Sunday the Best Day of the Week

Favorite Day of Week

                Ask most people you know the question; what is your favorite day of the week? For the most part the answer that you get will be Friday. Why is this you think? End of the work week, start of the party weekend, or start of the sports weekend are the answers that you will probably get out of most people. For me, if you ask what day is my favorite, I will tell you Sunday. When you give that as your answer most people look at you like you are CRAZY.

                About 2 months ago I realized quickly that there Sunday had rapidly become the day of the week that I just looked forward to all week long. Sundays for me have become a day of true rest or the Sabbath, but not in the way you would think about. You hear rest and think that it means lounge around watching football and just basically chilling. For me Sunday’s are the exact opposite of lounging around though. My family and myself are on the go almost all of Sunday starting right off in the morning when we wake up. Most Sundays are the day that we as a family sit down in the morning and have a good breakfast together to start our day.

                Then we move on to heading to the Church for fellowship and worship with our Church family. Let me tell you, this is just good stuff here. I completely love going to the Church and studying with my group and listening to my pastor speak the truth of the Word. The spiritual fulfillment that I receive on this day is something that I crave for throughout the week. This is something that I strive to feel every single day, but on Sundays being with the Church body and worshipping God together with my family just completes my week. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not just a show up on Sunday Church attendee who thinks that as long as I attend Church on Sunday I am doing all that is needed to please God. I have fully taken up the motto of Live in the Word, Under the Word, and in Prayer. It’s just that Sunday for me brings it all together. I often find that a lot of the stuff that I experience throughout the week and the questions that I have had are addressed somehow. For me that helps me to solidify what I have been studying and praying about all week.

                From our worship service, my family and I head to the house to have our family time. We have actually made Sunday a day that our children must spend time with not just each other, but my wife and I as well. Whether that is just watching a movie together, enjoying the pool, or playing a game together the point is that we are doing it as a family. I have found that even if we do nothing at least we are doing nothing together.

                Then we head back to Church to begin our Sunday night activities, which for the time being is participating in the S.O.U.L program right now. Myself and the boys are a part of the outdoor team in where we go into our community and focus on helping the people in our community that are unable to maintain their yards on their own for whatever reason they might have. Now I know I have said this before but I want to stress how good this feeling is. I am able to take my boys, who if I was to ask to mow my own lawn I would get nothing but complaints. Yet I am able to go to a complete stranger’s house and ask my boys to do yard work and they do it with nothing but smiles on their faces with no expectation of a reward. Now for me this is just God good.

                Our evening usually winds down after that with the kids getting ready for bed and my wife and I relaxing with each other. So again I will say to you, my favorite day of the week is Sunday hands down. For me it is an awesome day to reset, worship, and get ready for my upcoming week. Thank you and God Bless.

G.E.D.D

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Respect Your Wife

Respect Your Spouse

            OK so I will be the first to admit after a lot of SOUL searching, I am not perfect and I don’t know everything. There are things that I do on an everyday basis that I don’t even realize I am doing that upset my wife beyond comprehension, and unfortunately I am not very sensitive to her feelings on the subject. This is something that I have to work on hardcore, and I mean really start to consciously start thinking about what I am doing before I do it. Today I will outline a few of the things that I have done this week which even though I didn’t think it really affected my wife (or I knew and didn’t care), it had shown a level of disrespect to her that I was not even aware of.

            Monday- This day was my first day back to work after being off for most of July for vacation and surgery recovery. My morning started a 0355 waking up, showering, making my coffee, and heading out the door. My first UN thoughtful decision was not to take the dogs out to go to the bathroom. Some might think take the dogs out at 4 in the morning that’s CRAZY, and to tell you the truth that is what I thought also. The dogs were quiet and not making a fuss and my main focus was trying to be as quiet as possible to not wake up my wife while getting ready for work. But the things I don’t take into account are (1) my wife hears everything once I wake up and (2) I am not as quiet as I think. The other thing that does not even cross my mind is that even though the dogs are quiet and not making a fuss when I wake up is that eventually they are going to wake up about an hour after I head out to work and want to go to the bathroom which in turn wakes my wife up at about 5 am. This is something that I am going to have to make a conscious effort to improve on so my spouse can get a little better sleep in the mornings. The second thing I did on this day to just completely make her morning horrible was spill coffee on myself and not clean it up. I honestly thought that the mess went into the garage on not on the inside of the house, my mistake was the thinking part of this equation and not confirming what had actually happened. So as soon as I had the opportunity, I let my wife know that I had spilt coffee on myself while heading out the door to work, what I did not include was that apparently most of the coffee was on the inside of the house, all over her carpet and garage door. So basically by 7 am in the morning on Monday I had caused a huge mess and deprived my wife of sleep, and when the time came to answer for what I had done all I could think is why is she so mad at me I didn’t do it on purpose. Well that my friends is simple, I should have taken the time to show a little more respect to my wife by looking at what mess I had caused and cleaned it to save her the heartache. For this I am truly sorry, and I will find the strength to confirm things and not just ASSUME that it won’t bother my wife. Finally, after my wife cleaned the mess up and all was said and done, she asked me to clean the outside portion of the garage. I went outside and poured water on the spot on the ground to get it off the garage floor, but once again did not take the time to look at the door or door jam. HMMM, not very smart or thoughtful on my part. In the end my wife finally explained to me how disrespectful I was being and being the hard headed person I know I can be all I did was stand my ground that I was not wrong. Boy I can be stupid.

