Weekend Blessings

So on the drive home yesterday evening Hubby T. asked me, "What was your favorite part of this weekend?"

There are a lot of answers I could have given.

I could have said hanging out with my college friend on Thursday night. She has lived in France since college and I only get to see her once a year at best when she and her husband come over to visit family. Yay for old friends, I wish she was around more often:)

I could have said hanging out with my parents and Baby B at their house on Saturday afternoon. Both my mom and my dad become almost different people around Baby B. He's the first grandchild and it's hard to imagine them being more joyful about anything in the world, even the birth of their own children! (Don't worry Mom and Dad, I don't hold a grudge, Baby B is hard to resist:)

I could have said watching our college friends get married! Weddings are so fun, and ever since mine I've really appreciated the way watching other people recite their vows reminds me of the vows that I made. In a culture where the value of the institution of marriage is declining, I say, rock on marriage! It's awesome, and I'm always glad when our friends choose to join the marriage club too.

I could have said hanging out with all of our friends at the beach on Sunday. The wedding we attended on Saturday was for one of Hubby T's friends from his college small group. It has always been a pretty special group, they started meeting their freshman year and stayed together all 4 years. Since graduation the guys have been intentional about getting together for a weekend once or twice a year so that they can stay connected and, let's face it, have fun hanging out together. In the last year or so they've started including the families (aka wives and kids) in some of the gatherings. And since we were all together for the wedding, it made sense to have some hang out time the next day. The bride and groom even came over for a little bit after lunch! We included a couple of other college friends who were in town for the wedding, which made the gathering even more merrier. I'm always sad when I think about how dispersed our college friends are, because we had so much fun together in college, so it's a very joyful and fun time when we get to have a little bit of that time together now in our "grown-up" lives.

But I think my favorite part of the weekend was the time we spent in worship on Sunday. Because it was Hubby T's small group that organized the gathering and because it was Sunday morning, somebody decided it would be a good idea to spend a little time in worship and hear a short devotion before heading out to the beach. I give him credit, because it would have been really easy to not take the time for God. But I'm really glad we did. One guy played the guitar and we only sang two songs. The second one was pretty familiar to almost everyone, but I got the feeling that most people (including me) hadn't sung it for quite awhile. The voices were a bit hesitant, especially on the verses. But the chorus of that song is set up as an echo, where the guys sing the line and then the women echo it and then the voices come together for the last line. I thought it was a bit symbolic of marriage, how the husband and wife complement and support one another as individuals but are also one in their marriage relationship before God. There's also something very pure and intimate about worshiping God with only a guitar and voices. I haven't worshiped that way in quite awhile and it was heart warming. I wish I could do it more often.

So yay family. Yay old and dear friends. Yay marriage. And most of all, yay God.