Gratituesday — Ice!

Laura, at Heavenly Homemakers, posts so many recipes I love to make and eat! She also posts a blog carnival every Tuesday I have always wanted to participate in. But, each Tuesday morning when I check my blogs, I can never seem to come up with something I am soo overwhelmingly grateful for (honestly, even grateful for at all, but clearly I’m not looking at the small things, but that’s another story), that I felt I had to shout about it from the rooftops. But today is different. Today I do!

Two weeks ago our cabinet installers came to put in our new kitchen cabinets and countertops. The week before, Hubby and I (really, just Hubby) had torn out our old cabinets, pulled out the fridge, and painted in those last, hard to reach spots. Because of the way the previous counter top had been installed, we knew once we pulled the fridge out it wasn’t going back in until the installers arrived. That was fine, except when we pulled it out, we had to seperate it from the water line for our ice maker. No big deal. We still had some ice. All was fine and dandy. Then, once the fridge was replaced, the ice maker wouldn’t work. And it wouldn’t work. For three weeks I didn’t have any ice! I couldn’t have cold drinks without ice. I couldn’t have smoothies without ice. And boy was I really craving a smoothie! So, one night, my handy hubby decided it was finally time to take apart the ice maker! And he found the problem. And he fixed it! And he came running in with the ice bucket to show me our first new pieces of ice. In celebration, all of us, even the Wonder-Puppy, had a piece to suck on and enjoy the wonderful, icey-coolness of ice once again.

Today, I am thankful that I can have ice, and that it is so abunantly available to me. I’m also grateful that I have a handy Hubby who can take apart (and put back together) an ice maker and fix the problem for me.

More on the Wedding

On the topic of our wedding, here’s a link to a Wordle of our wedding ceremony.

I love how the word “love” is the biggest in the top right corner, and echoed again in the top left.

EDITED: I couldn’t get the link to embed properly. I have no idea what’s wrong, but if anyone has any ideas, please let me know!

A Year and a Week Ago…

Enjoying a short walk together at the reception.

A year and a week ago, Hubby (who I really should start referring to as Ducky — its so much more fun!) and I got hitched! Neither one of us can believe has year as past already; the time has just flown by. I can hardly believe a year ago, I only got a few fitful hours of sleep, felt sick to my stomach and thought I really couldn’t walk down the aisle and make it through the ceremony. In fact, shortly after getting dressed, I considered what my mother’s reaction would be if I told her I didn’t think I could go through with it. Then we were joined by my lovely bridesmaids, and the time flew by until my dad came to get us to walk down the aisle. In fact, we were having such a grand old time, none of us were ready when we were told we needed to head out! Once I made my way down to Hubby/Ducky, it seemed like I blinked and the ceremony was over. When we walked out and into a small room where we had a few moments alone, we looked at each other and said, “that was it!?” (after a nice kiss and laughing and all that good stuff). We couldn’t believe we had waited and planned for soo long to be husband and wife and it all came together in such a short time!

I wanted to share a special moment from our ceremony. We had two scripture readings, the first was the typical 1 Corinthians 13:4-13, and the second was Ephesians 3:14-21.

When I think of the wisdom and scope of God’s plan, I fall to my knees and pray to the Farther, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from His glorious, unlimited resources He will give you mighty inner strength through His Holy Spirit. And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts and you trust in Him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love really is. May you experience the love of Christ though it is so great you will never fully understand it. Then you will be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Now glory be to God! By His mighty power at work within us, He is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask or hope. May He be given glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever through endless ages. Amen.

This means more to me a year later than it did when it was read at our wedding, and I’ll confess I didn’t really hear it too well at the ceremony. Already I have seen Christ bring together and bring about things in my life I never imagined were possible. I have seen, in this difficult first year of marriage, that the more we have trust Christ, the more each of us have individually sought to make Him the most important thing in our lives, the closer we have become and the less difficult the process of building a marriage has become. I feel like I have seen some of the depths of love the human heart is capable of, and yet God loves more than that — even more than I or my husband are capable of loving one another. I know as my marriage continues, as it opens to include children, and someday grandchildren, I will find even more meaning in this passage.

It has been a wonderful year, and I look forward to many, many more. I can’t wait to see what God has in store for us!

Happy Anniversary Honey!

Back to Africa – Timotea

I’m skipping over the better part of my time in Kenya to bring you this story, but I don’t think you’ll mind too much. This story comes from my two-month stay in the little African nation called Lesotho; it is the story of Timotea.

Timotea was abandoned by his mother, who was HIV positive. If memory serves me, he was found by a police officer under a tree, and eventually brought to the orphanage just outside of the capital city. When he came, he was taken to the hospital for an HIV test, where it was found he was positive. Since his mother couldn’t be found, he was drinking formula and receiving medicines and good, loving care. I know many people prayed he would eventually test negative. I arrived in Lesotho and meet Timotea shortly before he was18 months old. I had only known him for a few weeks when I accompanied two other volunteers, a local worker, and four babies to the hospital for some tests and check-ups — it was time for Timotea’s 18-month HIV re-test. For those of you who may not know, if a baby is born to an HIV positive mother, if they are not breast fed, and have a good diet and good care, they can actually become negative.

