so thankful

First, the quilt page has been updated (I posted the final, quilted version of my third quilt of valour).

This last week I read the book Growing Up bin Laden by Osama bin Laden's first wife and fourth son. It was heart-wrenching, sad, and enlightening, all at the same time.  But so far, every book I've ever read about the middle east that involve women in the book, except one, have left me feeling overwhelmed and a little flabbergasted that God chose me to be born to American parents.

I do not consider myself a feminist, though the older I get the more I see many Christian males as male chauvinists. For example, a Christian group I know recently posted that they need assistance moving things. They specifically requested men to come move furniture and dismantle desk units, and for women to come pack up the office supplies. I do understand that most women do not enjoy lifting heavy objects and that men are typically stronger. But it also made me laugh. a little.  My roommate and I actually took one of those desk units apart and put it back together (Okay...I took it apart and she helped me put it back together and then cleaned up the mess I made on her side of the room...and never complained). I know women who move furniture and paint their own houses while their husbands are away on business trips or at work, women who till their own gardens (GO, go, GO! Barbara Ann (she has a pink tractor) and Charlotte (who used a small hand tiller), women who repair the washing machine and refrigerator and toilet because there's no money to call the plumber and hubby is working his tail off at work (thank you YouTube!), and women who build their own stone steps and patios and driveways. I also know men who want to help out but have injured backs or severe health issues that limit their movement, but gladly will sort paperwork or make phone calls. When we (and I use the church/Christian groups here as an example because those are the groups I work with the most) limit certain activities to male/female roles, we alienate potential workers...for no reason. I understand there are very clear God-given roles for men and women in the Bible...but these things do not fall in those categories.

Yet every time I read a book about women in the middle east, I am SO thankful to have grown up in a country with parents who encouraged me to use my mind, who allowed me to work and learn to drive, who saw me as more than "just a girl".  I am thankful for their Biblical teachings: that God made me and loved me, that I am not incomplete because I am a female, and that God clearly teaches every thing we do should be for His glory and honor - not mine. That, when the apostle Paul wrote Timothy to "study to show yourself approved as a workman to God", it's a good principle for every believer, and not just males who are becoming preachers.

There's a lot to be said for respecting your husband and being a keeper of the home, but I would never want to see that taken to the extreme where a wife can never question her husband or leave the home without his permission or an escort. I cannot imagine my only duties in life to be that of cooking food, cleaning house, and reproducing. I am so thankful that God gave me a godly example in my father, who has never seen it as a threat to his manhood to lovingly help around the house. As he used to inform us if we ever asked for an allowance for doing our chores "You live here. You're a part of the team. You don't get paid for teamwork."

But I was also reminded of why we should reach out to the downtrodden and those on the fringes of society...they're the ones desperate for acceptance and meaning to their life.

For me, reading about another culture and from a different viewpoint is a great reminder of why I believe as I do, and how important it is to truly listen and understand where a person is coming from before we make snap judgments about who they are and what they will do. Things are not always as they seem.

retirement update

Because everyone keeps asking...Bobby's retirement is going quite well.

Most days are like Saturdays...we sleep a little later than before, I do housework, we tend the animals, I do laundry, we take care of errands and business, some days we do yardwork, and some days we find/make time for fun stuff. And we have taken 2 trips to Alabama - one to check on Mom after her surgery and one to see my niece and nephew get baptized, and two short trips here in NC.

That's all I really know to tell you.

I've not started gourmet cooking (and don't plan to), though I did clean/ organize 2/3 of my work room the last two weeks. I never got around to establishing a writing schedule nor getting the wallpaper off the bathroom wall, but that's okay. I'm thinking August might be a good month for that. :)

I will say that in four months, we've only had one week where we both wanted to consistently smack each other upside the head. Personally, I think one week out of sixteen isn't quite bad.

And that, my friends, is how life with a retiree is.

And Bobby's disclaimer: "Why would people think we were going to drive each other crazy? We were both crazy to start with!"

