holiness not happiness

well, my philosophy of marriage has always been that it is more about holiness than it is happiness...( and don't jump to any conclusions,...our marriage isn't just about duty or doing what you're suppossed to do...or lacking happines...) our marriage is wonderful. But i still think marriage isn't always easy and it isn't something you can opt out of or just leave when you don't feel 'in love' anymore. i think love is a choice, it's a choice we make all the time, like tonight for instance i was mad at mike and he was mad at me and the details don't really matter i just felt like in that moment when iw as mad at mike God was asking me to show him love anyways, (even if mike didn't notice) that i had to do things that would show my love for him and my motivation had to be love not spite., So i made him tea and i washed the dishes for him(cause he's the one who does dishes..i make cook , he cleans..) but anyways, there were lots of dishes today cause i made soup and breakfast and last night's cups and dishes.So i did it, i made him tea and i did the dishes and finished dinner and it isn't so much that anything radical happened to us it's just that i felt like God was speaking to me again that marriage is not about happiness but about holiness.....and look i found this book cover that says the same thing ( i had the idea before i saw the book...) but i think it's true. and i haven't read that book but i probably will one day because i definitely don't have this thing figured out but i really do think anyone getting married or married i think we all have to remember that we are called to love unconditionally ....we are not called just to love our husbands/wives when we feel like it or when they make us happy...it isn't a score card, and life isn't fair, no matter what love is a choice that we have to make and to be unconditional in the love that we give. so those are my thoughts for the night.....

beauty

i feel like this is my journal and i just have some thoughts from today.
rest is good. God is amazing, He blesses us even before we are obedient. He is faithful and He trusts us. I just feel guilty often because i feel like God is longing for us to pursue him....and that we don't..i don't ..sometimes i feel so lazy or i get caught up in what i'm doing that i don't really make huge efforts to pursue Him. And i'm realizing more and more that that is a longing inside of me, to be pursued, by my husband, by people who want to get to know me, by friends.....i want to feel important enough for someone to make an effort and i think that is how God feels as well, He doesn't want to just be somone who gives us what we want all the time, because He truly wants relationship with us, He wants us to seek him out.....
i just want to quote wild at heart because it makes so much sense..
"After years of hearing the heart-cry of women, i am convinced beyond a doubt of this: God wants to be loved. He wants to be a priority to someone. How could we have missed this? From cover to cover, from beginning to end, the cry of God's heart is, 'Why won't you choose me? ' It is amazing to me how humble, how vulnerable God is on this point. 'You will find me,' says the Lord, 'when you seek me with all your heart' (Jer 29:13) In other words. 'look for me, pursue me- i want you to pursue me' Amazing. As Tozer says. 'God waits to be wanted.'

i'm back. and there have been some changes

well, sorry that i have not been able to keep updated lately. we have been away at the Go Conference and it was so good. Honestly it has been the best conference i have been to in awhile. Especially since i was helping so much and running around, it was still enjoyable and honestly it felt like all the hard work was definitely worth it! I think people's lives were changed, or at least challenged! i know mine definitely was. And it turned out that me and jamie ended up leading worship for most of the conference as well and actually i enjoyed it. More than i have enjoyed leading worship in a long time, i think that something was stirred up inside me again. i feel more alive than i have in awhile, i feel more motivated to do missions, i feel like i finally have new ideas and new motivation to see things happen. So overall i would say that this Conference definitely changed me. it sounds so simple, but honestly, it did and i can't even explain all the changes...but they are more like God woke me up again. yes that's it. God woke me up! and a fun thing happened...i got my hair cut! shorter than it has been in a long time, and i actually kind of have bangs ( a fringe) So here's the picture of me with my new hair! and i feel like a new me again.

a million little pieces

we all have choices. choices to trust. choices to love. choices to fight or choices to let go. everyday i feel like i am met with these choices. what do you think is the choice that is the hardest to make everyday? i think mine is to choose to trust and not keep my heart to myself.

i watched oprah today and at the very end she talked about this book and just the title describes how i feel lately..i feel like i'm in a million little pieces. really. but i have hope that God knows each and every piece and so He can put me all back together. and also i want it to read this book...does anyone have it?

