Thanks gals!! You’re the best! It was fun coming to my blog page this afternoon and finding the comments you made.

This is me when I was about 4 yrs old…I’ve since switched my allegiance from the phone to the keyboard!

Thank you for the kind comments on my picture and the wonderful comments about not looking my age! As I said, I plan on staying young forever! I decided I’d better not hover at 29 anymore though, after my daughter hit 30. I decided I’d just stay at 39 & told her she can’t age past 21, or we’re in trouble! LOL

Judy—I enjoyed hearing about the similarities in our lives. We ‘child brides’ had to learn the hard way back then, through trial and error. At least in the more rural area where we lived, we had little to no Christian counseling available during our first few years. Pre-marital counseling was almost non-existent, and wasn’t offered to us. I went into marriage believing it would be a perfect life with this wonderful man I’d married, who surely would meet all my needs and more…. and come to think of it, he should be able to read my mind, sense my emotions before I knew them myself and always have the right answers! LOL!

I know life is different now and there are wonderful Christian resources available to any couple who chooses to use them. But I wonder how many young brides in the past few years have entered into the life long contract of marriage as naive as I? How many truly take seriously the pre-marital counseling offered and realize the struggles and problems they’ll soon face?

Our struggles and journey took us down many roads…some pleasant, some not so pleasant. We’ve teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, and escaped those jaws by a slim margin. We’ve had a business fail due to a poor economy, and another that carried us through a number of years. We’ve experienced the extreme stress of financial hardship, and been blessed with enough to meet our needs and have some left over to give to others who needed the extra more than we. God has been faithful through out all of our marriage, and has been there walking beside us and giving us strength, even when the night seemed so black we couldn’t see the other shore.

Our lives have been enriched by our children, and even by the animals we’ve owned. Two cougars (yes, mountain lions) joined our menagerie for a number of years…they were my husbands ‘babies’, while the horses & cats were mine. No, they weren’t taken from the wild, but bred and born in captivity, with one being rescued from a neglectful home. I’ll share stories & pictures about the cats one of these days, if anyone’s interested!

If anyone would like to share any favorite sites that minister to or encourage women, please let me know…I’d love to add them to my links. Also, feel free in your comments to post your blog site or web page. I’d love to send some traffic your way. And if you’d care to add mine to your site, I thank you in advance!

More later, I need to get back to a revision on my novel. My agent and I agreed to pull it from four houses that are reviewing it right now, as I’ve had some professional feedback from an editor that needs to be heeded. Rewriting….Sigh…..Not my favorite thing to do. But rewrite and revise and tweak I will, and pray that someone will look with favor on my baby after I do!

Hugs to you all and please keep the comments & visits coming!