Dedicated

This past Sunday, Matt and I gave Afton back to the Lord.  We had wanted to do it for a while, but it hadn't worked out before this past Sunday.  We were blessed to share it with Matt, Vail, and Mattea Woodard (Mattea is 2 months older than Afton) and the rest of our church family.

Pastor Matt (yes, there are that many Matts in our church and it is confusing) called us to the front, said a prayer over us, and then called the rest of the body to the front to surround our family and the Woodard family as we dedicated our lives to raising our children the way God wants us to.

When Matt and I were faced with the decision to move to New Mexico, we knew the move would challenge us in a lot of ways.  We would be moving away from our family and friends, from all we knew (and for Matt the only place he has ever called home).  One of our biggest worries was finding a new church home.

We visited the churches in town, but after my first service with Grants Church of Christ, I knew that we had found it.  I have never been in a church body that has shown more love and acceptance than Grants C of C.  God has blessed Matt and I so much in the short time that we have been together. The move to New Mexico was a huge act of faith on our part and finding the church was confirmation that we had followed God's Will.  If you know me, you know that it takes a while for me to open up to anyone, but being at this church I felt at home with all these people immediately.  (that is really saying something!!!)

We wish that our families could have been with us this past Sunday.  It is a huge comfort to know that even though our blood families live 2000 miles away, we have a group of people that have accepted us and loved us as their own and we could share with the them the joy of our daughter.

I don't feel like what I have written will ever adequately express the gratitude we have for these people.  They have truly become our family away from our family and have blessed us so much.  Matt and I are so grateful that we will have the support of this Body of Christ to raise Afton (and more children, if we are so blessed) in.

Reading, Writing...

I am in, what will probably be a short lived, reading kick.  I love to read, I always have.  As I have gotten older, I have started to enjoy reading non fiction as well as fiction.  I am in the middle of two or three books, a couple of magazines-all about parenting or raising children-but I wanted to read something fun.

Matt and I have several book shelves full of books in our house.  They are mostly my books.  I am a book hoarder.  I can't bring myself to get rid of any of the books I have ever had.  I love to buy books.  Even if they just sit on the shelf and look pretty, I do have the intent of reading every book I buy, even though it never works out that way.  Amazon.com is the devil for that very reason.

So night before last, I read a parenting magazine, a chapter in one of the parenting books I am in the middle of, but I still wanted to read something that wasn't so heavy and didn't require a lot of thought.  I occasionally think about books or stories I have read before, and I do like to re-read some of my favorites.  I had been telling Matt about a story I had read in college, but couldn't remember who wrote it or what the name of it was.  I was pretty sure it was in my Freshman year Literature book (that which I still have, of course) so I got it off the shelf and with a little digging found the story I had been agonizing over for sometime.  I was stoked it was in the book I had!  So as I was looking through the literature, there were plays ("Death of a Salesman" jumped out at me.  One of the worst reads I have read.  I plan to read it again, though, to see if I still don't like it), poetry (most of the ones that I loved and were forced to memorize in high school!  I wish I could still remember them!), and mainly short stories-Edgar Allen Poe, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty-names I had forgotten since that first semester of college.  My world had been open to so many new names and stories-I loved it!

I have decided to start reading that Freshman Literature book.  My mind needs a workout.  I need to expand beyond Raffi and Sesame Street again (although I love those things now).  I miss school, I realized after reading about 15 pages into that big book that I had to lug around in my book bag 3 days a week.  I miss stressing over tests, writing papers, going to the library for research and using a card catalog not a computer!  I am such a nerd!

The Lord saw fit to let me marry a nerd.  Hopefully we will pass on that nerdy-ness to our daughter...