Weekend Kindness
Reaching Others Through Kindness

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Hubby, are you reading this?  Someone, send him a link. :p

Actually, hubby does make me melt.  All the time.  He’s an amazing man, friend, lover, husband, and servant.  I am so unworthy to be his wife.

Some things hubby has done to make me melt:

•  Brought a cat, Bouncer, home for Valentine’s Day.  He hates cats.  He thinks the perfect companions for cats are potato guns.  Yeah.  But since he loves me and I miss my parents’ cat, he got me Bouncer.
• Sacrificed his all-time favorite mattress for a bed I love, but he hates.  His sacrificial love always amazes me.
• We have a date night each week and the 1st of each month.  Our date nights mean so much to hubby and the fact that he prizes these nights with me makes me swoon.
• Two words: Baby.  Fever.  Hubby wants to be a daddy.  This is a new development as infants scare him.  (He’s okay once a child can talk and tell you they’re hungry or they have an owie or whatever.)  Some days I think he wants a baby more than I do.  And that’s a whole lot.
• Pouring into youth - especially those without father figures.  He is the dad some of these kids never got to have.  I love watching him around teenagers, especially teenage boys.  They’ll go to the movies or to the gym.  He’ll go to their games.  He urges them to become men of God.  It’s absolutely beautiful.

So that’s why my husband’s amazing.  Boy sometimes, compared to him, I feel like a shmuck.

I sure do love him.

Hubby and his family are in love with my enchiladas. Which is awesome since his grandma is known for her authentic New Mexican cooking and I’m just a silly gringa.

And the best part? They’re so easy!

AG’s White Girl Enchiladas
Servings: Theoretically, six. Realistically, two. They’re scrumptious.

Ingredients
6 boneless skinless chicken breasts.
1 or 2 26 oz cans green chili. I like Stokes brand a lot and I use about a can and a half, depending on how I’m feeling that day. I think the chili makes or breaks this recipe.

1 or 2 1lb bags pre-shredded mexican style blend cheese. Again, I usually use about a bag and a half, depending on my mood.
6 burrito size white tortillas.
Any hot sauce, salsa, lettuce, tomatos, sour cream, etc., that you’d want to put on top.

Directions (Brace yourself… this is too easy!)
Preheat oven to 350ºF. Place oven rack toward the middle of the oven.
Cook chicken in a skillet over medium high heat until outside is cooked. Slice breasts into strips. Cook chicken strips until completely done.
Spread a few tablespoonsful of green chili in the bottom of a 9×13 (I prefer glass) baking dish to prevent sticking.
In each tortilla, spoon about two tablespoonsful of green chili, top with 1/6 of the chicken, and a good-sized handful of cheese.
Roll tortilla and place enchilada with the loose end face-down into the baking dish.
Once all six enchiladas are in the baking dish, spoon the remaining green chili on top. Spread the chili out so no little corners of tortilla are sticking out as they will burn if they don’t have chili on them.
Cover entire dish with cheese - lots of cheese. As much cheese as you dare.
Bake at 350ºF until it smells so good you can’t stand it. (Usually between 20 and 35 minutes, depending on the oven. And if you forget about it or not.)

And remember - the meals you eat with your family are automatically only half the calories.

Today is National Sibling Day. And I just want to take today to tell all of you how much I appreciate and miss my brother.

First, a fun slideshow: (His nickname is Fireball for his hair. I’ll just let you guess which one he is.)

Fireball in Asia, on shore leave.

Fireball in front of the carrier they escort (left) and…well… I don’t know (right).

Fireball as a groomsman at our wedding.

By now it should be extremely obvious to you that he’s kinda silly. Okay, he’s really silly. And I miss him. He joined the Navy and has been having all kinds of adventures in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. He’s been to Pearl Harbor, Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, Iraq, and a miriad of other place.

Fireball and I are only a year and a half apart in age and we always grew up with our bedrooms right next to each other. There was a close friendship we developed at an early age and will continue forever. We were even plotting once to drill a hole through our bedroom walls so we could pass things to each other even if we were sent to our rooms by our parents.

