☀️It Dawned on Me… (#5)
This Day I Will Not Forget at (in)courage; doing the work; new desktop wallpaper and phone lock screen; with this ring (pt. 1); currently reading, watching, listening
This Day I Will Not Forget at (in)courage 📝
My son sat in our living room with Bibles spread on the floor around him. He and I discussed translations, commentaries, and Study Bibles: the tools we use to interpret God’s Word. We talked about things like how I think 1 Corinthians 13 in the KJV reads like poetry.
I pulled a few more volumes from the shelf — a multi-volume exposition of the Old and New Testaments. They belonged to my grandfather, who was a minister. He passed away over thirty years ago, well before my son was born. I thought my son would enjoy diving deeper into the Word using these family heirlooms.
Time has aged and yellowed their pages. Nothing but duct tape and the grace of God hold some of them together. I can still picture Granddad studying in his recliner, his desk on his left, and bookshelves of religious commentaries behind him.
He filled his Bible, worn and supple, with notes and underlined verses in red. These lines weren’t haphazard. My grandfather drew them precisely, pen guided by a popsicle stick he positioned beneath the lines of text. I found one of his sticks a few years ago; I keep it in my Bible case, a personal treasure that steadies my hand now, as it once did his.
Inside John Gill’s Exposition of the Old Testament, Volume II, my son and I saw those familiar red lines on worn pages that still smell like my grandparents’ home. Granddad kept cards and letters in his books. In this one, we discovered a get well soon card, and an envelope on which Granddad had written “This Day I Will Not Forget.”
Please join me today at (in)courage for the rest of the article and what I learned about the importance of sharing our feelings with our people.
Listen HERE.
Doing the Work ✍️
I’m happy to say, my first foray into fiction is moving right along! I’m over 16K words in (I need 80K, but I’ve been told the first 10 are the hardest). It’s challenging (what if I run out of words?), surprising (I didn’t know that was going to happen!), and sometimes fun (writing dialogue, who knew?).
I would love to say I know the genre of this book, but I don’t. I’m discovering the details of the story as I go, which is fascinating.
Speaking of fiction, Saturday night my sister and I went to an event on Lisa See’s book tour for Lady Tan’s Circle of Women. I loved hearing about her inspiration and research. I haven’t started it, but I’m excited to read this book.
{FYI: I earn a small commission if you purchase through my Amazon affiliate links. This doesn’t affect your price. Find my Amazon Influencer page here.}
New Desktop Wallpaper & Phone Lock Screen 📱
I’ve created a new wallpaper for your desktop and a lock screen for your phone featuring hydrangeas from the flower bed outside our sunroom. Aren’t they gorgeous?
with this ring 💍
My 2017 book The Heart of Marriage includes a three-part “with this ring” story about my and my husband’s wedding rings. Although I haven’t written it down, we recently added another chapter when we had a new wedding set designed from diamonds from rings and a pendant worn by my grandmother, mother, mother-in-law, and me. I decided on rose gold too, which I LOVE!
I’m sharing part one of our ring story today.
{Also? The hardback is only $4.50 right now on Amazon—a great gift during wedding season!}
{part 1}
Most people would say my husband and I married too young. Sometimes it made life hard, but I’ve learned the best things seldom come easy. If hindsight is 20/20, then the Lord brought us together in His perfect timing. Whether eighteen or eighty, my heart would know this man.
We were young and in love and got married in a small New England college town eighteen hundred miles from home, with friends and roommates in attendance, a college newspaper photographer taking pictures, and a justice of the peace officiating. My husband heard David Bowie sing “[get] me to the church on time” on his way to meet me. 25
I spent all the money in my checking account on a dress off the rack—I’m not sure why Lanz made a dress fit for a bride that year, but I’m thankful they did—and then, determined to pay for my young man’s wedding ring myself, I put it on layaway in a small, local jewelry store. Bryan slipped a matching gold band on my finger the day we said I do, but I couldn’t pay his off until after our wedding day.
As two Southerners living in New Hampshire, we experienced daily culture shock. And the weather? We’d never seen snow drifts piled to the top of stop signs after the plows cleared the roads. Heck, I’m not sure we’d ever seen snow plows.
We were thankful to make it home to the safety and warmth of our little apartment on the day of our first snowstorm as Southern transplants. We lived on the third floor of a nearly vacant and not-so-glamorous building in a new apartment complex the locals thought looked like army barracks. Our heat came from radiators (another new experience). Bryan took off his gloves, and that’s when he noticed his missing wedding ring. Mentally retracing his steps, he realized it must have slipped off as he scraped snow from our windshield before the drive home from work and school.
We worried as we drove back to that small parking lot tucked behind buildings off Main Street. Would we make it there and back as the storm escalated? Would we find the ring? We had to try, especially since we had learned the plows would sweep the snow-covered lot clean first thing in the morning. In a desperate race against the clock, we borrowed a metal detector, used to locate tombstones under the snow in winter, from a funeral home.
We scanned the parking space over and over with the metal detector in that dimly lit parking lot for over an hour and located nothing more than a manhole cover. And then we found it: a single gold band buried in a snowstorm.
If that’s not God, I don’t know what is.
To be continued . . .
Currently Reading, Watching, Listening 📖
📖 I recently read The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, the first in a series of four novels about crime-solving residents of an upscale English retirement village. It looks like Steven Spielberg is making a movie adaptation of this enjoyable cozy mystery.
When the library informed me this book was ready to check out, I didn’t remember adding it to my Holds list in the first place, much less what it was about (it’s a rom-com about firefighters). Although it won’t make my favorites list (and her book The Bodyguard was better), I liked the themes of forgiveness and giving your younger self grace for bad decisions.
If you’ve followed me for any time, you know I love movies. My friend Mary Carver and I record a Summer Movie Preview for her podcast The Couch, which sets me (and hopefully you) up for a great movie season each year. Take a listen!
Movies we’ve seen recently include Sound of Freedom, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One. Sound of Freedom is a true story about child sex trafficking. It can be hard to watch, but you should. I wanted to love Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, but I kept checking my watch for the Braves’ score. Make of that what you will.
It feels like we’ve waited forever for Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One. We rewatched the last two this past weekend to get ready for it and saw it Tuesday night. Loved it! I was bummed to hear that the following day, Tom Cruise attended the movie in person at a theater two exits from the one where we saw it. 🤯 😢 (Remember: this is part one, so don’t be disappointed that the story doesn’t conclude.)
What’s the best thing you’ve read or seen recently?
