I spent the morning cleaning out (I am not done yet) a desk drawer that has been the "catch all" for our family since way before we were a family. The drawer of this desk is where Gary hid my engagment ring until that awesome day he preposed. This ugly little desk was in Gary's room at home, in his first bachelor pad that quickly turned into our first apartment and followed us as we went to bigger apartments annually as we added more kids almost annually and has set in the bedroom we shared in our first house for the past 11 years.Gary wanted to trash the desk a long time ago and get a new nicer looking desk so I dont feel to bad about kicking it to the curb but it holds a ton of memories for me. In church you hear the phrase of you wanna know where a persons priorities are look in their checkbook well I say look into a persons 20 year old junk drawer and you will get a good idea. The above picture is of the contents of the drawer in the picture you will notice a lot of family pictures family has always been so important to the both of us. Gary would always say we HAVE to make sure family stays together we cant get through this life alone. That was when he was healthy, family became WAY more important after he got sick. You will also see a gift from his work, wow I could have never imagined the wonderful role his work played during Gary's illness. I cant say enough about how they rallied behind him and this family. Gary spent so much of his life worried that one mess up and he would be fired when all along his work was behind him a 110% when he finally realized that he was just overwhelmed with grattitiude that God had made a way for him to come back to that company after leaving for a time. Also in the picture is a cassette tape (yes cassette) from the March for Jesus. Gary was VERY involved with this he loved being apart of something that brought praise into the streets of Jacksonville. At the bottom of the picture you will find a bag of rocks that we mined at our honeymoon these unrefined rocks hold small saphires and some other stones I dont remember, this bag reminds me not only the sometimes wonderful but mostly comical time we had on our honymoon. It is a good symbolism for the both of us we never saw ourselves as anything but an ugly gnarly rock and through lifes painful refining process we both began to see a glimmer of something special under the surface. Gary has gotten to shed that outter layer of mess and come into the fullness of all that God made him to be. God is still working on me.. On top of the pile you will find a cross necklace, we tried for the 16 years and three months that we were husband and wife to always put Christ at the top of everything that we did pleasing God and serving Him ..I hope the next 16 years finds our junk drawer looking similar. The girls and I are still trying to figure out how this life will work without Daddy but I know it will have a ton of family and friends and Jesus will remain at the center other than that who knows I know I have a God and Gary cheering us on..