Friends & Family: August 2023

Special Edition: Looking Ahead with Hope

August found Dennis and I enjoying some of our favorite things, including fresh corn on the cob, a once-a-year treat no grocer can replicate, and early hints of fall as stores burst with school supplies that are fun to peruse even without the supply lists every teacher requires. And even in a month that featured nine straight days over 100 degrees, we relished a few cool fronts that invited us out to walk our neighborhood in the evenings. Can’t wait for more!

We also enjoyed our screened porch and deck more as the calendar marched forward. I mentioned in July that we’d agreed to fight the heat. And we have. Our two outdoor fans and our new awning are making our west-facing deck much more pleasant in the late afternoon and evening summer days. And our porch curtains are helping block the heat, too.

This last official month of summer has also found me serving as general contractor for our family farm in south Arkansas. We discovered, not unsurprisingly, that we had rotten floor joists. The floor in the hallway to my mom’s room has been sagging badly for years; we just didn’t know why. But in late July we discovered the air conditioner had been leaking for who knows how long.

Sadly the damage could have been prevented, but our caretaker didn’t notice or was so used to the gradual slope it didn’t register. Regardless that became my focus for much of this month.

I researched and hired a floor leveling company; discovered our under-the-house ductwork was bad for a variety of reasons; found a heat/air company to repair the air conditioning units and redo the ductwork; and finally by late August got our carpenters back to resume what we intended to do in late July, find the old original wood floors.

Another road trip was on the calendar to spend three and a half days with our daughter Laura and her three little ones while her husband was on a business trip. They surprised me with my favorite cake, caramel cake from Frost Bake Shop, and the sweetest serenade of happy birthday.

Looking ahead with hope

As I drove to and fro these last 30 days I began to do some dreaming about this coming year for Ever Thine Home. The always-creative side of me wants to find new ways to share all that God is doing in my life and in the world around me. So I’m working on a couple of new avenues of writing that I hope to follow as God leads and as time allows with my seminary class.

The new topics I’m considering will be:

·      What I’m learning: lessons from God Himself, His word, my seminary class, or life in general. “I will tell of Your name …” (Psalm 22:22), “…telling of our wondrous deeds,” (Psalm 26:7), “ … they tell what God has brought about and ponder what He has done” (Psalm 64:9). We need to hear from one another what God is doing to bolster our faith. 

·      What I’m reading: Books live in stacks in my office and other places around our house. I’m hoping to share great statements made by the authors that have been especially meaningful or insightful for me and, in doing so, recommend books to you. These will be short little bursts of content that you can read in a few minutes.

·      What I’m creating: Projects fill my life—from the farm remodel, to art, to decorating seasonally, to other ideas I’m trying or discovering. I’m looking forward to sharing some of these with you for fun or as inspiration. God created all of us to create, so sharing those activities also honors Him. My team also plans to share with you more of our amazingly designed Scriptures as free printables this year.

Friends and Family has evolved from just a monthly newsletter into a community of sorts, a group of women (and a few men) who share similar values and interests and mostly a growing heart for knowing God more and experiencing Him in our lives. Friends and Family is now also the name of our growing group on Substack. All of the above new ideas will be sent automatically, once they become reality, to Friends and Family subscribers.

A note on subscriptions: We invited all of you to respond to a survey last spring and so many of you did. We are grateful. We’ve read every single response. Coming early this fall will be an email with our responses to many of your questions and concerns, one of which was confusion about the switch to Substack and paid subscriptions. You aren’t alone. We’ve also had our questions and moments of confusion too. So watch for that. We hope it will be helpful.

Friends and Family is also growing. We are beginning to include a couple of our children as contributors. All six of us on our little team are very excited to bring you a six-part series during the week of September 11 by Samuel Rainey on how to grow trust in your marriage and other relationships. With over 20 years of experience as a marriage and family therapist, Samuel has acquired great wisdom which you will easily recognize in this series of posts.

Ashley, our oldest, is the women’s director at her church and has written a number of Bible studies for her women’s groups. She’s working on new ones all the time and we hope to share one with you in the spring of 2024 for your summer study.

And last, for now, is a response to hundreds of you who over the last five years have asked for more of the original ETH holiday products. Producing thousands of ornaments and other items in China as we once did is no longer feasible for many reasons. But we are dreaming, brainstorming and trying to creatively solve this repeatedly expressed desire and need.   

Be watching for two emails a month on Wednesdays in this coming year. We have found a few left-over physical products we’ll be selling, like 12 spools of the Untie Your Story Ribbon for Thanksgiving. But we also have created digital versions of the same item that you can buy on Etsy, then download and print at home. We know it’s not the same, but it should give you the same content and experience.

I’m excited for what’s ahead knowing God is already there. He is always with me and with you. And that alone is an adventure!

Thanks to all of you for following Ever Thine Home either as a free subscriber or as a paid member of our Friends & Family group. Our goal is to encourage your faith and cheer you on to more.

I’d love to hear from you if you have a minute.

·      Do you better understand Substack with the few above explanations?

·      Are you tired of hearing about the farm or have any questions about it?

·      We’d love to hear if you have been to our Etsy store and what you’d like to see more of in the future.

Ever His,

Barbara