Countdown to Thanksgiving Day 6: Coke Coupons, Pork Chops, Green Beans, and a guy named Peacock

This is the sixth in a daily series celebrating the blessings I'm thankful for, leading up to Thanksgiving. While they will portray some of the many -- and random -- things I have to be thankful for, they will not be presented in any particular order by degree of thankfulness. Skewed priorities should not be implied.

I know what you're thinking: I've finally lost it.

I'm sure it's about to happen one of these days, but I'm still borderline sane, even when I tell you there is something those four things have in common.

I'm thankful for all four because they're how Mr. Hat became "the one."

When asked how we met, we like to perplex people with our truthful answer of "we haven't." And in terms of first meeting, exchanging names, shaking hands and saying "nice to meet you," we haven't. We were babies together in the church nursery and grew up together in that same church.

Other than a stint of "going together" back when we were 15, we were always just friends. Our parents were friends, too, and we crossed paths at various gatherings and at church each Sunday.

College sent us in different directions, both paths leading to other people we fortunately realized we shouldn't marry. And we began talking beyond shallow greetings again.

That's when I got traded for Coke coupons. His dad worked for Coke, bringing the product to the store and often helping to stock it on the shelves. Which is how he ended up being in the same store my mother was shopping in one morning. "So, about that daughter of yours... If I give you some Coke coupons, could you give her a little shove in my son's direction?" was the related gist of the transaction.

I'd have done it without the coupons. But Coke, well, it's awfully good.

That was June.  Right after that was when I threw that brick at his head.

At one point that summer, we were discussing kids, futures, and foods we didn't like. (You have to cover a wide range of topics to determine true compatibility.) And I discovered he didn't like green beans or pork chops either; for me, they were anathema. I knew that if I married him, I'd never have to cook them and ingest them again. SOLD!

His confirmation was far pithier. They were the lyrics in The Way of Love by one of his favorite artists, Charlie Peacock, particularly a part of the chorus:
  

I've got the notion

Love is devotion

Not just emotion

We were engaged in September and married the following July.

I'm thankful for him every single day. He puts up with all my flaws. He works hard to provide for us. He's an excellent father. Twenty years later, we're still married because he's guided by "devotion and not just emotion." And he lets me cook whatever I want.

Which, oddly enough, is sometimes pork chops and green beans, washed down with Coke.



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Countdown to Thanksgiving Day 5: Grace

This is the fourth in a daily series celebrating the blessings I'm thankful for, leading up to Thanksgiving. While they will portray some of the many -- and random -- things I have to be thankful for, they will not be presented in any particular order by degree of thankfulness. Skewed priorities should not be implied.

Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving. -A.W. Tozer

Between day two's post and November being National Adoption Month, you probably saw this coming.

I'm thankful that I couldn't have more children, because if they'd come along as I planned, I would have missed out the great wonder that is a gift of grace.

I'm a very flawed human being. Yet twice I've been given a gift that cost the giver everything with no merit, no way to have earned this gift, on my part.

It's an awesome, overwhelming generosity that's been extended to me.

Our journey has been slow, initially falling prey to myths of insurmountable expense. There were starts and stops as job loss shoved plans to back burners and political unrest abroad closed options.

There were another son and another daughter held, loved... and lost to us.

But we held on. Kept pursuing. Continued praying. And finally, we made it.

And adoption is a gift for our children, too: a brighter future.  Adoption changes their destiny - and that of every generation that will come from them.  It removed them from the abject poverty and probable delinquency that would otherwise define their future.

I treasure the birth parents who gifted us with these children, despite their own yearnings and grief.  I'm thankful to have witnessed and benefitted from their sacrificial love, their grace.