Love and Chocolate Treats for February (Part 2 of 4)When You’re STUNNED about your Valentine’s Day Gift...

Friends! Happy Belated Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day! Please enjoy two wild tales…

FLASHBACK: Valentine’s Day 1993…

“No babysitter for Valentine’s Day???” I whined, coupled with a proficient pout…

“Now honey…” my way-too-practical hubby began…”You know restaurants jack up their prices on Valentine’s Day, and the boys are too little to take out…”

Translation: “Why don’t you just cook us up somethin’?

Silent thought while heaving an extra loud sigh for future Oscar potential: “Oh boy, grocery shopping with three boys is such a trip…literally….”

Determined to create fun and education for our Valentine meal, I hunted down ingredients for everything RED: cherry cool-aid, red spaghetti sauce, cherry jello, red sprinkles to go on the ice cream with the not-so-red-but-filled-with-a-boatload-of-chocolate brownies.

Spreading out papers for the boys to color, my scary cooking commenced…

Quickly into our “project”, something was not quite right. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Our oldest son, John Jr., was way too excited about helping with his brothers. They were coloring at lightening speed, wanting more and more “Valentines” to make for Daddy.

Dinner pulled together, Hubster now home and seated, John Jr. and Gordy seated, Woody in his high-chair, the following proclamation ensued:

“Mommy! We have a huge surprise for you! Daddy’s gotten a babysitter and everything!”

Visions of an escape to a hotel sans les enfants rolled thru’ my head….

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Fantasy interrupted, my mischievous husband said, “John Jr., why don’t you tell Mommy about her Valentine’s Day gift?”

“Mommy”, John Jr. continued with wildly excited eyes, “Daddy and I got a babysitter for Woody…

… so that the four of us can go to…..

…the Truck and Tractor Pull!!!”…

Taken from www.farmmachineryshow.org Photos by Scott Henson

“The what?” I managed to ask…feigning interest…

“THE TRUCK AND TRACTOR PULL!!!” John Jr. repeated, now standing, voice at high decibels.

Fabulous hotel fantasy comes to a screeching halt.

Pivotal moment in Mother/Wife Career:

Enter a God moment…”You’d better put on a sense of humor while raising these boys, being a Godly, cheery, loving wife and mom, or you’ll never make it.” (Guessing The Lord didn’t say “or you’ll never make it”, that’s just my translation.)

Bidding adieu to my very-sheltered-only-child background, it was time to buck up. Riding a perpetual roller coaster comes to mind. Nevertheless, I will still praise you, Lord.

That year was a turning point for me. Ups and downs, yes, but with a sense of humor. Which segues beautifully into one of the funniest books on marriage I’ve read lately.

Allow me to share snippets of The Antelope in the Living Room: The Real Story of Two People Sharing One Life by Melanie Shankle.

You’ve probably heard of Melanie. She’s one in the same who wrote Sparkly Green Earrings: Catching the Light at Every Turn. She reports receiving countless pairs of earrings after the book published. (There’s an idea! She said she really wanted her next book to be Louis Vuitton Purse with Matching Wallet!!! I’m thinkin’ A Caribbean Villa…could be swell.) Check out her way popular blog at www.thebigmamablog.com.

With killer humor, Melanie shares good times and not-so-good ones with her husband, Perry. Melanie and Perry define opposites attract. She puts it like this: “Perry loves the outdoors and I love air-conditioning.”

She says, “There are days filled with laughter and compromise. And then there are days filled with silence and anger. But at the end of it all, you’re two people God has joined to journey through life together…

… For better or for worse. In hunting season and in health.”

My wild-n-adventurous husband, John, used to ride motorcycles. Shouts of praise he’s not riding anymore. (At least for today.) I poked fun at all the “accessories” a bike could have, not to mention the “gear”. They make that in leather???

But guess what Melanie’s husband’s hobby is? In addition to hunting, he makes homemade ammunition. You go, Perry.

In addition to humor, Melanie includes the importance of their faith. She alludes to not following God and making bad choices prior to meeting Perry.

