Thank You

My lovely wife is lying in bed right now, not feeling good at all today, very tired and hurting (nearly) all over. Praise the Lord, I didn't have to go to work today and I get to stay home and be with her. She has been awesome this past week. Somebody was congratulating me last night on my role in our church's Easter program, and I told them the truth: Lana did the thankless work behind the scenes for it. Well, I say thankless, but I have thanked her for it and I wanted to do it publicly as well, because I'm proud of her.

So, my Lana, thank you...

• for patiently enduring eight consecutive evenings away from home (ending last night).
• for patiently enduring two and a half months of husband-beardedness, even though you would MUCH rather me be clean-shaven.
• for working hard to improve a horrid wig that turned out to be the only one usable for the part I was playing; a lot of people still heavily criticized the wig, not knowing how bad it originally was and how much you labored to make it work for me. You did a great job, love, and I was pleased with it!
• for testing out makeup on a willing guinea pig (uh, thank you also to my brother Caleb!) not once but twice.
• for going to Wal-Mart more times than we thought humanly possible, always to get some other thing we had just discovered we needed for the program.
• for constantly encouraging and blessing me with smiles, prayers, kind words, selfless actions.
• for spending over an hour before each performance, putting on my makeup and helping me with my costume.
• for helping me keep up with my various costumes and props, and making sure that we put them in the right places before each performance.
• for doing all this while also singing in the choir in the program.
• for scrubbing, exfoliating, washing, and tanning me at various points before and after the program.
• for cutting my hair and beard last night so I could shave the beard and you could feel my smooth face again!
• for being a loving, submissive, patient help-meet, which is nothing new; it just shone out even more brightly this last week.

All praise ultimately goes to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He has created my wife, equipped her to love and serve me, and has begun this good work in her. And He will carry it through to the day of completion in Christ Jesus.

Thank you so much, my Lana; I'm so proud of you, and I'm so thankful for all you've done for me, especially with the Easter program! I love you so much! :%