2nd Day of Christmas....Charity part 2

In addition to Whitney’s love for her family, she has a real talent for loving everyone around her. So often, I am the person who is really good (if you can call it a talent) at picking people apart. Whitney is very willing to look for the best in people. She makes friends with everyone she meets and loves them sincerely.

I think that is the thing that is most impressive to me, she is dedicated to her friends. She wants to be there for them, and she does everything she can to help them. When Whitney is friends with someone, you know that you will have someone who will drop whatever she is doing to help you.

For example: This past summer we were in Oregon for a friends wedding. The day before the wedding she and I had planned to head to the coast and spend some time there. (Neither of us get out to the coast very often, and so we were quite excited to be able to go.) Well we found out that our friends needed some help getting things ready for the reception the next day. Of course, we were both a little sad that we didn’t get to go to the coast, but we were happy to help our friends out. What amazed me is that she immediately jumped in with everything she had and figured out what she could do to help and made it happen. This is one great little example of her incredible ability to have real charity for everyone she knows.

3rd Day of Christmas...Charity part 1

A picture of Whitney's extended family at Thanksgiving

Whitney absolutely loves her family! It is such a joy to go home with her and see her spending time with them. You can tell that they are the most important people in her life. The picture below is a picture that she took of her first (and so far – only) niece. She is dedicated to them and wants to do everything she can to help them to be happy. What really impresses me is that way that has dedicated herself to my family as well. Before she even met some of them, she has been interested in their lives, wanted to know about their lives, and immediately fell in love with them.

4th Day of Christmas....Hope

A couple of weeks ago, I was out at Whitney’s house watching a very important game of the OSU Beavers. It didn’t start off very well. The Beavers were doing absolutely horribly. Her dad and her brother were yelling at the TV every time they made a mistake, and I was sitting on the couch resigned to the fact that the Beavers just weren’t going to win. Whitney (and I should also say her mother) were criticizing the rest of us for giving up on them. For those of you who didn’t see it, the Beavers won in final seconds of the game.

Albeit this is a relatively unimportant example, it certainly is an example of Whitney’s ability to live her life full of hope. She always sees the best in every situation she faces. In addition, she always sees the best in people around her. That’s really good, because that means that she sees the best in me too!

5th Day of Christmas.....Faith

Today begins a triptych (plus one) of reasons why I love Whitney. As I started to make the list of reasons that I love her, I found that a great number of them related to three great qualities that we find listed in the scriptures: Faith, Hope, and Charity.

As I think back to the times when I realized how amazing Whitney was, it was when I heard her pray. She approaches her Heavenly Father with a real sense of humility and sincerity. You can tell by the way that she addresses Him that she knows that He is real and that He loves her. Even better is that she lives her life in a way that shows her love for Him and shows her faith in Him. It is wonderful to see as she faces difficult times and decisions that she turns to Him and puts her trust in His promptings. Her strong faith has been such a strength and support to me.

6th Day of Christmas....Long suffering

This picture is the "calm-whitney"

It’s really pretty difficult to get Whitney angry. That’s really lucky for me, because sometimes I can be pretty insensitive. I also tend to get angry about the simplest of things. Whitney, on the other hand, doesn’t really let things get to her. She can be working with the most frustrating people or placed in the most difficult situations, but she simply puts her head down and keeps on working, making the best she can out of any situation, and many times the situation gets even better because of her willingness to work with them.

Also, she has a great ability to calm other people down. When things around her are going absolutely crazy, she has the ability to think with a clear mind, calm everyone down, and get things done.

7th Day of Christmas...Courage

There's just one word to say about this: Sushi.


So....I decided after I saw this post go up that I just HAVE to tell the sushi story....Thank goodness for the ability to edit posts!

I really like sushi. A LOT. I really like fish. A LOT. Whitney doesn't like fish that much, she only likes the Salmon that her grandpa catches and cooks fresh.

Whitney decided (after much cajoling from me) to try sushi, at least try it. Now lets realize the string of complications here: first off, she doesn't like cooked fish very well, so making it raw is just making it more difficult.

I tried to find a cooked sushi, and I think that I did. I was also excited, because she LOVED crag rangoon that she tried earlier, so I got the crab and cream cheese one (forgot the name of the roll), thinking we were moving along similar lines here. The deal was that we would have plenty of other food for her to eat, just in case she couldn't handle the sushi.

She almost gagged on her first bite. Apparantly sushi isn't for her, which I was okay with. I was really proud of her, though, for not spitting it out. She kept on chewing and eventually swallowed it.

THEN!! She tries it again! I was absolutely amazed! She said that she thought she might like it better with the second bite. That is courage! Almost gagging on the first one, and then diving in and trying it again!

She would totally rock on Fear Factor!

8th Day of Christmas...Supportive

In a recent conversation with my Bishop out here in Illinois, he said “I just pray every day that all of you will make it through this difficult stage of your life, find good jobs, and get started with your families.” Through career decisions, the frustrations of school, financial worries, and family challenges, Whitney has been willing to support me and stand with me on all of them. I suppose that, to her, it probably doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but to me it means that instead of having to stand alone, trying to figure out what is the best decision, I know that I will have someone who will listen to me, even argue with me if necessary, but in the end make a decision with me and support me in that decision. And that means the world to me!

The great thing is that, when Whitney says she supports me, it means so much more than just agreeing with the decisions that I (or we) have made. It means that she does everything in her power to make sure that I’m successful. From helping me out with the projects I have to do, or just making dinner while I work on them, or simply telling me that it’ll all turn out okay. It means so much to me that she is willing to sacrifice so much for my success. I would like to hope that I do the same for her.

(PS....this picture is not of the two of us! Although Whitney did take it, along with most of the pictures in this series)