i love you, i am sorry. please and thank you!

it's so easy to forget our manners with the people that we claim to love and cherish the most.  for some reason their constant presence numbs our desire to simply be kind and thoughtful.  it's hard to convince someone that you love and adore them when your words and actions hardly convey it.

i am terribly guilty of not measuring my words and actions with the precision that i have been called too.

before i married mark i witnessed my dad marry countless couples. it allowed me to have this amazingly sure foundation of what i wanted my own marriage to look like. one of my favorite weddings that he does is one about using these two phrases, "i am sorry," and "i love you" everyday. there is cause to use these two phrases over and over again. i don't care who you are or how long you have been married, these two phrases have the ability to put out fires and restore beautiful intimacy.

if i could i would add the next phrase to my dad's sermon, "please and thank you!"  (although, rest assure, my dad needs no help in preparing the most beautiful weddings and funerals anyone has EVER attended :) with the constant thread of conversation that takes place under the littlejohn roof.. it would be easy to drop the please's and the thank you's. there is a lot of talking that goes on here, and often i am exhausted of talking at the end of the day. however, mark and i are committed to treating one another, and our 4 little kiddos, like best friends, not stale roommates. my heart skips a beat when mark says something like, "thanks for cooking dinner, it's delicious!" even if it's a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, i feel like the queen of the castle. the other day katie was upset about something, and she and i were having quality time just cuddling in the bathroom, b/c that's where girls cuddle... and she said, "mom, thank you. you always know how to make me feel much better!" i cried. i have gone back to those words time and time again the last few weeks... "please and thank you" convey a message of respect and gratitude... every relationship can use a good dose of those two characteristics.

if this vocabulary needs some freshening up in your relationships, i encourage you to dust them off quickly and start talking. it never hurts to try :)

happy weekend,
~s