agency

I thought this was a great verse about our freedom to choose.

A loss of freedom reduces the extent to which we can act upon our choices, but it does not deprive us of our God-given free agency. A woman who has spent much of her life confined to a wheelchair expressed that thought in verse. Annie Johnson Flint writes:

I cannot walk, but I can fly;
No roof can house me from the stars
No dwelling pen me in its bounds,
Nor keep me fast with locks and bars.
No narrow room my thoughts can cage,
No fetters hold my roving mind;
From these four walls that shut me in,
My soaring soul a way can find. . . .
And when the long, long day is done,
I clasp the dearest book of all,
And through the dim, sweet silences,
I hear my Father's accents fall.
Then, though, in chains, yet I am free;
Beyond the pressure of my care,
Above earth's night, my spirit mounts
On eagle wings of Faith and Prayer.
["My Wings," Annie Johnson Flint]

blog worthy material

So Alex made this dinner tonight...

...which is worth a good blogging (as opposed to a good FLOGGING - Alex knows that everything he does or does not do could be blog material now, so I can threaten him with a good blogging). It is particularly worth a good bloggin' because he RARELY cooks. That job falls to me, which unfortunately I don't like to do - I just do it because I have to and because I'm a good wife...

Anyway, today one of the speakers at church, Pres. H*, in the stake presidency (some of you know who I'm talking about), spoke about being unselfish in marriage and sacrificing for each other. Alex made the mistake of asking me when he got home what he could do to sacrifice for me - well, I first said "time, " which is true, and then got to thinking that it would be nice if he made dinner tonight. So he did, a little unwillingly, but nevertheless he granted my request. It was nice to not have to cook dinner for one night, and it was really yummy too. I of course got to do the dishes though.

So back to the talk today (Pres. H* and his wife spoke- both were really good talks)... one thing that really touched me was when he talked about being more kind, patient, and understanding with others. Sometimes we may not think that those around us are giving their all, but we can't judge that. What we see as being lazy or not giving the best effort may not be the case. As in the story of the "widow's mite" in the Bible, she gave so little, yet it was ALL that she had. I've always thought about that it regards to tithing or monetary donations - I've never thought about the concept of the "widow's mite" in regards to relationships. We have to be sensitive to others, including our spouses, in their efforts, because they may be giving all they have to give at the time. It was a good reminder to me to be a little more patient and forgiving to Alex in his faults, and there are times when I need him to do the same for me.

mama's boys, my loves

Valentine fun...

Thanks grandmas for the sorting "Hide & Peek" chocolate thing and the moon sand playdoh...

the boys are having a great time with it...

they enjoy it so much that I keep finding pieces of it everywhere...

who wants to get down here?

I said I'd never get down in the crawl space underneath the house...well I did today...with the 3 boys. Ugh! The tornado siren went off and I just couldn't risk not going underneath the house. So I ripped out everything out of the closet floor, pulled up the board (which is a little heavy- didn't notice that when I was pulling it up; must have had some adrenaline), and got us all in there. The boys thought I was crazy... you want us to go in there?! Yep. We were fine though - no tornado touched down here. How are my Edmond friends? You got the worst of it.

After the first round, we had about a 20 minute lull before the 2nd round of storms, so we headed to Alex's office. Nothing else but thunderstorms, but I did realize from this experience today that we're not ready for an emergency. I wish I'd had a bag of snacks and such ready to take out the door. Instead I was running around the house, grabbing whatever I thought we could use for the boys, like a bag of pretzels, apples, fruit snacks, and diapers. Luckily, the diaper bag was just about ready. The one good thing was that I knew the storm was coming and picked up Nathan from school early. Otherwise, we might have been trying to go out and pick him up when the storm hit. A little tender mercy that I didn't have to take Jared and Owen out in the storm...

Persistence

I like this quote about persistence.

"We cannot go back and make a new start, but we can start now to make a new ending."