Dealing With Disappointment

Despite this being the best week ever, I had to walk through an incredibly hard, disappointing moment yesterday, closing out a 15 month season of really good, but really challenging moments, that definitely did not end the way I expected. I guess there’s a lesson here in managing your expectations. I figured I would interrupt “love week” and write really in that moment, because sometimes really crappy things happen in the middle of really amazing things, and we get to choose how we respond to them. So hopefully something good comes out of this post, and the timing of it, that’ll be encouraging to you guys!

Harden || Strengthen

Don’t let today’s disappointments cast a shadow on tomorrow’s dreams. | Unknown

A core value that I’ve always tried to live out is to not let situations that have hurt me in the past, change the lens through which I view the future. But the mistake I made in that, is going in with the same happy-go-lucky attitude, instead of letting those situations strengthen me. Notice I didn’t say harden, but strengthen.

Disappointing moments should strengthen our resolve to do better, to be better, to not treat people the same way we were treated. Not only that, it should strengthen the esteem we have for ourselves, strengthen the value we have over ourselves, and over other people. Our goal is that we’re better from the disappointment, not worse off for it.

Building Up Walls || Setting Boundaries

It’s so easy to let a hurtful situation push you towards building up walls around you to protect yourself. Here’s the thing that a well constructed wall will do: keep the bad people out, keep the good people out, and keep you locked in. I don’t know about you, but I’m not willing to settle for 1/3, especially when it means taking myself from a place of freedom into a place of fear.

Boundaries on the other hand, are highly permeable. No one is stuck inside who doesn’t deserve to be, no one is stuck outside who doesn’t deserve to be, and most importantly, boundaries give strength to me, because I get to determine who goes where.

Bitterness || Identity 

It’s soooo easy to choose bitterness when you’ve been hurt, but I feel like it’s just not worth it. I’m not saying stuff your feelings under the rug. Yes, feel hurt, feel the sadness, feel the anger, feel whatever it is you need to feel in the moment. If you need to take a break, take a break. But, don’t let your feelings become your new normal. If you spend the rest of your life being bitter about something, you’ve kept that thing in your heart, taking up room that something much more worthwhile could have occupied.

Instead, remember who you are. Don’t let other people’s actions, inactions, attitudes or injustice change that. Don’t veer from the person you know in your heart you are. Don’t let their perceptions of you be a louder voice in your head than Yahweh’s. Don’t forget all the value you had to offer, all the hard work you put in, all the sacrifices you made that were genuinely from the heart. Don’t forget the goodness your heart held before you were in this situation, and that it still holds now, if only you take the time to remind yourself.

You have a voice. The biggest thing disappointment should teach you is to never allow yourself to lose your voice. Ever. Your voice is your power, and we are not a powerless people. Repeat after me, “I am powerful.” There is hope. There is so much hope on the horizon. There is so much better coming up ahead. The tide is about to change.

Our Love Story - Boy Meets Girl

The Woodsman’s Side

Hi there ladies and gents. I suppose you are all wondering what the story is behind how Joanne and I found life together. So, this is my perspective to the story. 

I was in transition moving from Indiana to northern Idaho, when a good friend of mine told me about this particular site that was intended for online dating, but also had enough filters to allow for one to find friendship of like faiths and personalities as well. So I got on and made a profile. After answering a bunch of questions, the site gave you matches based on compatibility percentages, so far, the closest percentage to me was only in the high 70’s. I’d talked to a few girls, but found that their profiles only said all the right things but their conversation was totally opposite. It was that way for a few weeks when one day I had decided to log on and delete the profile.

Little did I know that going online that last day was going to lead me to the woman that I am now writing about! When I logged on to delete my profile, I saw her. I saw a new profile at the very top of my page. The personality compatibility was 99%, by far the highest I had seen yet. Being very surprised to see the rating so high, I clicked on her profile to see what it could possibly have to say that matched her so close to me. It was almost too good to be true. It mentioned God everywhere! Her interests were the same, priorities of life were the same, desires were the same, pasts were very similar, future plans were the same, on and on it went, and I couldn’t help but message her and keep my profile active for a little while longer. 

