7 Quick Takes Friday

Hi friends! Here's the latest from the Kennedy household this week!

**1**
Last night we hosted 3 high school kids on our couches for the night. I'm tired. They stay up late. I get up early. Yeah...but really they are great kids and their parents were out of town so they hung out here with us last night. We taught them Ticket to Ride (a favorite board game) and watched Aladdin before telling them at 12:30 that it was bedtime. I'm not sure we're ready to parent teenagers yet :)

**2**
I was supposed to have another interview with a church this morning, but for some reason they never called. Not sure where the communication breakdown happened, but seeing as how I'm wiped out it might be a good thing there was miscommunication.

**3**
My husband preached a great sermon last night for his preaching class, I was so proud of him! It was a tough text and he worked hard but he was awesome :)

**4**
I am reading Jodi Picoult's new book House Rules right now and as usual, am loving it. Seriously, she writes incredible stories that constantly amaze me and keep me guessing. It wasn't originally on my list of books to read this year, but that's because I didn't know it was coming out this spring. It's now one of my 28 books for the year.

**5**
I'm so thankful for my husband. I have just been reflecting on things this week a little deeper and realize how amazing he is. Not that I didn't already know that, but we had some cool opportunities to serve together this week and I just love him. Yesterday I was helping him with his sermon and he stopped looked at me and said "I hope you know how much I appreciate your help. I have the most amazing wife ever, I love being married to you." Melt my heart...:)

**6**
Wednesday night I got the opportunity to speak to our teenagers about The 5 Love Languages, which was such a great lesson! Several of them told me they really enjoyed it and want to bring it up with their friends now. For those who aren't familiar with the Love Languages, the basic principle is that everyone has a different way they receive love from people, and when we are aware of this we are much more effective in demonstrating love to the people we're close to. So we gave them the inventory (30 questions to help you figure out which one of the 5 is yours) and talked about what that meant for them. I broke them into groups based on their love language and had them teach the rest of the group what showing love and affection to them looked like. The 5 main ways that people receive love are through Gifts, Quality Time, Words of Affirmation, Physical Touch, and Acts of Service. I think this is really important to realize about ourselves, our spouses, our kids, our friends and family because it can solve all kinds of problems! For instance, to show my husband love, I know gifts is dead last on his list. He doesn't usually enjoy receiving them, he doesn't really love thinking about them and shopping for them, it's just now how he's wired. On the other hand, Acts of Service or Quality Time is huge for him. So for his birthday or our anniversary, we go away together, do something together, share an experience together and that is WAY more satisfying for him than me buying him a book or a movie. For me, I'm a Words of Affirmation person, which means my most prized possession is the book of letters my parents put together for me when I turned 18 from all my friends & family telling me what they loved, appreciated, and remembered about me. Talk about a gift that spoke directly to my deepest love language! If you are interested, spend 5 minutes & take the online inventory here at this link and then let me know what your results were! I'm compiling a list of my friends/family's love languages cuz I think they are fascinating!

**7**
Confirmation starts on Sunday! I am SO proud of my husband and all the hard work and hours he has put in to designing a confirmation experience for these students that will hopefully be a great seven weeks. This week's topic, understanding our own faith stories and learning how to write/share that with others in a way that isn't "preachy" or even all that "theological," but simply sharing who Jesus is to each of us and what He's done in our lives.