Introducing Keith

I am pleased to welcome a very special guest to Dreaming of the Country today.

Meet Keith

Keith is my big brother and that’s why I can get away with posting pictures like this of him. It’s a little sister’s prerogative to be annoying after all.

Keith is a great brother, and he’s also a great pastor of a church in North London. Josh and I were so pleased that Keith agreed to conduct our wedding for us, and he delivered one of the best wedding sermons I have ever heard. I’m not just saying that because I’m biased (or because it included eating KFC in the middle of a wedding service), but because I can still remember every point clearly, and all the advice was great.

Anyway…over to Keith…

I guess we all judge success differently: some of us are much harder on ourselves than others, some have greater aims than others. But in the blogging world how do you know ‘you’ve arrived’? I reckon it’s when you’re invited to write a guest entry on your little sisters blog. If you follow Rachel’s blog closely you will no doubt be aware that there is quite a long list of things that she has promised to blog on at some point – but never seems to get round to it. So when a recent entry had a reference to the sermon I gave at their wedding, with the promise of a future blog on the topic – I thought I’d get in there first. This fast food guide to marriage can be read alongside Mrs. M’s Marriage Tips.

 

1) Fish and Chips – Feelings and Choices: Love is a choice and not just a feeling. Love means that I will choose to act a certain way even if I don’t feel like it.

2) Burger King – Bedtime Kiss: There is a verse in the Bible that says we should not let the sun go down while we’re still angry. In a marriage it is important to say sorry, and to put things right quickly – certainly by bedtime at the latest. Going to bed with your relationship right is more important than winning the argument.

3) Pizza Hut – Practical Help: Marriage is a partnership in which both partners must play their part – and this doesn’t involve watching TV while your partner does all the cooking, cleaning and ironing!

4) KFC – Kindness, Forgiveness, Compassion: Be Kind – may seem an obvious piece of advice but how often when we open our mouths do we forget? When Jesus had compassion it led to action, and when we see each other in need it should spur us to action. A marriage (or any other relationship) without forgiveness is never going to work, because we all make mistakes and we need to be ready to forgive and to be forgiven.

Well – Rach and Josh – congratulations on 2 years. Good to know that after more than 17544 hours you remember something I said. Thanks for inviting me to write, and if anyone is interested, drop in and feed the fish at www.milkandnosugar.blogspot.com

Mrs M’s Marriage Tips

Now that Josh and I have been married for two years I don’t think that the term ‘newlyweds’ really refers to us anymore.

Perhaps now we have been married for 104 weeks, people will stop giving up that ‘oh aren’t they cute and young’ look and saying “soooo….how’s married life then?!”

Now that I have been a Mrs for over 731 days I thought that maybe I now qualify to crinkle my nose in a companionable way and to give some unsolicited advice of my own.

So, here we have it. For all my just married, or soon to be married friends here’s Mrs M’s top 5 marriage tips;

1. Girls, guard your socks. Might sound weird but it just needs a man to mistake your sock for theirs one time and their great oaf feet will stretch it out of all proportion. Or you could only buy pink sparkly socks, that could work.

2. It might take you a while [read: a year] to get used to the fact that there is MAN sleeping in your bed at night, but don’t worry – one day you’ll come to appreciate exchanging foot fives before you go to sleep.

3. Unfortunately saying “FINE, we’re made up” doesn’t really count as an argument ender (or an apology).

4. It’s always better to laugh than cry. Washing machine just exploded? Car broken down in the middle of a roundabout? If something stressful is going down or you’re just getting worked up try and put it into perspective. Is it really worth having an argument over? Could this be turned into a happy memory just by laughing?

5. Always remember that marriage is made up of Fish and Chips* Feelings and Choices. When Josh and I were dating I knew I wanted to be with him forever because even when I imagined a future without him I would suddenly stop short and think ‘Oh, if Josh wasn’t around I couldn’t tell him that’. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to kill him sometimes, but I’ve made that choice to share my future with him and that means whatever our problems are, we face them together instead of letting them get between us. Once you have decided that, nothing seems so hard.