I thought this was meant to be, right up until I realized she had seen my message but totally ignored me! (Later she explained the week she had had, which took some of the sting away, but still…) When she finally did respond, a day or so later, our conversation took right off. For two weeks straight, all we talked about was about our faith and what Yeshua meant to us and everything else I could think of under that umbrella. Her every answer was on the money what I was looking for. The interesting thing was that I was only looking for friendship, but I was quickly developing feelings of more interest for her. We were only on the app for a couple of days before I knew I had to get her number and find out more about this girl.

We talked all day, everyday for a couple more weeks, then started using Skype, and lost a lot of sleep because we would stay up late talking for hours. Things were going great, until this didn’t seem like enough either. I decided to come up with a plan to fly her out to Indiana to meet me in person for the first time and then meet my friends, family and fellowship group. 

I showed her around my home town in Indiana and met everyone of importance to my life there. After missing her flight home, we ended up driving cross country together to Idaho, where she met my friends and I showed her around before taking her home to California. The trip was originally intended to be for 10 days, which ended up turning into around 23 days, and it was truly the best time of my life thus far. The time with her was so great! 

We had a chance to experience everything together, or that’s what it seemed like. We had engine problems on our way to California that I had to fix myself on the side of the interstate. Then we got there only to discover that my identity had been stolen, which meant having to cancel all my cards, and being “stranded” in California, waiting for my bank to resolve the situation. We made the best out of a bad situation, and we were still together and having the best time. I was truly in love with by this time, I knew life was going to have her in it from now on, forever and always…which became the catch phrase I use on the scale of my love to her, by the way! 

After these amazing couple of weeks came the hardest part of this whole experience. The stolen money showed back up and it was now time to say goodbye and go back home. The whole drive back to Idaho I was a wreck, just reflecting on the great time we had, how much I loved her and how much I was going to miss being with her. We had talked a lot of what our days apart were going to look like and tried to come up with a plan as to how and when we would communicate with each other. 

We had to learn how to communicate in this long distance courtship and how to trust each other being thirteen hours apart. We battled through the obstacle of time and distance in this relationship to the degree of loving each other so much that we are now talking about when and how to take the next step in our love story…marriage! 

As of this day today, we are moving forward with life with each other and in a couple of weeks, my girl will be with me in northern Idaho learning how to maintain what we built in that long distance season, enjoy seeing each other everyday, and watching love grow in the order of Yahweh’s grand plan for our lives together.

There’s a couple of cool details, like her fitting qualities I had prayed for specifically with a friend a couple of months before, and ways that the Father has spoken to me about the purpose of our relationship, that I didn’t mention to keep this short, but I’ll save those stories for another day. Hope you enjoyed this…

Our Love Story - Girl Meets Boy

Joanne’s Side

Well, like most people I’ve wanted to be married and start a family for as long as I could remember and I was convinced I would be the first one to get married, right after High School graduation…well that didn’t happen, in fact the opposite happened and I didn’t even end up going on a date until I was 19! 😄 Things did not go exactly as I planned in those young teenage days.

Skipping forward through one bad relationship and plenty of bad dates, I found myself halfway across the world: new country, new culture, new lease on life and still wondering if a family was in the Father’s plans for me. Joyce Meyer said once, “God is never late, but He never seems to be in a rush either.” Have you ever just been stuck on a loop in what feels like one season with no end? Not just in singleness but maybe trying to find answers, or find healing, or get a promotion, or break an addiction? That was me, singleness was my season. I know people that get married when they’re in their 50’s, so by no means am I saying I had it rough, but man it was a struggle.

I’d fasted, prayed, made declarations, built my self-esteem, traveled the world by myself, worked, made money, lost money, made money, invested, planted, dreamed, researched, studied, learned — all the things that people say you need to do before you’re blessed with a family, and I was worn out and tired of the doing. So finally, last summer, I quit trying and doing and decided to take a break from all of that and “focus on me.” I packed up and went on a 2 week retreat, just me and no phone, no internet, no nothing. All I had was my computer, a couple of books, and a hard drive full of worship music. I didn’t pray about anything or have any agenda, I just read books, took walks, and sang my heart out to the Lord.

