Thursday, August 28, 2014

august, a list

 

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eating:
not enough.

loving:
my husband… duh.
my kitties.

reading:
John 14-17 over and over again.

listening to:
kittens purring.
old Taylor Swift songs.

watching:
the first maple leaves fall.

exercising:
to Jillian’s Hard Body—new fave.

following:
Masterchef Season 5.

making:
crusty bread.

waiting:
to hear God speak.

missing:
my other three homes (here, here, and here).

working on:
writing a beginning ballet curriculum.
outlining a new writing project.
building my photography business.
abiding in Jesus.

thankful:
for my husband’s godly example.
for my family.
for the Word of God.

praying:
for an eternal perspective on the many things wrong with this world.

Sunday, August 24, 2014

six months

 

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Six months ago—February 22, 2014—I got to marry the best and truest man I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing.

I was told a lot of things before I got married. Some said it was going to be the best, most beautiful experience of my life; others suggested it would be a disappointment, a kind of living death that would leave me with regrets. The feminist culture of our society and the media were not on my side. I went into it with much trepidation, but even more faith—knowing without doubt that God had a plan for the two lives that Sam and I were about to make into one.

Six months isn’t a long time compared to “till death do us part,” and I suppose a lot of people will wave off my words here by labeling them part of the “honeymoon phase,” but even so I’ve learned a thousand things about marriage and about life since then. The first and most important: feminist culture, the media, and anyone who has been influenced by them to think that marriage is a form of prison is wrong.

I love being married. I love the man I married. I love that I get to see him every day and have a slumber party with him every night. I love when he’s sitting on the couch doing bills or something while I work in another part of the house—because I love just knowing that he’s there. I love our conversations about politics, theology, and world events. I love it when he loves what I make for dinner. I love our “dates” to the Costco food court and our walks through the neighborhood and our times together in prayer.

I love that I am living out one of God’s greatest gifts to His children—the opportunity to model a miniature replica of His relationship with us.

It’s hard sometimes. I can be difficult and so can he. Living in a completely new area where I don’t have many friends yet can be lonely (especially as an introvert). Sometimes I really feel like I have no idea what I’m doing, and maybe it’s true—but I never lose faith that God does.

To the unmarried who might be reading this: Marriage is beautiful, and so much fun that you sometimes feel almost naughty! But never count on a spouse to fill the preexisting gaps of your heart. Marriage won’t automatically relieve you of your loneliness, cure you of your self-pity, or fill the hole that belongs only to God.

To the newlyweds: It’s okay to be lonely and sad sometimes. Many, many people will look at you and assume that your life problems have been solved because you found The One, but you and I know that’s not true. Maybe you had to readjust to a new place or maybe you’re just trying to feel out your new role in your old friendships—either way, marriage brings change and change brings a lot of difficult emotions with it. You don’t have to be happy all the time.

To the long-married: Have patience with we who are breaking this ground for the first time. Remember what it was like in those early days for you. If it was all sunshine and roses, I’m very impressed and you should comment your secret below… but I rather doubt it, because two unrefined sinners living in close quarters is bound to raise storms eventually! So if you see us in tears now and then, don’t worry; we aren’t having second thoughts about our marriage, we’re only pulling through some of the hard things that came with it. And meanwhile—teach us by example! We have a lot to learn. :)

Happy six months to my beloved husband and best friend! And here’s to sixty+ more years.

:)

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P.S. I will post more wedding pictures soon—I’m still waiting on my digital files to arrive in the mail from George Street Photo & Video (long story on why they’ve taken so long…more on that in a future post).

Monday, August 18, 2014

two years later: life lessons from my first weeks in gcbi

 

So, two years ago I had just moved into this sort of smelly, very hot 1920s hotel building in downtown Sebring, Florida. There, I would spend ten months studying the Bible from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22—but the things I learned definitely didn’t relate solely to theology and ministry, especially in my first few weeks! A lot of these things I have shared with few people in detail, but I dedicate them to my sister Hannah, who will Lord willing go to GCBI someday and hopefully make fewer mistakes than I did.

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i. the world is a lonely place.

Adventuring solo across the United States is all well and good in novels… but in all honesty there is nothing glamorous about being completely alone in a crowd of people. There were horrible goodbyes, long waits in the security lines, the hassle of getting luggage to the right place with no one to help me, sitting airborne in a tight space with a stranger at either shoulder and a lump in my throat that no one around me would understand. It’s just no fun.

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ii. any excitement you had about leaving home for the first time will dissolve into tears at some point—maybe for days or weeks.

