Category Archives: Marriage

Laudable Linkage and Good Ol’ Cory

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“Winter is many months of the year
But now at last Maytime is here…”

~ Veronica Ann Twells

Wow — it’s May already! I do feel bad for some of you who are still experiencing winter weather. Spring will come again! Some time!

I’m just going to list some of the interesting things I saw this last week with little commentary.

Author Robin Lee Hatcher writes about the personal story of being married to an alcoholic which contributed to her book Beyond the Shadows.

Tim Challies: Read More, Read Better, and how he reads a book.

The Superior Wife Syndrome.

A Crazy Idea For a Missions Trip.

My big, but partial, list of pregnancy and baby musings.

Miss Whitebread Was Wrong, HT to Challies.

Balancing Writing and Family.

A Free Motion Quilting tutorial.

Sometimes a little laughter is good medicine, and I had a good dose the other night watching some clips from the old TV show Boy Meets World. I can’t condone everything on the show (we veered away when they talked about “make-out parties”), but it roped me in the first episode I saw (“The Play’s the Thing”) when young Cory was being a brat and having to suffer the consequences rather than having everything work out in his favor. Imagine, what a concept for TV! 🙂 The writing and the relationships were generally very clever, and the casting and acting spot on. Here are a couple of favorites:

Laudable Linkage

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Here are some great things I’ve seen around the “Net and thought some of you might enjoy as well.

Tim Challies shared a link to an incident that brought tears to my eyes: The Contagious Comfort and Mercy of God at Wrestling With an Angel. It begins this way:

One busy Saturday afternoon I was patrolling the local mall parking lot in my police cruiser. It was warm, so I had my windows down enjoying the fall air. As I drove though the lot I heard a loud piercing cry echoing like a sound bite from a horror movie.

After reading that post I clicked around and read a few other posts there. Very good, rich reading.

A Biblical view of self image and way of dealing with self-doubt by Laura at Outnumbered Mom, a new blog friend discovered through the Friday Fave Fives. Though it deals with self-doubt as a mother, the truths there are applicable to anyone.

Political angst by Wendy at Practical Theology For Women deals with a few pet peeves, such as angst in Christianity “over something the individual perceives as righteous or unrighteous but that Scripture itself only addresses in either very general terms or doesn’t address at all.”

The Marriage Bed. Be sure to read til the end! I’m sorry I forgot to note where I saw this one.

Respect within marriage.

How to Pray For Missionaries.

The Paradox of Parenting Boys. This made me smile.

A live web cam of a nesting owl, HT to Lizzie. It will be really fun once the babies hatch.

A refurbished vintage sewing cabinet. Lovely!

A video library of hand embroidery stitches. Great resource!

Paper silhouette art. These are very creative — I’ve never seen silhouettes like this.

If you need any ideas for cute Easter decorations or goodies:

Eggy Baskets.
Little nests.
Free printable cupcake toppers.

Have a great weekend! We start spring break this week!

Flooding and Mudding

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It rained all day this past Sunday, just a sprinkle at some times and a downpour at others. The main problem that creates for us is that one corner of our “sunroom” floods when we get a lot of rain. This is the room the previous owners added on, and I don’t know if they did something wrong or what.

Our patio has a little brick wall around it with a drain that we have to keep leaves and gunk out of.

We had the roto-rooter guys out a few months ago to thoroughly clean out the drain, but it didn’t help a lot. They had a $1,200 solution to offer us, but we’re trying to come up with a less costly alternative.

So until we figure out what to do or have time to do it, we have a routine established. Jim bought a pump that we put in the corner of the patio which usually works fine. But yesterday, though we had the pump going full blast, the sunroom still flooded in one corner. We have a Wetvac and went through a lot of towels to try to keep it contained. I asked Jim if the pump just wasn’t keeping up for some reason — he said it was pumping, but the ground was so saturated there just wasn’t any place for the water to go. The water in the yard was almost to the level of the little brick wall around the patio and was about to overflow it.

(This was taken Monday just to show the wall, so no flooding is shown. The side next to the yard is not as deep as the side next to the patio.)

