A "LOVE"-ly weekend

This weekend I had my turn to go on an Emmaus Walk.  When I agreed to go I was excited about experiencing what many of our friends here had experienced during their Emmaus Walks.  Chris went on his walk two weeks ago, upon his return he has just had an amazing renewed spirit and dedication to God.  During the 3 days he was down in Camp Occohannock I was just really pushed to pray for him and take a look at my own heart and find ways I could draw closer to God myself.
So once Chris came home and couldn't tell me anything about his weekend, because "I had to experience it for myself" I started to get REALLY nervous. At first I couldn't pinpoint why I was so nervous, then once I figured it out it just made me MORE nervous.
I was nervous for a few reasons.  Here were my thoughts:

 1) Why in the world was everything SO secretive about the weekend?  What was going to happen? 

 2) Since I didn't know what was going to happen, how would I know how to react? 

 3) What if I don't have a completely moving spiritual experience?

 4) What would I come home wanting to change? I feel like I'm doing just fine right now.

I don't want to have a major life changing experience!!

5) I don't know anyone else who will be there. So I am going on a 3 day retreat, cut off from the rest of the world to have a potentially life changing experience, with a group of strangers!

So on Thursday afternoon before we left to go meet Maggie and Lori for dinner I just started crying.  Chris just kept reassuring me that it would be a great weekend and to stop worrying about trying to "do it the right way".  So I tried to squash all the fear, nerves, ect and after dinner I headed down to camp with Maggie and Lori.  Lori had done her walk last Spring and Maggie did her's a few years ago.  They were great at trying to reassure me. (Apparently I looked like I was going to throw up when they left me.) They checked me in, set up my bed, gave me hugs, and  left me in some good hands, and the weekend began....

Like all good Emmaus walkers I will not spill the beans on what happens on a really amazing weekend, but I will tell you my worries were not necessary. 

My big take-away point from the weekend was centered on LOVE.  I felt so loved by the Emmaus team, the extended Emmaus community, my church community, my friends (old and new), and my family (even all the way from the jungles of Hawaii and the hostels of Central America).  I didn't know how much I needed to hear "I love you" from different people in different ways. 

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  The love from my family was so special.  You automatically assume your family knows how much you love them. It wasn't until I received my letters that I realized how important tangible words, through their letters, are in re-affirming that love.
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  The love from friends far away was beautiful and amazing and I miss having them as part of my day to day life. Each of them has walked with me and I with them through some ups, some downs, and lots of in-betweens. 
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  The love from the Emmaus community and my church family was so uplifting and supportive.  Some of those people I will never even meet and some of them I just haven't met yet.
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  The love from our new friends close by was overwhelming, unexpected, and empowering.  Thank you for the letters, the prayers, the agape gifts, the babysitting (sleepovers and crack of dawn), and most of all for encouraging us to go on the Walk to Emmaus.

Long ago (or so it seems,) I wrote a blog entry entitled "Proof God will place you where you need to be...". It was about our first service at Franktown UMC. Although at the time I wrote the entry I felt so powerfully that the words I wrote were true, in less than a month I was back to feeling very lonely and isolated. I constantly wondered when I would feel like this was home.  I wondered when I would ever feel like I had friends here. But in God's time it has all come back to that blog entry.  We are surrounded by some amazing Christian friends who in such a short time have shown us some true acts of friendship. God truly has placed us where we need to be.

A song for families about the importance of THE Father

I heard this song on the radio the other day.   Well, actually, I only head the last part of it.  But, it caught my attention so I used the all-knowing Google to find the whole song. I listened to it over and over on Friday and it just brough tears to my eyes and a fullness in my heart.  It is about a father leading his family and how he asks the Lord to help him. 
In the past year our family has had some big changes that all began with Chris taking a job our here on the Shore. It was a move we knew would be tough in many ways, but Chris really used prayer and his realtionship with God to help him make the decision.  And although some of those changes were hard and caused tears and some arguments, in a lot of ways the moved pushed Chris and I to really examine our realtionship with the girls, each other, our families, old friends, new friends, and God.  Sometimes Chris would questions if this was the right move for our family, mainly because the time demand is so high and it pulls him away from us more than either of us would like. Finding the right balance is hard.
As his wife I am lucky because it always comes back to prayer and the Lord.  So, even though I am not perfect and Chris is not perfect, I can rest in knowing that as long as we go to the Lord for our leading evenually we will have perfection in Him.
I think this song really hit home this weekend because Chris is on his Emmaus Walk, and knowing that he is deepening his relationship with Christ inspires me to be the wife God calls me to be for him, supporting him and partnering with him to be his "help-meet.

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...and April begins

We went to Front Royal for Easter.  The weather was beautiful.  During our trip we got to spend time with Gigi (including a lunch out at McDonalds), with Mimi and Grandaddy, and even Aunt Kathy, Uncle Jeff, Ben, and Jackson were there for one night.

On Friday we took a hike with the Shaffer family. Their 3 kids and our 2 had a great titme running around together.

On Saturday we went to the Point-to-Point races.  They are a family tradition in Chris' family and this was the first year we were able to come watch the horses race.  The girls enjoyed seeing the horses and playing with cousins.

We also colored Easter Eggs: 

Easter Sunday:

March ends....

Here is what we got into for the remainder of March....

After a full weekend of celebrating we had a low key Sunday night birthday for Sarah Elizabeth.  She blew out her candles one more time with Grace, Chris, and I.  She is wearing her new nightgown Grace gave her for her birthday.  The next night Grace somehow conviced her to trade.  So SE wore Grace's nightgown and Grace wore SE's.

These 2 girls LOVE their dress up clothes. In the first picture they were dressed for the "long cold trip" they were going on.   In the second picture they were experimenting with neclaces.  (Don't worry, after the picture we untangled them).

Grace's friend at school, Lucy (in the picture with Grace), invited us to an Easter Egg party at Aqua (a restaurant) in Cape Charles.  The girls decorated cupcakes, did some Easter crafts and got daffodils from the Easter Bunny on the beach.

Our final March activity on the Shore was an Easter Egg hunt with the Wednesday playgroup at the Wachapreague Park.  The girls had fun hunting for eggs, playing on the playground, eating lunch and yummy cupcakes.