A Wanderer at Rest

Starting with a poem, because it sums up my heart better than any other writing I will do. 

We are all wanderers, filled with joy and great peace

Our Rest, carried with us, rooted in our souls, great and deep. 

The place where live made of wood, brick, and stone

Is just merely, that, it's our temporary home. 

As we wander our way through the chaos of life,

For the lists of "To-do's," my God will suffice!

My Rest is always with me, whether at home or on the move

Giving peace and joy to my weary soul, that my life might bring glory to You.

7/15/12

This summer, the Lord has been teaching me a lot about finding rest in the craziness of life. My soul has been restless and tired this summer, feeling out of place in this phase of transitions, and longing to feel at peace in the midst of traveling and busyness. On multiple occasions, I have looked at our calendar for the summer and felt like I'm drowning, overwhelmed by the places to go and things to do, followed by a long year at school. 

A divine appointment occurred on Sunday though, when I was talking with a good friend at church. We were both discussing our busy summers, and she mentioned how she just doesn't handle the busyness very well. She gets tired, emotional, overwhelmed, and stressed. My heart echoed her thoughts and feelings, as this is how I have felt for much of the past month. As our conversation pointed back to Christ and the Gospel, she said, "I just have to remember that my peace and rest goes with me." That simple sentence has stuck with me all week as I've pondered our omnipresent God. He is always present, wherever we go, not only His presence but His gifts to us- joy, peace, rest (among others). We can be restFULL wanderers, instead of restless people. 

And really, we as Christians are all wanderers. This earth is only our temporary home, and we are called to lay down our lives and pick up our cross, surrendering our earthly comforts for the eternal riches. This means that I do not have to be in our apartment for my soul to be at peace. This means that when Spencer and I have a hundred miles to travel and 6 people to see in a matter of days, I can be at peace and joyful, because the Lord's hand is on me. All of the tasks that I feel need to be completed are at the mercy of the Lord, and if they don't get done, then it was not on HIS agenda, and it will be okay. 

Such simple lessons that have a huge impact on our lives, marriage, and relationships. 

Praise be to God for His patience in teaching me these lessons over and over again!

I'm a Mrs. now!

I'm a Mrs. now! Done with wedding planning, getting settled into life, and back to blogging! My heart has been overflowing with thoughts and I can tell I am way over-due to get back to writing. I'm trying to decide if I should start a new blog or stick with this one.......thoughts?

Chloe

We had to put our 7-year old dog to sleep last week. Chloe played quite an important part in my life. 

In 6th grade, I made a powerpoint presentation for my parents explaining why we should get a dog. My main reason? I was lonely. I had prayed and prayed and prayed for us to adopt, and it wasn't happening. My heart was bursting with this maternal love that longed to take care of a child. Since it was apparent that adoption was not in our future, I figured at least a dog would be able to keep me company. So I started praying for a dog! I distinctly remember singing "Your Grace is Enough" at a chapel service that week, and crying as I surrendered my loneliness and hurting heart to the Lord. Without adopting, without a dog, without lots of friends, His grace would be enough. The Lord was graciously allowing my young heart to grasp the beauty of the Lord and the completeness that He gives us. Nothing in this world, no relationship, no object, no experience will compare to the surpassing greatness of knowing Jesus. However, after hearing my heart and watching the powerpoint that I'd put together, my parents finally decided that we could get a dog. 

Just like my mom predicted, she ended up taking care of Chloe even before I'd left home. Just as I had feared, Chloe did not fill the gap in my heart to care for the orphan. She was just a 95 pound Golden Retriever who wanted to eat, sleep, and play. But the Lord taught me huge things through this sweet dog who never did learn to fetch. First, my parents showed me selfless love. My mom did not want a dog at all, but they knew that this was a huge thing for me, and so they put aside their hesitations and agreed to live with a dog for the next 7 years- for me! Though this is a small sacrifice in comparison to many in this life, it was one that impacted my young heart. Secondly, I learned that even when dreams are fulfilled, we must pursue Jesus still. Fulfillment and contentment does not come from things of this world. 