But finally about 11:30 p.m., the rain had moved out and everything seemed to settle down.

It was bright, sunny, and windy Monday morning, so I had great hopes for everything outside to dry out. When I took some trash out to the garbage can around lunch time, I noticed pieces of cardboard and what looked like an old handle of a rake or shovel out in the yard, so I ventured out to get it…and sunk past the level of my shoe in mud.

I’ve mentioned before that I have balance problems — I told my husband that it was a good thing that long handle was out there to use as a walking stick, or I would have been out there hollering for help until someone heard me inside. But I was able to gingerly step around the swampy area enough to get the big pieces and get back to the house.

And when I told my dear, sweet, sympathetic husband this, he replied…

“I wish I’d had the video camera!”

Thanks, Dear. 🙄 🙂

Odds and ends

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I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas week! Ours was very nice.

I thought I’d share with you just a few tidbits from the past week.

When we came back from our anniversary trip, Jeremy has already offered to make dinner that evening, and Jason and Mittu surprised us with balloons, a cake, some plastic goblets (I didn’t know they made such a thing), and “sparkling” grape juice. We had never really had an anniversary celebration at home before — having a girl in the family adds a new dimension! Not to fault the boys, though. They were used to us just going out to eat that day and only a couple of times over the years going somewhere overnight. But that was a nice surprise.

One of our silly little traditions on our anniversary is to put a card under each others’ pillow and then read them together before we go to bed. Somehow even though I bought family Christmas cards specifically before we left so the store selection wouldn’t be all picked over or all gone by the time we came back, I totally forgot about an anniversary card. I thought I might sneak out Monday morning before we left, but it ended up being so late before I was ready to go, I didn’t want to take the time, and there was no way to do it sneakily. So I thought maybe I’d find something in a little shop along the way. Nope. The places we went to didn’t have any and the places that might have had them weren’t open. So that evening in the hotel I was trying to decide what to do. I hated not having a card at all, though I knew Jim would understand. While he was on the phone with the kids I looked around and found the hotel stationery….so I wrote my little note for our 30th anniversary on that. 😳 At least having the image and name of the hotel on it made it somewhat commemorative. I was especially thankful then that I had posted my 30 things I love about my husband that morning!

Our church always has a Christmas Eve service, understanding that everyone can’t come because some have their family celebrations then. I had had to go to the store that day and then had multitudes of wrapping to do and was chafing just a little about going. But I always enjoy it once I get there. Our music director’s daughter and her husband were in town and they did a sacred concert for us: she plays the cello and he is working on a PhD in something to do with classical piano.  The cello is my all-time favorite instrument. It was lovely: a nice, peaceful time to stop and reflect.

The service itself was at 5 p.m. — kind of an odd time — I guess they were trying as much as possible not to interfere with anyone’s evening plans. But we ended up going out to eat afterward at Fatz Cafe. I wouldn’t mind making that a regular Christmas Eve tradition. 😀

Christmas Day was very nice with Jason, Mittu, and Grandma coming over. The Christmas story, presents, and what has become our traditional breakfast of Sister Shubert sausage wraps, cinnamon rolls, and sliced, cooked apples with cinnamon and sugar, then naps, puttering around with Christmas presents, dinner, naps, a couple of movies on TV, and time with family in between. A very restful day.

No after-Christmas shopping for me on Saturday! I went into one store looking for something I had seen advertised before Christmas in the hopes that they might still have it, but no such luck, and the crowdedness and lines reminded me why I don’t go shopping on that day.

Mittu and Jason had a little get-together Saturday night with us and a family from church they are close to whose daughters worked with them at Castlepoint. One daughter attends college in FL and one teaches in CA, and they were both in town, so it was a nice time of visiting. We played Pit, which was my first time playing. I had always thought, looking on, that it was a noisy, confusing game, but in the midst of it, it’s fun.

