Happy Birthday Brother

 Today is my best friend/brother’s birthday. He’s at work and I can only talk to him over email. I was thinking about doing a tribute to him, and I realized I had already done that. While he was away earlier this year I posted different memories of him. You can click on the links below to read each of those short entries.

I just want to publicly thank my brother Stephen for being such a good brother, and the best friend someone could ask for. Stephen, your humilty and integrity puts me to shame. You have such a kind heart, and you are always ready to love someone, no matter what. You have encouraged, prodded, and sometimes dragged me along the right course in life, and for that I can only thank you. If it wasn’t for you I don’t know where, or who I would be. Your love for Christ shines so bright others cannot help but see. I love you!

• Best Friend and Brother
• The Love of a Brother
• From Enemies to Friends
• We Know Each Other’s Hearts

The last sentence of that last post summed it up perfectly. “I will always love him for loving me, and standing beside me, and often in front of me, in the face of the storm.”

Needing Each Other

When we moved, Stephen and I became each other’s only friend. Nothing brings two siblings together like not knowing anyone else, and living in the weirdest place ever. There were a couple of times we would look at each other during a party at someone’s house, and know that we were both thinking the same thing. Let’s get out of here! Life was too wierd, and it was so hard making new friends. We still managed to have the best times together, and even if the big Christmas party of the year was uncomfortable we would go grab Chinese and have our own party! We stood by each other through the long hard times, and encouraged each other during the process of making other friends. We both can rest in the assurance though, that no matter what, we will always be best friends.

The love of a brother

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

~Astrid Alauda

Memory # 2: Summer memories.

Summers were the best when we were kids. The gap that had been so huge when we were very little got a little smaller when we were 7 and 12. Our summers were the best. We would play in the morning, eat lunch on the porch with mom, listen to mom read aloud to one of our summer books, and then go swimming for the rest of the afternoon. My favorite times were spent lying on the couch, while my mom read the Little House on the Prairie series, the Borrowers, and The Phantom Tollbooth to us. We would then take magnificent journeys to far off lands, over the seas, in our little pool. Stephen and I would drag the lawn chairs into the pool, “paddle off”, and make “watercrest” sandwhichs from the weeds around the pool.  The summer of the fires we couldn’t go outside and so my amazing mom let us play baseball in the house. Not with a real baseball, but a paper one, and our living room was perfectly shaped like a baseball diamond. It was also the summer Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa battled for home run history. Stephen was Mark McGwire and I was Sammy Sosa. We kept track of all of our “home runs” and had our own competition. We even insisted on keeping our “home run baseballs” like the real homerun hereos, something that I’m sure thrilled my mom much less than it did us.

Sunday Morning Sunshine

I always wait too late to take pictures of our dogwoods, and there is more green than white. Oh well!

The sun was most extrordinary that morning

“As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.”

These flowers remind me how short life really is. They bloom, turn brown, and are gone suddenly.

“For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.

Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.” ~ James 1:11-12

Thank you Lord, for Spring!

“For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away:

But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.” ~ 1 Peter 1:24-25

Monday Evening Shadows

Sunday Morning Portrait. Without make-up no less. :) I asked my brother if I needed make-up that day, and he looked at me and said ”You never need make-up!” Aww. He’s the most amazing brother ever! So here’s my portrait, no make-up, shadows on my face, but hey, it was early. :)

It was a beautiful, peace-filled, Sunday morning, an emotional Monday.

Have the best Tuesday ever. :)