Our anniversary: of nerdyness, practicality and beauty

Oh yes, it is all quiet in the house. And I am taking advantage by writing up a few posts for this poor blog. Ah, I know I have neglected you, but with the retreat coming up as well as my anniversary, I just have barely been near my computer.

I could start about the retreat, which was fabulous and deserves it's own post, but instead, I will start with the most important; my husband. My wonderful husband and I celebrated our fifth anniversary. This makes us mere newlyweds compared to some, but it is never the less a big milestone. It's our first 'big number' anniversary. Halfway towards the double digits. I have told you before about how I came to marry that wonderful man. And about our wedding. It should be pretty clear that I adore my husband.
Now do not get me wrong, my husband is a man with flaws (though honestly, I think he does not have that many). And sometimes I am uspet at things he does. Usually though, if I think about it for longer than five minutes, I usually find much worse things that I have done, which makes it less worth quarreling over. If something bothers me long term, I try to talk it out at a happy moment in a non accusatory tone. "Hey, I was just thinking the other day how much easier it would be if we would...." seems much more productive than "Why do you always leave your pants on the floor?" Especially as .. ahum... I sometimes too leave things on the floor that do not belong there. Like pieces of clothing. However I never do this when I am cleaning up. Putting your own laundry in the basket seems natural, even if it is laundry that should have been in there two days ago. Putting someone else's laundry in there seems like an injust chore, a deliberate inconvenience. Sounds like a sinful and self centered perspective to me.
My biggest challenge in my marriage (and especially in motherhood) is to develop a servant's heart. It is my bullet prayer throughout the day when I am feeling overwhelmed: God create in me a servant's heart.
But despite all that: my husband LOVES me. And I LOVE him. For our anniversary I bought him a Jedi bathrobe. The perfect combination of nerdy and practical.



He has been wearing it a lot and claims it is really comfy! In return, he gave me the Pentateuch volume of the St. John's bible. This gift is nerdy and beautiful. Proof that by now we know one another well. I love the St. John's bible. This is the first handwritten bible since the invention of the printing press. It is pretty expensive, so I am acquiring it one volume at a time. So far I have the gospels and acts, the psalms and now the Pentateuch.



The beauty of this handwritten bible is that, because of the smaller size and the handwritten text (photographed handwritten text of course), it invites you to slow down in your reading and savour the Lord's word, even if- with small children- you only get to do so in small doses.

We celebrated our anniversary with Bill's parents and the children. Then in the evening we went out for a simple meal, a walk along the beach and ended up talking a few minutes under the moon while sitting on a porch swing. The group of teenagers sitting in and around the porch swing next to ours made the moment not less romantic.
Five years. Not nearly long enough. I was so happy to read that Matrushka Anna celebrated her wedding anniversary (fourteen, much further along the path of wisdom than I am) just a few days ago. Her fourteen lessons are a word to the wise! I found myself nodding my head at each one of them. Number three is my particular challenge. There is that 'servant's heart' again.
I hope that as the years go, I will grow in wisdom, in wifeliness (the spellchecker claims this is not a word, but it should be), in patience, in sacrificial love, and in willingness to serve. I hope our love will grow stronger and deeper. After all, I felt as if my heart was ready to burst with love on my wedding day. Five years later, it has only expanded.

A fine... romance... with many kisses

I told you I was going to keep romance as the theme of the week. Yesterday I may have gotten distracted by the excellent post in the blog 'the delighed life, but today I am back again. Romance. Did you know that you can deliberately chose to be romantic?
When I walk across the street and see a young couple that is obviously in love, how do I see it? Well, they hold hands perhaps. They touch eachother, not especially in a sexual way, but as if they just love to be close to the other person. And when they talk they won't just speak about 'Brandon' or 'Elly', no there are little words of endearment escaping every now and then.
Some people think it's silly and annoying. I always thought it sweet. When I look at older couples in Church, I notice some of them are still holding hands, staying close whenever they can.



Maybe you have noticed on my blog that I rarely refer to my husband simply as 'my husband'. I speak of my 'beloved' husband. My 'wonderful' husband. My prince. When people point out how cute or handsome my baby is, I never fail to tell them how much he is like his dada. I love telling him how handsome he is. How I admire him. Usually these are not the long winded declarations of love you find here on my blog (and won't he be slightly embarrassed at all this praise when he peeks in), but just a little 'Have I told you how handsome you are?' as he is emptying the dishwasher, or reading a book and I pass by.

When I need to go do something difficult (like getting off the couch to get a glass of water after a long day of todler chasing) I tell my sweet husband that I will do it, but that I need a kiss for strength first. There are other ways to get an extra kiss in here or there. Like last week when we were driving to Hilton Head and he predicted we would be at our destination in 30 minutes. I bet him for a kiss that it would take us less than that. And then there are the kisses 'just because' you are just passing by eachother and a kiss is absolutely mandated.