So, as we say goodbye to Chloe, I remember the Lord's faithfulness portrayed to me through one of His creatures. 

Next week

At this time next week I will be waking up next to my husband, the love of my life. It all seems so surreal to think that I will be a married woman, a wife- the ultimate calling that the Lord placed on the hearts of every girl from the beginning of time. The Lord looked on the union of Adam and Eve and said it was very good. Though tainted by sin and twisted by a broken culture, marriage remains as one of the facets of life and faith. It remains as one of the greatest reflections of God's glory- of His goodness to His people and of His unfailing love to the Bride, His Church. I could nearly weep just thinking about this magnificent, sobering, wondrous picture. When we let another human being into the nastiest parts of our souls and they still love us- that is what Christ did for us. I am so honored and thankful that the Lord has called me to carry out this great task of reflecting His glory in my marriage to a broken world that has all but given up on true love and the power of "I do."
As I ponder what married life will look like for me, the thing I am most struck by (at this moment, at least!) is the fact that in a week, I will still be Molly and he will still be Spencer. I will still be an early-bird, healthy eater, and a bad communicator. Spencer will still be a night owl, a tireless worker, and a jokester. Yet- something will be different. We will be living life as a couple. We've been trying to merge our lives for the past year, but there's so many loose ends that can only be met once marriage is fulfilled.
The Lord brought us together as 2 sinful, broken, yet willing individuals- and He has called it very good. I look forward with much anticipation to see what He will bring out of our marriage as we bring our mutual love, passions, hopes, and dreams together.
Next week is the day I've dreamed for since I was a little girl- and by His grace the Gospel will be shared and His glory will be known. Amen and amen.

Conflicted

My brother, Caleb, is in Guatemala RIGHT NOW at Eagle's Nest. And it is pretty much driving me crazy that I'm not there with him. Memories flooded back on Sunday when the mission team left, and it was as if I'd just been there yesterday. I'm in super hard classes this semester, 3 of them in Spanish! That means hearing and speaking Spanish 5 days a week, which is wonderful for my fluency. But really? My heart is aching to serve- be a mom to an adopted child, work at an adoption agency, encourage adoptive families, host conferences, write a book, lead mission trips- ANYTHING to help the orphan. Anything to follow James 1, to serve the orphan in their distress. Yet I'm here toiling away at the 2nd letter that Hernan Cortes wrote to Carlos V in 1520. An amazing piece of history, but my heart is so not there.

I wrote in my journal on the first day of class, "Father I rest. I rest in Your plans that are faithful and sure. I give this semester to You, for Your glory. Break me and teach me. I refuse to let the Enemy fill my heart with lies of discouragement. But instead I begin this semester with confidence, knowing that You have called me here as a Spanish student. And though it breaks me even more, I want to try to learn. Not to save Claudia, not to save the orphans, and not to prove to myself that I have a purpose, but because You called me to it."

So I sit here in my room with a textbook in one hand and a journal in the other. One providing me with everything I need to succeed in this class- and therefore continue to follow the path the Lord has me on. The other proclaiming truth that though my heart feels so conflicted right now, the Lord has a plan.
I'll leave you with a poem I wrote this week, as I turn back to that textbook!

Conflicted 

Torn between the then and now.

Want to serve but I don’t know how.

Studying for hundreds of hours on end,

What about the little girl in need of a friend?

Torn between roles of a student and soon-to-be-wife,

Wanting to fulfill God’s plan for my life.

Longing to bring His children home,

Knowing the truth but my heart still groans.

How do papers and projects fulfill a Kingdom mentality,

When there’s orphans, the widows, the lost, and the starving.

I know He’s called me to Truman as a student for the present.

My heart’s crying for more, as I stand in obedience.

For a year and a half, I’ll attend all my classes.

I’ll write lots of papers, and make lots of messes.

