Let love soften and strengthen you.

Let love soften you when your heart wants to be angry and hard and it feels like everyone is going against you and you can’t forgive.  When you want to yell and scream and be angry, let love soften you and fill your heart with compassion and grace.

Let love strengthen you when you feel your heart melting like wax.  When nothing is going right and people are pushing you around and you’re drowning in sorrow or pain or stress.  When you want to just hide in a hole and give up on the world, let love strengthen you and help you do what you need to do.

Let love be the pull that brings your heart back from the extremes.

Five years we’ve been on this ride.  The daily grind of learning and teaching and arguments and apologies and hugs and silly and sad and work and play.  Five years of growing up for both of us.  Five years of me learning how to be more patient and serene and less controlling.

Five years of more growing in God than I have ever done in my life.

Five years of learning how you can only fix yourself.

Five years of seeing myself and all my faults and then seeing the same faults in him and loving him anyway and then realizing just how much God loves me anyway.

Five years.  It’s like a blink and a million years.  And the rest of our lives to go.

One of the main themes that struck me was that Christ gave thanks before the last supper.  He gave thanks, knowing full well what was going to happen to him that evening and the next day.  He was thankful for his friends even though he knew they would all turn against him.  He was thankful for his life, which was about to end.

In church recently we’ve been doing personal/family communion.  The tables are set up in the front and you can go get communion – alone, or with your family – whenever you’re ready.  It’s very powerful.  The three of us walked together to the front, Brent served Andrei and I and we huddled together, reminded of the love Jesus has for us.  We took the sacrament together, and Brent prayed over us.

And I was reminded again of the part where Jesus gave thanks.  And I gave thanks.   I know what will happen in the next few months.  I know it will be stressful and tense and we will be on edge.  I know that we might be cold some days and be sick of bucket showers, and have to deal with emptying sewage in a blizzard.  But I can give thanks.

2.  Taco dip.  Mandatory Christmas food.

3.  Our awesome friends Audrey and Brian - we spent all day Christmas at their house and ate and laughed and played on our electronics and not much else.  It was so much fun.

4.  My new Fitbit that Brent got me for Christmas.  It’s basically a fitness/activity tracker.  I’m proud to have logged 11 hours of sedentary movement and not even walked one mile.  Relaxation Win!

(See, it even could tell exactly what I did today!)

5.  Watching Andrei play with his new camera.  He takes pictures of literally everything – just walking around the room with the camera in front of his face.  He also learned how to take video and then watch himself talk over and over and over.  It’s amusing and annoying at the same time.

6.  Christmas in general – how many times does the King of the Universe decide to pay us a visit.  What a lot he went through for us to be in His family.  :)

Merry Christmas all!

2.  Andrei’s leadership.  He is always ready to help others learn new things, and takes charge (still working on how not to be pushy, but the potential is there).

3.  Andrei’s attitude toward little ones.  He’ll naturally seek out bored or crying tots and try to cheer them up or play to entertain them.

4.  Andrei’s bizarre eye for faces.  He’ll see a movie and correctly identify the actor from some B-rate children’s film that he saw a preview for 2 years ago.  It’s crazy.

5.  Andrei’s smarts.  Despite his “ESL” status, I can see that all the potential is there.  When he gets a concept, he really gets it.  He puts the pieces together and everything he’s picked up, he’s good at.

6.  That four years ago today, Andrei became a part of our family.  It was 12 days after our court appointment, and 7 days before we returned back to the USA.  The day itself was not specifically anything special, but in our family history, it was everything.

2.  The book – People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks.  I shouldn’t add it here because I’m not even finished yet, but I don’t think I’m going to turn on it now.  The book is about a book restorer who finds a rare  and ancient copy of a Jewish Haggadah and the story weaves back and forth between her research and the history of the book.  I love books where I learn about church history and science and all kinds of interesting and new things.

3.  Eggnog – it’s been in stores for a while now but we finally had our first cup.  Oooh sooo good!  I’m going to try and make it this year.

4.  When I’m feeling extra introverted, I love to sit up by Brent when he’s working in the sound booth.  He hasn’t been able to sit in the congregation by me pretty much our entire marriage, so I like hanging out with him while he’s doing his work.

5. Being barefoot – I love warm weather when I can essentially be free footed as much as possible.  I think I found some acceptable barefoot shoes, but I’m waiting to get used to them before I decide if they’re keepers or not.

6.  Getting home from a long day of shopping, putting on some comfy clothes, and slipping beneath the quilt with Brent and the laptop.  Mmmmm.

2. The park near my house.  I love that I can walk there in five minutes and get completely lost on the trails with no distractions and fresh air all around, and still be back in an hour.  It’s like a teeny vacation.

3.  This dish storage method – Link - I think it will help in the RV since things shift while driving and all that.

4.  Nature Wants to Eat You - not a blog to read if you are freaked out by deadly animals.  I find it fascinating.  Nature sure has some weird crap!

5.  Pocket Sized Espresso Maker on Instructables.  If I knew how to weld, I would be tempted to create this.  Or maybe a pocket sized french press?

6.  My nephew, Abe.  He is almost 2 and the cutest thing.  If he doesn’t want what you are offering him, he’ll just purse his lips in a sly smile, close his eyes, and turn his head away slowly.  Being snubbed by a baby – adorable!

2.  Blue Q dishtowels - They’re all so cute – I will never buy a plain white dishtowel again.

3.  Pesto – I wish it were basil season and I had a blender

4.  Paprika - Not the spice, or Mr Salt and Mrs Pepper’s daughter – It’s a recipe manager for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.  I like it because it organizes my list by recipe, it’s easy to add recipes from the internet, and it cloud syncs with my phone.  I plan to use it to shop as soon as I’m done writing this post.

5.  Tweets of Old – Real newspaper bytes from the last 100 years or so.  

6.  My mug.  I got it at Russia’s only Starbucks.  It cost $10 and the drink inside it also cost $10.  I use it almost every day.  :heart