Nic
- Jun 4, 2015
- 3 min read

6.12.15 Letter to Friends

16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1Thess. 5:16-18

I have to admit this is not my natural reaction. My natural reaction to challenging circumstances is to:

a) Try to fix it or problem solve my way around it.

b) When that fails, complain… a lot.

c) Generate a marginally Christian narrative around it and try to paste some, “God is good” – I guess-ness over the whole debacle.

But being a follower of Jesus Christ is all about overcoming my “natural” self and finding a new way to do things, right? So here goes; a brief summary of the past 7 months of life without all the complaining (and be very glad you missed that sorry stage of things my friends.)

It is hard to characterize the stage of life we are in, perhaps it is best described as a season of growing and stretching. Mike started at First Presbyterian Church of Sharpsville last September. We enrolled the kids in school here in Pittsburgh for one last year and Mike commuted to his job 2 days during the week, worked from home 2 days and then we all piled in the car for Saturday and Sunday in Sharpsville (henceforth to be referred to as SV in this post). SV is 1 and half hours north of Pittsburgh and once we get past the city it is not a bad drive. Though the weather during January, February and March was horrible for driving we had no accidents or incidents! Hoorah!

School ended for the kids last week. Tessa and Riah were at PUCS again and had a great year in middle school. Riah was challenged and gained a lot of ground academically and finished 6th grade with all A’s except for one 89%. His robotics team went to the Lego world championship in Kentucky and he worked on the yearbook. He also got a rock tumbler for Christmas and had a blast polishing rocks that he has found and bought.

Tessa graduated from PUCS 8th grade with straight A’s and many fabulous memories from her time there.

Tessa also worked on the yearbook and babysat two nights a week for most of the year.

Sophia transferred from the International Baccalaureate High School to the Science and Technology High school where Samuel attends.

Sam also finished up his Junior year with a 4.0, was inducted into National Honor Society and received a National Merit letter of Commendation. It says something when the principal, guidance counselor, and multiple teachers offer to adopt your kids so they can continue going to their school.

I have continued my cleaning and organizing business. This spring a dear friend agreed to take over the business and she has a portion of my clients and will take on more as I phase out after we sell the house. We have been frantically trying to finish projects on the house since March and finally have all the trim in, flooring on the first floor, and doors on our closets (truly superfluous things since we lived without them for 10 years!)

Life in SV is good though still very part-time for the moment. We plan on shifting our schedule to living in SV most of the week starting in a few weeks. I will need to be in Pittsburgh at least two days a week to work and both Tessa and Sophia are working with me but the rest of the time we will live up in SV. But where will we live? Last year we had the gift of a mother-in-law apartment over the garage of a congregant in town for our use and Mike still stays there when he is by himself. But in April we had an amazing conversation with a family in town that own a gentleman’s farm with a rental home. No one was renting the house and they offered it to us to use “until we were done” for an unbeatable price. So for now we have a home base and have moved in partially so that when we go to SV we have a home complete with a pond, 37 acres of wood and fields, garden, orchard, miniature horses, cows, and chickens. It’s such a blessing and it gives us breathing room to look for land to build the “Carlin homestead”.