I”ll learn Spanish for His glory, that His name be made known.

That by my present and future, His glory be shown.

1/9/12

Loving this

I love being engaged. Love my future in-laws. Love wedding planning (even the now-frequent nightmares about wedding day disasters- like missing the ceremony or showing up at the hair salon on the wrong day!). Love looking ahead to the future. Love my fiancé! :)

Tradition

"Tradition!!!! Tradition! Tradition!!! Tradition!
The papa, the mama, the son, the daughter....

We all know these lyrics, right?? Good ole' Fiddler on the Roof.
This song has been coming back to me the past couple of weeks as we've been celebrating Christmas. Now that I'm engaged, there's 2 families to celebrate with! And, you guessed it- twice as many traditions!
I love them all. My family always watches Miracle on 34th Street on Christmas Eve, Spencer's family goes to the zoo that day, we both make cookies and gingerbread houses, and the list goes on. There's our gorgeous candlelight service at church (my favorite event of the whole season), and of course, there's all the crazy gift opening.
This season, though, I have felt stuck on what I believe Christmas should be. As we sat at our Christmas Eve service, I looked out over the congregation and saw all of the children from Guatemala, Ethiopia, and China who now have a family to celebrate christmas with thanks to the miracle of adoption. I looked at my friend's family who will be leaving on Friday to go pick up 3 children from the Philippines. NO longer will they spend Christmas in an orphanage. Praise be to God! I began to ponder the number of orphans, and was overwhelmed as I considered how many sanctuaries it would take to hold all the orphans in the world. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Hundreds of sanctuaries packed with children. And yet we still go out and spend billions on our Christmas gifts?? My heart has been torn. Torn between tradition, culture, family, commercialism, and the call to enjoy what we have been given (which is a Biblical principle).
I loved the O family's post this morning entitled a "Grinchy Christmas." You should read it. I have trouble envisioning what I want Christmas to look like for our future family. Spencer and I both feel very strongly about not focusing on the presents, Santa Claus, and all that goes along with that. I loved how the O family turned gingerbread houses into a fundraiser for orphans, a nativity play into an outreach to the neighborhood, a business trip into a sweet father-daughter experience, Christmas gift certificates that will serve as parent-child date nights, serving lunch at a kitchen even with a 2-year old in tow. Those are the things that serve others, bond families together, and keep children's eyes focused on others and not on the presents underneath the tree.
Traditions?? Absolutely. But let's keep them Christ-centered and others-focused, that we may be serving and learning/teaching in the midst of celebration.

Beauty in the Manger

I've seen beauty in the manger, in the pain on Mary's face.
As a tiny babe entered the world, in such a lowly place.
Yet this babe who clutched his mother's breast would come to put the world at rest.
He has come to bring the orphans home, come that homeless no longer roam,
Come to bring health to the sick and feeble, come to bring hope to those who weep.
His little cries ring out in the night, echoes of a world that in sin is not right.
Cries he would sound again and again as he hung on a cross for the sins of all men.
But for now there is beauty in the blood on the mud.
For a girl became a mother, Joseph a faithful  Father,
 a baby so small and yet a King, whose cries through the night will forever ring.

12/27/11

248 Days

In 248 days, I will be a wife. Sometimes, it seems like it's coming so soon, and other days it feels like forever away. Today it seems so far off. Yet I'm thankful for this season of preparation, of patience, of intentionality as we grow closer while still balancing life and school. I could not be more blessed to be the girl in these pictures. I still look at them and marvel at what God has done.
I love you, Spencer, and I can't wait for June 2! :)

Thanks to Leigh Ann Smart for doing these gorgeous pictures!

Reminded....

These pictures popped up on Facebook yesterday and my breath caught in my throat. 

Sometimes, Guatemala and Eagle's Nest seem like a different life ago, a different world. But it's not. Those sweet kids are still there, waiting.
We must keep fighting for them, praying for them, adopting them.
The Lord will not leave them as orphans, but we're a huge part of making sure that promise is true for them in this life!

