What a great, yet incredibly awful summer!

I was thinking the other day about this summer. Jay and I looked forward to it for months. Ever since we met, we looked forward to it so we could get out and do more stuff. Now other than going to the zoo for our 5 month anniversary, I don't think we really got out to do much outdoorsy stuff. It was a good summer for falling in love and getting engaged. The weather this summer was pretty awful. Now I don't really care for the +30 and higher temperatures, however, it has been really cold and miserable. I am thankful for the rain, and the incredible LACK of grasshoppers (I can hear an AMEN from Robyn, haha), but the weather has been disappointing.

Now I was thinking about this summer from my mom's perspective. It has been super hard on her. First of all she lost her job of 13 years, went to work one day and they called her into the office and sent her packing within half an hour. For no good reason, just company restructuring. Then once the shock of that started to wear off, her mother came down with a bad case of pneumonia! So mom went to Calgary to help out gramma and grampa, who are 81 and 86 years old and still live by themselves in an 1800 square foot house with very slippery, steep, narrow stairs!!!! Gramma recovered from the pneumonia, however then she came down with a really bad, highly contagious bacterial infection that took a LOT out of her!! She was sent home after that ordeal with oxygen to wear around the house. So all in all, mom and dad were there for nearly a month helping them out. They finally got home and started to get settled back into their summer holiday and dad started getting very depressed. He has struggled with depression before, he has his ups and downs, but he has been REALLY down lately. THEN to top it all off we got a call from my mom's sister in Calgary and gramma is back in the hospital cause she collapsed this morning. Now we thought it was pretty bad, and it's not GOOD, but it was just due to dehydration, and they have gotten her hydrated and she is doing much better now! So, that has been my mom's summer. She has a job lined up that she starts after the long weekend (praise God!), but I imagine this has taken a pretty big toll on her!! If you think of it to pray for her, as well as my gramma, that would be much appreciated!!!

Weddings

I had a great weekend! I went to a wedding yesterday and it was lovely! It has been just about two years since I was at a wedding (I think...), the last one was Karen and Levi's wedding on Aug 31, 2002. It was a nice ceremony, about half an hour long at Lakeview Church. It was kind of a reunion for our grad class and that was cool! I saw a few people that I haven't seen since grad and they are doing well.

As I listened and watched during the ceremony I wonder how much non-Christians take in of the 'religious stuff' in the ceremony. The pastor talked about the importance of having Jesus be a part of the marriage, and about the importance of marriage in God's plan for mankind. As he read 1 Corinthians 13 about love, and I recited it along in my head, I wonder how much of an impact it had on the non-Christians I was sitting with. Or maybe they were just sitting there thinking about how drunk they were going to get at the dance, or thinking about how cute they thought the best man was.

I think it would be interesting to hear that stuff through 'fresh ears'. I wonder what it sounds like to them. I think sometimes I take it for granted, the beautiful scripture that I have heard hundreds of times. What does it sound like to those who have never heard it before??? I had some friends I went to school with that were pretty against religion. I wonder if they think it sounds crazy. Like we think culty people are strange, I wonder if they think it's culty sounding.

Then there was a reception with some good food, and visiting :) Then there was a dance. I think that was the first wedding I have been to since my sister's that had a dance. And people actually danced! There were a lot of young people there last nite, so the dance was a lot of fun. At my sister's wedding, like NO one danced :P I think my next wedding will be MY wedding, how exciting!! :)

Body Break with Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod

Today Karen and I went for a walk. She told me yesterday that she planned to get a little active to help get in shape, keep busy, tone up, etc. I was instantly reminded of a time in high school on our summer holidays when we were going to get in shape. So we got together and cut stuff out of our magazines (mostly YM magazine!) and the next day we went at it hard core. We did aerobics, went for a bike ride, did some stretching, did some crunches, and lemme tell you, we were so sore the next day, we didn't continue on with our plan!!! So we are going to start out slowly, with brisk walking and go from there! Maybe by winter time I can afford to, and be in decent enough shape to get a gym membership or something ;)

Jay and I got engagement pictures done on Sunday at Superstore. Now if anyone out there is looking to have some pictures done for cheap cheap cheap, I recommend going there!! I think the pictures look great, and we got 26 pictures ranging from 5X7 to 3X2s for about $20!! If anyone out there wants to see my engagement pictures, I can email them to you if I haven't already :)

You learn something new every day...

Did you know that there is such thing as plaid condoms??

WEIRD!

Mrs. Finkbeiner?

So as most people who read this probably already know, I am officially engaged! I had a great day on Saturday with Jay, and he proposed to me at 7pm by way of cover letter, resume and beautiful poem. He applied for the position of my husband! What a sweetheart! We were sitting on the couch and he asked me to get him his brief case from his desk so I did, and he pulled out a folder with his resume in it. He told me that he had been looking thru his files and came across his resume and thought that I might like to see it. So I thot, cool, never seen his resume before! So I opened it up and my first thought was, "why is my name on his cover letter??", but as I read, I very soon started to understand. I cried and managed to read through most of it before he asked me to be his wife, and we cried together and I said yes! What a man I have! I have since read over the resume many times and it still brings a tear to my eye, so heart felt and romantic and sweet. So we did some calling of parents and my sister and they were all happy, my parents even came over to visit briefly! It has been a good week :) I love my ring sooooo much and hopefully soon I will have a picture to email out to anyone who cares to see it!

Sea of Faces by Kutless

I see the city lights all around me
Everyone's obscure
Ten million people each with their problems
Why should anyone care

And in Your eyes I can see
I am not just a man, vastly lost in this world
Lost in a Sea of Faces
Your body's the bread,
Your blood is the wine
Because you traded Your life for mine

Sometimes my life it feels so trivial
Immersed in the greatness of space
Yet somehow you still find the time for me
It's then You show me Your love
And In Your eyes I can see
And in Your arms I will be

I am not just a man, vastly lost in this world
Lost in a Sea of Faces
Your body's the bread,
Your blood is the wine
Because you traded
Your life for mine

If only my one heart
Was all you'd gain from all it cost
Well I know you would have still been a man
With a reason
To willingly offer your life

I am not just a man, vastly lost in this world
Lost in a Sea of Faces
Your body's the bread,
Your blood is the wine
Because you traded Your life for mine

Just one in a million faces

God's Character

God has a forgiving character. I think sometimes it is hard for us to grasp God's forgivness in our lives. We have heard in church, youth group and Bible study groups that we are only to ask, and God will forgive. And when you think about it, that's pretty amazing. God is perfect and holy and he forgives us, who continue to sin and sin and sin and sin. But we can come back to God and ask forgiveness and he readily forgives us again and again and again and again.

I was given a good perspective on this forgiving character just the other day. I have been struggling with a sin in my life, and I finally confessed it to a friend of mine a couple of months ago. That friend is trying to keep me accountable by asking me from time to time how I am doing in this area. Well to be honest, I slipped up a couple of times, and felt too ashamed to tell my friend about it. That friend asked me yesterday how I was doing, so I told them the truth. It was hard, but they just held me and cried with me and forgave me. I felt so unworthy of that forgiveness. That should be what it's like to ask forgiveness from God. Incredible humility, shame, fear....but I think many people, myself included just take it for granted that there will be forgiveness.