Six month Honeymoon in Texas

When my husband and I decided to cash in the return tickets during our honeymoon and stay in Texas, our parents panicked. But they were miles away in Idaho and there was nothing they could do. Back home we were broke and without employment, and the economy was desperate. In Texas the economy was good, we obtained jobs and found an adorable apartment. However as newlyweds on our own we were faced with the reality that mom and dad were no longer available beyond messages during an occassional phone call. So for the next six months we bonded. And we learned about reliance upon God.

One night the hot water pipe in our bathroom wall burst. The apartment manager sent us up to her apartment across the way while she contacted authorities. Because nobody could find the shut off valve, everyone was called. We looked out the window of her place to our building; and in the flashing red lights of a fire truck and the yellow light of the power company, we assessed our situation. We were driving a borrowed car, we didn't have a phone hooked up until the next week, our furniture consisted of a borrowed bed and a card table with two mis-matched folding chairs. And for the next couple of days, we were without an apartment. We laughed and decided it was a good time to pray.

Our difficulties were not over, but we had begun to learn one of our favorite lessons: People can work hard or be very talented and achieve much, and at other times work hard, be talented and get nothing. Hard work and talent are not the deciding factors. It is the best we can do, but in the final analysis, all blessings come from God.

Nevertheless, the lure is always there to take the credit; to begin the telling of life accomplishments with "I."

C. S. Lewis explained: “The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first—wanting to be the center—wanting to be God, in fact. That was the sin of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race.… What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’—could set up on their own as if they had created themselves—be their own masters—invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come … the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

"In the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, [Lucifer] could find nothing to think of more interesting than his own prestige."
--A Preface to Paradise Lost

In contrast, on all the music that the great composer Bach wrote, he always penned, "Soli Deo Gloria," or simply "SDG". "To God Alone the Glory."