I ended up holding Timotea as we sat in the hallway waiting for each child to be called back for their tests. I didn’t expect to go back with him, since I was a new volunteer, but he was called while the long-term workers were with other children, and so I back I went into one of the smallest exam rooms I have ever been in. The nurse, thankfully, spoke English, but I still had a difficult time understanding her. She asked me questions about Timotea’s development, like if he was talking. As far as I had heard, he hadn’t said any words I could understand, but he babbled, and I figured a good bit of what I heard as “babbling” could probably be baby talk in Sesotho. I answered yes. She had me hold Timotea tight with one arm, and hold his hand steady with the other while she pricked his finger for the blood test. She squeezed a tiny amount of blood onto a small strip, and stuck it into a small, plastic thing. It reminded me of a very small pregnancy test. Then, she left the room. I sat there, holding a cotton ball to Timotea’s finger, cradling him tight, as I watched a band of pink appear at the end of the strip. We sat there, wedged between the desk and the wall, watching the pink seep up the strip, revealing an answer I could not understand. I wished desperately I could read the test, wished the nurse had not left the room, and I prayed a short prayer that Timotea would not be positive. I prayed the wonderful, smart, curious child I held in my arms would not find out he would live a short life, one where he would be ostracized from society, one that condemned him to a painful death. I didn’t want that for him, for anyone. I couldn’t imagine it.

After what seemed like an eternity, the nurse returned, glanced at the test and said, “Timotea, he is negative.” My heart leaped. Negative! I wanted to rejoice. I wanted her to rejoice with me! Instead, she bent down, scribbled something on a piece of paper, and told me to take him somewhere else so he could have a blood test. I didn’t understand, and she didn’t explain. I walked out and told the volunteer, who had been their nearly two years, and told her Timotea had tested negative, but that he needed to get another blood test. He explained that if a child originally tested positive, and later tested negative in the finger prick test, they had to have another blood test (done with a larger amount of blood) to confirm that they were indeed negative. We took poor little Timotea to yet another room to have more blood drawn, this time from a giant stab in the groin (ouch!). Then, we waited. And waited. And waited some more. In reality, we probably waited about a week for the results, but it felt like an eternity. Finally, we received the news that he was, truly, negative!

It’s been four years since that day, and I have no idea where Timotea is now. I do know though, that wherever he is, he is no doubt happy and healthy. He was 18 months old when I met him, and today he would be over five and a half. Nearly six. He’s in the first grade, going to school, playing with friends, with siblings. Someday, he’ll fall in love with a girl, get married, and start a family. Someday, he’ll do things that might never have happened. I don’t know under what circumstances his mother left him, what she thought or hoped the outcome might be. If it was a difficult decision. If she loved him. If she had cared for him until she simply couldn’t anymore. If she was unmarried and her family would not support her if she had a child. I don’t know. I do know, that in abandoning him, whether she meant to or not, she helped save his life.

It’s Been Awhile

My three faithful readers are probably wondering where on earth I’ve been! Well, I spent a week with these cuties, among others. These were my small group girls (and camp staff member) from youth camp. I had a wonderful time getting to know the kids (and white water rafting), had some really good conversations with one girl in particular, and really saw God moving in many lives. As soon as I got off the bus though, I started to feel a little sick, and was bogged down with a cold for the whole rest of the week. It was all I could do to make it through my day at work. Good thing most of duties the first couple of days consisted of posting camp pictures to Facebook! Monday, Hubby and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary! It’s hard to believe we’ve already been married a year. In a couple of years we’ll be finding it hard to believe we’ve been married for thirty! I wish the days were short and the years long instead of the days being long and the years short. Alas, it just doesn’t work that way. Hubby one of the sweetest things he’s ever done for me while I was away at camp. He sneaked into my office and decorated it for me! I haven’t been in there for very long, and while I had picked out a few things to put in there, I hadn’t hung my memory board or picked out photos for my frames. Not only did Hubby pick out pictures, but he framed them, and left me flowers on my desk! I was so shocked when I walked into my office Monday morning! We had dinner at a nice restaurant, but by the time my dinner came, I felt so bad I was ready to fall asleep at the table! It was not the romantic night I’m sure Hubby had in mind, but as he pointed out, “at least you didn’t feel this way a year ago!” We went camping this weekend to celebrate, and had a great time just talking and enjoying s’mores and our puppy. We’re glad to know the Wonder-Puppy is a champion camper — she stayed in her area of the tent all night. We can’t wait to take her out again! To top it all off, while I was gone our kitchen received new lower cabinets and counter tops! We’re still busy cleaning up from that, but its been fun getting out a lot of our kitchen wedding gifts and finally using them a year later!

So, we’ve been busy, but things seem to be winding down, and I promise to be back with a vengeance!