(ps. remember that this is not a movie endorsement, and I watched an edited for airplane version, so I don’t know what I “missed”.)

I have not accomplished #8 yet, and it might not happen. I bought three bags of Valentine’s candy as a back up

I was completely blessed by a stranger today in the grocery store! She was an older woman in the check out line before me, her name is Mrs. Stoner. Owen was in a bad mood at that point and I was trying to distract him by showing him all this cool Thomas the Tank Engine stuff by the checkout line. When I turned back to the line Mrs. Stoner had put almost all of my groceries on the belt for me! Then to top it off she bought Owen a Thomas book!! What a blessing for sure!!

As a Mom it takes a lot to get ready to leave your precious family, but time away is always worth it. I am headed to Sandy Cove’s Pastor’s Wives and Women in Ministry Connection, a retreat I have done yearly for 4-5 years. I am always blessed to be there. Spending time being taught from God’s Word and rubbing shoulders with other women in ministry is always great! I look forward to returning home refreshed and renewed and ready for my crazy to do list filled with baking needs, food gathering, high tech finger print analysis, and who knows what else!

“You must know… surely, you must know it was all for you. You are too generous to trifle with me. I believe you spoke with my aunt last night, and it has taught me to hope as I’d scarcely allowed myself before. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes have not changed, but one word from you will silence me forever. If, however, your feelings have changed, I will have to tell you: you have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on.” Mr. Darcy Pride and Prejudice
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“The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.” Honore’de Balzac
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“For God so loved the World that He gave His one and only son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16

“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan.” Captain Wentworth to Anne Elliot Persuasion
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“Youth fades, love droops, the leaves of friendship fall; a mother’s secret hope outlives them all.” Oliver Wendell Holmes

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“But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.” Psalm 13:5

“If I could but know his heart everything would become easy” Sense and Sensibility
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“The Mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom” Henry Ward Beecher
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“he brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.” Song of Solomon 2:4

“In vain I have struggled. It will not do! My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you… Almost from the earliest moments of your acquaintance, I have come to feel for you a passionate admiration and regard, which despite my struggles, has overcome every rational objection. And I beg you, most fervently, to relieve my suffering and consent to be my wife.” Mr Darcy Pride and Prejudice
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“My Mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.” Mark Twain

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“Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.” Psalm 36:5

“Marianne could never love by halves; and her whole heart became in time, as much devoted to her husband, as it had been to Willoughby.” Sense and Sensibility
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“As I look to the hearts of my own children and seek to teach them about the grace of God, I realize my love and service to them must come before any of my great words, my teaching and training. My time, my attention, my “soft-tickling” – even when I am tired or have other “important” things on my mind- is what builds our relationship and prepares them to listen to what I have to say. Only then, once the wells of their need are filled with the grace of being loved, will my words to them about God’s grace finally make sense.” Sally Clarkson in The Ministry of Motherhood
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“For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” II Corinthians 5:14-15

“I cannot make speeches, Emma; If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. You hear notheing but truth from me. I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it.” Mr. Knightley in Emma

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“Mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.” Emily Dickinson

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“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”" Romans 8:35, 37

“I am happier than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh” Elizabeth Pride and Prejudice

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“A Mother who is really a Mother is never free.” Honore de Balzac

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“For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you.” Psalm 86:5