On Poverty

According to my Nutrition class textbook:
Malnutrition- a state of health that occurs when the body is improperly nourished.
This can be in the form of undernutrition and overnutrition.

I'm in a basic Nutrition class for my Health Studies minor, and I am absolutely loving it. I have dreamed of getting married and running my own home, budgeting for groceries, and cooking healthy meals for my family for years- and now it's actually happening! So that has put an even greater purpose in this class. I have also had the idea of teaching Nutrition classes in Spanish someday, so that makes me excited as well.

However, as I listen and take notes on what we should and shouldn't eat, what makes a balanced diet, how many grams of protein we need, my head and my heart keep wandering. They wander to the children in Africa who are starving, they wander to the children at the Manna feeding program at Eagle's Nest in Guatemala, I think about the mommas in Haiti whose children die if the mothers aren't properly nourished enough to provide breastmilk. Thousands upon millions of people didn't eat at all today. And here I am, learning about how I should best feed myself so I don't get fat or get heart disease.

So in the past week, my heart has been torn. I'm torn between the passion I have to take care of my body, and later the bodies of my family. I want to cook wholesome foods, and eat in a way that preserves my health for the furthering of the Kingdom. Yet the other part of me is crying inside for the poor and the needy. As cliche as that phrase is, we MUST realize that this is real. 14% of the people in our country alone are concerned about where their next meal is coming from. At the same time, we have people who are sitting at their kitchen tables eating cheap potato chips, and children with nothing but skin and bones in Africa eating the skin of a potato as their only food for the day.

It's in these moments that I hate inequality. I despise injustice. I cringe at the trays of food poured into the garbage every night in my own cafeteria. My stomach turns as I fill myself with fresh fruits and vegetables, remembering that there are those who go with nothing but garbage gleaned from the streets. Why, Lord?

In the midst of my troubled heart, I'm trying to focus on the fact that God is sovereign, and that for some reason, He has placed me in a place of plenty. He has placed me in a class where we discuss good nutrition, that I might take this knowledge and use it for His glory. Perhaps I will adopt a malnourished child, perhaps I will manage an orphanage, perhaps I will teach nutrition classes to those who don't know how to provide wholesome meals to their families. I don't know, but I'm trusting that our God does know. So I rejoice in the blessings, and thank Him for His provision, determined not to waste even a minute.

Goin' deep....

I've been writing this post in my head for several days now, and it will definitely take several days to catch up on my writing based on my limited amount of free time (I miss writing so much- hoping to get back to a blogging schedule here soon!). But anyway, as I've mulled this post over in my head, I keep going back to the Steven Curtis Chapman song from Jr. High Dive.

You all remember it, don't you? "I'm divin' in, I'm goin' deep, in over my head I wanna be, caught in the rush, washed in the flow, in over my head I wanna go. The river's deep, the river's wide, the river's water is alive, so sink or swim...I'm divin' in!" It's definitely not the most theologically, gospel-rich song. BUT- it was a blast to sing in Jr. high, and I feel like it's a good way to describe life right now.

I finished my first full week of school last week, and I was definitely "goin' deep" so to speak. I'm taking 16 credit hours, all of which are fairly tough classes. My Spanish class is entirely in, well, Spanish, which isn't surprising. My heart was a mess walking into the classroom, and I was so afraid of how inadequate and unprepared I would find myself. Instead, the Lord in all His goodness chose to do the exact opposite, and I walked out of class that day with HOPE and a JOYful heart. My campus ministry community has fallen back into the rhythm of fellowship, and I found myself having deep, stretching, challenging, growing, and encouraging conversations within the first few days. Sweet times of prayer with dear friends have set a theme for the year. We are hungry for more of the Lord, and we are ready to dig deep. To go deep into the Word, to go deep into our hearts as the Spirit challenges and convicts, to go deep into the lives of others, to go deep into continuing the ministry that Jesus started 2,000 years ago.

