Mark of a Man

Last week was DH's birthday and I made him a photobook! I titled it "The Mark of a Man'' to commemorate and celebrate how I feel about where he is in his life right now, in my opinion he embodies what a man should be, I may be biased, but that's surely how I feel! :) I concentrated mainly on describing what he means to our family as a father and a husband, and also in his profession as a teacher. Of course there was a lot more I could have included, but this was manageable and so meaningful to us. Oh did I mention he absolutely loved it!!

I thought of the title first, then tried but was not eloquent enough to put into words what I meant. So I googled and found this fantastic quote from Elisabeth Elliot's book The Mark of a Man (she is one of my favorite authors, I have read many of her books, including Let Me Be a Woman, but did not know of this one!):

The Mark of a Man:
The world cries for men who are strong: strong in conviction, strong to lead, to stand, to suffer... glad to shoulder the burden of manliness. Characteristics of manhood that were exemplified in the life of Christ. Responsibility, sacrifice, courage, obedience, initiative, forgiveness and endurance...
by Elisabeth Elliot

Wow.. what do you think of that?
To me that is absolutely beautifully and meaningfully put. And indeed the world cries out for men like that! I know there are some differing views, as indicated in the reviews of the book on amazon, mainly regarding the strict views of manhood that Elisabeth Elliot lays out in her book. But I'm totally sold.

I find myself asking if we are raising our boys to be men as so defined. We fuss over their studies, over the right influence they are getting through media, books, friends, over their health, diet, and so on. Again I'm reminded on the main objective of our parenting role, to guide them to know God and love Him for themselves, and to be like Christ. And hopefully responsible, strong, courageous, .. men.

Obviously we need to ground them in God's word, and show them by example how to walk with Him. And thankfully (as I said in my book for dh), they have their father as an example. Are there other things I can do to train up men, as a mom? For a start, i'm ordering the book to read with them! And do you think my 'training' Ryan to carry heavy loads for mommy will help in some way ...? (smile)

Much food for thought indeed. And much prayer required too, of course, as we parent sons. Do share with me if you have similar thoughts!

I'm excited to show you all the book! I chose to do it in a 8x8 format, photos on the right pages, and journalling on the left pages, with a couple of full page photos to complete it. Below are the inside pages.

The pictures above are of Ryan when he was one! He was once a chubby baby! And noticed dh has not aged at all in the last 12 years??

That's baby Ryan on the left and baby Jared on the right, oh how I miss them as babies!

And can you tell which is the photo from our honeymoon?

This time, due to the limited time in which I had to pull it together in time for dh's birthday, I did not have time to send the book to the US for printing, but instead printed it locally at FotoHub, it was beaufitul, printed on thick photo print paper, and opened flat, cost about US$54 for 30 pages, (much more than it would on shutterfly if I had a discount) but I got it in three days(!)

And you can find all the right side of the albums as a 10 page template set available in the store

Now I've pulled out two more 8.5x11 layouts that I love from the past, which I'm now progressively getting ready for printing into a book(can't wait!), have put them into templates for you below :)

Download both templates 228 & 229 here!

Actually I've really been productive, 3 more layouts from Hokkaido trip have been completed. All snow, snow, and more snow days spent last december in Otaru and Niseko, it was as we planned, 10 days of non-stop snow and winter wonderland for us tropical folks, we totally soaked (or was it froze) it in!

 (click on image to see larget view) 

This template is now available as a set in the store HERE