Sometimes, when my husband does something that annoys me (believe it or not, even my wonderful, magnificent husband sometimes does things that annoy me) I make it a point to set it aside if it's a trivial matter and instead of harping on it, go and get a kiss. If it's something that seriously bothers me, I'll talk about it when I'm not feeling snarky or 'in the moment annoyed' anymore. Because that's usually when unkind words fall. And that extra kiss usually gets me over the annoyance pretty quickly.

I'm not trying to make anyone believe that ours is a fairytale life. We're a normal couple with many shortcomings before either of us manages to become a true mirror of Christ like love. But we have found out that even the most difficult time becomes a little bit easier when a small offering of love is made in a word, a touch, or a small or big action.

Romance: take every day, before or after breakfast

Maybe I will keep romance as my theme for the week. After the high of Valentines day, there might be a slump in attention and I am a great admirer of romance. True romance that is. Now I don't have anything against roses, in fact I love them. Nor do I mind chocolates. I'm from Belgium. Just bring me the good stuff!
Too often we discourage girls to believe in romance because 'it's just movie invented hallmark induced fake stuff that has nothing to do with real life'. Not true. I experienced true romance this morning.




It was raining and on my way to dropping my husband off to work, I needed to get gas. I had been pretty grumpy during the morning since my usual routine was disturbed by getting Joseph out of bed half an hour earlier. I am still a novice driver and probably was not driving my best. I guess something in the set of my mouth told my wonderful husband that I was not in the best of moods. And as I pulled up at the gas station, knowing how much it rained, he simply offered: "Shall I do it?"
To me this is the modern day equivalent of someone spreading his coat out over a puddle. Only it is eminently more romantic since I won't need to wash a sodden, muddy coat. True romance is quietly offering to go out through the rain to fill up the tank so your wife doesn't have to. It doesn't come more simple or more sweet than that.

I found this one on Emma's blog and decided to join in

1. He’s sitting in front of the TV: what is on the screen? CNN or Criminal Minds

2. You’re out to eat. What kind of dressing does he get on his salad? He has a cesar salad with cesar salad dressing. Any other salad: Italian.

3. What is one food he doesn’t like? chocolate. Can you believe it?

4. You go out to the bar. What does he order? Not sure if there is a difference between a bar and a cafe, but if he orders an alcoholic drink it's usually a beer.

5. Where did he go to high school? John Burroughs High School St. Louis.

6. What size shoe does he wear? 11

7. If he were to collect anything, what would it be? Books and Star Wars stuff

8. What is his favorite type of sandwich? French Dip roast beef

9. What would the Husband eat every day if he could? fries. Or my chili con carne.

10. What is his favorite cereal? Raisin bran

11. What would he never wear? over priced clothes

12. What is his favorite sports team? Saint Louis Cardinals

13. Who is his best friend? Aside from me, Mandy.

14. What is something you do that he wishes you wouldn’t do? Worry

15. How many states has he lived in? Four: Missouri, Washington DC(I know, not a state, so Virginia) California and South Carolina, plus a year abroad in England.

16. What is his heritage? Mostly German.

17. You bake him a cake for his birthday; what kind? Cinamon raisin cake

18. Did he play sports in high school? golf and track

19. What could he spend hours doing? Working, reading, playing on the internet, spending time with me and Joseph.

My husband... the uber nerd

Why I love my husband. I can probably write a whole host of reasons why I love my husband, and I remember quite clearly the moment I tumbled completely in love with him: over a game of trivial persuit at my mothers house. Only a mind as quirky as my husband would be able not only to win the departemental election prediction pool.... but also to write an acceptance speech afterwards, worthy of any real political candidate. Without further ado, I give you this historic speech.


My fellow Americans (and appropriately credentialed resident aliens),



At times like these, one is humbled by the immense opportunities of this great land of ours. In no other country on this earth would our Founding Fathers have been able to design an electoral system so deliberately complicated as the one we enjoy today. Therefore, I can only be thankful to live in a country that allows us not only to create a challenging election pool, but would allow a mere news junkie like me to rise to the top of this group.



The last couple weeks of this campaign have been hard on all of us. In particular, I’d like to thank my wonderful wife Eva and my son Joseph for supporting me through countless hours of CNN political coverage and web surfing. Without their help, I never would have learned all of the trivial and useless information that made this day possible. I’d also like to thank my colleagues, especially John Gordanier, for suggesting many days ago that I should enter in to this Presidential contest. I’d also be remiss to leave out former Vice-President Al Gore, without whom I would not have access to the Internet and would otherwise have to spend time on more productive pursuits.



Finally, I must also extend a warm hand of thanks to Senators McCain and Obama. Their campaigns were hard-fought at times, but even as Election Day neared, they remained largely predictable. For that, we should all be grateful, no matter what our political preferences.



Now, we must look to the future. The challenges ahead of us are great, but I have faith that we can all put this quadrennial obsession that we call democracy behind us. With trust in our ability to focus on the present, I sincerely expect that we will be up to not discussing the next election until at least January of 2010.



May God bless us all, and may God continue to bless America.



--Bill