Thankful Month - Day 1 - My Dear Wendy

I'm playing catch-up, because I didn't think of it until I was chatting with Wendy just now.  Lots of people are writing "a thankful a day" on Facebook, or elsewhere, for the month of November.  I was just saying to Wendy that I need a hobby for days like today.  The sad truth about me is that I have not learned to manage the minutes between the minutes.  I let valuable time go to waste because I tell myself that the time available - until the next scheduled activity - is too short to make good use of it.  It takes me a few minutes to "get into" any activity, and so I let all kinds of time go to waste - reading useless news, or eating, etc.

So Wendy suggested that I meet her challenge of thankfulness.  That is obviously a good way to pass the time.  So it was easy to choose the first object of my thankfulness: My dear wife Wendy.

Wendy is a great blessing to me.  I have grown a lot from learning from her.  I try to follow her example in a few key ways. 

She is faithful to our family.  She is acutely aware of and interested in each of our children.  She creates activities that become family fun, and she encourages me to take each of the kids for one on one time.  I came with very little fatherly intuition, other than family scriptures and prayer.  Wendy has taught me everything else, and I am a completely different man, a much more faithful priesthood leader, because of her example and counsel.

She is an example of dilligence in any endeavor.  Whethere it is arriving 30 minutes early for church, spending countless hours preparing for Seminary or volunteering at the high school, or crocheting blankets for newborn babies in our ward or writing birthday cards to the relief-society sisters, she is the greatest example of diligence I know of.  I still can't hold a candle to all the work she does or how effectively she does it, but I try harder because I have seen how much can actually be done.

She is an example of revelation.  She is an example of personal service.  She is an example in her free expression of creative energy in the arts she loves.
She is also incredibly patient with me.  I won't say that patience is her strong point :^), but you don't know what I put her through on a daily basis, and I can tell you she has developed a great level of patience when it comes to me!  I am very blessed by her love, affection, and understanding.  She has given me the incentive to try (try, try, try) to live a celestial life, so that I can spend eternity with her.

So there ya go.