Some Valentine Red Before February Is Over

We are currently planning something for our upcoming tenth marriage anniversary.  It’s as hard to believe that ten years have flown by as quickly as this month as flown by.  Here are fourteen pictures in red representing some aspects of our lives together.  Needless to say, I’m thankful for our life together.

 

Valentine’s Day Equals Promotion Day

Yesterday was my day out.  Today I just wanted to stay in.  I had no definite plans for dinner but wanted to fix something special.  Along with something special comes a clean house for my husband to walk into and a candlelit dinner.  The candles were a gift to us from a dear friend.

The contemplation of what to fix began formulating piece by piece as the day progressed.  The meal would be basically vegan.  The centerpiece of the meal was to be a lentil dhal burger.  I had fresh spinach and strawberries.  I could do something artistic on the plate with those items.  I made my first creamy poppy seed dressing.  It turned out great.  I had beets.  Beet chips, along with the strawberries, for the color red to adorn the plate sounded like a good idea as well as nutritional.  To top it off we had dark chocolate truffles.  And almost every item including all the ingredients on the menu was organic.

A grand day in seemed appropriate with my husband’s new promotion.  The card on the table this morning announced that after a decade he had moved up from being the happiest and luckiest man in the world to the happiest and luckiest man in the universe.  The task seems to get bigger every year.  Now, I must work on all those parallel universes as well.

Actually, I’m really thankful he is so easy to please.

For Valentine Month – Thy Will Be Done & How I Met Superman

The Wedding Dinner

I was listening to an interview with Debbie Ford. In it she said if you only pray one prayer, pray, “Thy will be done.” I totally agree with that. God can dream much better things for us than we can ourselves even imagine.

So many people are looking for their soul mate. I have a somewhat different take on soul mates. I believe that soul mates are our teachers; therefore, they can be anyone we come in contact with, even for a brief time. Sometimes what we need to be taught is not that pleasant for us. I definitely see my first husband as my soul mate. I may have flunked that lesson. It takes two to make a relationship. This applies to any relationship – not just that of spouses. I often hear people putting all the blame on this one or that one. We all play the victim at times and the victimizer, the controller and the controlled. It’s our dual nature until we learn better. I have learned that in any troubled relationships that I may have that I am the one common denominator in them all.  A twin soul on the other hand is someone you are really in sink with and are ready to take that next spiritual step with.

This is about the day I prayed, “Thy will be done.” what led up to it and what followed. This prayer is often prayed after we’ve exhausted all other means of trying to manipulate life the way we think it should be.

I was acquainted with a wonderful woman and her daughter. I had known them for a few years, and found we had so much in common. I especially shared a lot of interests with the mother. We thought much in the same way, liked reading the same kinds of books, etc. I didn’t know the rest of the family, but through more and more contact with her met one of her sons. We had both been single for a couple of years. We began to date. I found I didn’t have as much in common with him; but still I was calculating my plans for becoming a member of this family. Losing my mother about five years earlier played a role, and I think I was looking for a substitute.

I loved spending time with the mother and daughter, but the son wasn’t exactly drooling over me as planned. I was still, you might say, “settling” for this relationship, thinking well you can’t really have it all. My daydreams about finding that perfect man said otherwise though.

The course of this entire relationship was less than two months. He did take me out for dinner at a nice restaurant and point blank asked me what kind of man I wanted. I used my daydreams as a reference and bolted out, “Superman, I want Superman.”

Shortly, thereafter, I had a business trip planned and was fretting over the care of my dog. He offered to come over and feed her. I was so relieved. Upon returning home I found my dog half starved. It takes a lot to make me mad, but this did it. With the utmost determination I started thinking I don’t deserve this and began praying. I basically said, “God, I’m tired of being single. You know the kind of man that would be best for me. You pick him.”

A couple of days passed. I sort of forgot about the prayer. I started looking on line using the keyword art and found Chris’s picture and bio. It sounded like we had a lot in common. I wrote about three lines of email to him to which he responded with a rather lengthy one. He started calling, and within a week drove the two and one half hours that it took to meet me. He said he knew he wanted to marry me the minute I came to the door. It took me a full day. Our first date was a five-mile hike. Now we celebrate our first date anniversary with a hiking trip.

I hadn’t had any more contact with the one who didn’t feed my dog until one day he just showed up asking me what had happened and why I hadn’t shown up at his family’s for Thanksgiving. I replied, “Do you remember when you asked me what kind of man I wanted?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Well he flew in.”

He also met someone, getting married about the same time Chris and I did. All is well with his mother and sister. We are still great friends, as they are also with Chris. I also married into a great family, as all of Chris’s family have heartily embraced me as their own.

In my phone notebook you will find Chris’s office number under Superman. It’s been almost ten years now, and I’ve had no reason to change it.

I’m thankful that Chris taught me that when you have to be gone from the house for any length of time you just leave a giant bag of dog food out.  Duh?  But, in the grander theme of things I’m glad I didn’t know that at the time.

 

A Valentine to My Husband

I think of all the subjects there are specific to the month of February.  For the shortest month, there really is a great deal to write about.  There is Black History Month.  That is particularly relevant to me considering for the past several years I have been researching and writing about the life of Sally Ann Barnes, a lady I met at age 8.  She had been born into slavery in 1858.  There is Lincoln’s birthday.  Last year my husband and I worked on a project for Lincoln’s Bicentennial celebration.  Then there is Valentine’s Day.  The subject of love is for any month.  Tonight I created a valentine to my husband.  Needless to say I’m very thankful we are together.  To Chris, Love, Jerri