GRACE for all things toxic.

Hello my lovely friends!

I know it's not Friday and I said that I would probably blog on Fridays but this last Friday was a very full day and blogging just wasn't on the priority list, so today it is and I'm ok with that. It's Martin Luther King Jr. day and that's even better. I'm loving all of the quotes that have been shared! What an amazing legacy. (Also, pay no attention to my run on sentences. I like them.)

I'll share a bit about our Friday, or rather, the last couple of weeks... (and this sorta kinda pertains to our big trip that we're planning. You might be able to put the pieces together yourself) ...but the last couple of weeks have been intense with our house!

I had a suspicion that there was mold in our downstairs bathroom. That's not uncommon in an old farmhouse, of course, but I needed to know what we were dealing with. My sleep was hinging on this information! So Mark and I looked over our homeowners insurance policy and got the process started to have an inspection. The insurance company sent out some guys and, sure enough, there was a little colony of mold up in the ceiling. (Thankfully it wasn't black mold or anything ridiculous! But it still concerned me... especially with little children in the house!)

While this mold discovery and talk of toxins and air quality was going on, we realized that we never had our air ducts cleaned out after we remodeled our upstairs bathroom last year. That became really concerning to me because of all of the construction dust that could be circulating in the house, and even more concerning when one of the girls developed a UTI and I spent several nights researching the effects of toxins in the air. (You guys, they say "knowledge is power" but over the last week or so, I decided that knowledge is actually really scary! I had all of us diagnosed with cancer and a dozen other unseen illnesses thanks to my FBI skills and the endless pit of information that is the internet! Not really, but sheesh! Too much info!)

Anyway, to link this to our trip, we cannot let anyone stay in our house knowing there's toxins in the air. Nor could I allow US to stay in the house knowing such information. Espcially since the insurance guys removed a portion of the ceiling, took the mold out, and left us with a big hole in the bathroom! I couldn't even be in the house without feeling like I needed to hold my breath!

(I'm sure I was a bit over the top when it came to my reaction. I was told that it really wasn't that bad of a situation. But I needed SOMEONE to be concerned about the health of my family and clearly that someone was going to be me!)

So our solution was to remediate the mold issue - cleaned up and all cleared out. It's source was from an old roof leak that we fixed when we first moved in. Also, we left the furnace off until we could get the duct work cleaned out in order to not circulate the construction dust anymore. (Some of those days/nights without the furnace were COLD!) I kept the kids out of the house most of the day, and at night, all four kids slept in our closed off bedroom where we had a nice air purification unit keeping the air clean for us. Needless to say, it was a crazy week!

So FRIDAY was the day that the air duct cleaners came out and took care of the system. We got THE WORKS done - plus a sanitizer flushed through the system to take care of anything that may have been left behind. 

After a day of ventilation with every door and window open, we were back in the house and the heater was turned ON once again. Hallelujah! The air feels SO much healthier, in my opinion, and I can finally sleep again knowing that our air is clean. NOW we just need to figure out how we're going to get the downstairs bathroom put back together, aka, REMODELED, before we take our trip! Finances will be tricky for this one.

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This whole mold and "toxic" talk is SO fitting for our lives right now. I just laugh at the thought... Satan is trying to use every "toxic" trick he has to derail us! But, as you know, we have (ahem, mostly me.) we have spent months getting rid of toxic things in our life. People, places, behaviors, thoughts, foods, products, etc. WE ARE GETTING RID OF IT. So mold and toxic air totally fit in right now, and we are done with it. 

I cannot tell you how great it feels to be rid of those things. It feels SO GOOD AND RIGHT AND HEALTHY to rid ourselves of toxic things! My mind and my body, our home and food and products... definitely on the right track. (I won't get into too much detail about my body, but clearly I still have some weight to lose. And our house is by no means 100% chemical free/Whole Foods only/vegan/all natural/yadda yadda and all that jazz kind of house. I'm saying that we are on the right and healthy track.)

Of course, like He always does, God uses these physical things help open my eyes to spiritual things. Here was my fresh epiphany of an old epiphany... 

Do you know what allows us to rid ourselves of toxic things?

GRACE.

Grace is exactly what enables us see toxic things for what they, gives us the desire to purify ourselves of them, and the courage to do what it takes to get rid of them.

Titus 2:11-14 says it like this:

"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works." 

AREN'T YOU SO THANKFUL FOR GRACE?! 

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Ok, ok. That's all the preaching I'll do. 

Back to our trip! 

We are discovering just how many details go into planning a trip like this. We knew it would be that way, but it has definitely proven true. It's all a bit daunting, to be honest! But I've learned a few things between having kids and owning homes and LIFE in general... 

The only way to do a big thing is to do a whole bunch of small things, and you should always start with the small thing that's right in front of you. 

So we took care of the mold in the house. Now we can move on to the next thing. 

One fun thing I'd like to do with the kids in preparation for the trip is to find a good, detailed map of the states and start pinning our route! In my mind, I see using a cork board behind the map and nails for our pins and as we travel we'll add string from destination to destination, and when we get home, it'll be a finished piece of artwork with an overview of our adventure! 

Also, we are still looking for renters for our house. We had a lot of interest when I posted about it on FB, but nothing moved passed that. I know it will have to be a unique situation, or perhaps more Air-bnb style. If you have any ideas, please let me know! We're trusting that God will work out the details and bring just the right people to us. 

Lastly, you might be happy to know that a friend of ours offered us his 27ft travel trailer! It's not too old - 2007. Sleeps 6. And he offered us a price we couldn't ignore! *Answer to prayer!* I'm so thankful! 

That's all the update I have now. I'm looking forward to watching this whole adventure unfold! I'm sure when it's all said and done, I'll be thankful to have these early posts to remind me just how overwhelming of a process these first steps were and how much we overcame to get to the end!

Love you guys! 

~Anna Austin 

PS. The old laptop that we had been using for awhile finally bit the dust. So I'm typing these blog posts up on my phone, which is not exactly fun. There seems to be a problem accessing my photos to post on the blog. I'm not too worried about it. We'll get a computer soon and it'll be so great. Until then, I'm just old school writing, no pictures or fancy things. Simplicity. But we're all good with that, right?