            Tuesday- My wife had a long trip ahead of her this day taking the kids to the airport to fly home. I made sure that when she got home that I had cleaned the door from the coffee stains and that the kitchen was cleaned for when she got home. You might be asking what I did wrong on this day, well here is the deal, she has strong feelings about our larger dogs being on the couches. We had broken our boxer of doing this about a year ago but recently Rocky has deemed that he belongs on the couch. While my wife is not OK with it we have not really gotten on him about it, well while I was on the couch playing my PS3 my Mastiff decided it was cuddle time with daddy. I being the typical person I am didn’t really think much of it at the time. Once my wife got home and we started talking about our day, our children started talking about how cute Harley looked on the couch today with DADDY. I immediately pretending like “I don’t know what these crazy children are talking about” when my wife just simply pointed out again that I was disrespecting her wishes by letting the dogs on the couch. Once again, lesson learned, I don’t always take my wife’s feelings into account when I let stupid things happen. I really wonder what the rest of the week is going to be like.

            I do know this, it is not just my responsibility but my duty as a husband to ensure that I am taking my wife’s wishes and feelings into account when I do things. This is something that I have to ensure that I make a dedicated effort to do every day, and for all who read this I suggest that you do the same, because in the end if your wife is not happy I promise you your house will not be happy either. So to Shannon I apologize for my retardedness and promise to make a conscious effort to respect your wishes, because as we learned in Genesis 2:18; Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper as his compliment.” (Woman) Thank you and God Bless.

G.E.D.D.

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S.O.U.L

Summer Of Ultimate Love (S.O.U.L)

            Well this subject is near and dear to my heart this year. I learned this acronym through my Church as a program where we take our children into the community and perform work projects to help out those in the community who cannot help themselves. This program is dedicated to showing our children that it is Godly and awesome to serve people in the community without hope of reward or recognition. Let me tell you something, it does have a reward that you would not imagine; pride, confidence, since of selfless service, joy, and overall love for your community. I mean for real, on my first experience with my outdoor team, I was able to take my 3 boys in 97 degree weather over to a complete strangers house and tell them we are going to help mow this gentleman’s yard who had been in an accident that laid him up in a wheelchair and unable to upkeep his land. Now my children don’t even want to mow my yard, which is in total under a half acre, without giving me issues. But to my surprise my children were out there moving sticks, raking leaves, and helping where ever they could, and enjoying every minute of it. This program is priceless, I mean come on now, teaching your children to just love the community that they live in through hard work and dedication, PRICELESS.

            Now lets take a look at the other meaning of S.O.U.L that presented itself to me this summer. Every year my wife and I get a chance to have our 3 children who don’t live with us full time to come and visit. This is something that we both look forward to and dread a little each year. The dread side of the house comes from the financial side of the house, which is to be expected when you have 6 kids in the house who eat like small horses. But having them here totally outweighs the financial burden put on the family.

            My summer started actually back in April right after my lap band surgery. I had finally received the call that I could come to work finally, something I had been waiting on for 6 months. It then was followed by the good news that we actually qualified for the first time home buyers tax credit that we had been previously told we hadn’t qualified for. This meant that we could now purchase a quality above ground pool in preparation for the kids arrival in the summer, which in the end meant cheap entertainment for all the children. Then came June. Oh June. So many things happened in this month that was nothing short of a miracle that I can’t even count. First off to start the month, I had another issue with a bowel blockage that led to me being hospitalized for 5 days. The day after I got out of the hospital my wife had me going to an adult bible study group that I was a little apprehensive about attending. Then on the day that all of my children flew into Houston, I accepted Christ as my savior and was saved. This was all in the same week, for me miracle number one.

            So now all my children are here and we are having a great time. We are all going to Church, for my oldest child it was not an option I made him go, and you know what, I am glad that I did. In a little under a month, my son Colby, who did not happen to have the chances to attend and awesome Church like the one that we do here, came home and told me that he had accepted Christ as his savior and had found his salvation. So during the week before he left to go home to California we had him attend the Churches connect class with Shannon and me, and on the Sunday before he went home, both he and I got baptized together with his brothers and sisters watching. Miracle number 2.

            The first week of July the kids connect class began on Wednesday nights at our Church. This was an opportunity to get my youngest 2 children into the class and start learning about Christ and their relationships with Him. By the end of the second week of the 4 week class, I was presented with my most precious miracle yet; my 7 year old daughter had accepted Christ as her savior and found her salvation. I mean come on now. If you have never had the opportunity to see a 7 year old accept Christ as their savior you are missing out. I mean Anna came up to me and said “Daddy, the most wonderful thing happened to me today. I prayed to God and asked him to forgive me for my sins and let and to let me be a Christian. And you know what, He said yes.” With a huge smile on her face the whole time. Miracle number 3.

            Now unfortunately for my family this Summer is coming to a close. My oldest flew out 2 weeks ago back to California and today my other 2 step children will be flying home to be with their dad. This will mean that we will have some damage control coming up with our youngest daughter. She has been attached to her older sisters hip since she arrived, and every year when she leaves Anna is torn up for weeks about it. But there is nothing to worry about because she now has someone else she can talk to and look to for comfort. God and Jesus Christ. I fully believe that this will help not only her, but my wife and I through this tough time in her life. The one thing I can definitely say is that after this year, my wife and I are definitely looking forward to OUR Summer of Ultimate Love 2012. Thank you and God Bless.

G.E.D.D

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