The Post About Multiple Topics

As you can tell, I wasn’t sure what to call this post. I mean, it could’ve been:

1. Kevin and Melinda: A Love Story
2. Playing Hookey
3. Dinner Lunch and a Movie
4. American Sniper: Portrait of a Patriot
5. That January Afternoon When it was 73 Degrees
6. Just Two Texans Kickin’ it Up at the Fort Worth Stock Show

See what I mean?

It was glorious outside yesterday. GLORIOUS. But really? It could’ve been 17, and overcast, and it still would’ve been fun. It’s important to just leave stuff behind and get out every once in a while, I think.

I was looking forward to seeing American Sniper, even before it was nominated for Best Picture. You know how I feel about our military, and having a cousin who led troops in multiple tours in Iraq, this one was an important film to me. It’s (of course) violent, and chock full of bad language, but you know what? If I (who rarely, if ever, utters anything of the four-letter-word nature) had innocent-looking women or children walking out of buildings, covered with explosives, I would likely be hurling those words into the air to anyone within earshot.

It was a difficult film, about a difficult topic; hard, but necessary to watch. Amazingly well-acted, it was an intimate look into the lives of our military families, who, while we go about our lives in the home of the free, struggle to keep it together while their other halves are in harm’s way, protecting it. It’s a powerful portrayal of a true story, and with no music playing as the end-credits rolled, sober viewers were completely silent as they exited the theater, us included. Go see it. Then come home, and after you thank every service man or woman you encounter, make a donation to the Wounded Warrior Project or the EOD Warrior Foundation.

The Stock Show is going on right now in Fort Worth. The barns were empty as the animals were being changed over, so we walked through the Exhibit Hall instead, checking out all the vendors. Everything from tractors, to hot tubs, to cutlery, to enough Texas bling to blind someone from another state, greeted us as we strolled each aisle. We really had no agenda, and we enjoyed that fact to the fullest.

I love being together. Even though we’re together pretty much all the time now, there’s something different about when we pull away from the normal. It’s good medicine for a relationship, I think; at least it is for ours. There really is a time for everything under heaven, and yesterday was a time for contemplation, laughter, dreaming and fun.

I give it two thumbs up.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: