Happy Heart Day... Our Style

This, my friends, is the box my dad's B-Day shoes came in. Hence the cautionary idiom: Be careful what you buy on the internet. I think these shoes had been wrapped up, opened, and returned several times before they made it to us. This box looks like it survived the Battle of Stalingrad... but just barely. (Reference to Russia circa 1942 made by no mistake. We've finished the victory of the Reds during the Revolution, The Great Purge, and are wrapping up Animal Farm... yes I teach English, what else? Oh Stalin, so terrible, so HATING spirit prison right now. I bet they put him in a cell with Adolf Hitler and let them duke it out for eternity... actually, that sounds pretty close to what life on Earth was like for them). I digress.

DAD'S AMAZING BIRTHDAY!!!

...AND HIS EVEN MORE AMAZING PRESENT. LAKE POWELL, OH HOW I DREAM OF THEE.

...One day earlier:




We spent the day with QM. I had been reluctantly holding on to these dishes. You see, I bought them for QM just a few days before Q's dad died. We spent Christmas night with just Shelia and Mark and she mentioned she wished she had Christmas dishes so... of course I picked some up, but then her-our-the world changed. I didn't know if I should still give them to her because we don't know where she will end up or what is going to happen... if there will even be a place to enjoy them or if it would just be more "stuff" to pack up and store or get rid of. In the end, I figured they were simply gathering dust and could double for Valentines colors (the plates anyway). Plus, we've had huge Sunday dinners every week since QD left and we've been needing a 12 piece set. I hope they don't end up being a hassle. I haven't made up my mind if they make me feel happy or sad yet. I bought them at the very last moment before life turned down an unfamiliar, impossible-seeming road and I had planned a much different picture for them.

That's life I suppose. The pictures we paint for ourselves are not what God would plan for the journey. He wants us to learn, to adapt, to grow. Trial and challenge is what warrants that development. I can't help but wonder what some trials are meant to prepare us for. What in heaven's name is it that some of us need such painful preparation for? Alas, it wouldn't be faith if I knew. It is not for us to understand, it is for us to believe.