Continuous Learning

Happy New Year to you and yours. Very happy and grateful to God to be alive to witness this new year and I pray that all reading this will be sustained under His grace and mercy throughout this year. Remember to renew your prayer life, He will answer whenever you call. Amen.

The holiday was very relaxing in the BoKem household. Nothing really stressful. We both needed a good mind-numbing vacation and happily sank into the nothingness of the days. By the end of it though, Bo was ready to get back to work (and start making money lol) and I was ready to re-energize and re-focus. As talked about in the last post we have a loose plan for 2012 so we know each other's priorities individually and as a unit. We also sat down during the holidays to do a monthly budget in excel, so there's less tension regarding finances and saving. I'm very big on saving this year, and now with the removal of fuel subsidy, that has become even more imperative.

On to other things, one of my grand prayers when praying about Bo and I is that God should teach us how to love each other the way the other person needs to be loved. Sometimes I just shorten it to Lord teach us how to love each other. I find this is a grand prayer because it just encompasses every single challenge within a relationship, within a marriage. Both parties aren't perfect and will never be, so the remainder 20% that's not what you bargained for you've got to occupy it and love it away. That's really the big challenge. I read in one of Gary Chapman's books where he said he used to always complain about his wife NEVER shutting the drawers/cabinets in the house, which was especially upsetting since he always managed to run into it. After years of complaining about this he just realized that, well, his wife may NEVER change and if he was going to lead a happy (injury-free) life, he's going to have to learn to shut drawers/cabinets all over the house. I always remember this story because I believe it's a great attitude to have about many things, especially within a marriage. Bo is an incredible neat freak, which is great, but for some reason he never puts empty water bottles in the bin, he always leaves them hanging about the kitchen sink. This used to bother me until I just said to myself, well, he may NEVER change this so I'm going to have to resign myself to putting empty water bottles in the garbage. That's my job. I'm going to be okay with that :-)

This morning Bo says to me, I know you've been planning your birthday Asia trip for a while now, but I was looking at my calendar for work and noticed that your birth month is strategy month at work so I won't be able to take any trips during that month. See, this is where everything I've been writing on this blogpost comes together: my prayer that God teaches us each how to love each other, and Gary's advice to resign yourself to fill in the 20% that bothers you. My husband works in a very demanding industry and moreso he LOVES his job so working is something that fulfills him and I get and respect that. But I also don't desire to move my birthday trip because of his work. I told him this morning that I'd have to go by myself then or with a couple of girlfriends if they can swing it. This is obviously not what I want but while I truly understand his desire to be at work I also feel strongly about taking this trip during my birthday month not a month or two after. I'm not sure this is the best decision yet, so therefore this morning I'm humming my golden prayer in my head over and over, "God please teach me (us) how to love each other the way we need to be loved! Teach me (us) what I should do or say in this situation."

We'll see how it goes!