By the end of that summer, I wasn’t in a relationship yet, but my perspective changed and I knew the Father’s voice better than I’ve ever known it in my life. So I lived with this assurance of His plan over my life and a vision of what I believed He wanted for my spouse and for my future, but by Thanksgiving 2015, I felt restless again, and a thought came to my head, “what are you doing to put yourself out there?” The truth is you can pray until you’re blue in the face but, you will not meet anyone watching Netflix under your blankets. I did my best to start going out to different events, and gatherings, but one day, I was browsing through Tumblr and an ad for a dating app popped up. I decided to sign up for just one week and see what would happen. So I signed up, answered about 200 questions and waited.

That same week, my car engine exploded, my family was going through a hard time back home, I was having a hard time with work and things just piled up to where I was ready to pack it all up and go home and go back to my mommy, lol. So I totally forgot about this site, until Wednesday – the day before my one week trial ended, when the Woodsman, messaged me. Like I said, I’d had a rough week and I didn’t reply right away because I was planning on quitting the next day. So the next day when I went online to delete my account, I took another look at this guy, and it turned out that we had a 99% compatibility – way more than any “matches” I’d seen on the app, and the key words on his profile were almost identical to mine. (The app described you depending on your answers to the questions, and we had: kind, conservative, old-fashioned)

So I wrote him back and it was magical lol. But really, from the first conversation, it was like we knew each other forever and his questions were super intentional and he opened up from the get go. His heart and the things he said, felt like liquid gold, and I was hooked. We traded contact information pretty much the next day, and got off the app – after he’d taken his time to take pictures of all our conversations so we could remember how we met – did I mention how sweet he is?? About a week later, we started talking on Skype, pretty much all day. We’d Skype until 4AM and he’d have to wake up 3 hours later to go to work, come back from work, and we’d be back on Skype. We lost a lot of sleep, but those were the BEST days! We fell in love and I remember freaking out because I couldn’t believe this was happening after praying about it for so long! I was in love!!

A few weeks after that, I flew across the country to go meet him and his family in Indiana, and we drove cross country to Idaho, then back down to California for a couple of days. We spent probably 60 hours in the car together. I was wrong, THOSE were the best days, lol.

That’s my version of our love story, and it leads to where we are now, about to start a whole other adventure, and to be honest, there’s no one else in this world I would want to adventure with!

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Check out his side here 🙂

Love Week 2016!

This week is special to me for so many reasons. It’s my final week in California…eek! But also, by the end of this week, I get to see my love…yay! We’ve rocked this long-distance thing, but I am glad to be nearing the end of it!

Here’s a cool statistic, since being in a relationship, we’ve had probably a hundred phone calls and there’s only been exactly two times we’ve intentionally hung up without saying “I love you.” (Even though we called each other back and apologized, lol). I know that’s a corny statistic, I’ll make it even more corny by saying, my goal is to not make it 3.

Anyway, can you tell I’m excited?! And in love?! <insert heart eyes emoji>

In celebration of the week, and to channel all this excited energy, I have a couple of fun blogs lined up for this week: Our Love Story! We both sat down to write these down because when I read a couples blog, I always look for the love story first, and I’ve always wanted to do one, and now I get to do one!

So mine will post tomorrow, and D’s side will post on Wednesday. After that, we probably won’t have much going on as I disappear on a little “secret” trip, but I have some posts lined up to post while I’m away and I’ll be back next week with more!

Happy Passover 2016 (And A Quick Q&A)

Happy Passover! I hope you and your families are having an amazing week. Unfortunately, I’m still in California and had to make do with a quick home cooked meal and YouTube videos on the meaning of passover, while Derek got to celebrate with his fellowship group in Idaho with lots of good food and community.