Yes, some things in life just don't change.

simply the best

The first year we were married my husband pleasantly surprised me. I know how much he hates to shop, and I know it's impossible forhim to wrap presents. I full expected a box to arrive from one of 2 places, and that would be Christmas. So imagine my surprise that first year when I got a phone call from my mother-in-law, asking if I had ordered anything from two places. It had Bobby's name on it, but her address. :) I told her I hadn't, but I'd check with him and see. Not sure if he forgot to tell her they were coming or in the busyness of life she forgot, but she wrapped my presents for him. Now THAT is a super nice Mom-in-law. And form my birthday, his best friend helped him out.

In less than 2 weeks, I will enter a new decade. There's a good possibility we will be out of town on that monumentous occasion, so yesterday I was very surprised when my mother-in-law showed up. Well, not so surprised that she came bringing some gifts, but with this:

 a birthday cake. A not just ANY birthday cake, but a home-made cake with her special icing.

Chocolate on chocolate: it doesn't get much better than this.

It's been a VERY long time since I've had a home-made birthday cake I haven't made myself. And the fact that a)my husband asked her to do this and b) she did it with a smile is incredibly awesome.

And no, neither one of them are available. I claimed them 13 years ago and have no plans of that changing. :)

the big question

13 years ago last night I came home from work, tired as usual. I started supper, then went to work on grading essays, knowing that report cards would be going out soon. Bobby arrived after work like he normally did. The chicken was VERY dry, and the vegetables weren't all that great, either. After supper I dumped the dishes in the sink and he watched election results while I continued to grade papers. During one of the commercials, he asked me to get my calendar and see when would be a good time to head to South Carolina and see my parents. The closest date was around Thanksgiving. That didn't thrill him. He kept wanting to know why we couldn't shift some things around and go that weekend. I kept looking at that non-shrinking stack of essays and wondering where on earth his head was.
After he realized we weren't arriving at the same destination, and he told me to look in his wheelchair pouch. There I found a ring box, and it was already sized!!!
I promptly made arrangements to visit SC that Saturday, but I wore the ring the rest of the week (even though we weren't telling my parents over the phone!) The next morning at school one of the teachers spotted it between classes, and the news spread like wildfire throughout the school. My tenth graders wanted all the details, and they were more than a tad disappointed. They were totally convinced I was the most unromantic person on the face of the earth when I told them to get out their grammar books. 
"But Miss White, HOW can you teach GRAMMAR when you're so much in love and you just got a ring?"
I don't think my answer of "I'm thrilled, but life still goes on." impressed them too much.  But that night, before Wed night church, we headed to our favorite little hole in the wall, Eldorado's (which was then on 401) to celebrate.
And my romantic husband always remembers this date, and we almost always go there to eat on November 3rd now (even though it was actually the 4th when we ate there) to remember the night he popped the question.

11 years ago tonight

from our wedding:

The Servant Song

Brother let me be your servant.
Let me be as Christ to you.
Pray that I might have the grace
to let you be my servant, too.

I will hold the Christ-light for you
In the night time of your fear.
I will hold my hand out to you,
Speak the peace you long to hear.

I will weep when you are weeping.
When you laugh I'll laugh with you.
I will share your joy and sorrow
till we've seen this journey through.

When we sing to God in heaven
we shall find such harmony.
Born of all we've known together
of Christ's love and agony.

Bobby, (Yeah, I changed the words at this part)let me be your servant.
Let me be as Christ to you.
Pray that I might have the grace
to let you be my servant, too.

Happy Anniversary Babe!

so this is love....

Saturday we had the privilege to see Bobby's niece, Martha, get married. The new couple exited the sanctuary to "So This is Love" (from the Cinderella movie) and it has been stuck in my head ever since! The Bryan's are like my family: large in number and spread out, so when everyone is actually together it's a very special occasion.