I’m sure there are some people who can leave home and be unaffected by it (in fact I think my roommate was one of them), but not me. I cried when I said goodbye to my brothers and sisters, I cried when I said goodbye to Sam, and I cried again when I said it to Mom and Dad at the airport. I cried when I watched Mount Hood fade away over our northward wing. I cried while I sat on the plane writing in my journal, asking questions like “What do I think I’m doing?” When I finally arrived in Orlando, I thought I was done crying, but once I’d gotten through baggage claim and found Kirsten and Sara and gotten in the backseat of the Prius with a load of toilet paper headed toward Sebring, I could think again and therefore I could cry again. I cried when I called Mom and Dad to tell them I was alive. I cried when I was standing in my new dorm room alone to unpack. I think I made it through Gabe’s spaghetti dinner without crying, but as soon as the GCBI building went dark and I was alone in bed, I cried like I’m pretty sure I’ve never cried before.

Then—for the next several weeks—I got through every day by knowing I could call Mom any time, and boy did I. And cried every time.

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iii. don’t set too much store by appearances.

Disclaimer: Some of my first impressions of my fellow classmates did turn out pretty accurate, I think. At least I don’t remember being surprised by the way they ended up. Except in the case of my roommate.

It started with some innocent Facebook creeping. By going through her pictures, I decided that Hannah was probably a tiny bit on the snobby side and wouldn’t deign to be friends with me. Then, when I actually met her (having just found that she was MOVING INTO MY ROOM), she brought in so. many. clothes. and I was like, Oh great, she’s going to be completely preppy and unbearable.

Needless to say—I was completely wrong. And after a couple of sarcastic exchanges (sarcasm is her getting-to-know-you language) we became inseparable friends. To this day, she’s the only classmate I regularly keep in touch with and visit in Pennsylvania as often as I can.

(To be fair—she also had a pretty bad first impression of me. It just so happened that I hadn’t brought NEARLY enough pairs of shorts with me to survive the Florida heat, so I was wearing a denim knee-length skirt the day she arrived. She immediately classified me as a “weird antisocial homeschooler.” Considering that I am an incredibly quiet person upon a first introduction, I guess her impression was somewhat justified.)

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iv. not everyone will like you.

Having spent eighteen and a half years of my life roaming one very small social circle, I was under the impression that I was an extremely likable person. I had never met anyone, that I was aware of, who didn’t like me. Nobody ever had a bone to pick with me. I was always just the easygoing type.

But pride goeth before a fall, and within a month or two of moving to Florida I came to the shocking realization that I could be the most easygoing person in the world and some personalities still wouldn’t mesh with mine. I have to be honest, this was one of the hardest lessons I’ve ever learned, and I was willing to go to nearly any length of compromise—even to the point of accepting responsibility for things I had no part in—to keep the peace. But once I figured out that other people’s attitudes weren’t my job to fix, life got a lot better. Be kind, but “peace at any cost” is a really flawed motto.

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v. also, don’t waste too much effort trying to make people like you.

I’m pretty sure most of my classmates liked me well enough, but all the same I felt inadequate. I had never been in such close quarters with eleven people so completely different in personality and upbringing than myself, and I felt like I had to try to adhere to the traits of each one of them. Some of it was unconscious—for example, after ten months of sharing a room with my louder and more confident counterpart, Hannah, I definitely grew louder and more confident. But sometimes I knew that I was making a conscious effort to change myself to fit other people’s molds. I wanted to be sillier, be funnier, be blunter, be stronger, be colder. When describing me, the most creative adjective most people came up with was “nice”—and I wanted to be more interesting than that.

But what’s wrong with being nice? What’s wrong with being the compassionate one, the quiet one, the thoughtful one? What’s wrong with having different traits and interests? I wish I had known better.

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vi. when you agree to commit time out of your life to really study the Word of God, you will become excruciatingly aware of your failings.

I wasn’t expecting this at all, but it started within weeks of beginning classes. Every day felt like a new realization of how I was lacking in my walk with God. Every day I was challenged by some new area of my life that I had thought was “fine.” Some of these I dealt with quickly and easily, but others I looked at with a stubborn heart—and these brought me to crisis points in which my only choice was to finally submit my will to God’s.

For example: When I started GCBI, I was running pretty regularly every day. I enjoyed running and I knew it was good for me. But then I started feeling like running wasn’t enough. I started realizing that I was eating less healthy than at home (which I had little choice in, but it alarmed me). I noticed that I had gained weight. And I freaked out.

