Happy Valentine's Day

Today was a day I have looked forward to for months. I didn't realize that it would occur on Valentine's Day though. Today I had the privelege of shopping for furniture for our new house. My husband said I looked like I had suddenly developed an extreme case of A.D.D. We went to Lake Charles to shop and the drive over there seemed endless. Once we finally arrived at the store, I was so excited and overwhelmed and didn't know where to begin. We ended up shopping for about 2 hours. The fact that there was NO TAX and 15% off didn't help.

My dream for this day actually began about 5 mos. ago, about a week after Hurricane Ike wreaked it's havoc on our house. The day we went in to clean out the house of all the furniture, carpets, etc. That day as we piled everything on our lawn, I began to look forward to the day when I would get to begin replacing the old "stuff" with the new. That's not to say I wasn't mourning our losses, but I knew that it was only "stuff", much of which could eventually be replaced by the "new and improved model".

So as you can imagine, I have really been looking forward to this day.

As we began to drive to Lake Charles, I was thinking "Only God could orchestrate in perfect harmony, the timing of this day, especially for us, as his children." You see, who would have thought 5 months ago in September, that on Valentine's Day, a day when love is celebrated, that I would be holding the keys to a new house and getting to shop for new furniture. It was as if God said to me "Happy Valentine's Day! See I still love you after all. Why do you ever doubt my love for you? This was my plan all along. Only I could arrange such a special Valentine's Day gift just for you." And me? All I could say was "Awesome, you are an awesome God, and I love you too!" Happy Valentine's Day!

Blessing through the storms

After Hurricane Rita in 2005 I kept a journal and recorded all the events that occurred during the days following Rita. Good and bad. As we evacuated for Hurricane Ike, for some reason I picked up that journal and took it with us. It was one of the few things we took. We had just evacuated 2 weeks prior for Gustav so we sort of left with the attitude, "hey, we'll be back in a few days, no big deal". Little did we know what we would come back to.