Today was a fairly normal Sunday. I have the ladies’ booklet to work on this week — I don’t know quite how that will work with everyone home, but I’ve been praying about it! We’re really looking forward to New Year’s Eve at Jason and Mittu’s. I grew up in a family that had fireworks regularly and I’ve chafed at our city’s restriction of them. But Jason and Mittu live outside the city limits! So we kind of invited ourselves over to do fireworks then. We’re not so much into the ones that just make noise: one of my all time favorite ones we had ages ago were little tanks that would send off little sparkles as they traveled a few inches. I wonder if they still make those…

It’s been understandably quiet around the blogosphere this week, which has been helpful as I am sure we were all otherwise occupied, but I’ve missed getting together with my blog friends. I imagine most people’s posting might be a little iffy this next week, too, but then we’ll get back to “normal.” I have a lot of plans for that first normal week!

Here are a few pictures from Jim’s camera during our anniversary trip. We don’t have many photos of just the two of us together, but he got some using Jeremy’s gorillapod and his time-delay setting on his camera.

In the hotel room:

In front of the hotel:

At a little tea shop where we stopped for lunch one day:

In front of the Heyward-Washington House waiting for the next tour:

Hope you have a good last week of 2009!

On our 30th anniversary: 30 things I love about my husband

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1. He loves God.

2. He fulfills well the admonition in Deuteronomy 6:7 to teach children God’s Word in the course of daily life: “And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.” Jeremy has said he gets more out of a conversation with his dad than almost any sermon.

3. He is a wonderful father.

4. He leads gently, not tyrannically or despotically.

5. He has kind eyes.

6. He kills bugs for me.

7. If he drives my car and notices the gas is low, he fills the car up for me.

8. He knows how to fix a multitude of things.

9. He is smart.

10. He can usually handle problems and issues with people firmly but not angrily.

11. He is calm in a crisis and knows what to do or can figure it out in short order.

12. He has a sharp sense of humor.

13. He is very patient with my foibles.

14. He is a great griller!

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15. After Thanksgiving dinner he gets the rest of the meat off the turkey and then cleans out the roasting pan.

16. Sometimes he will clean the bathrooms unasked and unexpectedly.

17. He has a strong work ethic. He not only works hard and long to support us, he likes to do his best at any job.

18. He takes good care of his mother.

19. He is generous.

20. He has a lot of financial savvy.

21. He has a lot of sanctified common sense.

22. He is discerning.

23. He is generally more relaxed than I am. I appreciate the counter balance to my tenseness.

24. He can handle most of the technological stuff.

25. He is thoughtful.

26. He is more outgoing than I am.

27. Though he probably would say he doesn’t feel at ease in social situations, he handles them with apparent ease.

28. He is generally more upbeat and cheerful than I am. If he does get into a bad mood of some kind, it doesn’t usually last long.

29. He is still a gentleman.

30. He made this video for me last year to one of my favorite songs:

Thanks for a wonderful 30 years, Hon.

Here’s to the next 30!

Engagement

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I made a passing reference to my engagement in Wednesday’s Random Dozen post, and Carrie said she’d like to hear my engagement story. I thought for sure I had told about it somewhere on my blog before, but the closest I came was a mention in my love story post from three years ago. I thought about saving this for our anniversary in December, but it is a milestone anniversary (30 years!) and I have other plans for that post! And the anniversary of our engagement isn’t until May, and I don’t want to wait that long.

So, as I mentioned in our love story, it took me a long time to determine Jim was “the one.” Part of that was because it takes me a long time to come to most decisions, especially major ones, but also because I had been engaged before and didn’t see the problems in that relationship until I had been out of it for awhile. How could I be sure this time?

Coming to that determination is told in the other post, but I don’t remember if I specifically told Jim, “OK, I’m ready now,” or if he just sensed it, or, as happens often with long-dating couples, little sentences like, “If we get married…” become “When we get married…”

But we had been dating about a year and a half while attending college. The end of the school year came, and Jim offered to drive me to the airport — I was from Texas, he was from Idaho, and we were in college in South Carolina. We wouldn’t see each other until the end of summer, when he planned to come and visit and meet my family before we headed back to school. I had a feeling he might ask me when he came to visit.

But in the mean time he suggested we stop off for a picnic lunch at a nearby state park (Paris Mountain State Park, for those familiar with the area) before going to the airport. He checked to make sure it was okay: most Christian colleges have rules about dating couples not going off campus alone lest they be tempted to engage in any hanky-panky. The person he asked said it was fine: we found out later that that person might not have know what they were talking about, but we went in good faith that we were doing right.