I thought I would do a little Q&A about the heart behind this festival, because once you see the meaning behind it, (including but not limited to feasting and family togetherness ;), it takes on an entirely new significance. I for one am super excited to share this with my family and our generations to come; no not just for the lamb, but I’m gonna leave this picture right here, because food pictures make me happy 😉

Question #1 What is passover?

Biblically, Passover begins on the 15th day of the Jewish month of Nissan, which is the first month of the Jewish year that’s around March/April. The primary reason why God instituted Passover was to commemorate freedom and the exodus from Egypt after generations of slavery. This story is told in Exodus 1-15.

Exodus 12:14 And this day shall be to you for a memorial. You shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations, keep it as an ordinance forever.

The meaning behind Passover takes on an even deeper significance in the New Testament though, because here we realize that Jesus was the true Passover lamb, and that through Him, we find freedom and fullness of life – which leads to question #2 🙂

Question #2 How does this relate to Christians today?

The Old Testament Passover lamb, although a reality in that time, was just a shadow of the better and final Passover Lamb, Jesus. We were once slaves to our sinful nature, and He shed His blood to ransom us – to save us from death, the same way the lamb’s blood in the Exodus saved the Israelites from the angel of death. He gives us more imagery at the last supper 

(Mark 14:12). Raising up the bread, He said it was His body broken for us, while the wine was his blood shed for us. All in all, Passover always points to the risen Messiah.

Question #3 Hmm, k, if Passover is today, why in the world was Easter in March?!

Easter like I mentioned, isn’t exactly a holiday specified in the Bible. It originated from the First Council of Nicaea in AD 325, which, for all us non-church-history- nerds, was basically a council of Christian bishops gathered under the command of Roman Emperor Constantine I, to bring unity to a church that was growing disunited by the day.

One divisive issue at the time was that Christians at the time had to rely on the Jews to know when the Passover date would fall on, which some felt was inaccurate. So the council endorsed changing the date to a computation by the Christian community, specifically, the Catholic calendar. Which leads to question #4…

Question #4 Why Does The Date Always Change?

The calendar is based on the rotation of the earth around it’s axis (a day), the rotation of the moon around the earth, (a month: 28 & 1/2 days) and the earth around the sun, (a year: 365 & 1/4 days). That’s a lot of fractions! Not only that, if we were to do simple math on this, we’d have years where spring would land in the middle of summer, or fall in the middle of winter. In our regular calendar, this is taken care of by different months having different number of days, and having a leap year every 4 years. The Jewish calendar also has ways of compensating for these drifts. So why does the date change? In simple terms, math, fractions and compensation 🙂

Question #5 So which is it? Easter or Passover?

We’ve all heard the “what do eggs and bunnies have to do with Jesus”, and read the articles on how “christian holidays originated from pagan festivals”, so I’m not going to add my voice to that debate.

I think holidays are so important, but not in a legalistic, or ritualistic or imprisoning religious way. That’s not our Father’s heart for us. He’s the one that keeps telling us to celebrate and commemorate with week-long feasts and festivals! I would venture to guess that His heart is that celebrations would give His kids something to look forward to, a remembrance, a custom, a way to be with friends, family and community, and a way of creating memories that shape who we are.

Personally, I didn’t grow up celebrating Easter, simply because my family just didn’t, so it’s not a big leap looking forward, that my family will more than likely be “that” family that doesn’t do egg hunts or put up bunny ceramics on the mantle. At the end of the day, all I want is to celebrate the fact that Heaven’s greatest gift came to the world, and gave us the greatest sacrifice. That’s what Passover means to me and what I hope it will mean to our kids.

Well, I hope this answered a couple questions you might have had, and as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts, so comment, share, subscribe 🙂

Derek's Testimony

Throughout my life, I’ve been to many different churches – none of which ever lasted long or felt like home. I’ve always had questions about the Bible and how God works. The interesting fact was that no matter how many people I asked questions to, I never received answers that made any sense. Growing up, I understood that there was a supreme being or God or something out there greater than I was, but beyond that, I didn’t know much about religion.

