true love

Y’all. If I said the past couple of weeks had not been a true test of my faith, I would be lying & my pants would be on fire. With me, I may go awhile without anything earth shattering happening. Then, BOOM! Everything happens all at once.

It’s like nuts falling from the sky.

(Which is an expression, my then 4 year old Miss Neenee would say, when things were awful or terrible. It’s the worst thing her little mind could image to explain something really crazy.)

I told my hairstylist if anyone feels bad about what’s going on in their lives, just have them come talk to me. I can make them feel a lot better about their own personal tragedies.

She said, “You do seem to have a lot of crazy things happen to you.”

Umm, yeah. So, not to go all negative Nancy on everyone. I just wanted you to know, even though my blog life has been a little ho-hum & sporatic, here of late. I am alive & as well as a person like me can be.

I did have an interesting conversation with a lady the other day. I was at the dentist office, waiting my turn in the chair of torture, when a nice older lady & I struck up a conversation. She started telling me how she had just lost her husband in January. I could tell it was still a fresh wound, because she had tears in her eyes as she talked about his passing. She talked so fondly of him I had to ask her how they met. She said they met at Fraley’s Drive In. He was home from the service & she was 17 years old. She said when she first laid eyes on him, she thought he was so handsome. She said some of her friends & his friends commence to playing cupid & before long, y’all, they were married. She said they were married almost 60 years. They had raised a family together & went through some hard times.

“But you know,” she said, “there’s not a single person in the world I would have wanted to have gone through hard times with. He was so good to me.”

Now. Don’t you guess those two did have some hard times? 60 years is a long time to go without an argument, any illnesses, heartaches, or anything of the like. And to still be able to have such a love for a person through all of that. That’s the remarkable love Paul talks about in

Ephesians 4:2 with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, (NKJV)

Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her,(NKJV)

Colossians 3:19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them.(NKJV)

Peter writes about love we should have for one another in

I Peter 4:8 And above all things have fervent love for one another, for “love will cover a multitude of sins.”(NKJV)

It goes without saying, this sweet couple took their marriage vows seriously & loved each other the way the Lord commanded. What a true blessing! It is so heartwarming to hear the love, we are told to have, still exists. Having that talk with that lady just made my day, y’all. I guess I’m just a bit sappy over stuff like that. And since we are talking about love, let me talk about these grandkids!

We had such a good time this weekend. Our new baby grandboy is growing & so sweet. I could just eat him with a spoon. My granddaughter is so cute & sassy. She is so funny. Here are some things the older kids did over the weekend:

We made bubble snakes. It was pretty fun.

I gave a little tutorial on how to use the bubble makers before we started. “Blow into the bottle. Make sure you are blowing like you are blowing bubbles with a wand. Don’t suck in, because you will get a mouth full of bubbles.” And wouldn’t you know it, somebody got their mouth full of bubbles. There was a fair amount of spitting & wiping their mouth on their shirt. But thank the Lord, no permanent damage!

Miss Neenee entertained with the trumpet.

And they could play pretty good. Ever tried to play a trumpet? Not. Easy.

a trumpet Even though, the trumpet was fun, you know what the biggest hit was?

You guessed it. Something that wasn’t even a toy. A plastic tote was a boat, a hide out, a car, & anything else they could think of.

At the end of the day, all of them are still sweet & precious.

And this is when they are most precious of all!

I am so glad you came by to visit me today. For those of you keeping up with my Daddy, he came home from rehab & is being visited by home health. He’s doing well & opinionated as ever. With that, we know he’s doing alright. Thank you for all your prayers for him. They really have been working. Keep’em coming! Until next time, I have to be going because I should be washing clothes.

**On a side note- I can’t leave without showing my discontent for Daylight Savings Time.

Thank you, Mr. Indian, for your wonderful interpretation of insanity.

Seriously though.

photo credits: Pinterest

So, if you really want to know what I have been doing lately, it’s been some of this:

It goes without saying there is not a day that goes by that wedding plans are not discussed. There’s a lot of thought, & preparation, & planning, & sometimes tension. Because ya’ll it’s hard to decide if you want navy napkins with foil coral writing or coral napkins with matte navy writing & there are so many cute sayings they put on them now-a-days. Back in my day, when they used to sell a pair of curtains in the pack, you didn’t have to worry too much about things like that. But that was a gazillion years ago. Now that my little ones are tying the knot, it’s A LOT of planning & stress, I tell you. A LOT. It’s just that you have things thrown at you, that you just aren’t accustom to answering, like how much lace & burlap can you glue on a mason jar without it looking purely like our grandkids did them & what trim should you have the invitations in? Square, rounded, squiggly, the corners cut out, & other shapes that I have never really considered before. (By the way, the last 2 of those trims may or may not be actual descriptions. But you get the picture.) And DON’t get me started about fonts. Goodness gracious. Decisions YA’LL.

We do get to have a lot of fun conversations, while pouring over what size buckets we should put baby’s breath in. Some are about how much a responsibility it is to be married. You are basically becoming someone else’s caretaker. Because you know: MEN. And too, how you are in charge of feeding your family meals, washing the clothes & the dishes (even when you just don’t want to) & how they do get sick & it’s pretty much a guarantee they consider themselves much worse off than anybody in the ICU part of the local hospital. Then, how unselfish you have to become because real love has to do with sacrifice. You have to have a heart of a servant. And if all that’s not trying enough, you sprinkle some kids in the mix & wa-lah! You are full on loaded down with commitments & what have you. At some point she jokingly wanted to know was I trying to talk her out of all this?? Never would I. But ya’ll marriage is serious & evidently many don’t take it that way. Because hello, TRUE LOVE, ya’ll. Some of the stuff that goes with it like starry eyedness & ooey gooeyness, just doesn’t always last as long as it should. I just want some reality to be spoken. Sorry, I just don’t want her to be in total shock the 57.379^th time she has to remind her sweet husband to put his socks in the dirty clothes, that no matter how much you want to hurt him in a real bad way, you have to pick your battles. This will be a good time for her to practice up on her favorite songs from the song book at church. Because she will be needing to sing a few verses of Amazing Grace, to herself once her patience starts to run out.

The apostle Paul talks about what true love is in I Corinthians 13:4-7

⁴Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; ⁵does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; ⁶does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; ⁷bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

That’s a lot of stuff! If we are going to love another, as the Lord wants us to, we have to be patient, kind, & put their best interests first. Our needs become less of an importance to us & theirs become more to us. We shouldn’t be jealous & want what others have. And we cannot be full or ourselves. That will never work. It may all seem like it’s too much, but it’s all a work in process, ya know? I know my daughter & her soon to be husband will be happy as larks, once all this wedding stuff is over. Just pray for them & their new life together. You can never get too much prayer.

I am so glad you came by to visit with me today. It’s been a beautiful Mississippi day. Why, it was 63 degrees this morning, as I drove in to work. I talked to someone this morning, in Houston, Texas. They said before 10am, it was already 90 degrees. Sorry, Houston. Maybe cooler weather is coming your way. Sounds like fall could be right around the corner for us! Until the leaves turn brown & the smell of cinnamon & apples is coming from my kitchen, again, I have be going because I should be washing clothes.