Left to Right: Brad & Martha Mitchell, Brad's daughter (I thought it was neat that she and Martha had their hair fixed identically, and was also impressed at how thrilled she seemed to be a part of everything, but yet was willing to stand back and watch. She did a great job, and I think Martha's going to be a great Mom.) Brenda lighting Bryan's memory candle (Martha's brother who died at 17), and my favorite picture: Bobby's three sisters: Susan, Pat, and Brenda. While all three are great about being there when needed, it's seldom I get to see the three of them together at such close proximity. And I also like the fact that even in difficult situations (such as cake layers refusing to come apart), the three of them know how to laugh and keep going.

still the one

4 floppies FULL of e-mails
7 months of weekly long-distance phone calls
11 years of friendship
and 9 WONDERFUL years of marriage!
Happy Anniversary, Babe!

sleep

When my cousin was at Paris Island going through Marine Boot Camp, they had a week where they were allotted very little, if any, sleep. I think the theory was that their minds needed to be trained to withstand anything. Once you know you can do it, it's not such an insurmountable task. One of the many methods of torture used in POW camps is sleep deprivation. I don't know what the actual number is, but if a person is deprived of sleep for a certain period of time, they will eventually start hallucinating. Lack of sleep can also contribute to a dramatic decline in a person's health, eventually causing them to die.

Before Bobby and I got married, one of the things that concerned me was that I am an extremely heavy sleeper and he sometimes needs something during the night. The first three months we were married, the slightest noise made me wake up. I guess my mind was on alert status. Then one morning, he kept watching me, and asked me if I remembered him waking me up during the night. I did, but turns out he had to wake me up at least three times before he had me awake enough to do anything. One of the times he woke me up, he claims I sat up in bed, smoothed the wrinkles out of his cover, patted it, asked him if he wanted anything else, then went right back to sleep. I don't remember any of it, except when I did wake up he was a little on the grouchy side, which I didn't appreciate at all.

I'm supposed to work tomorrow. That means I want to go to bed early since I have to get EVERYONE up and fed before I leave. But of course, life never ever (okay, there are the rare exceptions) goes as you plan. Aleh is sick with a high fever. I have another 20 minutes before I check him again. If this children's tylenol hasn't kicked in any, then I may be getting Bobby back up to head to the hospital. If I get 6 hours of sleep tonight, I think I'll be happy.

My motto has always been that I need to eight hours of sleep to feel good. I can function on seven, but we won't say how well I function. But I've learned over the past four years with the kids and the last nine years with Bobby that I can function if and when I have to, to points I never dreamed possible before. Yet I also realize when I go for a couple of weeks at full blast, that's normally when I wind up sick in some form or fashion. I guess if God needed a break after six days of work, who are we to think we can go without one?

THE CHEESE LOVES YOU!

I am not a morning person. And as far as bedtime goes, I need a routine. Get me out of that routine, and you can almost guarantee the next morning will be really rough -rough enough that even having the alarm on the other side of the bed doesn't help any.

One morning this week I woke up achier than usual, and must have been moaning and groaning quite a bit. I don't remember what Bobby said to me, but I responded with a challenge for him to tell me "just five things good about today." (In case you haven't figured it out, optimism is rarely in my vocabulary before 7am.) I'm still struggling to keep my eyes open. I hear numbers one and two, can't remember #3, but then for #4 he says, "The cheese loves you." That one kind of woke me up. I repeated it back, and he starts laughing at me! Turns out he said "JESUS loves you."

polygamy

With all they hype in the news over the polygamy raid in TX, it's brought back to my mind conversations from summer '93. I spent six weeks in Ivory Coast, West Africa, studying how to learn the inner-workings of a different society, as well as the many conflicts Christianity creates when introduced to a non-believing people group. One of the many controversial subjects was polygamy.

Polygamy is common among tribal societies. But what happens once a polygamist accepts Christ? To many of the African believers, they saw themselves as Abraham, David, and others: they took multiple wives to satisfy themselves, and not out of God's perfect plan. Yet God never commanded the multiple wives to be put away. My African brothers and sisters were absolutely mortified by America's concept of divorce. In their mindset, even if they never slept with wife 2, or 3, they provided for her and her children until her dying day, both emotionally and materially. How can someone make a commitment and not keep it?

And that leads me to ponder the "abhorrence" our media has toward polygamy. Why is it socially acceptable for a man to have a mistress/fiancee or sleep around, yet so terrible to have more than one wife? He's providing for all of them, and not abandoning them or lying to them. Granted, the issue of abuse and choice make a world of difference in this argument, but if the women choose polygamy and there's no abuse, I can't see how that is so much worse than how so many people choose to live in our society.

Now, should Bobby decide to take a second wife...our little joke of us being turtle food for that monstrous snapping turtle in the pond might cease being a joke.