If this doesn't make your day...

I don't know what will!

If Spencer and I are ever so blessed to have a sweet Asian daughter half as cute as this, I won't ever be able to stop smiling. Someday :)

An anchor to the soul

I've had Hebrews 6 in my head the past couple days about hope as an "anchor to the soul." I've been reminded several times in the past week that life here on this earth is not secure. People let you down, your plans fail. And there is absolutely no way to guarantee success, or a painless life. We are left to trust God, and this can be very scary.

In Hebrews 6 it's talking about the certainty of God's promises. That section starts off remembering God's promise to Abraham, that he would be fruitful and multiply through all the earth. As a "seal" to his promise, he made an oath, which the Bible says is final for confirmation." God wanted to "show the heirs of promise the unchangeable character of his purpose." How incredible is that statement? The unchangeable character of his purpose, his heart. Though our world is not secure, HE IS.

And because it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.

We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul...a hope that enters into^(AF) the inner place behind the curtain, ²⁰where Jesus has gone^(AG) as a forerunner on our behalf....

I want to learn what it means to hold fast to the hope set before us. Because this week, I have not been doing that very well. And I want to not only hold fast to this hope externally, but in the deepest part of my heart as well. I believe that if, through the grace and strength of Christ alone, I learn to make this hope my anchor then it will in turn be reflected in my attitude and the way I respond to situations.

Lord, I praise you for this beautiful hope. Thank you that Jesus went behind the curtain for our behalf, that we are clean, and that we have hope through the resurrection and 2nd coming. I pray, Father, that you would teach me what it means to hold fast to this hope. Show me what it means to live with that hope as an anchor. I invite you into my heart to do your great work within me, and I pray that you would do the same within the global Church as well. I love you.

Food for the mind and soul.

Feed your soul with this Scripture from Lamentations 3:22-26:

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
²³they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
²⁴ "The LORD is my portion," says my soul,
"therefore I will hope in him."

²⁵The LORD is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul who seeks him.
²⁶ It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD.

Feed your mind today with this definition of a true woman:

A true woman is willing, serious, and determined to reflect the beauty and heart of Christ to her world. She seeks to live a God-centered life, trusting Him and saying "Yes, Lord!" She knows this is only possible by His grace, and seeks to do so in community. (http://www.truewoman.com)

Wedding Dress

I’m trying on wedding dresses on Monday, and I am very excited. I have one picked out, on sale, and the store has it in stock. All of this wedding dress talk has really got me thinking. I’ve always loved the song “Wedding Dress” by Derek Webb, and I encourage you to listen to it before continuing to read.

“I am a whore I do confess, I put You on just like a wedding dress and I run down the aisle, run down the aisle. I’m a prodigal with no way home, I put You on just like a ring of gold and I run down the aisle, run down the aisle, to You.”

As I sought the Lord at the conference this past week, He graciously brought all my cluttered thoughts into one broad theme, and that is my identity. I’ve been reading books and articles recently about Godly womanhood, and a burden has been growing in me to foster that Godliness both in myself and in other women.

So I get to thinking about a wedding dress. Our clothing, our uniform helps create our identity. If we work at McDonald’s, we’ll wear a hat with the big yellow arches. A doctor wears a lab coat. A mom might wear yoga pants and an adoption t-shirt (okay maybe not…just had to throw that in there) J But in any case, our clothing helps to define us, and gives a little glimpse of who we are and what we do. When you see a beaming woman in a gorgeous white gown, she looks like a princess, and you know that she is a bride. She is going to walk down the aisle to her husband. The white is a symbol of purity, something that has lost tremendous value in the past 50 years, and it makes my heart ache. Regardless, the wedding dress is the outward evidence of a bride.

While I absolutely cannot wait to find that perfect dress, I am far less concerned about that than what is on the inside. What is my inward evidence of being a bride-to-be. Any bride can put on a dress and walk down an aisle to be married. But when that ceremony is over, she takes that dress off and she is not only a woman but a wife. When we become Christians, we become a part of the Church, which is the Bride of Christ. In one of my workshops last week, they gave us 3 qualities of the Bride of Christ which should in turn be possessed by women of the Lord.

