Surprised by Jen

Jen and I were sitting in our front room today, talking after church. As she spoke, I turned and looked at her - really looked at her.

I was surprised by what I saw.

I've long been attracted to Jen. That is, after all, one of the reasons we married.

(Having said that, though we met in junior high, I didn't really get to know Jen, and certainly didn't fall in love with her, until we wrote letters to each other for 18 months while I served a mission for our church in Belgium and France. I fell in love with Jen, the person, rather than Jen, the body/face.)

But as I turned to look at her today, I was amazed by how beautiful she has become. Maybe she's always been this pretty, and I simply didn't notice.

But I think Jen actually gets better looking every year, and today I caught her in full bloom.

Today, among many other days, I consider myself fortunate to have been smart enough to marry Jen. I think of all the different sorts of personalities with which I could have settled in, and I don't think I could have been as happy with anyone else as I am with Jen.

I'm sure Jen would clash with other personalities, just as I know that I grate on some people. But Jen and I, despite our sometime differences, really get along well. She complements me as no one else does. I hope I do the same for her. Or that I will live to earn that place.

I didn't fall in love with Jen today. I was just blessed to discover how fantastically fortunate I am, in part because of how lovely she is.

Gordon Brown's "Audacity of Hopelessness"

I find that I follow UK politics more closely than US politics, perhaps because I like the political commentary in Britain so much more. For example, I found this note in The Spectator to be very funny (and true):

Labour got 15 per cent of the vote in the European elections, in which only 34 per cent of the electorate voted. That is roughly five per cent of those entitled to vote. When you add those too young to vote, this means that, on average, only one in every 25 people you pass in the street voted Labour last week. So when Mr Brown emerged triumphant from the meeting of his parliamentary party on Monday, his slogan was really ‘The Audacity of Hopelessness’.

As popular as Tony Blair was, Gordon Brown...isn't. At all. Labour has really messed up over there, and then managed to get caught in the economic crisis, as well. Double whammy.

And yet Brown continues to hope....

Lily, the secret-keeper

Lily knows how to keep secrets. This is what we discussed today while I was baking a pie to eat on Father's Day:

Lily (seeing me eat some chocolate): Dad, you love chocolate, don't you?

Me: Yes, I do.

Lily: That's why we got you some chocolate for Father's Day.

Me: Who did?

Lily: Mom, Scout, Greta, and me. But it's a secret.

Me: Um, Lily, you just told me about it. It's not much of a secret anymore.

Lily: But I'm not telling you where it is!

I suspect that if Lily did, in fact, know where the chocolate is hidden, she would have opened it up to share it with me.

Not that Father's Day presents are much of a surprise. Jen told someone the other day on the phone what she was planning to get me, even though I was sitting five feet from her in the adjoining room. I guess they figure it's not worth trying to surprise me. :-)