March 10 – “A Day with my Wife"

Today I spent  the day with my wife.  She got back home from Bay City last night while I was at the Seaside Christian Academy school board meeting, so I didn't get to see her until I got home.  And when I got home she was on the phone with Josh.  We did get to talk awhile last night.  I got the scoop on how her Mom and Dad were doing and what all Josh had to say.  But then we were both falling asleep on the couch, so we went to bed.   This morning I was determined to spend some time with Chris.  I did sneak into my office and do some work whenever she got busy with something, but whenever she wanted to do something, that's what we did.  First thing she wanted to do was take a walk.  We haven't done that in months, and it used to be a regular thing for us.  Back when we first got married we used to walk and talk while we were buying groceries.  Multi-tasking back in the day.  But we enjoy walking around our neighborhood and meeting folks.  It was sad to see the for sale signs on the houses of some of the people we had made friends with before Ike.  But it was great to see the ones who came back and are in their homes again, waving and saying hi as we pass by.   Her second idea was to work in the yard.  She started cleaning out the front flowerbed, pulling dollar grass and other assorted weeds.  I used that opportunity to fix the stool I sit on when I preach.  It was missing two screws, another screw had broken off, and all of the bolts were pretty loose.  It didn't take near as long as I expected, so I did a little work at my desk.  Then I headed outside to see what trouble I could get into.  I ended up mowing our grass and the front yard of the abandoned house next door.  I had to pray about that one.  I was thinking if we let it get overgrown then it would look worse and improve our chances of making a very low offer if it ever comes on the market.  The prayer did it.  I realized that I was being selfish, so I mowed it.  And it was about knee high, too.    Chris next decided to go to Home Depot and get the rest of the white concrete decorative blocks she used to outline the flower bed in the front.  Of course we also spent some time roaming around the flower section, and she even bought two African Violets.  She really likes them, and we lost all of them in the storm.  We  bought 24 chunks of concrete and two flowers and headed home.  When we got here Chris got a phone call from Kel, so I got to unload all 24 of those beautiful decorative white hunks of heaviness.  But Chris liked it a lot, so it was worth it.    To place the new outliners, I had to move the old landscape timbers aside.  Chris had plans for them.  We went to the side flower bed and started pulling weeds there to make room for the "new" landscape timber outliners over there.  The took a long time, since we had to move the weeds out of the way first, then dig a path to drop in the boards.  We didn't finish.  Saved for another day of quality time with my wife.  I sure do love that woman.   Ephesians 5:25-28 says, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself."   Father, thank you for the unbelievable gift of my wife.  Amen.