[…]of reunion and readjustment. Normal has changed for everyone. Be patient–it takes time to get into a routine. Soldiers haven’t been on a vacation. Expect your household to be different. Keep life as routine as possible. Take time to re-adjust to one another. Go slowly. Communicate feelings. Anxiety is normal. Discuss frustrations. Accept that we are all different. Initial discomfort in adjusting doesn’t mean your spouse is unhappy with you or the family. Communicate ahead of your spouse’s return about radical changes in your physical appearance (once a redhead now a blonde). Communicate about changes in discipline of children. […]
[…]a fatherly concern and fellow feeling for their sufferings, and has made every exertion in his power to remedy the evil, and to administer the much-desired relief . . . In this darkening hour of adversity, any man who possesses less firmness than Washington, would despair of our independence.” Washington’s firmness at Valley Forge paid off. His character impressed all who came in contact with him. To the distinguished character of a Patriot, he exhorted his men, “it should be our highest glory to add the distinguished character of a Christian.” That he was able to pass on this virtue […]
[…]went off to college, I had never lived in a land-locked place. The other reality that inspired my awe, however, was that the ocean was my father’s livelihood. Even as he knew how to navigate and operate within it, he lived constantly at its mercy. As a little girl when I spoke of my father as being “at sea,” I really had no notion of the dangers he faced—he had helped teach my sisters and me how to swim, and for all I knew that’s what they did out “at sea,” diving off the deck and swimming with dolphins. The […]
[…]arguably the most eloquent passage on love anywhere in the Bible. It’s almost impossible to go to a wedding and not hear the thirteenth chapter read as part of the ceremony. If, as the passage states, love is patient and kind, bears all and believes all, where was this type of love in my exchange with my friend? My conscience, no doubt under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, drew me to the first verse of that chapter, “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong […]
