after

five minutes of writing on friday! i’m ready. are you? jump on in on the fun over here.

here’s the prompt!

after

the music fades, the people have left, the airplane lands, the fanfare slows, and we find ourselves in the after. the after moments of eery quiet filled with tense wondering of is this all there was and the wide eyed anticipation of just how these moments will change everything.  for in these moments and places and situations the course of our story changes.  sometimes i’ve known ahead of time that i will lay down my rock to create an altar of remembrance.  other times the moments pass me by before i’ve realized that that was the time when things changed. there’s the before and the after africa. the before and after “i do.” the before and after “god, you are my all in all.” my life is filled to the brim with these sacred moments and while some of them hurt so bad that i’d rather skip them altogether, i can’t help but still recognize the powerful ways they’ve changed me.  they’ve rearranged me. He’s rearranged me. He’s wrecked me. wholly and fully for His purposes and plans. being conformed and being renewed requires a whole lot of bending and stretching and fitting awkwardly into the new afters.

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.

Money Money Money

My husband the other day was talking about how he had read a devotional about the four money languages.  I had heard about these before, but couldn’t remember them so I promptly looked them up on google and found this fun video.  We both could identify our money languages and could see traces of our secondary languages as well.

Here’s the line that I identified with most:

“We can take that trip. We can buy pizza!”

Amiable it is!  Pretty sure I’ve been known to say, “Hey! We have unallocated funds [funds not put in the budget yet]….let’s go buy something fun!” Not to mention that the last time we had unallocated cash on hand, I ended up going and buying all sorts of food for people.  Hello, money means love =) Plus, gifts is one of my top love languages.

Ryan on the other hand…well, he’s an analytic and…”Money means security.”  He’s been known to have thousands and thousands of dollars just sitting in the bank. Handy, though, when it comes time that he wants to do something with it like buy a wedding ring or go to Sri Lanka or head to Norway for a few months.

Thankfully, I have some analytic in me too and he’s willing to spend on experiences, which helps us be on the same page money wise and we’re Dave Ramsey fans.

How about you? Are you a driver, amiable, analytic, or expressive?

3 months and counting

3 super happy months of being married! woot! in celebration, I went through our wedding pictures and honeymoon pictures to finally post them on facebook.  if we’re friends, you can look at them here. made me totally want to do the whole day over again and to run off to the mountains and the beach like now. but instead, i’ll make a list of all the fun things i love about life right where i’m at! in no particular order here are 12 things for the 12th.

1. being married

2. my awesome husband

3. my adorable dog Boaz who loves me

4. my church family.

5. a wonderful place to live that is warm even though it’s still cold outside

6. traveling to look forward to in the future

7. friends’ super cute babies

8. being able to e-mail and text best friends

9. being able to cook all sorts of deliciousness

10.  pinterest boards of lovely things

11. books to read and time to read them

12. mornings spent with god reading the bible and doing the breaking free bible study

What are you loving about your life right now?

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? 

deep breath…of hope

Hope

I breathe her in and start with just a little taste.  She seems familiar, but it’s been so long since I’ve tasted her goodness. I thought I didn’t want her hanging around, but then I slowly started letting her come back to play.  Once I started boldly and consistently confessing trust, there she was.  She showed up with her bright sun rays and dancing laughter.  She wanted me to come dream with her.    

Now, with trust, I’m un-digging my heels and stopping my tantrum to learn even more about trusting fully, but hope? That just seems a bit…risky.

Except the funny thing about hope is that she sneaks up on you.  You start trusting God with those heart desires and next thing you know hope has blossomed.  Deserts into Eden.  A beauty in the waiting with hope and anticipation.  A face set on His best no matter what it looks like.  So, I breathe her in deep even though it’s not what I intended.  A deep breath of resting and enjoying…the Gardener who is making my deserts oh so beautiful. 

Come play along with the 5 minutes of free writing on “Deep Breath.”

What are you breathing deeply lately? What are you hopeful for?

Saying No to say Yes

Truth is…I don’t like saying no to people…

I don’t like not being able to do certain things…

I don’t like knowing that because I struggle…because my flesh likes to take over…

that to walk as He calls me to… I must say no in order to say YES to God

Because, for me, the bigger truth is…I want to say YES to God way more than I want to say yes to people.

I don’t want to let a seemingly “little” yes get in the way…

That’s how it starts…the little yes to the flesh leading to a bigger yes leading to finding myself in a hole…

But, see, I am OUT of that hole.  And I am staying OUT.

The old is GONE. FOREVER.

Oh, but I won’t be naive in knowing that I can choose to crawl right back into that hole so instead I fix my eyes on Jesus and hear…

God saying, “What are you talking about?” because my SIN, my UGLY, is forgiven…is as far as the east is from the west and…

He made me a new creation…with a new heart…

A heart that is saying a big resounding YES to God

A heart that is being guarded from that hole by my Protector, my Provider

and Oh, I must have more of Him

So, I press on to know Him.