As I grew older… into teen years, my family stopped going to church altogether. Sure every other year or so we’d try a new one, but it never lasted long. I had friends in church who would go to church camps and youth groups etc, and I’d join in still searching for answers. But, I remember getting told to not return to a youth group once as I gave the youth leader such a hard time with all my hundreds of questions. I started feeling like an outcast or loaner of some sort, like I didn’t fit in and like I was the only one not “getting it.”

I graduated, went to college and joined the real world with a factory job. I quickly needed to figure out what kind of man I would be. I didn’t really have good role models growing up, and all I had were examples of what no to be. I got connected to a mentor from a local church, and thought I’d found someone I could look up to, and he led me to a group of friends I considered brothers.

I remember thinking, “This is my ticket to being a great man. This will kick start my relationship with God, set up a bright future for my future family, and provide me with brothers or a support group beyond what I was used to.” Unfortunately, as happens with a lot of susceptible young people, things weren’t as they seemed, and I found myself in the middle of a world I had no control over.

Life seemed good, until I made a friend in college who went to an Apostolic Pentecostal Church. My friend told me that all the questions I had about the Bible and pertaining to God, would be answered and he invited me to check out his church. Again, I became excited to get a chance to become a genuine Christian. A man that would have answers and support to those answers and why they make sense. I built some great relationships there and would meet with the pastor every night. I lasted in this denomination for five years, got baptized there, and grew tremendously in the Word.

In my first year there, I experienced my first miracle, when during a worship session, I felt the Holy Spirit tangibly and got healed of knee pain I’d had for several years following a football injury. Through the kindness of God, I realized, all the lies I had been believing in this other world I had been living in. The Bible was clear about not doing the very things that my “friends” were about. So I ended those relationships. It wasn’t an easy process, but I knew I was in the right place and doing the right thing, because I was finally living out what the Bible says. I felt His strength and peace in such a real way through those very difficult and challenging moments, and I know without a doubt, I would not have made it through without Him.

And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. | Jeremiah 29:13

Four or five years down the line, I started really reading the Bible for myself, beyond just taking the bits that we read in church. The Bible is everything I want to live for. I learned more about the Lord than I ever had in my entire life, and I prayed that I would be able to live it out.

I’ve been blessed throughout my life to have some great workmates, and in that season, one of my workmates and I would talk about what God was teaching us and what we were learning in the Word. He gave me Torah resources to go home and check out and invited me over to meet his family and see how they live according to the truth they know. It seemed great, exactly in line with what I was reading and in line with the sources he gave me to check out.

I finally had that moment in life I had always waited for. That moment when I look up and say to myself, I finally have the truth that I will stand on before Yahweh and for my future family. I found an amazing home fellowship with like minded believers who understand truth and the Bible for what it says it is. It’s been such an incredible journey, and I’m grateful for each part of it because it’s led me to where I am now. I finally found what I was looking for.

If any of you is deficient in wisdom, let him ask of the giving God [Who gives] to everyone liberally and ungrudgingly, without reproaching or faultfinding, and it will be given him. | James 1:5 

Answered Prayer

Ladies and gents, we have found our new apartment!

The day after this post, the freaking out that ensued, and the mini night of worship that continued on my bedroom floor for the better part of that Friday night, we prayed about it and reluctantly resigned ourselves to the fact that we would have to settle for an apartment neither of us really liked. Among the things we were willing to settle for was the fact that there was no laundry on site and we’d have to schlep across town to get clean clothes. Truthfully, it didn’t matter to me, we’d be together, that’s what matters, right? Realistically though, those are the little annoyances that breed silly fights, who wants that?

Regardless, we prayed about it, got my best friends and mom to pray about it, and left it at that. Derek got a call back on Saturday morning from a place we had found online but hadn’t really considered fully because it seemed like a bit of a long shot, and they hadn’t put down what their pet policy was. We had called anyway not expecting much, but they got back to us the next day and set up a showing for Monday.

