Where You Go, I Will Follow...Even to South Dakota

There are so many things I love about Easter. Most of all I love getting ready and going to church on Easter Sunday, knowing that we are celebrating the most holy of days - the day Christ defeated death and bought our salvation. Ever since college, when my relationship with Christ changed and grew, Easter has become even more important to me.

And then there are all the other little Easter details that are the icing on the cake...family meals with delicious, refreshing dishes and desserts that always make me think of spring... the promise of new life in nearly all of nature - beautiful flowers blooming, grass greening up, the promise of warm, sunny days ahead... so on and so forth.

So, admittedly, when I found out that a bull sale in South Dakota we were planning to go to was on the Saturday before Easter, I was pretty disappointed. I hated to think I would be missing out on all those things I really love about Easter because we would be traveling.
It wouldn't have been that crazy for me to say that Taylor could go to the sale, and I would stay home with Taylee. After all, that's a long drive for a baby on top of it being Easter weekend... but that's not how Taylor and I want to approach things.

We've never been the "you-do-your-thing-and-I'll-do-mine" type of relationship. It's important to us to do things together. We share a bank account (and all the loans) ;)... We sit down for supper together as often as possible... We work in our garden together... Heck, we even shower together when we can!

The most beneficial class I have ever taken was a class at K-State called Family Studies with an amazing teacher, Kelly Welch. And one of the things she said that really stuck with me was "People don't fall out of love. They fall out of intimacy."

If Taylor and I are constantly doing things independently of each other, how can we develop and strengthen the intimacy that is so very important to a successful marriage?

So... we went to the bull sale in South Dakota together. And even though we weren't sitting in church on Sunday morning, I believe God was still glorified. I think He rejoiced in the strengthening of our marriage - a commitment we made before Him - through time spent together and some good conversation we were able to have in the car on Easter morning.  And He was glorified as we listened to a wonderful book called This Life I Live by Rory Feek where he tells about the ways God and his wife, Joey, changed his life.

I may hope that next year I'll be able to sit in a pew with my family and worship on Easter morning, but I'll cherish the memories from this Easter as well.

We ended up getting three really good bulls for our cows. I enjoyed going through all the animals with Taylor, figuring out the best ones, and seeing Taylor's excitement about the quality of the animals we got.

We got back home Easter afternoon, and Taylee got to open her Easter basket from Grandma and Grandpa Stabel, including this cute, little Easter bunny hat. :)

Taylor and I try to do a lot of things together, but on occasion it doesn't always work out. We hadn't been back to my parents' since Christmas, so last weekend I made a trip up to see them with Taylee. Taylor stayed home to be prepared since there was a chance of snow and it's a good thing he did - we had a full-blown blizzard on April 30th. I loved getting to spend a relaxing weekend with my family, but I felt terrible for Taylor and all the feedyard employees. They worked extremely hard to try and take care of the cattle in the feedyard through the blizzard. We lost power at our house, so I stayed an extra day at Mom & Dad's to avoid hazardous driving conditions and to give the power company a chance to get our electricity back on.

On Sunday night we watched some old episodes of the Grand Ole Opry. Taylee got to dance around the kitchen with Grandma and Grandpa and help Kallan with her piano practice.

This is a picture of my garden with at least a foot of snow covering the whole thing.

We got between 1 and 2 feet of extremely wet snow on April 30th. There were drifts higher than my jeep at the entrance of the feedyard, and as I was driving home from my parents, I went a mile where every single power line was snapped off from the wind and weight of the heavy snow. Many people were still without power a week later, and many cattle were lost across the entire western part of the state. Please keep these people and their animals in your prayers as they recover from this harsh weather.

"Obey me, and I will be your God, and you will be my people. Do everything as I say, and all will be well!" Jeremiah 7:23

The lesson that accompanied this Scripture was a really good one. It reminded me that I am not responsible for the actions of others - I am only responsible for my actions and obeying my Lord. Everything else I will trust to Him.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Lyndee