Fireball is full of life and passion for whatever he does. He realizes that people are most important and spends time on-ship ministering to other sailors. I praise God for my brother and am thrilled to be his sister.

There’s no other love like the love for a brother. There’s no other love like the love from a brother. ~Astrid Alauda

A brother shares childhood memories and grown-up dreams. ~Author Unknown

A brother is a friend given by Nature. ~Jean Baptiste Legouve

It was nice growing up with someone like you - someone to lean on, someone to count on… someone to tell on! ~Author Unknown

Our siblings push buttons that cast us in roles we felt sure we had let go of long ago - the baby, the peacekeeper, the caretaker, the avoider…. It doesn’t seem to matter how much time has elapsed or how far we’ve traveled. ~Jane Mersky Leder

After a girl is grown, her little brothers - now her protectors - seem like big brothers. ~Astrid Alauda

To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other’s hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time. ~Clara Ortega

Siblings are the people we practice on, the people who teach us about fairness and cooperation and kindness and caring - quite often the hard way. ~Pamela Dugdale

The highlight of my childhood was making my brother laugh so hard that food came out his nose. ~Garrison Keillor

Take today to appreciate your brothers and sisters! (This also includes brothers and sisters in Christ!)

Hubby’s and my love languages are very different.  And I’m no good at speaking his love language: Acts of Service.  A little brainstorming is in order:  How do I show love to my husband when I’m terrible at serving him?

My thoughts are below.  What ideas can you give me?

Food

The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, right?  Maybe I should focus on having a hot meal prepared for him when he gets home from work.  This will take some creativity since I generally pick him up from work.  It’ll have to be something I can cook quickly or that reheats well.

Cleanliness

Staying current on housework, providing a calm, organized environment for him will not only show him love, but will help me feel more collected.  Any tips on getting and staying organized with space?  I’m no good at the “a place for everything and everything in its place” principle.

Sacrificial Giving

I can’t stand tattoos.  I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them, they’re just not very attractive.  But hubby wants a tattoo so badly.  For Christmas, I got him a gift card to a tattoo parlor.  This is one example, but I can’t think of any other bits of sacrificial giving, can anyone help me?

This is about as much as I can think of when it comes to serving my husband, but I know there has to be more to it.  Any other ideas when it comes to service?  Thanks, everyone!

Happy birthday to MInTheGap!  You, through this blog and others, have touched many lives and today is a celebration of how God has designed you to be a leader in His kingdom.

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This week’s topic is “If I could change one thing about them…” But I think the tables need to turn.  Our whole culture teaches us to look at them and blame them.  My husband has plenty of flaws and I could write pages and pages about them.  But that would hardly improve my relationship with him.  And isn’t Weekend Kindness all about building relationships?

God’s been speaking to me lately.  Sometimes I really hate what he has to say.

Turns out, I don’t want to focus on changing something about my husband, but I need to focus on changing things about me.  Darn it.

Hubby is upbeat, energetic, motivated, responsible, and everything I’m not.  I’m lazy, disorganized, easily flustered, and everything hubby isn’t.  I know God brings opposites together to balance each other out, (Hubby teaches me to be adventurous and I teach hubby to relax once in a while.) but extremes of one thing or another are rarely good.

So, if I could change one thing about myself, I would become a better bride to my groom.  This involves getting motivated and organized, staying current on housework, being frugal, and prioritizing better.

I think my priorities should be:

God

Husband

Fellowship with other believers

Home business

Home-making

Church ministries

Part-time job

What do you think?

At 13 years old, I went through a True Love Waits class and wore a purity ring. I decided to save my first kiss until marriage. I was made fun of many times for that decision. My friends would ask me, “But what if you marry a guy and he turns out to be a bad kisser?” I’ve also heard people say that you don’t buy a car without test-driving it first, so why would you get married without a little test-run? “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Matthew 5:8, 10-12. Because of my stand for purity, I was able to witness to the people I went to school with and I will be rewarded for my perseverance. G. K. Chesterton was a great Christian who said, “Jesus promised his disciples three things: that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble.”
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