We got chicken from somewhere, drove into the park, and set up at a picnic table. I noticed Jim wasn’t eating much, but I didn’t suspect anything. He suggested we take a walk off the main clearing. We came to a fallen tree and found it sturdy enough, so we sat on it and chatted for a while. Then he asked me to marry him. I don’t remember the exact words — I do think he got down on one knee. But my answer was, “Yes!”

And then when my mom picked me up at the airport in Texas, I had a surprise for her! I showed her my engagement ring right off the bat. I think she suspected things were heading that way. She was excited.

Jim did come to visit and meet the family that August. I had done preliminary wedding planning through the summer, and we finalized some things that week, then headed for school, where I student taught that semester. Then we got married in December.

I’d love to hear your engagement stories if you’d like to share.

Laudable Linkage

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Hope you’re doing well this fine fall day!

Still have a lot to get done today, but I wanted to share some good things seen around the Web lately:

How can I know I have a heart for God at By Grace.

The waiting is the hardest part of waiting by Big Mama. Quotes: “…f you can’t find contentment and security as a single woman, then you’re not going to find it in marriage” and “Marriage wasn’t going to take away all my fears, insecurities, and worries….marriage tends to just amplify whatever junk is in your life.”

Homemaking Internship

Study to show yourself an SAHM

Being merry with our husbands by nannykim.

I am my husband’s girlfriend by Candy.

Bless others with food: practical ideas and organizational tools for helping others by bringing food.

What about the culture? by Jungle Mom: answers from a missionary against the charge that missionaries adversely affect the culture they minister to.

How far is enough? Wonderful testimony from a missionary (husband of Jungle Mom).

Craft station out of a crate.

How fiction can powerfully inform the practical application of truth, part one and part two by Jeanne Damoff, whom I had never read before, but whom I now want to read more of. Quote: “God is good in what He forbids.”

funny pictures of cats with captions
see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Helpers

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I’ve mentioned that I am rereading Becoming God’s True Woman, a series of messages to women edited by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. Today I finished the latter half of the chapter “A Wife’s Responsibility to Help Her Husband” by Barbara Hughes, which was reprinted from her book Disciplines of a Godly Woman, which I’ve not read. One part particularly stood out and spoke to me this morning.

In Genesis 2:18, before creating woman, God said, “And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.”

This doesn’t mean, of course, that the man never helps the woman or that the woman never does anything else in life but sit beside the man waiting to see what he wants help with. The fact that we feel the need to clarify and explain this underscores the truth of what Barbara goes on to say:

So why does our blood pressure rise at the mention of the word helper? It’s a cultural norm for us to associate weakness and even inferiority with the one who assists. No one wants to play second fiddle. But the fact is, without a second violin there is no harmony.

And harmony, my friends, is a beautiful thing.

Then later in the chapter she points out that in John 14:16 Jesus promises His disciples that the Holy Spirit will come to them after He has ascended back to the Father: “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever.” Some versions use the word “Helper” in place of Comforter. The Holy Spirit is by no means an inferior member of the Godhead, yet part of His role is that of helping believers. Barbara goes on to say:

By addressing the Holy Spirit as a helper, Jesus forever elevated the position of one who assists. Trace the Holy Spirit’s actions through the New Testament, and you’ll find the Spirit repeatedly encouraging, comforting, coming alongside, and helping. The work of the Holy Spirit, the Helper, is beautiful!…

So Christian wives must never resent or despise the term helper or consider it demeaning. To help is divine!

Good reminders!

Works For Me Wednesday: Wedding Tips

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wfmwbannerKRISTEN

Works For Me Wednesday is hosted by We Are THAT Family as an opportunity for bloggers to share the tips they’ve learned along the way with others. Be sure and stop by to peruse a plethora of tried and true tips.

