Holiday Weekend Wrap Up
We are finally back home. (It feels like I just posted how I was “back home,” right?)
Today was a full day of travel. It was a 90-minute drive from my dad’s house in Eastern Tennessee to the Knoxville airport; then we flew to Memphis where we caught a connection to fly home. We’d parked in Aaron’s garage downtown, so once we got to MSP we had to hop on the Light Rail to get to the car, and then drive 40 minutes home. Whew.
And then once we got here, we discovered that the DVR didn’t record the Vikings game. We went radio silent for nothing!
(We’ve been using the term radio silent ever since we watched the Ohio State/USC game in Cleveland at my friend Kim’s. Toward the end of the game — once it was obvious the Buckeyes were not coming back — her little brother stopped texted her. She said, “TJ’s gone radio silent!” It stuck.)
But no worries, because the Vikes won and all is right.
My dad and stepmother moved to Tennessee last summer, and finally moved into their new house just this past August. My brother and his family came down from Ohio, and we had a nice holiday weekend.
The new house:
Hanger:
Smoky Mountains:
Dad and Michael watching Up! (Which still makes me cry, a lot, of course.)
There’s not a lot to do way out in the boonies. So we went to meet a donkey:
And then we went to Davey Crocket’s birthplace. Michael kept calling the little house a “barn.”
Have you ever loved someone so much that the sheer act of loving them breaks your heart? Yeah, I love him like that.
And then there’s this sweet baby girl. She is such a good baby. Barely fusses, laughs and giggles and loves her auntie!
We had a great weekend, even if the travel portion exhausts me. (For the full Flickr set of our weekend, click here.)
But there is no rest for the weary. Tomorrow I start a new job (hooray!), and then it is full Christmas swing around here. 2009 is almost over, and I only have two words for 2010: Bring it.
A Week of Thanks — Day Five
I am thankful for photography. For my camera. For family. For her.
Hope you’re all having a wonderful weekend with your friends and family.
A Week of Thanks — Thanksgiving Day
I’m sitting in the living room in my dad’s amazing new Tenneesee home, next to a fire and my husband.
My nephew is running around with a nerf-like sword, and amazingly enough, the dog isn’t hiding.
I am thankful for more things than I can say on this day of giving thanks, so this is anything but an exhaustive list.
- My family. I’m so glad to spend this special holiday with my dad, stepmom, brother, sister-in-law and especially Michael and Elizabeth. (Who is called “Wizzle” by her parents. Makes me laugh.)
- Modern travel — as much of a pain as it is sometimes, it’s truly amazing to get on a plane and end up somewhere far away in the length of time it takes to watch a bad Will Ferrel movie. (Land of the Lost, I’m looking at you.)
- Photography. I’ve always loved taking pictures, but it is SUCH a joy to be able to capture other people’s priceless moments.
- My friends, near and far.
- Career change. On Monday I start a new job with a great team for a wonderful organization. Sometimes God’s answer to prayer is “not yet,” and it’s pretty exciting when you finally get to “yet.”
- The promise of things yet to come. For a short while, I had the chance to picture myself spending these holidays with a big third-trimester belly. It was brief, but I’m grateful for even that small time. Someday we’ll spend holidays chasing kids, so I’m relishing this one where I can be on my laptop and drink wine and if the three year old goes up the stairs again, guess who doesn’t have to follow.
- My husband. I think every wife should feel like she has the best husband in the world. (Even though I really do.)
- And, as always, salvation. I could never praise Him enough.
A Week of Thanks — Wedded Wednesday Edition
I am thankful for marriage.
In all its gory glory, marriage has made me a better person.
But more importantly, while I am (ever so) grateful to be my husband’s wife, I am even more thankful to be the bride of Christ.
Two years ago – just after Lauren was baptized in the ocean at the 2007 Labor Day Retreat — she sent me a text message that simply said “am bride of Christ.” I wasn’t in Florida that year — engaged lady that I was — and I was terribly sorry to miss watching her be baptized. But I clearly remember getting that text and how all the hairs on my arms stood on end.
It’s a powerful metaphor. But even more powerful is that this particular metaphor is really Truth.
In his most recent book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller says that he imagines heaven will be one giant wedding reception. After all that is where and when the bride (the church) will finally again be with her groom. It’s an image that sings to my heart.
Our wedding was an incredible, perfect day. There is nothing that I would change. I have literally never seen my mother as happy as she was the day that Aaron and I wed. She beamed. And to imagine that the joy on her face that day was but a glimpse of the joy we will share in heaven, well, I can’t think about it without choking up.
We are His bride. His beloved. He loves us. And each time Aaron lets my harsh words brush past him, he paints a picture of Christ. Every day when Aaron tells me that I’m beautiful despite not seeing it in myself, my husband models in a small way the way that my Creator sees me. It is a privilege and an honor that I do not deserve.
Paul calls this — the relationship of Church as bride and Christ as bridegroom — a profound mystery. It is something we truly cannot fully understand.
And I for one cannot wait for that wedding!
Ephesians 5: 25-33 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
A Week of Thanks — Day Two
Tonight I am thankful for tradition.
In 2007 Aaron and I flew to Texas — me from Atlanta and him from Minnesota — to celebrate Thanksgiving with my dad and stepmother. That night — after he and my stepmom made a gourmet meal in her gourmet kitchen — he handed me a little Hallmark box and said “Let’s start a new tradition.”
Each year on Thanksgiving (or there abouts) we would get a new ornament, taking turns being the ornament-giver and ornament-getter. That first year was Ralphie. Last year I gave him a Hallmark “Our First Christmas” glass ornament.
Tonight he gave me two Jim Shore angels. I carefully wrote “2009″ on the bottom, first making sure to ask, “It’s 2009, right?” (It’s been that kind of year.)
I am thankful for my husband in big and small ways. Tonight I am thankful for traditions; for having the opportunity to build a life with someone who cares for me in the best ways (both big and small).
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Compassion
