Spring

 When we returned home to our Melbourne cottage, we found that spring was well underway!  The bulbs were blooming, the roses too, the trees were full with new leaves, the bees were buzzing, and the grass in the fields was one metre high and full of seeds!

We didn't even think about spring and allergies, but it hit us fairly hard!  Our bodies had to adjust to a different time clock, different food, and a different climate with bacteria and pollen and seeds in the air.  We were eager to do some jobs around the house as we hadn't done much work in Germany, so in the first week back we went hard at it for a couple of days, and this was not good for our immune systems!  So last weekend Ulf lay in bed with puffy eyes and no energy at all, for a whole day.  The symptoms are still hanging around like a bad smell, but they no longer stop us from our daily lives.

 There's been much to do in the garden - plants that I do not desire to have keep growing back and taking over and lots of bushes and even a tree needed pruning back.  The vegie patch made a good start, thanks to a friend who looked after our seedlings while we were away.  But the slugs and possums had a go at it and about half of what was there is now gone.  But there is hope!  Our second lot of seedlings are sprouting healthily and plans are underway for future possum protection!

Being away from home has given us, especially me, some much needed perspective on our lives.  When you're removed from your everyday environment, it's much easier to see what it is that motivates you and drives you to do what you have been doing and how...  It was very refreshing to see that I needed to make some changes in my daily routine, my thinking, and let Jesus eradicate some fears that were driving me. 

We have begun to go through our little home, room by room, getting rid of excess decorations and unnecessary junk, dusting and putting things in order.  There were many small unfinished jobs to be done, and now we're finally getting to them!  It feels really good to be putting things in order.  Our t.v. now lives in our storeroom and our computer has taken its place.  Goodbye marketing input!  It's amazing how much more peace we now have in our daily lives without that one item in it!

Ulf is enjoying working with Dave again, painting.  He has plenty of work right up until Christmas, which will provide some financial security for us over the holidays.  I'm continuing with my part-time bookkeeping job and keeping the house and garden in order.  We also have reconnected with our friends and the Elisha Care community, which has been really good.  It's always interesting to learn where God is taking people on the journey - and I mean that in both a spiritual sense and an everyday life/physical one, as I cannot seperate the two.  And it's exciting to see changes, both that have taken place, and which I can see coming for people....God is always at work and he is so faithful.

It is very fitting for us to be experienceing spring-time at this time in our lives, as we felt that when we moved here a new season was beginning in our lives.  After our seventh wedding anniversary in June this year, we learned that we were expecting our first baby!  This was very meaningful for us, as someone had given us a prophetic word two years ago (in our fifth year of marriage) that five was the number of grace, seven the number of completion, and that God would take us from the fifth year into the seventh year by grace.  It was a very timely word as we were waiting and waiting for our time to have children to come.  And now it is upon us! :-) 

We know that the years we have waited were very important and all that God has done in us and our relationship was necessary and very healthy for us.  We see that if we had had children in our first year of marriage, things would have been a lot harder for us and for our children.  But God deals with each of us differently, and this was his path for us.  He is so good and loving and faithful.... and we know that in the coming months and years, we will need the trust and relationship that he has built (and continues to build) with us more than ever before.  The years of waiting were just the beginning....