We’ve just had the first wedding among our kids. That doesn’t make me an expert, but there are some things I observed along the way (not just at our wedding but at weddings in general over the years) that might be helpful:

For friends of the bride and groom:

1. The bride in particular is getting bombarded on every side with wedding advice and expectations on several fronts. Avoid saying, “You should…,” “You ought to…,” “Why don’t you….?” Sometimes sharing something really nice you’ve seen at another wedding can be shared simply that way, “At my cousin’s wedding they did this really neat thing where they…” The idea is out there, the bride can think about it or not as she sees fit, but she doesn’t feel pressured.

2. If you use a gift registry to buy a wedding gift, be sure to follow the instructions so that the store registers that particular gift as having been fulfilled.

3. Include a gift receipt in the card or with the gift if possible: most stores do provide them. Sometimes the registry still doesn’t “register” for various reasons, and duplicates do happen. A gift receipt makes it so much easier if the couple does have to return something.

4. If you order something online to be delivered to the bride or groom, be sure to indicate that it is a gift if there is a place to do so in the ordering process. Usually there will be a little space for you to type in a note if it is a gift. My son and daughter-in-law did receive a couple of gifts that way that they have no idea who sent them. You could also let them know ahead of time that a package is coming from you via whatever store to their home so that when it comes they’ll know it was from you. They sincerely do want to send thank yous for the generosity of their friends and loved ones.

5. Attach your card firmly to the gift you are taking to the wedding. Most wedding gifts aren’t opened at the reception: they are at least taken back to the bride or groom’s family’s home: they may even be taken across the country before being opened. The couple wants to get the right thank-you card to the right people, and, of course, the gift giver wants the right card on the right gift. So use a lot more tape than you think you need, or, better yet, put the card inside the gift and then wrap it.

6. I saw many ways that friends or church family helped out, ways that had never occurred to me before:

  • Helping clean the bride’s family’s home before guests arrived.
  • Bringing over food.
  • Offering to house guests.
  • Picking up out-of-town guests from the airport.
  • Helping to set up, clean up, or serve not only for the wedding but for events before the wedding.
  • Running errands.
  • Bringing light snacks or something to drink for the rooms where the bride and bridesmaids or groom and groomsmen are getting ready before the wedding.
  • Being available the hours before the wedding to get items, run messages, etc.

7. If you see any member of the bridal party dashing by before the wedding and you try to speak to them, please don’t be offended if they don’t stop at that moment to talk. There are a multitude of things that come up at the last minute that have to be taken care of. Most everyone relaxes a lot more and has more time after the wedding or at the reception.

For the bride and groom:

1. Do as much as you can ahead of time. Things have a way of snowballing at the end with unforeseen details, plus you want to have some time to just relax with guests if possible.

2. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

3. It’s a good idea to check your registries every now and then in case some of the items have been discontinued since you made the registry. It’s frustrating to go to a store and print out a registry and start shopping only to find that half the registry isn’t available. You may not want to peek at it because you don’t want to see what people have bought yet: perhaps a friend or family member could keep an eye on it for you. And if you receive something from another source or change your color scheme in a room, etc., be sure to adjust your registry accordingly. It saves a lot of time in taking things back later.

4. Consider your guests. My son and daughter-in-law did a great job with this, and I commend another young couple in our church who scrambled the day of their wedding when the weather turned blisteringly hot to change the venue from outdoor to indoor. But one wedding we attended a few years ago was outdoors — in the South in August — and the bride or groom or family, I forget who, got upset that some of the older people stayed inside a nearby lake house to watch. As it was the wedding coordinator fainted and my youngest son got violently ill after running around in the heat.

5. Don’t fret if something goes wrong. There are probably very, very few events that go off absolutely perfectly. The little (or big) things that go wrong are what make for funny stories in years to come.

6. Keep prespective of what the day is all about: celebrating your union together. No matter what else happens or doesn’t happen, if that happens, the day is a success.

Of lists and marriage

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Some time after posting about the Marital Rating Scale from the 1930s yesterday, I remembered making my own list when I was dating (not in the 1930s! More like the 1970s). It was kind of a popular thing to do when I was in college, to make a list of what you would look for in the guy you wanted to marry.

