Holiday Planning & Love the One You're With

Today, I want to share a little album I came up with to do my holiday planning. The best part about this album is that it's reusable from year to year (depending on wear and abuse, of course). I used two chipboard pages from a scalloped Rusty Pickle album and then the Hot Chocolate line from Upsy Daisy Designs. Other supplies include Tim Holtz grungeboard (the snowflakes), American Crafts ribbon and Martha Stewart glitter. I cut down scraps of cardstock (from my big adoption album project) to fit inside and them separated the sheets with patterned paper tabs. My categories are gifts, cards, baking and parties.

The other thing I wanted to share today is a book recommendation. I just finished the book "Love the One You're With" by Emily Giffin. Without giving too much away, the main character is happily married and really has an ideal life...until she runs into an old flame on the sidewalk. This relationship was built on passion but did not end well. A series of events unfold that bring the main character back in touch with this old flame. There was one particular passage in this book that rang so true with me...

"But maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all."

My workplace is committed to keeping marriages and families together and we have a mentoring program available to help couples in crisis. Many marriages have been put back together through this program. I'm saddened by the fact that 50% of today's marriages will end in divorce. And to me, it all comes down to this passage I shared. It's such a beautiful thing to see couples who have been married 25+ years. That says something to me about commitment. More often than not these couples have seen their share of heartache, frustration and disappointment but they CHOSE to stay committed to each other.

I recently read through another book called Intimate Issues. It's basically a Christian perspective on sex in marriage. A recent survey of Christian married women showed that 90 percent of them have been attracted to another man at one point in their lives. When faced with temptation, what do you do about it? It can be so easy to put yourself in a situation that can destroy what you have. You know the saying "the grass looks greener on the other side?" Well, if you get to the other side, you might just discover it was pretty green where you already were!

That's enough deep thought for today...enjoy your Wednesday! :)