teach myself to like olives. [If they are excellent quality, I’m happy with them plain and no longer pick them off Greek Salads, so I’m calling this a win.]
30) Hold off on getting a smart phone as long as possible. [Bit the dust November, 2013.]

love is the lesson

/ abby hummel

Most glorious Lord of life, that on this day,
Didst make thy triumph over death and sin:
And having harrowed hell, didst bring away
Captivity thence captive us to win:
This joyous day, dear Lord, with joy begin,
And grant that we for whom thou didst die
Being with thy dear blood clean washed from sin,
May live for ever in felicity.
And that thy love we weighing worthily,
May likewise love thee for the same again:
And for thy sake that all like dear didst buy,
With love may one another entertain.
So let us love, like as we ought,
Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.

-edmund spenser.

holy week and the death of dreams

/ abby hummel / 11 Comments

A few weeks ago, I was really starting to feel like I had it made in life. Not that things are perfect or how I would plan them! You know, I had to work for years in a job I didn’t like, but I was delightfully strategizing about increasing my teaching load, coordinating to tutor homeschoolers in the fall, and preparing for more ministry endeavors with my flexible schedule. While I’m not particularly happy about turning another year older without any accompanying littler birthdays to celebrate, I have a deep appreciation for many things I can do now that would be nearly impossible if we had children to care for. And we’re managing on a very tight budget, but we love our little house and someday Aaron will graduate, and even now we have a lot more than most people around the world. I want you to know that my gracious acceptance and good attitude here was not easily won. It took a lot of work to get there! But for a short, short time I was able to rest in the comfortable beauty of surrender and acceptance. And then, it crashed down when I got one of those heart-stopping calls that you never expect to get, the kind that makes you look at the phone afterwards and say “Did that just happen? Really?”

I suppose the story starts, quite innocently, the week before the phone call when Aaron mentioned he had a special one-on-one meeting with his advisor. He wasn’t particularly worried, but noted that this seemed very unusual. There were hours of conversation while we were tiling the kitchen, otherwise he probably wouldn’t have said anything in the first place. I forgot about this until he said something before leaving on Monday morning, and I wasn’t very alert because I’d barely slept from excitement about the kitchen progress and Aaron’s recent “75% commitment” to redoing the bathroom this fall. So I said a quick prayer and forgot about it until I got a text message later. While I would love to pretend we are a syrupy couple who constantly express our mutual undying affection in 160-character snippets, Aaron does not text me during the day. So even seeing that was a little unsettling, and then I read “…wanna move to Ithaca NY?” Um, what? I was confused and asked him to call me, and he did. Aaron also does not call me during the day. And I knew the news was big because he called and then he unfolded the story of his professor moving their lab across the country, telling me we were invited but not required to come, that he would get a raise and potentially an Ivy-league doctoral degree if we left…and I can’t even remember what else he said, but I knew we were thinking very seriously about moving right away. (When I prayed that I wouldn’t have to keep the deer head in my living room, I meant that the deer head should move, not the living room.) The next few weeks of our life became a massive blur of questions about selling our house, sacrificing all the music and job stuff I have worked for, and figuring out what else we should consider to make a decision about the whole thing. And because this move would mean we’d want our house sold by August, we gave ourselves a deadline of less than two weeks to make a final decision.

It would be far too laborious to go over all the aspects of this huge decision-making process here, but I will say that, miraculously, we concluded that it is best to stay where we are for now. We made the choice pretty quickly and it seems like the answer is the “easy” one, but this was not a “snap” decision. I’m grateful that this was a very short trial, but it was a time when it seemed like everything we worked for in the past few years might be given up quickly and the future looked like one big, giant, and possibly scary mess.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” –yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. (James 4, esv)

Yes, in the chastening lesson of this all we must remember we are a mist, we are vapor, we are dust. And if we who have eternal souls can be compared to dust and ashes, how much more transient are the products of our striving – our dreams, our plans, our business, …our tiled floors? I find profound connections here to ponder this week when we Christians especially contemplate the mystery of Jesus’ passion. It is overly dramatic to say this, I admit, but in the midst of that confusion and anxiety I really felt like I had grabbed onto a bit of what massive heartache the first “Holy Week” must have been – the political and religious landscape was in uproar, Jesus had to dread the cross before him, and for the disciples it looked like their hopes and dreams were destroyed. We miss a lot of the compassion and beauty in the Resurrection if we forget that emotional turmoil.

