Funny Valentine

Happy Valentine's Day!

My funny valentine, sweet comic valentine
You make me smile with my heart.
~Rodgers and Hart~

It's been crazy around here lately with all the moving plans and packing and emotional goodbyes. I thought Valentine's Day would just float by with barely a notice, but it turned out to be a good, yet irregular, funny kind of day. It started yesterday. Charles brought home flowers and a beautiful red velvet greeting card....did I mention this was yesterday? He always beats me to it lately on slipping in cards or gifts on special days. I had to run to the store today to pick out a card for him from the disarray of Valentine's cards that were left to choose from. I always know when I have just the right card for him and there it was after a little searching. Cupcakes and teddy bear valentines for the girls. I had just enough time to get home and write on all the cards before being rushed off to our busy day.

We stopped by Sears to look at their scratch and dent section for a refrigerator for our new home. We found a very nice dishwasher earlier this year that way. And there it was, meekly standing there with a big bash on on corner of the door, but it was the one for us.....brand new, but they knocked over $400 off the price because it has a bash. It has a Pur water filtration system for the ice maker and for the water dispenser on the front of the fridge door. We paid for it, set a pick up date and ran out the door again.

Today was the pastors' lunch for our association here...the last one that Charles will get to go to. It's once a month and they are a very close knit group of pastors from a wide variety of small towns around northern Arizona. They gave him a nice send off. I hate goodbyes, but I know we'll see these guys again around the state. We had to leave before it was over to zip down to Phoenix (2 hour zip) to sign loan papers on a home we're trying to get. We'll find out within the week if we'll get this one or not....waiting on the appraisal.

Then we went to a memorial service for the son of some dear friends here in town. It was on the other side of Phoenix. (a very wide city) Though we had only met this man once, it was a moving memorial to his life and a celebration of his release from pain and entrance into eternity....very cool.

We jumped back into the car and headed back 'up the hill'....stopping to eat a very unromantic, yet pleasant dinner, at a combination A&W Root Beer and KFC restaurant on the way home. That is so weird....why do they combine these icons of fast food and make it so confusing to order. There is a combo restaurant in Flagstaff of a Taco Bell and Long John Silvers....it is horrendous the smells in there. I can't enjoy tacos while smelling fish and I can't even enjoy the fish and crunchy bits while smelling tacos. Eeew! My appologies to anyone who owns a weird combo franchise, but it's just wrong....

So we are home now, kids in bed, dishwasher running and I am looking at my Valentine's flowers. Well...not really flowers....but there's potential for flowers at some time in the future. My husband knows me well and although cut roses are so beautiful and I absolutley love them, there is something even more wonderful in receiving skinny packages of flowerless rose bushes from Sam's Club. They look like sticks now, but I see the sprouts of new growth on them and have envisioned where I will plant them at our new home in Phoenix. (Where roses grow like mad in January and February.)

I can see the potential and the future in those bare branches and it's exciting! I'll plant them within days of making our move and enjoy watering and nurturing them until next year when I'll have way more than a dozen roses. I'll have dozens of flowers to sink my nose into and smell the wonderful aroma of homegrown roses....and I'll have pretty dried petals to make into pot pourri for Christmas. They have a lot of potential....just like our new church in which to serve and live has that same exciting potential to become to us a place to sink down into and enjoy the aroma of Christ filling the lives of the church and community there.


But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. 2 Corinthians 2:14-15

That was NIV, but I like how it is said in the Message too:

In the Messiah, in Christ, God leads us from place to place in one perpetual victory parade. Through us, he brings knowledge of Christ. Everywhere we go, people breathe in the exquisite fragrance. Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God, which is recognized by those on the way of salvation--an aroma redolent with life.