We looked into the place a little more, and it fits everything I could have wanted in an apartment. D went up to meet the guy and checked it out, while I was holding my breath and praying over and over again that it would work out. When he finally called me I was waiting to hear any sort of sign in his voice to know if it was a yes or a no, and after a couple minutes of suspense, found out it was a yes!

Blessing number one is that it’s a couple hundred dollars cheaper than our budget. Also, it’s up in the mountains, so the summer isn’t going to be brutal – that was a huge concern for me, coming from California’s 90 degree Spring(!) The space is fantastic, the area is beautiful, it really is everything, and more than I could have asked for! I’m so beyond thankful for this incredible blessing, praise God!!!

Needless to say, we are both over the moon and counting down the days!

Weekly Favorites

Blogs

This week has been all about discovering new blogs. Nothing beats the feeling of stumbling across a new blog and camping out there for a couple of days reading every post in their archive. Since I’m sort of new to the blogging world, these recommendations are basically what I want to be when I grow up 😉

homebook.blogspot.com

thestorkandthebeanstalk.com

rosemarywild.com

Music

This past week included some disappointment on the house-hunting front, and I definitely needed some time to re-connect with God and remember who holds everything together. So Friday night had me singing along to this album and being reminded that in Him is all I need.

Products

I’m trying to simplify my hair care process as much as possible and here’s where Shea Moisture comes in. Their products are definitely up there when it comes to clean ingredients, and they have so many lines, it just takes the guesswork out of trying to figure out what my hair needs when. I’ve used the Jamaican Black Castor Oil shampoo about three times now, and I have to give it credit for totally getting rid of a pesky dandruff problem I was starting to get. It’s super moisturizing and a little goes a loooong way. I just used the treatment masque from the same line today and both products smell like warm vanilla cream pie – love! We will definitely be a Shea Moisture household.

I usually use a home made olive & coconut oil blend keep my hair frizz-free, but I honestly didn’t feel the need for any more product after using the Carol’s Daughter Sacred Tiare leave-in conditioner spray. It literally reduced my hair breakage after 2 days of use. Definite thumbs up!

This was fun to do, see you guys next week!

God Will Perfect All Which Concerns You

It deserves a paragraph all of it’s own. We’ve been looking for an apartment for me for the past 3 or so months, and we’ve finally got some of the logistical issues taken care of, now it’s just a matter of finding the perfect home. Neither of us have a lot of patience, especially when it comes to the bigger things. We need a plan, we need to see things start to fall into place before we can sit back and watch them unfold. Now, we find ourselves in a place where my landlord has already found a new tenant for my room, and so by the end of this calendar month, I will be homeless.

It’s definitely taken it’s toll on me, but more so on Derek. I have to keep reminding myself that we’re on the same team, I’m not in this alone, he’s as concerned – if not more – than I am. So we take turns reassuring each other. Even if truthfully maybe neither of us feel it, one of us has to be the one to step up and say, “Hey, we’re going to be OK.” That’s what partnership looks like – one of us needs to pick up the baton, and the other person has to be the loudest, most obnoxious cheerleader in the stands.

I’ve been snippy all day, adjusting to the closing of this season and the uncertainty of the next, and in need of some answers. Most of all, I just need a hug and some love and someone to tell me that it’s all going to be OK. Wherein he took the baton, found out what’s wrong with my heart and spent 30 minutes loving me and encouraging me. Followed by texting one of my friends and my mom an emergency, “please pray” text, which brought this beautiful response…

“God will perfect all that concerns you guys in Jesus’ name.”

I’m thankful for that reminder, and it’s pushed me back to my knees until I remember that, there’s nothing that I have need of, there’s nothing He hasn’t done.

How To Survive A Long Distance Relationship

In the first few months after meeting The Woodsman, my top Google search must have been “how to survive long distance relationships”, usually read with a bowl of ice-cream on one hand, and a box of tissues on the other. When we first met, I was in ministry school in California, while he was in the process of relocating from Indiana to Idaho. Unlike most couples who are forced into long distance relationships, we chose this life. Or maybe it’s more romantic to say, this life chose us 😉

Our first date was a month after he asked me to be his girlfriend, and consisted of me flying 5 hours across the country and him driving up to Chicago to meet me. You can read more in our love-story, but the long and the short of it is, once we found each other, we knew we had to be together, and we would figure out what we needed to figure out. So our journey has definitely been unique, but in it, I’ve found 8 tips that might help someone who finds themselves in a similar situation.

