i am thankful

Happy (three days after) Thankgiving, y'all!

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Jesus Christ.

1 Thessalonians 5:18

We spent Thanksgiving break (hallelujah a break!) in Fort Payne with my family and had make-up Thanksgiving lunch today with the Snows. I'm so full of dressing I think I might explode... We loved seeing everyone and celebrating everything God blessed us with!

My aunt Regina came up with a game to play at Mawmaw's. We each came up with something we were thankful for besides the obvious (awesome family, cars with heat and AC, a safe home, jobs, great friends, a loving God, ect.), wrote it on a slip of paper, and had to guess who wrote what. We know each other pretty well because we all guessed right off the bat! Tom and I continued to play our own game of it and here's what we came up with:

- cranberry sauce from the can
- indoor plumbing
- Walking Dead and Call of Duty for teaching us how to survive zombie attacks
-  the A'Chocolypse and Cinnapsis bars hiding in my purse. We love Sweeteeth!
- The Office and New Girl for giving us hours of hilarious entertainment (I've been repeating Zooey's line "I got the last turkey in AMERICA!" all week! So far Tommy hasn't made me stop but I'm sure he's glad the holiday is over!)
- spell check for helping us look smarter than we are
- Jack the Dog
- a vacation from the schools we are both so blessed to attend
- fried rice, sushi, and shrimp sauce
- hard times that teach us to be strong
- love. For exsisting and making everything worth it.

Even with the silly stuff, we are truly blessed. I love the crazy family I was born into as well as the great big one I've recently become a part of. I love having true friends I can count on for anything. I adore having a my sweet, goofy husband and fluffy puppy to come home to every day. Thank you God for these blessings and many more!

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! What are some things you are most thankful for?

grown-up toughie: submitting

"Wives, submit to your husbands as you do to the Lord. For he is the head of the home..."

Ephesians 5:22-23a

I'll be the first to tell you this is not my favorite verse. I don't consider myself a feminist or anything and I'm very partical to the 1930s way of life for women, but I like to have things the way I like to have them! I mean, who doesn't?! So when it comes time for me to submit to my husband's judgement, I tend to pout. But God didn't say I had to like it, he just do it.

This particular time that I'm referring to involves the stove that came with our house. At this point in my life, I've learned use what is useable and ignore that ugly. This stove was uuuuuggggllly! But on top of that, it was in pretty bad shape. Three of the four coil eyes where popping out, the knobs didn't have marks so we couldn't tell what tempurature we had set the thing to and they didn't always turn like they should, so they stove could still be on and we wouldn't know unless we touched it. Can you say "major fire hazard"?!? I can!

We decided it would be safest to leave to stove alone and eat take-out and microwaveables until we could buy another. Didn't have to be new, didn't have to be pretty, it only had to work.

After being married for three weeks and not being able to cook my new husband dinner, I started to feel like a pretty crappy wife. How am I going to be a 'Leave It To Beaver' mom without a stove?! Then Tommy found someone selling a five-month-old stove for $200! I was so excited! AHHH! Instead of buying it immediately, he took a few days to think about it (side note: he always does that. he is such a resonable shopper. I, however, am an impulse buyer). I came home from work on cloud 9 one day, knowing that he had called the stove person and so excited that I would have it by the next day. But when I walked in, it wasn't quite the senario I had dreamed up. Tommy told me that he just didn't feel right about this stove. I threw a tiny tantrum and argued for a while; stomped off to our bedroom like a little kid. Remembering the verse in Ephesians, I took a deep breath, walked into the living room and told Tom through my hot, angry tears that I would sumbit to what he thought, but I did. not. like it. I pouted to my mom and Sydney for a few days, but saved face in front of Tommy. I even told God I didn't like it. I figure I might as well be honest since He knows my heart anyway. Tommy is my husband and the head of our family and I will do what God tells me, but it is HARD!

Oh, but God know better than I do and He always sees what I can't. Why do I fight and question?!
A few days later Tommy took me out to lunch and a movie and when we came home, this is what I saw:

a beautiful, brand-new Kenmore stove from my sweet, sweet husband! I love it so much! I am so grateful to have something this nice! We've cooked on it almost every nice since it came to live with us.


Basically, the act of submitting sucks because it's hard realizing you can't have what you want, but if you have a God-fearing husband who wants what is best for you and seeks God in every decision, it will be just fine.


(No, this is not the only experience we've had with sumbitting, the other ones just aren't long enough to blog about, but Tommy is always right! And admitting that tastes like vinegar!)