Our family has experienced a lot of wonderful things this Christmas season: magnificent meals, treasured traditions, generous gifts, and meaningful moments. But I think today may have been the best day of the whole season.

It was the best because we did the least.

We slept in a bit. We ate nothing but leftovers for our meals. We lounged around the house, playing with toys, reading books, and watching movies. We never took a single step across the threshhold of our front door. We never even changed out of our pajamas. It was beautiful... while it lasted.

A few weeks ago, I had a really bad bike day. It involved three separate tire punctures (on two separate bicycles)... a broken and mangled spoke on one of the wheels... and at least four separate instances of the chain falling off one of the bicycles (with each instance requiring several minutes of messy fingerwork to get things back on track). Quite a bit of my time was wasted, the skin on my hands was stained and chapped from the conditions, and the repairs cost me all the cash I had in my wallet. It was a very bad bike day.

Two tire punctures and three chain disengagements into the day, I had a brief emotional breakdown. After ten or fifteen minutes of futility in trying to get the chain back on the bike that still had two properly-inflated tires, I cried out to myself: "These stupid chains are the bane of my existence!"

But then, just after the words escaped my lips, I had to smile and laugh at myself. I realized that if stubbornly-disengaged bicycle chains were the bane of my existence... well, then my existence was probably not all that bad. I still had my health, to walk instead of to ride the bike. I still had a bunch of bicycle parts that did work in spite of the difficulties. And I had enough money in my wallet to cover all the repair costs. Ironically, a feeling of gratitude washed over me as I considered this "bane of my existence."

Today, I've had a similar experience. Our central heating unit sprung a leak very suddenly and unexpectedly, and when the technician came to take a look at it we received the dreaded news that the entire unit would need to be replaced. An expedited order for a new CV ketel was placed immediately, but in the meantime we have to go about 24 hours without any heat or hot water. That's twenty-four hours in one of the the coldest, darkest weeks of the year. And to get everything back on-line, it's going to put a serious crunch on our bank account...

Not exactly the tidings of comfort and joy that we like to consider at this time of the year.

But with the lesson of the stubbornly-disengaged bicycle chain still relatively fresh in my mind, I've been able to count my blessings today. If a cold house and a depleted bank account are the banes of my existence... well, then my existence is really not all that bad. In spite of the mess and money, we still have a home that shelters us from the wind and rain outside. We have plenty of blankets and extra clothing to pile on for the night. We have an extra space-heater that we were able to borrow from friends. We have the financial means to arrange for the necessary repairs. And really, no matter how uncomfortable things might get tonight, it looks like it's all of a 24-hour "ordeal" -- absolutely nothing compared to what so many people around the world have to deal with on a daily basis. We have so much for which we can be thankful. Even when the things around us are bad, God is good.

This is one of those posts that might only be interesting to grandparents, six-year-old girls, and perhaps the occasional interior designer... But here is a brief tour of Olivia's new bedroom (the result of several weekends of working on it).

Colorful sidewalk chalk drawings point the way home. There are only a few people I know who could have provided such beautiful street art...

At the beginning of January 2003, our family was stuck in Ohio.  We hadn't been able to sell our house in Bowling Green.  We hadn't been able to raise all of our funding, for our church-planting venture in the Netherlands.  And because of these factors, and the vague and uncertain timelines associated with them, we hadn't been able to make any definitive plans for our final leap across the Atlantic Ocean.  We were stuck in a holding pattern.

But then in one 24-hour period in the middle part of that month, everything came together.

One morning, I was eating breakfast when the telephone rang; it turned out to be a couple that I had just talked to a week previously about financial support for the "Amsterdam Project."  They said that they had talked about it and wanted to pledge their support.  I eagerly wrote down all of the relevant information and thanked them for their call.  It was very rare for someone to initiate contact when it came to financial support (more typically, it requires a follow-up phone call on my end) -- so their boost in support was especially encouraging.  An hour later, another individual called with the same situation:  another new pledge, without any follow-up work on my part, putting us just $100/month away from the "magic number" that we needed to reach before our missionary funding would be complete.  Of all the thousands of fund-raising contacts I'd had throughout the years, I could count on one hand the number of times that someone had called me back unsolicited, taking the initiative to become a part of our ministry team; and two of them had happened within an hour of each other!  Later that afternoon, I received two more pledges in the total amount of... you guessed it:  $100/month.  And suddenly, our funding was complete.

In between phone calls with ministry donors, we also got a call from our realtor in Bowling Green.  She said that the potential buyer for our house had finally accepted our counter-offer, and they were ready to sign papers the following morning.  Almost exactly 24 hours from when the wheels of progress had first been set in motion by that breakfast-time telephone call, we talked out of the bank with our house sold -- and suddenly, we were free to make our travel arrangements.

Right then and there, in the parking lot of the bank, we called our travel agent and told her to go ahead and book our tickets to Amsterdam, completing our improbable transition from "stuck in a holding pattern in Ohio" to "frantically preparing for the final push to the Netherlands."  Just a little over a week following our Day of Destiny, we were on an airplane flying to our new home in the Netherlands.  And on the 30th of January 2003 -- exactly eight years ago, today -- we landed in Amsterdam.  At the time, I never would have thought that this place could actually feel like home to me; but believe it or not, as of this coming summer (Lord willing) I will have lived in Amsterdam longer than I’ve ever lived in any other place on Earth!