Be still, and know that I am God … Psalms 46:10
Today I am thankful for …
25. living in a country where I can still worship God freely
26. the people at my church, who often function as my family away from my family
27. the Cardinal Greenway, where the hubby and I biked yesterday and plan to bike again today. You gotta love this Indian summer!
22. The nephew and his lovely wife were kind enough to send a picture of little Lucy, who just celebrated her first birthday. That will hang on my refrigerator and bring a lot of smiles!
23. It is 70 degrees in central Indiana, and everyone is out taking care of their leaves enjoying it.
24. I saw my friend Hannah out shopping. It’s nice to e-mail, but it’s much nicer to talk face-to-face. 
19. I do have to keep a sharp eye out for deer on my way to school each morning, but at least I don’t have to look out for elephants!
20. We have been working hard with our students to raise their vocabulary levels. One of my juniors, who functions at 3rd/4th grade level, knew what respective meant this morning. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but for him, it is a major victory.
21. There were paper towels in the women’s restroom this morning. I do love my school, but we were out for two days.
16. One of my students asked me to help him find the words to the Lord’s Prayer. We Googled it and printed so that he could have them written down. He was wondering about it because we were watching a DVD of The Crucible, and John Proctor, Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse are reciting the Lord’s Prayer as they are being hanged. This boy is on the football team, and the team says this prayer before every game. Evidently the instructions are to be silent if you don’t know it, but this young man wants to say the prayer with his teammates. I think that’s pretty cool. God’s Word does not return unto Him void.
17. My fall break last week was paid. I had forgotten that, and since I am hourly, it does make a difference!
18. The midweek Bible study the hubby and I are going to always teaches me something new.
11. It is the fourth of November and a rose just bloomed on my rose bush.
12. The hubby left a sweet note in the van while he was running errands.
13. The daughter had a good visit with some of the family that she has not seen in eight years.
14. We can see the end of raking. It’s finally in sight!
15. Martha stopped by to see me at school. It’s nice to see her more than once every blue moon, and it’s nice that she takes the time to stop by before she takes the student she mentors.
6. The moon really did look like a big pizza pie on the way to school this morning.
7. The first bus that would have delayed my getting to school turned off almost right away, and the other one turned behind me.
8. I forgot my thermos, which sounds like a bad thing, but in the time it took me to go back and get it, the road which I take to school, which had been closed, was opened.
9. We got rid of eighteen bags of leaves today.
10. Tony, the youngest grandson, has been having health problems. Today, we found out that the problem is his tonsils and adenoids. He also needs tubes in his ears. At least now his mom and dad know what has been wrong. They have been to the pediatrician for every two weeks for the last four months!
I kept a gratitude journal last November, and I think it is a good thing, so I am going to do it again. I can’t promise I won’t repeat things; sometimes I am grateful for the same things every day.
So. Here goes.
1. I am thankful for the new hot water heater. Ours was unpredictable. You could never tell if you were going to get hot water or water that was just tepid. We opted for electric instead of gas because electric is cheaper here and electric water heaters have a bigger storage tank. We’ll see if it saves us money.
2. I am thankful for daylight savings time because I saw a beautiful sunrise on my way to work today.
3. I am thankful that my new slacks are a size I bypassed growing up even though I discovered, in reading the label, that there is elastic in the waistband.
4. The power came on ahead of schedule yesterday. We were only without power for four hours instead of seven.
5. The leaves are about half done in the yard, and the weather has been mild so we can deal with them.
Tune in for more tomorrow!
This post is a part of Marriage Monday. If you want to read more letters, please go here.
To my Honey,
It’s Marriage Monday on Chrysalis, and the call for submissions asks you to write a love letter to your husband. I think it’s always good to think about the reasons that I love you, so that is exactly what I am going to do.
I suppose it’s a good idea to start at the beginning and say what attracted me to you. The first thing was your smile. I was 19 at the time, and a guy’s smile always seemed to precede his wanting something, but you didn’t appear to want anything but my company. That was a novel idea at the time!
The second thing was that you seemed to value the real me. Guys I met up until that time took a look at all six-foot of me and saw a basketball player (which I am not). You saw me. You didn’t criticize when I couldn’t play billiards. You went on and found something that I could do. I think that built an element of teamwork into our marriage early on.
Movies and books often portray “love at first sight,” and while I think I started to love you when I first saw you, it wasn’t a falling. It was more of a drawing in, like a plant is grafted to another to make it stronger. It took time. I don’t know if, during that time I was learning to trust or actually learning to believe that this was what love was, the making of one person out of two.