Captivating......

well we had our first Captivating group tonight and i loved it. of course there will be no details for those of you who weren't there, but it was awesome. There is something about just coming together as women and being real that brings me life. i've realized that there is something in me that longs for friendships to be real. i feel like to have a true friend you must be real with one another and a friendship isn't just about 'happy' times and a friend isn't someone who just tells you what you want to hear. Friendship means so much more than that, at least to me it does. So i'm looking forward to what God has ahead for us as a group. I think that He will do things that we can't even really imagine right now. I think that this is the way it is meant to be..as a community going through things together, letting God speak to us and challenge us to be women of God. And to discover what it truly means to be women of God. i think if women were truly women of God as we are meant to be and men are the men of God they are meant to be, we are to compliment each other in a way that truly shows the glory of God. We are a better picture of who God is when each men and women are living as God meant them to live and treating each other with love and respect for who we are, not belitting each other's sex. We are to be warriors with each other, not against each other. So i'm exicited about this journey towards being a woman of God and i'm so excited that I have a group of women who want to go through this with me.

See Beyond

today was one of those days when you don't even realize how much there is inside of you until you start to talk to someone and then all this stuff just pours out of you...like today, when i was talking to pam, all the sudden i just started to sharing all these things that were going on inside my head. alot of it relates to what i felt yesterday when i wrote in my blog...and i guess alot of those feelings are alot deeper than i realized and maybe God is stirring me to feel again. this picture is taken in scotland and just on the other side of the grass is a drop off into the North Sea....beautiful cliffs, but you wouldn't necessarily know that just looking at the picture because we don't always know what's just beyond - just beyond what we can see.

i'm not sure so sure i like change. i like it when it's my idea. otherwise i'm not a big fan. i'm thinking of getting my hair cut and that's a huge change for me. my hair has been long as long as i can remember...and i like it that way, but lately i've actually been really looking forward to doing something different because the truth is ..i feel like i am a different person. being back in vancouver is obviously different than i thought it would be and in reality i'm probably more different than i realized i'd be and so i'm not sure where that leaves me exactly. i went to sleep and couldn't sleep again tonight, last night i slept wonderfully though,...lots on my mind tonight, lots in my head. i feel like i need clarity ... i think i'm mostly confused about life....how it changes and morphs into all these different things, some things so good. like getting married..and some things are just gradual changes and they are harder to deal with..like because i'm married now and with my friends again i find it harder to balance time with everyone. and being married means you can't just go and do whatever you want whenever you want...but the good part of that is that you always have someone..a constant friend, a best friend. hard changes for me are my 'roles' like where do i stand with people, or what is my place in things. i think i'm confused about identity..wondering if i get my identity from what i do...or wondering if it's part of who God made me to be, to want to know what my purpose is..i don't want to waste my life..more than anything i want the changes in my life to be drawing closer to God.or just always seeking Him, i hope the changes involve me being refined, me letting myself go and God become more and more in my life..and realizing that He has made me to be who i am for a reason,
so....... how do i live as He as made me, with the passions and purposes He's given me, not being apathetic- not thinking my life is my own - not being lazy..but moving forward into the role He has called me and being willing to change for Him alone and not being willing to change to please any man. so that all sounds great..doesn't it?? i don't know, i just think there are more changes ahead...big and small..like my hair and what my life is going to look like. thoughts anyone?

coffee or sleep?

i haven't slept well in this house yet..isn't that a bit strange? well except one night. but it's been awhile. and i'm getting more and more tired. i hope tonight is the night when i can sleep well and wake up refreshed. i hope that tonight i really really sleep. i even went away for the weekend and there i slept fine, i came back here and last night i hardly slept at all.....i really really would like sleep. in peace. like where you actually feel rested, i feel like i can't even type anything intelligent at this moment, cause my brain is on hold. So i'm just going to climb into bed, read for a little bit and hopefully drift off into peaceful sleep and wake up tomorrow with a whole new perspective on life..and i really hope the sun comes out too..(that always helps) and i'll have my morning coffee regardless of whether i slept well or not....

hope and hair

well...last night i had this crazy dream that me and my friend jamie were washing our hair ( in a sink or something...) and she was washing her hair and big clumps of hair were coming out of her head so she was warning me about being careful when i wash my hair because big chunks of hair were really coming out of her head,....so in the dream i proceeded to wash my hair and big chunks were falling out.....so i shared that this morning was my friends at our prayer meeting and Audrey informed me that that means i am stressed.
so then they prayed for me, Got some encouraging words, some pictures...and some challenges.....one of them was to Rise Up and Bless the Lord...and to remember that God knows me more..and that i am the not-forgotten one...and to remember passion and purpose....
so that was good.and today has been up and down, my friend jamie is very very sick and i love her and it hurts to see her in pain, so i went with her to the doctor today and God was good to her, he gave her great doctors and i feel like i can trust her into God's hands....but you know days go up and down, and right now i'm frustrated...i can't really tell you why except i have this frustration inside me that i don't always know what to do with...life is unpredictable, you don't always have a choice what it throws at you....but i guess in the end, God is worth worshipping either, He still the only one with ALL the answers, so He's the one i should be talking to....He's still guiding us, but sometimes i worry that I'm like the israelites and forget all of God's goodness to me, i don't want to be like that..so in the midst of my frustration, anger, sadness I will praise God! I will trust that He loves my friends, my husband, my family even more than i do...i will praise Him..even when I don't understand ( because if i could understand God, what would be the point?? ) so yeah, this is somewhat rambling again, but i'm just not sure how where this is all going....so i guess i will go to sleep and pray that God speaks to me, that He draws near to me because I need Him..i desperately need Him. the picture above i took..and i call it 'Hope'

