On Wednesday, December 28, 2005, on a ferry from Lewes, Delaware to Cape May, New Jersey I asked LaDonna to be my wife. She responded with a resounding yes! Now the coming weeks and months are filled with preparations for a wedding. We look forward a future together filled with God's best for our lives. Pray for us as we take this exciting new step.
--Justin and LaDonna

This was an email that Justin and I sent out to our friends shortly after we were engaged, so I decided to add it to my blog, so that the millions of people who read this email that gets updated with promptness and regularity could read this announcement. Now I tried to add a picture of me and my beloved, but since I am so computer literate I am not sure it will work. We shall see.
Since all you dear people reading this blog have been getting on me about updating it I figured I would do such. Now if you think there is a good trend about ready to start here(particualarly in LaDonna's updating habits)--think again. I am quite sure I will be extremely busy the next few months and therefore will have very little time to blog.
I must say the Lord has been teaching me so many things about myself. Some things I don't even want to know, but need to be aware of anyhow. I am realizing how utterly selfish I can be. The funny thing is that when I focus so much on my needs and making me happy, I am actually rather unhappy, dissatisfied, and mostly unfulfilled. Now you think I would remember this and every time an unselfish thought slips into my head. I would say uh, uh, uh...no,no,no...not thinking this...it won't make me happy. Naaaaaah, I really can't seem to get it through my thick skull, or rather my selfish heart. Oh that the Lord would so fill me with His unselfish presence that it would chase out any thought for self that seems to be so strong in my life. I don't know maybe I am alone in this....Naaaaah:-) I'm afraid our culture is so impressed with the whole "make yourself happy" philosophy. It's no wonder we have so many gloomy people wandering around these days. What an irony!
What I wanted to say about this is the more I learn, through experience and reading, about relationships is that they are only wonderful when you personally are committed to loving the other person in your relationship unselfishly. I guess that verse, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for a friend."says it best. I think when we read that verse so often we think of it in a physical sense. You know if some lunatic was pointing a gun at your friend, sure you would come to his or her rescue and risk your life for theirs. But I am not so sure that is the real meaning of this verse. I wander if this verse doesn't have more to do with day by day moment by moment laying down your personal desires for the sake of your friend. Wow, for some reason that's a little tougher pill for us to swallow isn't it, it is for me anyhow... have a lot more to say on that, but it will have to wait until I have more time....Ha!:-)