How To Survive A Long Distance Relationship 

1. Take it slow. Be sure you’re protecting each other’s hearts, be prayerful and take your time deciding if this is something that will work for you and if it’s what you want. Once you both choose and resolve to do this together, nothing can stop you.
2. Pray. The Woodsman won me over the second I said, half-serious, in the middle of a conversation, “can you pray for me…”, and he stopped what he was doing, wrote down a prayer and sent it to me. Prayer has been so crucial for both of us, especially those first few months. Yahweh is truly an ever-present help in time of need.
3. Get into a routine. I know the word “routine” doesn’t exactly evoke feelings of passion and excitement, but in this season, you want to hold on to whatever form of security you can give/get from each other. For us, knowing that at the end of everyday we would talk and every morning he would be the first voice I hear, was such a lifeline.
4. Skype & text whenever possible! You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to connect over Skype. We were lucky enough to have the time to spend hours at a time on Skype after we met. After moving to Idaho, we couldn’t Skype as much so it became a special treat when we could and it really helps 🙂
5. Hope. It annoyed my friends to no end, but I was always on countdown mode to when we would see each other next. There’s a difference between wishing away your life, and living in hopeful anticipation of the future. Go out, live your life, enjoy every moment, but remember, it’s also OK to be excited for the future – it’s an exercise in faith.
6. Don’t go to bed angry. Learn to communicate and not hide things from each other. We learned pretty quickly that it’s unfair and never works out well to leave the other person to guess what you need, or how you feel if you don’t tell them. So TALK and be VULNERABLE.
7. People. Oh my word! By far the biggest challenge. You will definitely face some unsupportive people with stories of how their uncle’s cousin was in a bad long distance relationship, or the “don’t get your hopes up” people. Don’t blame people for their reactions, at best they’re just trying to protect you. I learned pretty quickly that the only voices that matter are Yahweh’s voice, the Woodsman’s voice and my voice. We’re the only ones fully invested in this relationship and who have all the information.
8. Mentorship. We are big into mentorship, and definitely invited our mentors and parents into the process. Personally, I had to create boundaries around what I was looking for. I’m already a pessimist by nature, so I needed people in my life to tell me everything would be OK, and that this was going to be an amazing journey. Their biggest responsibility was to make sure we were doing relationship right, and teaching us the skills we needed to learn, not to tell us whether or not we were going to make it.

Any more tips? Please share down below! If you have any questions or are in this season too and need some advice, feel free to chat with us!

Hello Home

After a few years of transition, I'm finally feeling like I'm on the threshold of finally being able to put some my roots down, and let me tell you, there's no feeling like it. I love adventure and exploration, and trying new experiences and all that good stuff. I have 9 countries and 4 continents under my belt, but I feel like in my life, all the adventures in the world were all me trying to find...home.

The last few years have had some great experiences, but also some really hurtful ones. Friendship was a major challenge considering that I lived in a city where every conversation was prefaced by, "If/when I move/go back home..." Even when I did try to sink some roots in to work and internships and different environments, my efforts weren't always reciprocated. I hadn't realized how steep the mountain was until I got to the top of it and looked back. This past season kind of sucked, and was also incredibly hard.

But I look back and think how much I learned about myself during these transitions and my biggest lesson of all is that places and people do not define me. Being friends with the most popular people, or having the most glamorous job, or having the latest style of clothes, doesn't define me. I finally settled on the fact that my image is created in Jesus and my identity rests on a canvas that even the broadest strokes from the hand of man can't cover.

Saying goodbye to the familiar is never easy, no matter how much you believe you want to leave. One phrase has been my anchor point, you have to say goodbye to say hello. 

