Calm Between the Storms

Last night we got home from our run around 830pm, showered, tag-teamed dinner and wound up on the couch watching the Dancing With the Stars rewards show afterwords. During his prayer before dinner, Landon thanked God for this calm between the storms that we are having right now--these days and nights of peace and calm and quiet. And I really liked how he put that. The last six months or so have been hard with Landon working out of town during the week and his job search after his company began having trouble and the stress over TAKS at my school. But now, now things are good and calm and easy. That storm has passed. But I loved his prayer because it just reminded me that even though things are good right now, hard times will come again; that much we are promised. But we are also promised that God will be the same in this hard times as He was in the previous hard times and as He is right now. He is not any more of a good God simply because we are receiving all of these undeserved blessings right now.

With that being said though, I want to give God all the glory and the thanks for the good times we are experiencing, big and little. I want to remember these blessings when things are good and when the hard times come. I'm thankful in this moment that--

Landon is working as an attorney for a law firm that he likes and doing work that he loves.

Landon and I both have jobs in Houston where we are home by 5pm and actually have time in the evening together to do things before we have to go to bed and wake up and do it all over again.

Our small group at church is going to begin getting to know the people that live in one of the poorer neighborhoods right by our church and hoping to organize some type of activity for the kids when we go out there. I'm really pumped--I've been wanting to do this since we started going to church there and there are some other couples in our small group who have a heart for inner city ministry now too. So cool how God works.

We found a park with a really nice 10 mile running track that we go running on together three or four times a week. I always wanted to be a runner and, for the first time in my life, I feel like we are. I also love that it gives us something to do together.

And, an added bonus to the running trail is that is has an incredible view of the sunset--I seriously need to bring my camera out there one night when we we're not running. Last night we were running and watching a little league baseball game with a bunch of 4 or 5 year olds running around like crazy on our right and a hot pink and hot purple sunset that absolutely filled the sky, on the right. It was such a cool reminder of God being alive and with us and that, combined with the beautiful weather and the fact that Landon was running beside me, made for a really enjoyable 5 miles.

Today is April Fools and I got to pull a prank on both my kids and Landon. It totally made my day that I got Landon. He's not easily fooled by me. :)

For the first time in a while, we are actually able cook dinner and eat together at our dining room table most nights out of the week. I absolutely love it because it means we get to talk. :) A lot of nights we've ended up sitting there long after dinner is over, just talking. I love it.

Basically, what a lot of it boils down to is that I'm realizing that I'm just SO incredibly thankful that God provided a job for Landon where he comes home from work each night. Before he worked at jobs with so much travel required, this was never something that I was especially thankful for--it was something that I just took for granted would always be. So in that respect, I guess I am also thankful for that time apart, hard as it was, for making this time so much sweeter. For making me thankful for what I have. I think we're both still trying to wrap our minds around the fact that he's working in Houston for good now--I keep feeling like any day now he's going to have to pack up and head out of town to work for the week. It's a nice feeling to remember he's not.

In conjunction with that, I've been convicted lately that I've been spending way too much time on my computer. During the time when he was working out of town, we got in the habit of talking in the evening for hours on skype, which required us being at a computer and we got into the habit of just surfing the net. I found blogs to read, sites to check etc and began spending way too much time doing that. I've decided that, from now on, I'm only going to be on the computer at home if I have a purpose, like writing a blog post, sending an email etc. If I have time at work or before Landon gets home to look at other things I might then, but it was eating away my time and making me not the kind of wife and person I wanted to be. Too much was not getting done and too much time was just passing us by.

So, here's to being grateful and making changes.