And I know this sounds crazy, but in deciding to stay we also had to give up the new dream of the life we would have after moving. We planned on becoming kayak bums in beautiful upstate New York and spending a few years exploring the East coast. It’s hard to lay that dream aside, even when I know there is no way to have both things I want. In articulating the confession, this reminds me of the time I was watching a friend’s baby who had a pacifier in her mouth and found another one on the floor. At a certain point, she was hanging on to the second pacifier and realized she would have to take out the first one if she wanted to suck on the second from her hand. She found the dilemma so distressing that she cried too hard to have either one in her mouth at all. And I don’t want to spend my whole life like that, but I’m sure that’s what I must look like to God right now.

(I think our awesome patio is my favorite part about living in this house, so I am consoling myself by focusing on how much I like it out here. And if the background is blurry, I can forget  how much work there is left to do in the yard.)

listening in the wilderness

/ abby hummel

I feel strange about taking Lent seriously this year because, on the surface, I’m mostly participating on my own. This isn’t something my church (or even my husband) is observing, and so I find myself feeling a little misplaced. I know many people in evangelical circles might argue against Lenten practices like extra church services, fasting and “giving things up.”  And regardless of one’s stance on observing liturgical seasons, every Christian would agree that faith is an internal work of God, not external, not of ourselves. I believe there is much value in traditional celebrations like this, because corporate expressions of faith that spring out from the genuine belief of individuals are a strong witness of our Christian unity and devotion. And though the people I spend my day-to-day life with aren’t really walking on this road with me, I’ve found encouragement that I am actually not alone. Since this Lent thing is something many Christians all over the world are doing right now, too, by setting aside a few weeks as a significant season of prayer and repentance in my own life, I’ve found common ground with friends and family who worship in a variety of traditions and styles very different from my own.

One of my dear Lent-observing friends, Bethany, is a treasure all her own. We met when I was leading her freshman bible study in college and really hit it off over some cookie-baking in my apartment. I always felt those bible study girls taught me more than I ever hoped to teach them, and my friendship with Bethany consistently reminds me of this unexpected blessing. I continue appreciating her beautiful articulations of faith and life, especially recently while reading the same copy of the Bible I used when we studied together, rediscovering profound “Bethany Kj” commentary scribbled in the margins.

While she blogs occasionally about teaching, literature, food, church, and having a cool apartment, Bethany agreed to share some “serious” reflections about Lent here. Her thoughts on this topic began at a young age with the traditional soup dinners and extra services at her Missouri-Synod Lutheran church, and today she finds Lent observance as an encouragement in the midst of weariness and brokenness. In reading this, I found myself thinking of the seventh chapter in Romans where Paul talks about wrestling with the “body of death,” which is what we do during Lent, and praises God that the solution is in Jesus and the resurrection.

“Thoughts on Lent,” from Bethany Kjergaard.
My earliest memories of Lent are sense memories. I remember the smell of the soup for the communal supper before the service (I didn’t eat soup, too picky). I remember the early darkness. We would arrive to church at twilight, and we would leave just before my bedtime. I remember snatches of the liturgy we sang (“let my prayers rise up like incense before you”). The hymns we sang during these Wednesday night services were much more melancholy than the ones we sang on Sunday morning. The services were much shorter too.

As I grew older, Lent became one of my favorite seasons of the church year. Last year I don’t think I missed a Lenten service (and I really don’t like going to church all that much). I think I treasure Lent because normally I feel that I’m supposed to pull it together for church each week. We are exhorted to be joyful in the Lord. Most Sundays I’m surrounded by happy, smiling people. Not so during Lent. During this season I can take the time to be grief-stricken at my sin and my hard heart. I don’t have to “fake it until I make it.” Rather, I can look around me and see that I am broken and the world is broken. As a Christian, one of the most difficult things is looking at the world around me and realizing that while Christ came and was resurrected and lives, it often does not seem that he has made much of a difference. We still have wars, poverty, and famine. The universal church does a lot of good things and a lot of bad things. Time marches onward.

