Pour Out Your Hearts

Trust in Him at all times, o people; pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us. – Psalm 62:8

I love that throughout scripture I see examples of God hearing and answering His people.  He longs for them to cry out to Him and to come to Him.  He asks them to cast their cares on Him.  He binds up their broken hearts.  He knows their sitting and their rising.  He does not act like an indifferent bystander.  He’s working for us and for our good.  So, today, in light of writing that, I’m going to share some of the things that are tucked into my heart and just plain make me happy (besides, Fridays are for happy things!).

1. That husband of mine who does life with me.  He is such a gift.  Such a rock and such an encouragement. The road has been rocky and full of adversity, but I’m grateful that I chose him and am still choosing him…and grateful that he chooses me still.
2. Baby oh baby.  Mr. Asher is pretty much the happiest baby and my goodness I am so blessed and privileged to be able to be his mom.
3. My Lindo. He’s the one I miss and the one who taught me to love little boys so much.  I’m so glad I got to know him and for all the ways he cracked open my heart.  He taught me much and he is part of one of my absolute favorite God stories.
4. My Africa. My heart still beats for this place and for this country.  This is such a both and of happy and the heart wrenching grief of not being there.  This is where I pour out my heart waiting for God to weave this piece back into my life in a bigger way.
5. That crazy Boaz.  He pushed me out of my comfort zone and led me on a path toward more joy, laughter, and lots more snuggling than I could have guessed when I brought him home.
6. Church.  I couldn’t have guessed all the ways being on staff at my church would challenge, encourage, change, and ground me.  There’s so much goodness in being planted in a local church.
7. Community/Friends/People.  The world is so full of so many good, good people and I am so glad I’ve gotten to know and do life with a lot of them!

I think (maybe?) sometimes part of knowing you are the beloved of God is remembering, taking note, and being grateful for the things He has put in your life.  He is good to us.

What has He put in your life that makes you happy?

Friday Fun

Let’s do this.  5 minutes of free writing with no pressure, no edits, no rules, and just plain fun.

Today’s topic:

Rest

I sneak over to his side of the bed after he’s snuck out to shower.  My sleepy brain is still in complete sleep mode.  When he comes back, he prays over me for my day and I mumble a prayer back.  Though, let’s be honest, I can’t say for sure that what I said was all that great.  I do remember how he made fun of me because my words were messed up and then I joked back with him that God was going to smite him because he was making fun of my prayer.  He played right along with my sleepy state.  When the nights are long and work schedules are late, I find myself needing so much more rest than I’d like.  I grumble about how I used to get up at 4 something or 5 something.  He gently reminds me that I also used to start work at 6.  Work starts at 3pm now and that definitely causes a shift.  He’s ever full of grace for my sleepy, restful state and I’m humbled.  Rest for the soul. A place to rest my heart. Rest for my body.  Saturday, come quickly, I’m ready for a day of rest.

Weekly Questions

Yesterday, marked being married for 2 months already! I even got a surprise bag of white chocolate pretzels. I do love gifts and my husband too!  Marriage has quite a few perks!  One of the fun things that we’ve done both when we were dating and have continued to do now that we’re all old and married off has been ask weekly questions.  They can be one of my favorite times because right up next to gifts is words of affirmation for me.  These have evolved over the months and some became more relevant after getting married.  We’re still working out the bugs and figuring out what questions to modify or add in for us.  They’re a fun way to recap, get on the same page, and check-in before the start of a new week.

The original five came from this fun little blog.  We’ve debated about the order of the questions but here’s the original order:

1. How did you feel loved this past week?
2. What does your upcoming week look like?
3. How would you feel most loved & encouraged in the days ahead?
4. How would you best feel pursued in sex / intimacy this week? (this is the one we modified when we were dating and mostly left it off or talked about oh hey how are we doing in waiting to have sex until we’re married and how can I help you in that?)
5. How can I pray for you this week?

Beyond these questions, we recently wanted to add a few more…these are the ones we are trying out:

6. How are we doing spiritually? (i.e. how are you doing with reading your bible, are we praying together, are we reading the bible together, etc.)

7. What are you working on this week? (what area do you want to see changed this week or do you want to work on…i.e. get up earlier, go to bed early, plan ahead, etc.)

Then when searching for the blog above, I found a few other potential questions to ask:

8. Is there anything we would like to do differently this week than we did last week?

9. How can I better serve you this week?

10. What were your struggles this past week?

Here’s also some questions to ask periodically: 

1. How have the first X months of marriage compared with what you dreamed about or envisioned?
2. What are some of the things we need to acknowledge our thankfulness for in our first months of marriage?
3. What do you want to get better at as a wife or husband?
4. What do we want to get better at as a couple?
5. What are some of the dreams that you have as an individual? How can I help you reach them?
6. What are some of our dreams as a couple? How can we seek after them and surround ourselves with the right people?
7. What are some of our greatest blind spots as a couple?
8. In what ways do you feel like you’ve grown since we’ve gotten married?

There you go! How about you? Do you ask any other questions that I missed or have any other fun things that you love to do as a couple? 

Wives Submit!

As a follow-up to Lauren Winner’s talk, I happened to go to a P31 talk at Northwestern the other night.  The Women’s Ministries’ Pastor at Bethlehem Baptist spoke on submission.  Since I’m still in a “list” mood I’ll do the same as I did with the Lauren Winner talk.  Here you go!

• Submission: stand in awe
• Reverence for God produces wisdom which produces virtue
• Submission is NOT: being a doormat, being passive, sinning under the authority of a husband, indicative of inferior
• Submission involves respect, joyfully placing under, trusting God
• Before the fall there was “joint-rulership”
• Women are not to submit to all men–the charge is about wives submitting to one husband
• Genesis 4:6-7 talks about the curse and how “her desire is to rule over him”
• 1 Cor. 11:3 makes a distinction of roles including that between God and Christ–there is role distinction, but in the same way one is not better than the other, they are equal.
• Submission is not about putting the husband in the place of Christ
• The Bible never tells *men* to make their wives submit–submission is the wife’s responsibility

Verses To Look Up/Mentioned: Proverbs 31, Psalm 110:1, Ephesians 5:22-24, Ephesians 5:33, Col. 3:18, Titus 2:3-5, 1 Cor. 7, 1 Peter 3:1-6, 1 Cor. 11, Genesis 4:6-7

Suggested Books: Intimate Issues by Linda Dillow, True Woman by Susan Hunt, Sex for Christians by Lewis Smedes (suggested by Lauren Winner)