Day 245: Message on the Sand

Yesterday, I took a break during my workday to compose a message for you on the sand out of dry seaweed. Here‘s a video of it and here are some pictures:

When I got to the beach, there were hundreds of high schoolers there. I almost didn’t make the message because I was embarrassed to do it with so many people around. But I braved on.

Partway through my project, a group of about 10 high schoolers congregated behind me to watch me make this. They were all a chatter about how clever this was and how nice and they asked me if I was making it for my girlfriend. I told them that I was making it for my wife.

When I finished, they took turns standing by it and getting their pictures taken by their friends. Then, all of the hundreds of high schoolers suddenly left, including my groupies. They must have been on a field trip or something.

Anyway, I hope you like your message and your youtube video. This idea isn’t novel, but I don’t think you’ll care.

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Day 244: At the Movies

On Tuesday, we went on a date of sorts: we watched a movie in the community center of our apartment complex.

On Tuesday afternoon, I went to the apartment-complex office and rented the community center just for us for the evening. After dinner, we made some kettle corn and went to the community center, plugged our laptop in to the big screen TV there, and watched Emma.

We took the girls with us, but they played on the floor while we watched the movie. About halfway through, though, all three girls got tired and whiny, so we took them home and put them to bed. We tried to finish the movie at home, but we both fell asleep. (Good thing we’d both seen this one a couple of times already.)

This was my attempt at giving you a break from the busyness of the week by taking you on a quasi-date. It cost us nothing and was quite enjoyable, even though it was cut short.

Day 243: Weekly Prayer

This is the third week that I’ve done a special prayer session for our marriage since I committed to praying for our marriage. May God work through these prayers to bring mighty changes to our marriage for his glory.

Day 242: Scrabble Message

This Sunday, before I went to church, I left you a message:

The girls saw it before you and were excited because they just knew it was a love note to you from dad. I guess I’m pretty predictable.

When I came home from church, you glowed when you thanked me for it. Seems like I scored a lot of points with this move.

Day 241: Your Mother’s Day Celebration

Due to my Mother’s Day faux pas, we decided to celebrate Mother’s Day on May 25^th.

The kids woke up extra early, for some unknown reason, so I let you sleep in while I watched them and made your breakfast. What was on the menu? Eggs in a bread bowl. I took a round loaf of bread from Trader Joe’s, hollowed it out, and filled it with eggs, feta, prosciutto, and basil. I then baked it for 50 minutes. Here she is:

Along with your bread bowl, I served you watermelon, cherries, orange juice, and tea:

You absolutely loved your breakfast. Afterwards, I told you to take a shower and get dressed and to take as much time as you needed. When you were done, I handed you your gift certificate for a professional massage and sent you out the door.

When you were gone, the girls and I made you your pictures using water colors, paint, dry noodles, and cheerios. They  had so much fun doing something special for you while being creative at the same time.

You came back from your massage very relaxed, yet a little giddy. For the rest of the day, you didn’t stop talking about it.

For lunch, I made us a picnic. I planned on taking us to the duck-and-turtle park, but Saturday was really windy. So we had our picnic in our front yard.

After lunch, I let you take a nap while I watched the kids. Eventually, we all fell asleep.

I had another thing planned for the evening, but I learned that we had a graduation party to attend. So, I put that on hold.

I hope you enjoyed your “Mother’s Day.” It might seem a little like my penance for taking you to Chuck E. Cheese’s, but really, I did it from a sincere heart because I love you. You’re a great mom and you deserved this day.

Day 240: Mother’s Day Drawings

On Friday, I wanted to help the girls draw some pictures for you for our late Mother’s Day celebration. However, their bedtime came before I knew it. While I was coming up with plan B, I fell asleep on the couch. When I woke up Saturday morning, I decided that I would just do the picture thing with the girls when they woke up and count that as my 240th act of love.

Day 239: Reading Up on Marriage Again

There are (at least) two things I’ve found that have the potential to really impact our marriage: prayer and education. The first seems obvious to me and will be obvious to anyone who thinks that Christianity is true. Prayer is a major means through which the God of the universe works. He wants us to bring the concerns of our marriage to him in prayer and wants to make changes in our marriage on the basis of those prayers. As such, I want to us to take as much advantage of that means as we can.

The other one seems obvious too: knowing certain things about marriage is a prerequisite to having a good marriage. In light of that, I’ve read up on marriage since 365 Acts of Love began. I read Timothy Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage, I’ve listened to sermons on marriage, we’ve been (slowly!) working through the Love and Respect Conference CDs, I’ve kept up with a few marriage blogs, and a few days ago, I read some John Piper articles on marriage. And for my 239th act of love, I read three marriage articles from Focus on the Family, one on commitment, one on protecting one’s marriage from infidelity, and one on fostering spiritual intimacy with one’s spouse.

I understand that possessing propositional knowledge about what makes for a good marriage is not sufficient for having a good marriage, but it certainly seems necessary.

Day 238: The Search for a New Song

When I posted about our song a few days ago, I decided that I want us to have a new (that is, an additional) song, one that reflects the renewed commitment we have for each other because of 365 Acts of Love. “Out of My League” is cool and it can always be our song, but I think it would be wonderful to have a song that reminds us of this great and challenging year in our lives as well as the changes that it brought to our marriage.

Picking a song is tough, though. For this post, I’ll have to be satisfied with simply throwing out a candidate: “I Will Be Here,” by Steven Curtis Chapman. I know it’s old, but I like it. I already bought it on Amazon. Like “Out of My League,” I won’t tell you that I purchased this song, but will surprise you with it by incorporating it into one of my acts of love.

And the search goes on . . .

 

PS Readers: I’ll totally take suggestions.

Day 237: Tried and True

For this act of love, I stuck with something tried and true: a back massage. If ever I want to make you happy, this is all I have to do. The trouble is, getting myself to do it is the tricky part.

Day 236: Custom Key Chain

I made you a custom keychain for my 236th act of love: I went online and ordered you a key chain with a picture on it (of us eating at Joe’s Crab Shack for Valentine’s Day) and with “my hubby loves me” as a caption.

I can’t tell you how proud I was for thinking of this. I imagined you walking around with your fancy key chain, proudly displaying it to all your friends and saying to them, “see, my hubby loves me.” I imagined them getting jealous and asking their husbands why they don’t have a fancy key chain. I was so excited that I couldn’t wait the estimated 7 to 11 business days to melt your heart with my debonair deed.

So, I told you: “Guess what?” “What?” “I made you a key chain with our picture on it and under the picture it says ‘my hubby loves me.’ You’ll get it in the mail in a couple of weeks.” “Thanks . . . that’s super cheesy,” came your immediate reply.

When you said that, my deed no longer seemed to me debonair; rather, it seemed Napolean-Dynamite-esque and I wondered why I didn’t just build you a cake. “So,” I replied, “should I cancel the custom shirt I ordered? It’s purple and has a picture on it of us riding a flying unicorn through rainbows and waterfalls with floating castles in the distance.” (Okay, I didn’t say exactly that, but something like it.) “Yeah, maybe you should. But I’m looking forward to that key chain.”