weak in the knees

yesterday was our anniversary and it was beautiful. one year of marriage. it's amazing how love grows and evolves. How much you can love someone and even when you love them so deeply there seems to always be room to love 'more'. it's the little things that are amazing about love. it's growing together and learning..it's sacrificing for each other, learning to be committed to each other in ways that seem insignificant yet when they are significant to the person you love you are committed to them. i love mike for so many different things, and i don't just love him for how he makes me feel, or because he loves me - i love him for who he is but i do love the way he loves me. today i stayed home from work cause i was sick and i ended up watching the notebook and cried so hard at the end, cried more than i have in a long time..it was strange, i felt like i couldn't even stop myself from crying if i'd wanted to. but still what stands out the most in life is not really that you might love and then be hurt because of it, or that if you love someone and they die that you'd be so sad because of it, i think one of the saddest things in life is not having loved at all....not letting yourself draw close to someone because of your own fear, what we remember most in life is the love we did have..the love we did find - in friends..in our family...in our close relationships - in the little things. every day i love mike more. every day we have the choice to keep loving even when the hurts come, or we can choose to ignore love and then live a very dull life filled with not much hurt or sadness and not much love either. I hope today you choose to love - it's worth it.

i'm tired. i feel like i've been baking for hours. i got up this morning, had to go to the store to ge tthe ingredients for tonight's thanksgiving dinner and then the store i went to didn't have them all, another store was closed and then finally i got all my groceries and came home and got to work making the pies and now 4 hrs later (then when i got up) i'm finally done with all of it and can sit down and relax. i'm looking forward to eating dinner tonight, yummy turkey and pies that i made and then coming home and watching a movie in the lounge. i want to watch crash, i've seen it once, but i really want to see it again...it's not really a relaxing movie but it makes you think. so hopefully that will be the rest of my day. not really any deep thoughts here just some minor ramblings. have a happy thanksgiving. and tomorrow we'll be celebrating our FIRST anniversary tomorrow.

a place of our own

well, sorry i haven't blogged in awhile, we have been busy and we just moved places so we now have internet in our new place! So, we moved in to Ang and Leigh's place ( friends from ywam) on Wednesday and we are sharing their place with them for a few days...sharing with newlywed's....it's fun. i think we'be both tried to give each other space and so we haven't seen each other much. But we really like them and we are so grateful to be renting their place for the next three months..so this is our home. it was so fun to unpack. we hadn't unpacked most of out bags since we got here ( which was over a month ago) So, now we have a big bedroom and we have put our clothes in drawers -a novelty. i'm feeling more at home, feeling a little more relaxed. work has been really busy and that hasn't been so much fun. i woke up one morning and really i'm really glad that the conference that i'm helping to plan is going to be over soon and then hopefully i can move onto other ministry things that i enjoy. i'm still asking God to show me what I am meant for here, what is it that He has brought ME here for. What impact can I make on people? What can I do? these are all questions i have and keep asking and so i think God will open things up and show me as i keep moving forward and keeping seeking Him. But i definitely don't want to get caught in the office cycle....( it's not really like that now.....but i thought it was funny anyways. )

Weddings....

Today, me & mike and jamie & craig went looking for a wedding venue for them today. we found this beautiful place, i hope that they get married there. We saw the banquet room all decorated for a wedding and it was so beautiful...it reminded me of my wedding. I really did have such a great time at our wedding. It's almost been a year. Ten more days and we'll have been married one year. I can't believe all that has changed in a year, we moved to scotland, we moved back here, we lived with my parents for months, we have traveled all over with outreach teams and other things. Alot has happened in a year and i'm just so greateful that no matter where i've gone i've been able to be with mike. How we will always have each other, we'll always be 'home' when we're with each other and we just have to make wherever we are our home. So...it's been a good day. remembering our wedding day.....a beautiful fall day, the leaves of the trees turning brilliant colors, crisp air...and love in the air........