I’ve been reading different meditations on Lent and what this season ought to mean to us. One of the most powerful comes from St. Benedict, and it is the idea of the New Adam and the Old Adam. Old Adam fell and was cast out of paradise into the wilderness. Humanity wandered in this “wilderness” until the New Adam (Christ) journeyed out into the wilderness to bring him back. Lent is recognition that although our path has been made known to us, we are still in the wilderness, the darkness of this world.

I think the darkness of the church during these services made the biggest impact on me. It was very dim with only the altar candles lit. Bernard Clairvaux commented that sin entered the world through sight (Eve being tempted by the beauty of the fruit), but salvation comes through the hearing of the Word. Darkness certainly obscures sight, but it cannot stifle sound. Lent is a time that allows me to admit that I am fallen, in the wilderness, in the darkness and yet despite that I can listen.

painting, staining, and tiling, oh my! (kitchen, pt. 8)

/ abby hummel / 8 Comments

We have put our noses back to the grindstone and accomplished some great feats in our DIY kitchen remodeling progress. I think by condensing picture updates I’m telling myself the project isn’t taking that long. Right… 

Anyway, this weekend we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day. This is great, because I love St. Patrick. (Here’s a quick recap of his life from last year.)  However, I couldn’t summon the strength to get excited about corned beef and Irish-style fine adult beverages this year. While this might be because it’s been unseasonably warm in Iowa, I’m guessing it’s because I exerted myself laying tile.

Yes, I was tiling. We have done a lot of work in the kitchen lately. This update is way overdue! Do you remember the blue wall? It’s no longer offending us with it’s brightness. We’re all cream, all the time now. Aaron’s height comes in very handy for painting rooms with vaulted ceilings.

All the backsplash tile is installed and grouted. The new wood around the island is in the middle of the stain-and-seal process, and the brackets are ready to install. (We also desperately need trim here. I know, I know.)

And what is this? Our garage looks like the tile department of a hardware store!? Get out of town! 

In order to get started on the tile project, we had to clear the whole kitchen floor. This means Aaron had to disconnect the stove and shuffle the appliances out of the way.

 We ripped up the carpet (a two-person, four-hand job, so no pictures), chipped up the cork and linoleum floors underneath, and started laying down concrete backer boards.
Incidentally, I was in a tank top the first night we did this and got concrete and fiberglass from the boards scratched all over my arms and neck. I was entirely miserable for about 24 hours, but then the real work began. Aaron says his thinset mixtures look like milkshakes.
True to our usual form, we would start these projects after dinner and work into the night while wearing clothing that’s pretty much inappropriate for the job at hand. (For further examples, see my skirt and bare feet in Part 3 and Aaron in part 7.) I’m also in flip-flops:

As frugal and responsible homeowners, we found encouragement to continue improving our home while listening to the Dave Ramsey radio show playing in the after-dinner time slot. It was motivating to yell “We’re (going to be) DEBT FREE!” every time one of his callers gave a debt-free scream. (Aaron, however, called the debt-free-except-for-the-house guests “cheaters.”) Our resolve to work late would wane about 10:30, when we both found ourselves really, really annoyed by the host of the next show. We may have just gotten tired then. The late hour may have had something to do with it, too, but we would get really cranky and complain about the radio programming while wrapping up our work for the day. Anyway, this was basically what we did every night from last Saturday until now, when we have ended up with this:
 I really wanted to find rectangle tiles to make a herringbone pattern, but tiles of that shape were out of our budget, so we used Rialto White tile in 12′ and 6′ squares. Since we’re extending the tile into the dining room – I mean, even two educated adults can’t manage to keep white carpet under the table clean – we’ve only laid half the tile, and I’m going to put the grout on for these tiles this afternoon. We won’t have the fridge and stove back up until Monday afternoon at the earliest.

