Our Table

Time at the dinner table is treasured. It is the only time of the waking day when cell phones are not answered and minds are not racing with the burderns and bustle of the day. It is sacred. It begins in prayer, and ends in happy tummies. It is usually the only time i get alone with my husband each day where we concentrate on each other and not on things needing done and whatever else married people talk about that has to do with living together more than growing together. It is sacred.

Our table.

Landon lived with a house full of fantastic guys while he was at UCCS. The year after he graduated he moved into a house with his best friends and then proposed to me soon after. Four months later we were married, and during those 4 months he slept on the floor/futon or something awful each night while he lived out the remaining months of his bachelorhood. In the kitchen of their house was what would soon be our table. I love thinking of those men that we so dearly love sitting together at that table eating the nasty stuff they invented in that kitchen (mostly thinking of aaron and philip here- ha! brandon somehow knew how to cook better than the rest). Soon all of the guys were out of the house and no one was to claim the table. So we did, even though landon hardely really lived there.

Before our table lived with "the guys", it was a family dinner table of the Campus Crusade for Christ director in Colorado Springs. He has a lovely wife who remains my greatest inspiration of a praying woman. While they lived with this table, they had 2 little children. Their first, a girl, their second, a little boy adopted from Russia. And the love and life of that family is still smothered all over this table in not so appetizing, but still precious reminants.

Our table, supposedly, is the EXACT same set that my parents had when they were first married in December of 82. The table that was mine when i was born.


Our table sure has a lot of character to show of its last 25ish years: legs chewed by some dog i never knew, missing rungs on the chair backs, glitter, paint, and crud stuck in all the cracks and ridges. there is this sticky residue on the chairs that is activated during our sticky humid summers here and every time i rise from the seat, i find am literally peeling myself (whether skin or denim or fleece, etc..) off of it. ouch!

Yet, i love to think of the history of the table. Especially the prayers prayed, tears cried, moments shared, families built, and lives experienced around this focal point in a family - the dinner table. I am so grateful that this table can be OUR table. And i hope that i can continue to share beautiful meals with my talented chef husband here, and I trust that even i will some day build my own family within its missing rungs and chewed up legs.