1. Beautiful- think and act beautifully. This means grasping on to the identity which is found in Christ with both hands, believing it with your head and your heart.
2. Confident- This attribute stems from the first one. Your confidence in your beauty as a Daughter of the King should in turn be reflected in your actions. When others see you, they should see something different about you- a peace and rest about who you are as a person, and a confidence in your ability to be used by the Lord.
3. Unshakeable hope- oh how beautiful these words are. We possess an unshakeable, unwavering hope that cannot be taken from us. Let me repeat that. It CANNOT be taken from us. I cannot tell you how many times I have let that be snatched away from my hands. A negative comment, a frustrating number when I step on the scale, a doubting professor, a disappointment. We are faced with these things everyday. For that matter, my first look in the mirror in the morning can dictate whether or not I claim that hope for today. But- if we claim that beauty from Christ, and with confidence believe it regardless of what the day brings, we will have this unshakeable hope.

So on Monday, I’ll be whisked away into every girl’s dream. I’ll try on dress after dress, I might cry when I find the right one, and I’ll truly feel like a bride. But in my heart of hearts, I know that this dress is only temporary, only an outward fixture of that big day. In the end, I am a woman of the Lord, a Princess Warrior, a Daughter of the King, and I have a lifetime of marriage to look forward to when the make-up is taken off and the dress is gone. Just as we don't want to slip on our identity as "Christian" and slip it off again, I do not want to just slip on the wedding dress and call myself a bride. Our roles as Godly women go much deeper than this.

As I seek the Lord’s face for what this season holds for me as a bride-to-be, I’m asking him to mold me, and put me through His refining fire, that I might come out on the other end a beaming woman clothed in the purity of Christ. And I long for this for every woman who is sitting staring at their computer screen reading these words. Truly. I care for your heart, I long for women to embrace our place in this world, the identity that God has given us. Will you join me on this journey of seeking the Father’s heart in a world that calls for the opposite of a gentle and quiet spirit with inward beauty? I believe that He has so much for us.

"but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. ⁵For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves."

1 Peter 3:4-5

"Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised."

Proverbs 31:30

Making changes....

I spent the past 5 days at the National Student Conference in Evansville, IN.

I came back feeling so incredibly refreshed and very challenged all at the same time.

I spent hours in workshops, and then spent the afternoons journaling, writing poetry, and reading the Word. The Lord met with me. Encouraging, convicting, changing, growing me.

Because of this, I am so burdened to allow His hands to make changes.

Never do I remember longing so much to be molded by Him.

My heart is yearning to be the woman that He wants me to be, not the one that the world tells me to be.

I am asking Him to come and shape me into the daughter, sister, fiancee/wife, friend, student, worker, servant that reflects our Creator.

First up- I went through my blogs tonight. Kept the ones that the Lord is using to grow me, and deleted the ones that I just read for fun. Less time on the computer= more time in the Word.

Tomorrow- Update my bank account. I had done really well at logging everything I spent money on. But recently...well....I've just been a little busy. Spain, wedding planning and stuff, ya know :) But when I don't keep an eye on what I'm putting my money to, it's so easy to spend it on things that I don't need instead of putting it towards things that God needs me to put it to.

Little by little, change is coming as the Lord's gentle hand moves in me.

2 weeks.

2 weeks ago, he got down on his knee and slid a ring on my finger.

Ever since, life has been a whirlwind!

I have become the girl who catches herself staring at her hand, just to make sure the ring is still there, and to do a little dreaming about the big day.

I've become the girl who cries about whether or not to have a DJ.

I've become the girl who pulls out the post-it note pad from her purse to randomly jot down ideas for the wedding, or a task for the to-do list.

Oh yes, the wedding planning is in full speed!