Sometimes it’s hard for me to believe that our beginning was almost thirty-five years ago. As you told me this morning when I dressed for school, what you see when you look at me is the young woman that you dated. It’s the same for me. I know when I look at our pictures that you have changed, but when I look at your smile, I see the young man with whom I fell in love.
That is not to say that all of our lives have been easy. We have had our dark times, and I thank God that He has brought us through them. There was your brother’s death. Unemployment. Raising two children, which seems easy looking back but certainly had its hurdles. And then there was the move, which took us out of our comfort zones , but it was necessary so that we could grow.
And grow we did. The move allowed you to exercise talents that the old job did not. And I? I learned to do things out of love for you and not merely because they needed done. Then came illness, and you showed me how you interpreted “in sickness and in health.” It’s very humbling to need help even getting out of bed. You anticipated my needs and never once complained. I had to learn how to receive, and how blessed I am that you were there to give.
Now we are on the downside of the hill, so to speak. Our nest is empty. You are retired. I know I fought that a bit. My excuse is that it was unknown territory. I was concerned about the fixed income and the big cut to what that income was. God has been good to us though, hasn’t he? It’s been two and a half years now, and we have enough. I wondered, too, how a man who worked 80+ hours a week could slow down and be happy, but you found things to do. Habitat. The Gideons. Bible study at church and doing taxes for AARP. I didn’t have to worry after all. You found activities that fulfilled you, and my reward was seeing the smile with which you won my heart in the first place return.
Now we wonder how to descend this “hill,” just as we had to look for ways to climb it. Should we move? Be closer to the kids? Have a smaller house with a smaller yard? (We’ll get the leaves done soon, my sweet).How full should our schedules be? How will our lives change if my handicap worsens?
I’m not as afraid as I thought I would be. I discovered, here in Indiana, the deep faith in God that you have. I remember the car accident that sent you back to church more than thirty years ago, and you’ve been faithful in attending ever since. You are a quiet man, and I have learned that I have to listen for your spiritual insights. They are worth waiting for. I still smile when I remember how it took you 50 miles to answer a question that I asked. Fortunately, in that case God gave me ears that actually listened. I hope I never forget that lesson.
So we move forward, you and I. We keep our eyes not on material gain but on that final goal the Bible says we’ll attain. Heaven! We know it’s in our future. We just don’t know how far. away it is. We are of an age when our friends are getting cancer and dying. We know that, but for the grace of God, the same thing could happen to us.
However God shapes our lives from here on, I am thankful to have you by my side. I am learning more and more to treasure each day that we have together. The Bible says it isn’t good for man to be alone. I am grateful that in His wisdom, to ease your loneliness, God sent you to me. I remain yours for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health , as long as we both shall live.
With much love,
Your B
This comes courtesy of CitizenLink:
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it
can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
– Alexis de Tocqueville, French historian
My sister and I were talking yesterday about things that stimulated our memories. We had a claw-foot tub in our bathroom at home until 1965, when the bathroom was remodeled. She asked me how old she was. She was three, and it surprised her that her memories of that tub could be so vivid.
Maybe that’s what got me thinking. The hubby and I were taking a tour of fall colors yesterday afternoon, and we were about to go by an Amish shop that sells cheese. All of a sudden, I could almost see my father’s hands cutting Colby cheese from one of those wax rounds (you won’t know what I mean if you’re not old enough). It just brought back such pleasant memories of something small that the Pater and I shared. The shop was closed, but today, I splurged and spent$4.99 on a waxed round of Colby cheese, which I have not had in probably thirty years. It tasted goooood!
Today was also good because I got to go to the park, enjoy the fall colors again, and kick through leaves that came above my shoes. I will not enjoy the leaves so much when they create a carpet on my lawn, but the memory of kicking through the leaves as a child is still a pleasant one for me.
Finally, I can’t leave without sharing some memories that my father and the youngest grandchild made last weekend. Tony won’t be five until December, but he played (with help, of course) a whole game of chess with my 84-year-old father last weekend. I was amazed at the patience that both of them showed, and I decided to take a picture. For the first one, I caught Tony by surprise.
For the second, Tony decided to mug for the camera. That’s him saying,”Chess,” not “Cheese.”
Good memories just make life sweeter, don’t you think? Thanks for letting me share mine with you.
