Kate just found out today that she has been published in an upcoming issue of “Metro Christian Living.”  Her article titled, “How to Survive Your Husband’s Unemployment” will soon be in print.  Here’s a snapshot though for you blog readers! 

“I was in the kitchen getting my 2 ½ year-old a morning snack with my 6 month-old on my hip when I heard the some sort of power tool-made racket coming from my husband’s home office.  He’d been unemployed for about a year then, and during that time had gotten carried away with a number of unfinished household projects.  I poked my head in to see if a wave of inspiration had come over him and led him to work on converting the shallow closet into a bookshelf.  It was a project we’d talked about a few weeks earlier but no ground had been broken.  Instead, what I saw stretched from one side of the room to the other and screwed in with heavy metal bolts was our red and white checked hammock.  Nothing says, “Don’t worry, baby, I’m going to get us out of this mess!” like a hammock hung in the middle of his office.

As I’ve shared this and other stories from the last year and a half of my husband’s unemployment, I’ve learned that I’m not alone.  There are so many women right now who find themselves suddenly with an unemployed husband at home and their testimonies all seem to parallel mine.  The first few weeks bring with them some novelty – movies in the middle of the afternoon and whole family outings to the park.  But once the honeymoon period is over, the days that follow test the very fibers that hold the relationship together.”

Kate and I are excited to share how this recent season of our lives has challenged us to grow closer together and closer to God.  When the full length of the article can be released, I’ll be sure to post it here on my blog.  We thank God that He has brought me out of a season of unemployment; I’m working now part-time with a roofing company, and part-time with Bridge Connections.  In addition, Kate’s been able to work 10 hrs. a week teaching refugee children English as a second language.  We are using this current season to prepare to enter full-time ministry in God’s timing.  God is so good!

The Steager family continues to be extremely generous to us – I just can’t tell you.  They are first rate people. Sheri is going to help  me with my new book, tentatively titled, “The Piqua Was Forced Out of Their Land.”  Sure, the title may change, but I’m crankin it out cause it’s gonna be a good one.

It’s 11:33pm, the scent of the Cinnamon Pecan Swirl candle is filling the room, and it’s glow is lighting up our dining room.  The sound of bass notes are coming out of our speakers from the darkened corner of the living-room, and I begin thinking about the scenes from The Capture of the Sabine Women, where Adam is in Italy and listening to the sound of Jazz from the apartment above him.

I’m getting ready to write my second book.  I’m not sure what its title is going to be, but it is going to be about my experience that I’ve had over the past year or two with the local church.  It’s going to be about breakfast with Don, and preaching in a large suburban church, going home each evening to an urban Hispanic neighborhood.  It’s going to be about prideful gain and corrupt leaders, justice un-seized and a God who works to redeem it all.  It’s going to be about standing in welfare lines and taking in the homeless and working to dig ditches for a living.  It’s going to be about getting a letter when some attempted to buy my silence, and when I had a phone conversation with a friend of mine who asked me, “How much is your integrity worth to you?”  It’s going to be about all of these things…and the tough choices that went along with them.