It’s a common occurance at our house to have an empty soap bottle laying on its side with the top off or find the honey bear upside down propped up somewhere to get the last little bit out of there…even if there is a new one in the cubbard.  

 

I think…”throw it away already and move on to the new bottle.”  

 

Some say…”That’s poverty mentality. There is plenty more where that came from.”  

 Others like my dear husband think…”Yea, I understand that there’s plenty more! Thankful for it and will get right to that also just after I finish all this goodness first!”  

 

There are few people I know who want to get as much out of life as my fun loving husband who is always up for just a little more or whatever is left of good to be had. He is genuinely just a happy guy with the best little giggle in the world. To hear him laugh is a common occurance and it fills the atmosphere with gladness. On the Strength’s Finder test one of his top strengths is Maximizer and some may judge him as having a scarcity mentality for sqeezing every last drop from a ketchup bottle, maybe he just enjoys his “everything” all the way to the last drop. {as annoying as it is to others of us who are just waiting for what usually happens and ketchup lands on a white T shirt:) } But hey even then, you can just sing that great Tim McGraw song when that happens and be happy anyway. 

 Kevin drives the same way. I can’t tell you how many scrapes and scratches are on all cars he drives at the front bumper because he is going to pull up just as far as he can to get “the most out of that parking space”. So funny. What used to annoy me to no end is just hilarious now after 23 years of well more of the same. Of course until we have to pay the bill of usually a few hundred dollars for this little maximizing habit. LOL Do you and your family have idiocencries like this? 

 I’ld say by this verse that Jesus is a Maximizer too.  “And this time their nets were so full they began to tear.” Luke 5:6 Talk about maximizing the situation!

Here’s where this trait pays off ~ That same man I am head over heels over is also the same guy who has carted his family to the top of the Eifel Tower {Ofcourse, you guessed it, we had to go all the way to the top. Not the little place you stop at first…if you’ve been there, you know!} He has lured us to the South Pacific~ not hard to do. We’ve seen Maui a few times and more of Hawaii, Samoa & surrounding islands. We’ve watched the people garden in Holland in their wooden shoes and the druggies hang out of the windows, a very disturbing sight in Amsterdam where prostitution was out for all to see. We had Belgium pancakes in Belgium. We went to where the Pope vacations in the countryside of Italy outside of Rome and it’s also the part of Italy that you may have seen on the the Everybody Loves Raymond episode. That was a surprise 20th Annjversary trip where he had the people at the airport keep it a secret until we got to the gate in Atlanta that said Rome! Oh and he also hired a “packing consultant” to ready me for the mysterious trip. We’ve seen the Carribean many times…Cozumel, Cancun, Belize, Caynmen, Virgian Islands, Honduras and Belize…and a few others I’m not thinking of at the moment. Alaska was amazing, bucket list item ✔️! That stinker didn’t take us with him to Thailand, Japan, Manilla or Africa but Barcelona was among our favorites! This good ole U S of A has been crisscrossed many times from the Grand Canyon to Beverly Hills to NYC and the ski slopes of OR and CO have been visited multiple times but those two places are calling our names again for sure! 

The point of all that is this….you know those people who bug you to no end because they are so happy and they squeeze the ketchup until it flies across the room and lands on your white t shirt and keeps squeezing the toothpaste more than you thought possible? Well, let’s take a lesson from them and look at how they also squeeze everything they can out of life! And let’s follow suite!  I get to live with this amazing man who has looked down a snub nose rifle held by a gang banger in Jackson MS while preaching the gospel, done close to the same on the streets of  Los Angelos many times, been hit on by cute guys in the gay pride parade but instead led them to Jesus, had fortune tellers saved after prophesying to them on Hollywood Blvd, been chased by radical Muslims, attempts made to poison him by Hindus who had never seen a white man but ended up getting saved – the whole village – because God warned Kevin so he declared a fast. Stories are almost endless of how much this one man I lay next to at night has squeezed out of life. Oh and above all that, he is the best Dad in the world!!! He has coached soccer all our boys’ lives, preached at their school’s chapel, kept the clock at basketball games, championed field trips, and kept everyone laughing the whole time. 

 

The epitome of a person who knows how to be happy anyway….and squeeze everything he can out of life. 

Reminds me of this verse, “Then he died an old man who had lived a long, full life.” Job 42:17

Happy Father’s Day week to my husband and father of my children. Happy Father’s Day to my dad and all the dads out there. This blog is in your honor this week, Dads. I hope we all take a lesson from these fun stories and start squeezing everything we can out of life, too. Let’s start today!

Happy Monday!