Memory Monday & Valentine Vignettes

Merry Memory Monday! I hope you had a wonderful Valentine’s weekend. The Salesman took the teens to swim team practice on Valentine’s Day for me while I put the finishing touches on a warm country lunch. Our piano tuner and his wife joined us around the table for lunch and lively conversation. Our piano tuner is blind. We have the beginnings of a friendship with them that started over a large pot of ham and bean soup and cornbread a few years ago. Later in the day, Audra went to see a play about Helen Keller with a friend, while Victoria Leigh and I made a few stops at stores in a nearby town. Sunday’s worship took us directly to the throne and Sunday evening we enjoyed an old fashioned ice cream social at church and then watched Roman Holiday with girlfriends from church. And my dear Valentine, The Salesman, has rested up from his travels last week. I am so thankful for my Sunday afternoon nap.

My memory verse this last week was:

John 14:27

Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled; nor let it be fearful. John 14:27

After troubled, there should be a comma instead of a semicolon…

The teens and I enjoy a time of prayer and Bible reading each morning before we start our lessons. We started this time (in addition to personal times with the Lord) to agree together over several specific requests and petitions before our Lord. We have been reading the Proverbs together and I felt the Lord leading us four days ago to the book of John. I am a schedule person, so I thought maybe it was what the Lord wanted us to start after we finished Proverbs this month. But the Lord seemed to indicate that we were to make the switch mid-way through. So we just started reading through the book of John together. And I was so excited to pull my next card from the deck of the Embrace The Word memory cards to find it was the first two verses of John! It was sweet confirmation that we were reading the book the Lord wanted us to read. Next week I’ll be hiding John 1:1-2 to tuck in my heart:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. John 1:1-2

Our budding Betty Crocker (to borrow Nancy’s endearing nickname for our youngest teen) has been busy again in the kitchen making Oreo Truffles. Victoria Leigh’s recipe and more pictures are posted here. To add to the valentine festivities, she decorated with milk chocolate hearts and Wilton’s Sparkling Sugars.Growing up my dear mother made every holiday special. I cherish the sweet memory of opening up my lunch box each year (when Valentine’s Day fell on a school day) to find my sandwich cut out in a heart shape. My dear mother’s traditions have carried down to our celebrations. On Valentine’s Day, I try to use the same cookie cutters my dear mother used to make our meals more festive. Breakfast included a blueberry-cranberry coffee cake and mild sausage, both cut out with heart shaped cookie cutters. My favorite holiday decorations are ones that the teens have made. Last week I listed our teens valentine art from their grade school years in my gratitude journal. Pictured below is one of my favorite pieces crafted from the busy and creative fingers of a second grader named Victoria Leigh. The pink heart has a hole cut in the center and she taped a cross in the cut out and wrote: “Only Jesus will fill your heart”. Simple and true, no matter how we try or search, “only Jesus will fill your heart”.