Loving Meme

This 'Counting Blessings' meme came to me courtesy of Carmel Sundae's blog


Five things I love about my spouse:

1. He is very protective of us
2. He is able to admit mistakes and learn from them
3. He has been very brave about the things he has had to face
4. He is looking to God to lead Him now, more than he ever has
5. He is willing to listen

Five things I love about other family members:

1. My family is very supportive in all those little practical ways.
2. My mother's faith has everything to do with the strength of my own.
3. Older relations don't mind offering advice or helping more directly when we need it
4. Everyone is willing to pray for each other
5. We have gotten better about telling each other (often!) how much we appreciate one another.

Five things I'm proud of in people I love:

1. My Mom does the neatest crochet projects. She even designs her own!
2. My daughter just gets better and better with her arts & crafts
3. My son is very quick to understand most concepts we seek to teach him. (Applying them is something he's still working on. lol)
4. My husband's resourcefulness in repairs never ceases to amaze
5. All of us have neat stories to share.

Five happy memories I have about people I love:

1. My husband and I were serious about each other right from the start (we went for betrothal rather than dating). Recognizing we were starting out with tight finances we agreed to skip alot of the usual 'date-y' expenses like planning to eat out a lot or luxury gifts. Come Valentine's Day though, I told him I was a bit sad we couldn't afford a lot of roses or anything. Tom surprised me by working in the whole dozen roses, by getting me one at a time over weeks. He fit it into his meager budget by making himself cut back on his cigarette habit. Believe me, I appreciated every one!

2. Becka had the most endearing habits as a baby. She was so polite! Whenever she wanted something she would start by making small 'het het" noises. If we didn't hear that, she'd clear her throat and try "het het" again just a little more loudly. Then she'd add just one cry to the mix, before giving it up and just howling. Usually we'd manage to tend to her before she needed to turn up the volume too much. ..

The only times she'd be unexpectedly loud was when one of us was holding her as an infant and we didn't give up whatever she was angling for promptly (more milk, down, etc). She would strain herself to look into an ear...and she'd bellow! LOL

3. William and Becka both got chicken pox when he was still a toddler. We decided we'd get their favorite take-out meal of the time - fried chicken - after our usually quiet William announced (repeatedly) that he'd rather have "chicken in a box than chicken pox." This was the day and moment William decided he would talk to everybody after all. (His asthma had made talking much uncomfortable for him.)

Its now a family saying.

4. Last month, my children went out to a park with their grandmother where there were a number of ducks & geese about. My son, who usually gets along with all things avian, loves to make animal noises. Soon he was merrily quacking back at them. Then he mixed it up with the 'afflack' quack from the tv ad. Soon the whole flock was quacking "afflack" right back. People laughed so hard they fell out!

5. I was so thrilled when my children were finally able to spend some real time at Busch Gardens. They were a relief for a rough year of medical trials and an encouragement to my mother who had been wanting to do something wonderful for us and could hardly believe her ears when she heard she'd won those tickets. It really was a dream come true, especially for William.

William had been a preemie birth. He had to have surgeries as a baby and then he suffered from a fairly severe virus-induced asthma. He didnt get out as much as I would have liked to take him. From the time he was little though, he had played with an old set of postcards from Busch Gardens that had been around since I was a kid. He really loved the images of the LeMans & bumper cars, the huge swings and boats. During late nights with a nebulizer, my toddler would huggle in my lap and ask me to tell him about them over and over. He would ask his sister what they were like from when she got to go. But he was never able to go himself...not until last year.

It may not be a funny anecdote or anything, but I was fighting tears of joy the first few times he got to ride them in real life. We let him ride each one as long as he liked the first day we got to that part of the park. It was a wonderful dream come true for all of us, and a reminder that God had got us through some rough times already. William is healed now, you see. He can take the smoke of the bbq pits, the heat of a summer day, and the noise of a crowd just like any other child his age. It has taken time, faith, effort, and persistence but his rough days did finally end. That has been a big help in encouraging our hearts through Tom's slow ordeal in the past few years.

God sure knows how to send a hopeful message, doesn't he?


Five things I want to thank God for:

1. The amazing way God has kept Tom going and is healing him
2. The incredible peace, joy, and hope Jesus has so often covered us with in this season of trial.
3. Forgiveness.
4. That God knows better than I do what's good for me.
5. That my tomorrows keep improving on my yesterdays, thanks to God's intervention.

Tagged: all the wives among ye.