I don’t really remember what was on mine except for the first two items. I think I may still have it in a trunk out in the shed where other things from that era are: I am hoping we can clean the shed out one of these days and get to that trunk, and I hope everything survived and isn’t mildewed or eaten by bugs!

But, being a Christian, the first necessity on my list was to marry a Christian. Secondly, he needed to be a Christian not just “in name only,” but a genuine, growing, active Christian who lived out his faith.

I think probably the rest of the items had to do with general character qualities: kindness, even-temperedness, etc. I think such a list was a good thing in that it got girls’ minds off of just hair and eye color and height and all the physical attributes and on to character and personality, the more important things. It would be interesting to compare my original list to one I made for my sons about what Christian women want in a man.

The only problem with making a list, though, is that we might not be aware of what we need. For instance, somehow I didn’t realize at the time that I was a pretty tense person. I don’t think I realized it until after we were married a while and I saw that Jim was fairly laid back. If we’d both been as intensely tense as I was, we’d have driven each other crazy. But where I can get tied up in knots about something, he can deal with it clearly and calmly, and that’s such a blessing. Of course, it can be a source of conflict — if I am all stirred up about something and he’s not, it can seem like he’s not taking it seriously or he just doesn’t understand. But by this point in our married lives –we’ll celebrate our 30th anniversary in December — I know we just approach things differently. And I think we’ve balanced each other out some: I think I’m more relaxed now, at least in some areas. But I never would have thought to put something like that on a list.

I wrote the rest of our love story out here a few years ago.

On the other hand, we have to be careful not to be overly picky and fault-finding. I believe in settings standards high, and as someone once said, it it wise to keep eyes wide open before marriage and half-shut afterward. But, as I said yesterday, no one is going to be perfect.

I had written most of this post last night, then this morning at the end of ivman‘s post on Mergers and Marriages was a link to “What she wants in a man.” I should post it separately as it is long and this post is already long (and believe it or not, I am trying to write shorter posts ), and with two posts on marriage this week I don’t want to add a third and have it look like “marriage week” here. But this just fits too well. 🙂 Enjoy!

What She Wants in a Man, Original List:

1. Handsome
2. Charming
3. Financially successful
4. A caring listener
5. Witty
6. In good shape
7. Dresses with style
8. Appreciates finer things
9. Full of thoughtful surprises
10. Imaginative and romantic

What She Wants in a Man, Revised List (age 32)

1. Nice looking
2. Opens car doors, holds chairs
3. Has enough money for a nice dinner
4. Listens more than talks
5. Laughs at my jokes
6. Carries bags of groceries with ease
7. Owns at least one tie
8. Appreciates a good home-cooked meal
9. Remembers birthdays and anniversaries
10. Romantic at least once a week

What She Wants in a Man, Revised List (age 42)

1. Not too ugly
2. Doesn’t drive off until I’m in the car
3. Works steady – splurges on dinner out occasionally
4. Nods head when I’m talking
5. Usually remembers punch lines of jokes
6. Is in good enough shape to rearrange the furniture
7. Wears a shirt that covers his stomach
8. Knows not to buy foods I don’t like
9. Remembers to put the toilet seat down
10. Shaves most weekends

What She Wants in a Man, Revised List (age 52)

1. Keeps hair in nose and ears trimmed
2. Doesn’t belch or scratch in public
3. Doesn’t borrow money too often
4. Doesn’t nod off to sleep when I’m venting
5. Doesn’t retell the same joke too many times
6. Is in good enough shape to get off couch on weekends
7. Usually wears matching socks and fresh underwear
8. Appreciates a good TV dinner
9. Remembers your name on occasion
10. Shaves some weekends

What She Wants in a Man, Revised List (age 62)

1. Doesn’t scare small children
2. Remembers where bathroom is
3. Doesn’t require much money for upkeep
4. Snores only lightly when asleep
5. Remembers why he’s laughing
6. Is in good enough shape to stand up by himself
7. Usually wears some clothes
8. Likes soft foods
9. Remembers where he left his teeth
10. Remembers that it’s the weekend

What She Wants in a Man, Revised List (age 72)

1. Breathing
2. Doesn’t miss the toilet