After the whirlwind that the past few years have been I'm ready to say hello to home. Home still carries it's share of adventure and new experiences and challenges, but home also brings the opportunity to be firmly planted in the things that my heart yearns for: in love, in family, in covenant friendships, in repairing relationships that have been broken, in investing in forever, investing in home.

In a few short weeks, everything I own will be packed up in the back of a Jeep and driven 800 miles away, and I will be on my way to being home. Home isn't a place, or a city, home is a place where you can love and be loved. Home is being rooted. The thought of finally being home with the one I love, fills me with more peace and joy than I can even explain.

Happy Baptism Day!

A couple of weeks after we started dating, Derek and I were sitting together at a Shabbat group and I grabbed his Bible to read my portion. After I was done, I flipped over to the front of it and I noticed an inscription from his family that said, "Congratulations on your baptism, we love you, 4/10/2010." I almost fell off my seat because one of my Bibles has the exact same inscription only it was from my mom, so basically, we found out that we were baptized on the same day, of the same year, and both our families gave us Bibles. I thought that was pretty special. :-)

"Baptism" is a transliteration of the Greek word baptizo which means to immerse. In Hebrew it is referred to as a MIKVEH - an immersion. Basically it is an immersion into another substance, for the purpose of being saturated by it, such as water. The new covenant also presents the immersion of a believer "in the Spirit of God" and "with Fire." (Matthew 3:11)

When you think of water, you think of cleansing, purification, renewal and refreshment. Through the Bible, it applied to all changes of status in life and for marking transitions to new appointment or position in life. To me, baptism is an acknowledgment that Yahweh is the source of all life, and it's a commitment to live trusting in His power working in me.

So today, I'm thankful for newness of life, for second chances and for His mercies that are new every morning. I'm thankful for the little surprises that remind me that Our Father cares about the small things. Happy Baptism Day to Us!

House Hunting - Pre-Engagement Style

For the past few months, the Woodsman and I have been in the middle of house hunting. I say months because pretty much as soon as he got in his car, drove away and left me standing by the side of the street in a small town in California, in tears and too faint to walk to the door - dramatic, I know, but for real, long-distance relationships are no joke!!! Since about an hour after he drove off to Idaho, I was online looking for a house, an apartment, a room, a mattress on a floor -- anything(!), that would get me back in Idaho and back with him. So I've been house hunting for a while now, he's just recently joined the party, so this is getting serious now.

We have a definite move-in date set: the weekend after my graduation, so technically, we're all dressed up with nowhere to go. Still, nothing can damper my excitement levels.  I'll be living there alone until we get married, so it'll be my home for a little bit, but it'll also be OUR home. There's just something about looking for the place that you're going to call home with the love of your life.I wake up in the morning sometimes, and before I even open my eyes, my heart already flutters with excitement, because I have a sub-conscious countdown timer ticking away in my heart of how many days away D-day is!

There’s so many things that I know I’d be taking for granted if we didn’t go through this long-distance season: the fact that you can see each other and actually look at each other while you’re talking and not through the phone! Do you know how frustrating is to have to say, “I’m crying,” to explain why you’re quiet in the middle of a conversation?? Holding hands, saying goodnight and being dropped off at home, going to the movies, hugs, rainy days and coffee dates?! Ugh! But this is why I’m loving house hunting, as much of a pain as it is — because it means that in 52 days, the Woodsman and I will have a home to call our own – technically.

It’ll mean we can go on dates again, we can go on walks, we can go explore, we can start life and have some fun. This is funny, but it’ll mean we don’t have to use our words all the time, haha! Words are literally all we’ve had in this season. Words and good communication are some of the building blocks of our relationship and I’m so thankful that we’ve done so well in learning how to share our hearts. So don’t get me wrong, I love words, but I can’t wait to just sit and say nothing and not have to describe how I feel and not have to communicate every single passing emotion, but just be.So, that being said, we are house hunting. Please pray for us to have a lot of favor when it comes to finding a great pup-friendly location and a great rate because adulting is expensive ya’ll!