Purpose

I am embarrassed to say that I am finally reading "The Purpose Driven Life" out of absolute desperation for rescue from the emotionally downward cycle I am currently experiencing. Here is an excerpt that really hits home for me...

"Many people are driven by guilt. They spend their entire lives running from regrets and hiding their shame. Guilt-driven people are manipulated by memories. They allow their past to control their future. They often unconsciously punish themselves by sabotaging their own success. When Cain sinned, his guilt disconnected him from God's presence, and God said, 'You will be a restless wanderer of the earth' That describes most people today-wandering through life without a purpose.

We are products of our past, but don't have to be prisoners of it. God's purpose is not limited by your past. He turned a murderer named Moses into a leader and a coward named Gideon into a courageous hero, and he can do amazing things with the rest of your life, too. God specializes in giving people a fresh start. The Bible says, 'What happiness for those whose guilt has been forgiven!...What relief for those who have confessed their sins and God has cleared their record'.

Driven

The best way to describe my husband. No matter what the job, no matter how many hours, he is the man. Why he is married to me (the opposite of driven) is still a mystery. As my parents would say, we know how to marry well in my family. While on vacation, Chuck lightly refinished all of our cabinets, ripped up and replaced the tile in both bathrooms, replaced the toilets in both bathrooms, replaced all of the fixtures and ripped out (or should I say) murdered our fiberglass shower that I would guess the house was built around back in 1984! I use an explanation point here simply because the night this happened, the boys and I were at a birthday party. When we arrived home it looked as if some sort of maniac had broken in our house and killed our shower. I was wrong to assume that those showers come out in one piece. Apparently, you have to bust out an ax, sledgehammer and crowbar and go crazy. I am amazed and inspired by the intelligent and confident man I am married to. He impresses me with his constant ability to take on any task at hand, complete it in an insane amount of time, and if tasks are not available, he will invent new ones. So here you go...all of the pictures I managed to snap. I wish I had gotten a before of the shower, but as I said, he did it while we were at a friend's birthday party...

New Fixtures...before & after












Old Tile - The boy's bathroom had green diamond insets and our bathroom had navy diamond insets - so glad they are gone!

Bath Step

Our Shower