Well, that’s all from Mrs M today…I guess now that I have been married for about 17544 hours I just get to look forward to the “so when are you going to have kids?” comments!

*It’s from our wedding sermon. A post for another day perhaps?

Still laughing…

Just a quick post to share some hilarity, because it’s bringing me joy every time I think about it…

Yesterday Josh went into our local bakery to get some lunch. He’s a cheerful chap so always likes to make some small talk with the people on the till, and like any good British citizen yesterday he chose to talk about the weather.

“It’s very hot”

“I BEG YOUR PARDON?” spluttered the woman on the till incredulously

“Erm…the weather” replied Josh, turned beetroot red “it’s very hot…”

“OH, I thought you said I was hot”

Hahahahahaha…still laughing 24 hours later

A thousand horrays

Josh got the job! Yipppee!
He’s now going to be working for Prospects, which is an organisation that works with people with learning disabilities to enable them to live their lives to the full and to gain a valuable range of skills.

This is great because
a) it’s a very worth while thing to be involved with
b) he’s going to love it because he’s a real people person
c) it’s going to be great experience for him and will be good for his CV for vicar school
d) We’re no longer going to have to scrimp and save on every penny

Praise the Lord!

Lunch

Josh knew I was upset so made me a healthy, nutritious lunch to cheer me up.

Haha, what a cutie.

This week and beyond

 

Normal blogging will resume this week after a slightly crazy seven days.

Things are really tough at the moment. As I mentioned in a previous post there was/is a family crisis on Josh’s side last week which I won’t go into here. Needless to say we are left feeling drained, exhausted and ratty with each other. All of this came at a very difficult time.

 

Downsizing

 

Josh and I recently had the chance to move flats. We were offered a good deal by couple from church and would have been paying significantly less that we are now.

 

So, we had a dilemma, save £400 over 8 months and move into a flat that although essentially nice, is much smaller than ours, with the shower and sink in the bedroom or stay in our recently refurbished flat but pay more each month.

 

I’m sure all the money saving buffs will be going crazy, but we decided not to take it (well actually Josh, being a good hubby made the decision because I was dithering around) just because of the absolute fuss it would have been to move, and because the cons outweighed the pros. I’m still a little nervous that we made the wrong decision but there we go – our current flat is very lovely so I should just stop worrying and get on with life.

 

ANYWAY…thinking about downsizing made me consider all the things I could get rid of if I needed to, which I realised was actually quite a lot. So I have decided I’m going to bite the bullet and get on with getting rid of the stuff that I have been putting off for ages. I’m not talking about rubbish – I’m talking about things that although are in working order, I don’t really use and could be sold, freecycled or taken to a charity shop.

I’m looking forward to the extra space it will bring! Now I just need to find the time…

Congratulations!

Many congratulations to the new Mr and Mrs King, whose lovely wedding we attended on Saturday. Not that they will be reading this – they will be off sunning themselves somewhere nice on their honeymoon I imagine!

The day brought back lots of memories as it is the first full wedding we have been to since our own. I cannot believe our first wedding anniversary is a week today. How the time has flown by.

The wedding on Saturday made we wish we could have ours again, but I have to keep reminding myself that, although our wedding day was probably the best day of my life (clichéd but true!), the general time was quite stressful and emotionally upheaving. In reality Josh and I are even more happy now together than we were then, so I need to stop being envious and enjoy being a one year Mrs!

 

Seeing Hannah plan her wedding also made me think how differently I would do our wedding if I had it over again. Don’t get me wrong, our wedding was perfect and I loved every part of it – it just wasn’t particularly environmentally friendly. It’s only really been in the last year since we have had our own home that we’ve really started playing out the idea of living simply. Our wedding wasn’t overly extravagant, but we did have most of the traditional ‘bumph’ which isn’t really necessary and just costs lots of money and wastes lots of resources. I definitely think that my mind-set has changed to such a point now that I wouldn’t even have thought of having some of the stuff we had, which really wasn’t necessary.

Anyway, my favourite part of the whole day was the service where we made promises to each other and to God in front of all our friends and family and I will remember it for ever. It’s that that sticks in my mind, and not the flower decorations!