Yellow Lilies

Yesterday Jeff showed his love by bringing home a bouquet of yellow lilies for me. He also showed his love by giving me two big Milky Way bars...and by taking the three oldest boys to town so I could have some peaceful time at home with Shav...and by bringing home yummy pizza for our lunch...and by working hard in the garden shed to clean it up (with amazing results)...and by keeping all the boys so I could go alone to a meeting...and by unexpectedly cutting my hair (which had been discussed previously, but wasn't a sure thing until his spur-of-the-moment decision). He keeps me on my toes. :) But back to the lilies...

There's something so gorgeous about a bouquet of fresh flowers, especially during this time of year when things outside are dying down and getting ready for winter's sleep. To have such a flashy spot of beauty on our kitchen table is delightful...

...and a constant reminder of Jeff's love.

Exquisite: the flowers and the love!

Day 19 - Thoughts of Jeff and the perfect-for-me husband that he is remind me of how, as a girl, my mind would often ponder the questions: will I marry? and if so, WHO will I marry? My friends and I played all kinds of silly little games on paper that would supposedly tell us who our Prince Charming would be. I remember MASH (Mansion, Apartment, Shack, House): a game in which we listed the names of four "available" guys, four possible numbers of children we would have, and four things in some other categories that I can't remember at the moment. Then we drew a swirl on the paper, stopped and counted how many lines there were, then used that to eliminate options until...voila! our future was revealed. Of course, if we didn't like the outcome, we could always do it again until we received the answers we liked. That, of course, was the true prediction; and we would hang onto that one and throw the rest away. Or there was the apple game: twisting the stem and saying a letter each time. Whatever letter we said when the stem came off was the first letter of our future husband's name. There were others, too--ways of folding paper and writing on it and moving it and...oh, I can't even explain it. As I look back, I think, "How silly! How fickle! How absurd! How...how CHILDISH!" But I laugh because, after all, we were kids--girls who were waiting for our knight in shining armor to come along and sweep us off our feet and take us to the Land of Happily Ever After.

I'm so very thankful for my own Prince Charming, for how he suddenly materialized in my life without any help from MASH or the apple game or other immature pastimes of girls longing to be loved and chosen, for how he continues to love me to this day--and show it so generously, and for these happy (albeit silly!) memories.