She and Perry met at a Bible study at Texas A & M. She said, “There was something about Perry that intrigued me. He was different from other guys I’d met. And he had a heart for God I hadn’t seen in many other guys.”

Making a list of husband qualities, Melanie realized, “What you really need is someone you’d want to be in battle next to you, someone who can make you laugh even in the tough times, someone who will encourage you to be the best you can be…” (Sounds just like our “Balcony People” from a couple of weeks ago. My friend Trish says her husband looks at her with “husband eyes”. Same concept.)

Since surgery seems to be in the air at our house (we’ll go there later), I cried from laughing so hard over an incident when Perry had yet another surgery for his back. After a night in the hospital, Melanie got Perry secured in the car for the drive home. Spying a Chik-fil-A and craving one of their chicken biscuits, Melanie pulled into the drive-thru’ only to be informed they were no longer serving breakfast.

Seven minutes past the breakfast hour caused her to jump the curb to get out of the drive-thru’ lane. Never mind Perry was in the passenger seat, barely twenty-four hours post-op from back surgery. This is only the beginning…

Melanie gets Perry home and situated on the couch, somewhat still sedated. She reports: “According to Perry, the Clemson Tigers band marched thru’ our living room to dispense his pain medication at some point that afternoon. Which is weird, because we’re not even Clemson fans, not to mention that South Carolina is a pretty good haul from Texas. So I took this as an indication that maybe it was time to cut back on the meds just a tad.”

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So for a guy who creates his own ammunition, hearing him suggest they try “radiant barrier paint” one day doesn’t seem so far fetched. When Melanie asked him what he was talking about, he explained: “It’s paint that makes a surface heat resistant. They use it on the space shuttle, and I’m thinking about buyin’ some.”

Melanie replies, “Well, of course you are. I’ve always said that if it’s good enough for the space shuttle, then it’s good enough for us.”

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John and I aren’t the only ones having fun with this book! Guess who else was caught laughing out loud reading this? Ann Voskamp’s husband! “The Farmer”, as she often calls him, got side-tracked while paying bills, and read some from The Antelope in the Living Room. Picture Ann and the Farmer howling, all the way up in Canada.

Melanie also sprinkles in a few stories about their daughter, Caroline. She discusses leaving a legacy for Caroline and her future children. A prayer she prays continually comes from Deuteronomy 30:6—“that the Lord would circumcise our hearts and the hearts of our descendants so that we will love God with all our heart and with all our souls.”

“That’s the legacy that’s worth working thru’ the hard times to leave for our daughter.” She adds, “In this world that sometimes treats marriage like it’s a disposable commodity we can throw away when it no longer seems to serve our purposes, a world that whispers to us that the grass might be greener on the other side, that’s something worth keeping in mind…” Oh, someone please shout hallelujah over that one! May we press on…

Finally, soak in this visual: In one particular scenario, Perry offered Melanie some inexplicable kind of grace. She said, “…even tho’ I thought I understood what grace looked like, I really had no idea how deep and wide the mercy of Christ is. That he looks at us when we lay ourselves bare before him, with all our ugly truths and realities, and says, ‘And?’”

“In Psalm 103 we are told that God redeems our lives from the pit. Verses 11-12 proclaim, ‘As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.’”

Melanie adds, “I once heard someone say that those words (of Psalm 103) represent the beams of the cross—reaching all the way up to the heavens with his love and stretching out to remove our sins as far as from where the sun rises to where it sets.” Grasping the picture??? Beautiful!!!

I pray you’re encouraged and enlightened by these glimpses of The Antelope in the Living Room. There’s twenty-four lovely chapters to keep you that way!!! And don’t forget this Valentine’s week: Marriage is fueled by fun and forgiveness.

‘Til next time!

Our chocolate treat this week comes from another Kentucky cookbook called “Splendor in the Bluegrass” by the Junior League of Louisville. Its’ Chocolate Chess Bars on p. 245 are not to be missed!