But the beautiful thing about it, is that in 301 days, I will be a bride blessed beyond measure.

The Lord has been showing me so many things as I prepare my heart for this journey.

More blog posts to come :)

Roses....and a ring!

This may be one of my most exciting blog posts....so sit back and enjoy! :)

I've grown up looking at this steeple. I remember feeling so special when I got to go on my first "tour" of the steeple with one of the church dads before the building was constructed. Little did I know just how much of my life would be shaped by this church and the people in it. Little did I know I would grow up with the man who would be my husband. Little did I know that I would fall in love watching him pray with our youth group, selflessly serve, and be a leader. But God did. And when He said that He had good plans for me, plans for a hope and a future, His promise was true. Why do I ever doubt Him?

I have dreamed and prayed for the man that I would walk down the aisle to someday. I prayed that He would bring us together when the time was right, that we would be able to further the kingdom better together than we can apart. Last night, Spencer took me on a "6-month anniversary date." So I got dressed up, we took a picture, and drove to a restaurant we had gone to in high school. On our way back, we had to stop by the church to drop off a letter. While we were inside, the steeple door just happened to be open, and he suggested we go up to take a look for old-times sake. I agreed, and as soon as I climbed the ladder to the landing, there was a Guatemalan blanket laid out on the floor with candles and a bouqet of roses. He got down on his knee and asked me to marry him. And, of course, I said yes :)

I now have a ring made with the stones of his great-grandmother's ring, and I couldn't be more proud to be representing that family. I would have been happy with a plastic one from Target so this is more beautiful than I could have asked for.

But the ring is merely a symbol. It's a symbol of the bonds that have been formed over the years through Christ. First by a friendship that was kindled into something deeper and long-lasting. It's a symbol of the new call that the Lord has added- wife (well, not quite yet. But next summer). The more I read about women, the more I learn that humans were created for marriage, as a representation of the Church as the bride of Christ. Our identity as women is founded in this, and it's a huge role to fulfill, one that I will fail at frequently. Yet just as we are imperfect, so is the Church- and God's grace is SO much bigger!

My mouth hurt from smiling last night, and it does today too. My heart is full of joy and expectation for what the Lord has in store for us. I do not deserve this gift, I do not deserve to be the bride of my high school sweetheart, a man who has grown to be so strong in the Lord. But yet, God chose to give it to me anyways, and I take it with open hands, ready to take this next step in this journey of faith!

Follow-up

Ladies, thank you SO much for your sweet feedback from my post yesterday. I am so excited to know I am not alone in this passion and burden for biblical womanhood. And I'm really eager to see what the Lord will do with this in the future. He is raising up a generation of women who love Jesus first- that is beautiful!

As a sort of "follow-up," I thought I'd post a couple things the Lord put in my path.

First, I had seen Elisabeth Elliot's Let Me Be a Woman this past spring when I was browsing Amazon for some books. So I ordered it, and just got the chance to sit down yesterday and read some of it. I just knew God was smiling when I opened that book. It is all about being a Godly woman in all stages of life- single, married, parent, etc. It was so encouraging to have that this week, as I feel like with every page I am being fed more truth from the Word about who I am and what I am called to be as well as being encouraged and convicted. This is a must-read, and I can guarantee you the entire thing will be underlined when you're done :)

Secondly, my youth pastor's wife gave me a couple blogs to look at when we were discussing healthy cooking. I love experimenting with yummy recipes that are healthy, and I also have a sort of a habit (some may call it an addiction) of reading blogs by moms with big families :)

So I've been perusing these 2 blogs, collecting some potential recipes, and reading inspirational posts on life, love, marriage, and family. Obviously, I'm not at the stage of life yet where these things are directly pertinent, but the Lord uses each season to shape and prepare us. So, I thought I'd share them with all of you lovely ladies as well:

http://www.heavenlyhomemakers.com

http://www.passionatehomemaking.com

You're gonna' love 'em! The only thing that could be better is if they'd adopted hehe :)