Today is a beautiful day...so many good things to be thankful for: the long-awaited cool breeze...long relaxing walk with the Shelbo after church where James delivered the message for the first time in years...fried okra from Golden Chick for lunch...watching the original Cheaper by the Dozen with the oldest two while coffee is brewing and filling this old house with its delicious aroma...and waiting for my newly engaged brother and sister-in-law to arrive to celebrate their engagement with us. How can I ever be discontent in this life? All is good. Even our old house and neighborhood where people can't believe we actually like living, we have come to love for so many reasons.
For one, the trees...Look at that trunk above. Arizona did have a few trees here and there, but they were skinny little things with no substance. Tree trunks are beautiful...trees in general welcomed us back to Oklahoma with more glorious green than we could ever ask for and much of that is because we are in an old neighborhood with big old trees. Huge trees, that will soon be changing colors for my favorite season of the year and I will get to enjoy them every.single.day.
It is good and more than good that my sister lives right next door to us and that we have a fence...a white picket fence that keeps our kids and our dog(s) safe. Even if every house within view from our front porch is in disrepair, our love for this house is growing just like the love for a friend that at first you think you have nothing in common with but overtime grow to love because of all of the character you bring out in one another. James calls our estate the Lichtenberger compound because of the bungalow. I call it the Lichtenhouse because licht means light and we hope our home shines so brightly with love and grace that we attract friends and neighbors to fill our rooms (small though they might be.) Below is the view from the school yard across the street.
Another thing we love about living where we do close to downtown is that when we go on walks {which is an almost daily occurrence} there is so much to see. Enid has a beautiful downtown with neat old historic buildings, lots of bricks and interesting rock buildings, unusual paint colors, retro signs, and lots of friendly faces. It's not like walking in the suburbs where all we saw was house after house...I think the only thing the kids miss about those walks is that there were always more sprinklers going for them to run through.
Every time Lucy sees birds on a wire she tells us they are having a meeting. When we ask her what kid of meeting they are having this time, she usually says, "A Church Meeting," in a voice that is like "duh!"
Downtown there are plenty of interesting places for the kids to scoot too... I love this picture.
Majestic old churches...even in Enid, OK.
so lovely....
so so lovely...
And here is an example of one of the houses we can see from our yard. It will be beautiful when it is finished, but it is far from finished at this point. That's okay, it's still beautiful in its own way.
One final thing I shall share today that we love about living close to downtown is that it is the only area in Enid where there are sidewalks. I found that out from a runner friend of mine. Without sidewalks, Jesse'd have a hard time teaching Lulu how to scoot and our family walks {and my morning walks with Jeka} would be very very rare.
Sometimes you have to intentionally focus on the good...I am a realist and kind of melancholy, so it doesn't come natural to me. But there is someone super-naturally living inside of me Who makes it possible for me to find the good...and after all, all is good. Even the hard and the ugly...the old and the new...the difficult and seemingly impossible...all is good because He makes all things work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28
