October Sunday

I have a confession to make. I played hooky from church today. And I had an accomplice.

First, an explanation. I'm entering into my busy season at work, which will involve long hours and a lot of travel, and my first trip is this week. In preparation for this trip I have already been keeping later than usual hours doing my admin thing, as well as recruiting and training an enrollment team that will be traveling with us. For you who may not know, I work as the Group Services Manager for an insurance broker, and one of the services we offer our larger group clients is benefits enrollment. This means that once a year we take a team out to each location of a given company and provide information and the opportunity for their employees to make changes to their insurance benefits.

Back to my confession. Knowing that we have barely seen other this past week, and also knowing that I will be even busier and traveling starting this week, David and I took today for a much needed time to reconnect and spend the day together. We went out to breakfast, then strolled around Home Depot for nearly an hour-and-a-half, doing a little shopping and little dreaming. We like to dream together about "one day when we build our dream house, this is what we want in it." David dreams big. It's one of the things I love about him. We dream big together, both in life and in ministry.

After Home Depot, we did some home projects we had been putting off. We hung decorative shelves in the living room, he mowed the back yard, and I re-potted some houseplants. The rest of the day was spent just relaxing, then finally eating dinner and watching television together.

Church relationships are a wonderful thing and when cultivated, they become a vital part of our Christian experience. Corporate worship is not something either of us take lightly either, as we both know well the importance and the power of unity that is the result of gathering together with fellow believers.

But today was more about cultivating our relationship. We recognize that no matter what we do for the Kingdom, our marriage is the most important investment of time and energy we can make. Our partnership in this thing called life is what fuels us for stepping out and pressing on to fulfill our destiny - his, mine and ours.

Years from now, we may not remember the events of today, but we will never lose the benefit of the time we spent together one Sunday in October.

Teach us, Dear Lord, to savor each moment,
to live it to its fullest potential.
Thank You for the moments that make up our years.
Thank You for the people who make up our lives.
Amen.