Since I was laying the tile while Aaron slaved at the tile saw, I ended up in all sorts of strange body contortions trying to protect my knees and spent several hours a night doing the equivalent of deep lunges and squats. So I feel like the lower half of my body might fall off at any point today. And like I said… we have more than half the total square footage to go.

Installing the tile has been a much bigger project than we expected, but it’s pretty enjoyable and it looks AMAZING. Every time we walk past the work already completed, one of us says “This is unbelievably better!” Considering that the previous kitchen flooring was dirty, ugly, dark, thin carpet, I bet anything could elicit this response from us. But for now we’ll just revel in the excitement of an upgrade!

(PS: Wanna catch up on the kitchen work from the very beginning? Read all about it here.)

Rendering unto Caesar

/ abby hummel / 5 Comments

Since it is the adventure of self-employment that gives me more free time and makes our taxes just slightly  more complicated than last year, I’m the one hacking through our year-end statements and getting ready to prepare our yearly tax returns with Turbo Tax as Uncle Sam’s April deadline looms in the distance. While setting up for this process, I have already succumbed to emotional eating (too much coffee, leftover pizza, and hazelnut wafer rolls, if you must know) and am now listening to classical music in hopes that it will bring a sense of calm and classy-ness to the day as I accomplish the task at hand.

Naturally, the quote that comes to mind in these times is from the Gospels.

“And Jesus answering said unto them: ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ And they marvelled at him.”
– Mark 12:17, the king james version.

It is always the KJV diction that sticks in my head for this passage, and I’m getting very distracted by the word “render.” In this context it means “return” or “give back,” but I’m amused that it can also describe the process of separating fat from meat by the application of heat. Though the double meaning may be unintentional, it seems like an apt picture for this process. We will soon know how much “fat” the government will claim for 2011!

(That exclamation point is supposed to be ironic. I am not actually excited about this.)

giving up

/ abby hummel / 4 Comments

A little over a week into Lent, I’m surprised at how scattered my thoughts about self-denial and repentance remain. I suppose it’s not a very fun thing to think about. At least with the other “big” Church season of Advent, we prepare for the revelation of Word made flesh while planning holiday menus and anticipating the spiritual experience of getting loads of loot. Not so with Lent! For nearly two thousand years, Christians have spent forty days in repentance and self-denial preparing to observe the most extreme series of events in human history: Jesus’ undeserved betrayal and gruesome death that make way for the eternal victory of His resurrection.

It can be rightly said that this is a special season of grief for sin and brokenness in ourselves and the world, and turning away from these things back to God. Of course we should seek repentance at all times, but that doesn’t make Lent irrelevant. There is much to gain in approaching this corporately and systematically — or, to use the evangelical lingo, “in community” and “intentionally.”  Compared to our full observance of Christmas (and sometimes Advent), we evangelicals tend to tend to sweep Lent and Easter under the rug. Perhaps this is further evidence of our own brokenness, indicating that we don’t always take the the death and resurrection of Christ as seriously as his birth.

My thoughts and convictions on this topic are still not fully formed, but mostly my point here is that these forty days are a special time of examining my own heart and orienting myself more fully towards the gospel. In giving up small things – this year, it’s sleeping in past six o’clock and using the computer after dinner – I’m more aware of how much I hang on to and how much Christ gave up for me. And I’ve failed at one or both of these things every day. This teaches me even more about my own rebellion and powerlessness, and how much I must cling to God in all things. I want Lent to be a big deal because these tangible experiences help break me out of my own fallen perspective and emotions. Rightly understanding my own state of helplessness and defeat is the only way I can rightly understand what the gospel means. In Lent, when I turn my heart towards sorrow for sin and grief for all that brokenness has wrought in my life and the world, I gain a deeper understanding of St. Paul writing: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive!” and the traditional liturgy stating: “Thus we proclaim the mystery of faith – Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ is coming again!”

Though “giving up something for Lent” alone is meaningless, with a contrite heart the tradition of fasting and denial teaches us about surrender, sacrifice, and salvation. These lessons are profoundly valuable. I’m glad to be observing Lent this year, because I know in “giving up”  little things  to make room for greater devotion to God, I’m learning more about giving up entirely.

“…whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” – Matthew 10:39, esv.