I had to add this. I didn't realize what God was doing (like I ever do.)
When our family moved down and needed to transform the photo museum into our home, at first, taking down all those pictures and moving in seemed like a negative thing, like I had to choose between the pictures or my family. But I look back and know now God never meant it that way. He wasn't asking me to take one or the other.
Taking down those pictures meant working together with my husband and son. Sometimes it involved moving furniture around to make the best living space, other times it was getting a chair to reach a frame or hook in the wall. We were talking to each other, asking questions, making decisions, passing things back and forth...for hours, every day. While we were in Iwatsuki, we hardly ever did that.
And when I made the meal with the goya (bitter cucumber), altho' my son wouldn't touch the vegetable that looked like dark green catepillar (I called it that; not him!), it was fun joking with him about how sorry I felt for him so left him a little in the pan in case he wanted to try it later...we rarely joshed like that up in Iwatsuki either (come to think of it, the family never ate at the same time).