What followed, I can only describe as an eating/exercise disorder. Every day I ate less, and every day I worked out harder. Monday—run. Tuesday—video workout on the bathroom floor at 5:15am. Wednesday—run. Thursday—run the stairs for an hour. Friday—video workout on the bathroom floor. Saturday—run. Only on (some) Sundays did I rest.

Of course, anyone with a basic knowledge of the human body knows that it cannot work properly when it isn’t fed properly. But I felt I had gone insane. Basic science like that didn’t get through to me. All the stress and the lack of control I felt at being 3,000 miles away from home got transferred to the one thing I thought I could control: my body. God gave me a lot of wise counsel that I didn’t heed and grace time that I didn’t use to figure out my sin issue on my own, but finally—justifiably—He had to step in and get my attention.

One day I was working out as hard as ever, the next I couldn’t walk. The ligaments in my ankle were temporarily out of service completely, and oh did it hurt. I was crestfallen, angry, inconvenienced—but also somehow relieved. I was set free of my self-imposed ball and chain.

Moral of the story: the discipline of God can (and usually does) hurt. But if you learn the lesson He’s teaching you (and you will know what it is), you will find yourself drawn closer to Him than ever, and in the end you wouldn’t have it any other way.

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vii. don’t be afraid to ask for help or guidance.

This is one of my hugest regrets, and I know there are many GCBI alumni who would concur. Don’t ever say you’ll seek out guidance “later.” The time to be discipled is not “later,” it’s now. Your teachers, your dorm parents, your adoptive families—they’re there FOR YOU. They have a wealth of knowledge you wouldn’t believe. Ask for it. Ask a million questions. Go on coffee dates and lunch dates and walks to the pier. I completely screwed this up when I was in GCBI. I blame my quietness—stepping out and initiating friendships and mentorships is NOT my realm of expertise—but I wish I had sucked it up and done it anyway. I did finally seek out the guidance of Pastor Aaron and Sara Michaud toward the very end of my GCBI year, and while out of that have still come a friendship and blessing for which I am very grateful, I do wish it had all started a heck of a lot sooner.

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viii. and finally (because ending on a seven would be weird), love every single minute and forget nothing.

This is the only point on which I actually think I did okay (memories, pictures, journals—these are all huge parts of my life!). Remember: you will do this only one time in your life. Never again will you live in a dorm with a dozen other people for the sole purpose of studying the Word of God. These are relationships that will be completely unique to any others—nothing else will bind you to a group of other people like going through this challenge together will.

Take pictures. Write a journal. Blog often. Stay up late in the common room sometimes. Make every day count. As Dave Nickisch will be happy to remind you, they are numbered.

And when it’s all over and you’ve got your certificate and you’re just back from Israel and your whole life is goodbyes again, remember the first few weeks and everything God has brought you through since then. Remember how you thought you would hate it all and not be able to survive away from home for so long, and realize that God blessed your obedience beyond your imagining—and He will continue to do so wherever He takes you.

naomi, class of 2015 (part 2)

 

Naomi’s second set of portraits, as promised! I can’t even pick a favorite… can you?

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Friday, August 15, 2014

a thor and loki update

 

Loki Thor

I can’t believe they grow as fast as they do. Thor is now 4-1/2 months old and Loki is 3-1/2. They’re both up to date on all vet visits except a booster shot for Loki and a microchip for Thor. As their portraits denote, Loki’s personality gets ever crazier (he can sometimes be found entertaining himself by running around in circles on our bed, pouncing on wrinkles in the comforter) and Thor, ever mellower and fluffier (my favorite thing is watching him try to clean his tail. It’s getting so big and fluffy that he has to really wrestle with it). True to kitty nature their naps extend longer and longer every day that they get older, but they still get the big-eyed bursts of energy every night when the house cools down.

Currently they are only allowed outdoors for short, supervised periods of time. They recently acquired breakaway collars for when their outside time increases (which for the furniture’s sake needs to be soon!). They are both well aware that jumping on the dining room table and kitchen counters is off limits, but they are both perfectly happy to do it anyway regardless of the punishment. Favorite toys include the rolly-balls with bells inside them and of course their playhouse, which they routinely destroy; they also enjoy doing battle with anything that resembles a box or paper bag.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

naomi, class of 2015 (part one)

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Meet Naomi.

She’s pretty much any photographer’s dream: sweet and easy to work with, beautiful inside and out, and a perfect natural in front of the camera. I’m so excited about every. single. picture! And guess what?! There’s MORE TO COME!

I told you you would love them.

:)

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