2023 Friday —

Friday, May 12, 2023 — Day 13 of our month long Anniversary Celebration: As one big heavy equipment vehicle rolled past our house, I headed toward the front window to investigate the activity. At 7:15 a.m. the vacant lot across the street was about to be assaulted. The big vicious jaw of a John Deere machine began ripping the overgrown vegetation from the soil.

Approximately 18 months ago the lot sold. In the next couple years we're going to witness the building of someone's dream. We're going to have new neighbors.

For hours the John Deere chewed the lot to bare dark dirt. Meanwhile in our little coastal house I was clearing clutter; actually trying to organize it into tidy stacks (magazines, books, spiral notebooks).

The day before at the final meeting of my Bible study group we were asked to tell what we had learned during the course of our study of "The Divided Kingdom." I knew what I needed to share with my new circle of friends -- during the weeks since I had joined them we had studied some very difficult books Jeremiah, Lamentations, Habakkuk to name a few. I had read about God's stubborn rebellious people and their obstinate behavior. One struggle after another.

I had learned that God never wastes a good struggle. I learned to not resist but to put my hand in Jesus's hand to let Him walk me through the ugliness, to keep my eyes on Him and my mind would not be filled with the wickedness around me. The two kingdoms rebellious Israel and rebellious Judah did not learn until years of captivity. Ugh!

Then I told my new friends that it was a question we tackled back in March that was stuck on "repeat" in my mind. It was asking "how am I getting ready, preparing for the coming King." I thought about the question with unsettling embarrassment because of the stress I produce when friends are coming to visit. I want my house clean and uncluttered when they arrive.

I told my study friends "I really really love a clean house, and I really, really hate cleaning house." My honest confession is that the study question caused me to realize that I prepare more for friends coming than I prepare for the coming of King Jesus. You have no idea how much I want to tap the "delete" key to erase those words. So what does that have to do with an anniversary or with today? Nothing and everything.

Marriage can be, it is, a struggle. Maybe on one of this month's essays I'll write about the horrors of the past three years. Not today.

This evening Mr. Fun & I touched our fluted glasses together, looked long in each other's eyes, and without a word acknowledged the victory of walking thru life with each other, especially when Jesus is in the middle.

Champagne and burgers at the Cayucos Sea Shanty decorated our evening. And that's Day 13 of our month of "Two are better than one."

Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol
and Chloe & Mitzi too!