To know His voice and to follow Him…

To His immeasurably more than all that I can ask or imagine.

And, yeah…it might probably will look different than my little head imagines

Yeah…that might hurt…that might ache…that might cause some tears to fall…

But I know that He’s working ALL my things together for good.

I believe and stand on the promise that He will come through.

That He has made everything beautiful in its time.

Because you know what, He lets me know, “My delight is in you”

So, I’ve laid down my UGLY at the altar.

He’s calling for a living sacrifice.

A sacrifice…that costs but reminds me…

Jesus is better.

Yeah. I confess…I desire to be married.

Yeah, I confess that that desire in my own hands instead of His lead me to my hole…

to my sin, to my UGLY

So, He’s called me to lay that desire down on the altar as a living sacrifice

and for this next season I will heed His call and stay single by saying no…

So, I stand still and w…a…i…t… to see what He will do

Because the attention I get from Almighty Jesus is better and I’m going to…

run to Him.

run to Him.

run to Him.

And keep saying no…so that I can say YES to Him.

Bam!

If you know me even a little, then you probably know that I tend to think….think a lot.  Sometimes to the point where it gets in the way and puts up walls (not a good thing) and stops things from going from my head to my heart.  The last few days I got all caught up in the thinking.  The heady, here’s what experience tells me.  I “know” the truth, but I couldn’t shake the all over the board emotions ranging from confused to frustrated to happy to disappointed to sad to lonely to okay to everything else.  I bounced around and couldn’t find my footing on the solid rock.

Until today. I sat in class and I tried to pay attention and engage in conversation, but every once in a while my thoughts would overwhelm me still.  Until I heard these words, “Follow Me.”  Funny thing is that we were talking about ministering to youth and I really don’t remember how that fit in and neither does my roomie (I asked her later).  So then, God immediately brought to mind the verse below:

“…what is that to you?  You follow Me!”

My reaction: Whoa. Lord, you are so here.  You are so getting my attention.  Because really.  What is it to me that ___ is doing this or that God is working in that way in their lives.  Even, who is that to me and what is that to you that I’m working in a way you didn’t expect.  When all I need to focus on is following Him then everything else fades away.  Africa fades away. Lindo fades away. Thrive fades away. Hope House kids fade away. Marriage fades away.

Yes, good things and yes, serving is good, but He just wants me to “be.”  He loves me when I’m just sitting on the floor with Him leaning against my bed.  He wants me to follow Him and be with Him.  He wants to step out only on His firm foundation.

“It had opened her eyes to the fact that right down in the depths of her own heart she really had but one passionate desire, not for the things which the Shepherd had promised but for himself.  All she wanted was to be allowed to follow him forever. “Nothing else really matters only to love him and to do what he tells me.” -Hinds Feet in High Places

34 Years :)

Happy Anniversary!! Love and miss you guys!

Loving on the Driscoll Sermons Again

Trial: Marriage and Men

Trial: Marriage and Women

Yikes…Mark Driscoll sure knows how to bring the heat and speak some godly truth.  Here are some of the key points or statements that I found particularly interesting from these two sermons:

• Ephesians 5:25. Husbands are to love their wives as the church. Is he selfish or selfless does he take from you or give himself up from you.
• Some of you ladies are very foolish on who you spend time with. You’re like Eve.
• You men are dating and wanting to marry God’s daughters.  Do you really think you can lie, manipulate, hit her, neglect her, abuse her, put your hands all over her? You are damaging His daughter. God is her Father and you cannot think that after abusing His daughter that you can cry out for His help and ask for help to do it some more….there is no excuse for any man who claims the name of Christ to treat a woman in a dishonorable, disrespectful way
• Don’t just date a man you can put up with.  Date a man you can trust and respect.  Date someone who is godly not one who is harsh, inconsiderate, immature.
• Marry a man who you agree with the course of his life and if you don’t agree with the course of his life then you shouldn’t marry him because wherever he is going that is where you’re going and once you are married then you’re going there too.

While we’re at it….here are some points from Francis and Lisa Chan’s podcast on Christ-Centered Marriages.(What can I say…I have to listen to something while I’m running!)

• The goal is not to have a happy marriage. You can have a happy marriage and still come to the end of your life and realize that you didn’t please God. The idea is having a Christ-centered marriage and one of the by-products is a happy, fulfilled marriage.
• Those who are most ready for marriage are those who need it the least. That doesn’t mean there’s not a desire to get married.
• I found life in Christ. I don’t need somebody to give me life.
• Think through ahead of time. Are we after the same thing? Do we both want God to be number one in our lives?
• There’s this mission first and my marriage is a part of that and comes under that. I don’t have time.  There’s more to life.