Skip to main content

Rednecks and Testimonies

What a wonderful Labor Day weekend!  Ethan came home on Friday afternoon, and he's been able to stay until now (early Monday evening).  It's so nice knowing, that when he leaves, it won't be two more years before we see him again!

He came home for two reasons:  us, and college football.  Man, we made the most of it.  Three Big Ten games in two days, lots of board game playing and even more really good food (pulled pork, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, cantaloupe, cherry delight and pumpkin pie with chocolate chip cookies as chasers :-)).

However, when we weren't eating, playing games or watching football, we were watching The Walking Dead, an AMC television show about zombies.  John, Mark and I all watched it during the regular season, but with Ethan wanting to watch it, it became a family affair.

Without going into the entire show (which I could do!), I want to talk about one character, Daryl.  While not one of the three main characters of the show, it's one of our favorites.  He's the epitome of a redneck, complete with a southern drawl and a crossbow, his weapon of choice.  While he appears very rough around the edges, we are discovering that he has a good heart.  He is the man who thinks about others in a very round-about way and gets things done.

In testimony meeting yesterday, a woman got up whom John home teaches.  She began her testimony by saying that President Kennedy was her home teacher and that he comes every month.  A couple of months ago, she had expressed to him that it was hard for her to feel very happy while working as a nurse in the emergency room.  Between the stress of the patients and the unhappiness of several of her coworkers, she would feel a lack of happiness, and a lack of the Spirit.  So, John suggested that she start listening to recordings of Conference talks on the way to and from work.  After all, John has an even longer commute than Sister Bluemell, and he has had many beautiful thoughts while driving and listening to Conference.

At first, she didn't think this advice would prove helpful.  Driving home (and staying awake) at 3 a.m. is hard enough, but doing so while listening to Conference?

However, she was humble enough to listen, and she tried it.

Funny thing?  It worked.  She walked into work in better spirits, was able to handle the trials at work, and felt comforted as she drove home.

It was a beautiful testimony, and an even better testimony of the great man John is.  He isn't always the "smoothest" character, doing things in a way that others might not, but he cares about every person that he meets.  People, especially people in humble circumstances, can feel the love that John has for them.

I turned to Ethan immediately afterwards, and he said, "Daddy's like Daryl.  He's a spiritual redneck who gets things done."

Amen to that, and amen to rednecks and testimonies.

Comments

  1. Thanks Mama! It expressed my feelings perfectly. I also think it's a good analogy because Daddy can always help people spiritually. No matter who they are or what kind of situation they are in, he's there to help. Darryl is the same way. It's a good thing to be compared to Darryl, Daddy!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It makes me somewhat teary eyed being compared to Darryl because he is good in a quiet way. Thanks Cheese for making that comment and thanks Mommy for posting about me!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SURPRISE!!

When the pizza guy came to the door last night, here's what John saw: It took a few seconds for John to process who the pizza delivery man was, but when he did, he was incredibly happy (and couldn't stop saying "heeeeyyyyy....".  It was Jared Moran, John's best friend. And me, I just knelt down, right then and there, and began repenting of all the lies that I have told over the last four months, hiding this most amazing surprise :-)  I told Sarah the other day that I was glad to see the light at the end of the falsehood tunnel, because if I kept this up much longer, I was destined to end up in liars' hell... Jared ran the Air Force marathon with John last year.  It was his first marathon, and from what he told us, his last.  However, he called in June and said he was coming again, but I was supposed to keep it a surprise from John.  I'm not sure what changed his mind, but we sure are glad he did.  John hates runnings marathons alone, and ther...

Like Dominos....

It all began with glare.  Simple, obnoxious, I-can't-stand-it-anymore glare. Our 60" rear projection TV in the family room was basically unviewable except after 10 o'clock at night.  The glare from the windows was making it impossible to see anything during my 10 minute lunch break each day, and something had to change. Too, the TV didn't fit in the entertainment center from Germany.  John, wanting bigger and better, hadn't considered that the space is only 40" wide.  For the past five years, I have been nagged by 6" of overhang on both sides of the TV stand. I went to Lowe's to price blinds.  $1,043 for five blinds, and that was at 20% off. I figured a new TV would be cheaper than that.  I was right, even with the state-of-the-art receiver and new HDMI cables that sly salesman told us we needed to have. But where to put the old TV?  It just needed a quiet, dark place to retire. Glo's bedroom.  Her TV was a relic from the paleoneoneand...

A Quick Trip to Mackinac Island

Allow me a pity party for a paragraph.  As much as John is earning buckets of money for us and for our retirement, his weekend calls have been infringing on our time together.  Like I said, it's a complete pity party, because my logical mind reminds me that I should be happy he's making so much money, but my heart feels rather lonely at times as I reminisce about trips we have taken that we don't have time to take again. I love John.  I don't need him around all the time, but I find that the best quality time with him is when he doesn't have other distractions like work, and call, and hospital credentialing. Anyway, I guess that was two paragraphs, and I don't need to take it any further than that, because I don't want the body of this blog post to be about me and my loneliness. I've been wanting to go to Mackinac Island for two years now (I can hardly even believe that it's been that long since I was there).  With Lake Michigan getting colder and th...