Wedding Musings

I'm just extremely excited and proud to say that I get to be the Maid of Honor in my best friends wedding! You cannot imagine how excited I was when she told me that her boyfriend proposed to her!! I guess girls live their lives waiting for that moment when a man expresses his devotion to you by asking for your hand in marriage. I have always dreamed about that day, some people just get there a lot faster than others!

I am so excited for them! I just can't believe that my best friend is GETTING MARRIED! It seems so unreal because I feel like only yesterday we were day dreaming about the future and getting married and now the future is here! I didn't think it would come so fast!! But it did, and I am glad! They are perfect for each other and even before Matt asked for her hand in marriage I knew that they would get married. It's one of those feelings in the pit of your stomach that could maybe not be true but you know that deep, deep down inside it is 100% true. Well that feeling was correct because about a month and a half after I had it Matt proposed so there you go!

Now the preparation for the wedding begins! I can't wait until Becca is done with her term in college and she comes back home and we can do the full on planning! I am so excited for the day I can hardly contain it and I know that the feelings will only get stronger and stronger as the day approaches! I can't even begin to imagine the joy that she must be feeling and even the fear too because now she is going to be an adult! A full blown adult!

That's something I never thought would actually truly come either. I feel like you always looking towards your future but it always surprises you when you realize that the future you had been looking towards is actually the present! I'm an adult but Im still under the care of my parents so I not a real adult yet. I think that you become a real adult when you are finally 100% on your own making your own living and living your own life without your parents constant supervision. I haven't reached that place quite yet but it is coming soon.

Here are some of Matt and Becca's engagement photos taken by Christopher Ryan Photography:

 Becca is so incredibly Beautiful it is not even funny!

 

Thinking about the future and seeing how close it really is sometimes makes me excited for when it is my turn to take the leap. I know that some people become real adults while they're single and they stay single adults for a really long time until they finally find their "knight in shining armor". I can honestly say that I really hope that isn't me, but I have come to accept that it could be me. But I still hope it isn't.

But you see that is a good place to be: Content. Paul wrote, "...I I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength" (Phillipians 4:11-13). Paul wrote these words while he was in prison and it is so powerful to know that he found what it was to be content in all situations and continue to live for the Lord. I think that I need to work better at staying content where the Lord has me, which right now is being single, because He has me here for a reason. So often I find that I search for the things that I think will make me happy and fulfill all the desires of my heart but really the only one who can do that is God. He created us with emptiness inside that can only be filled by Him and it's pointless for us to search out other things to fill that void. For a time those things we reach for are pleasurable but in the end they leave us empty. Contentment and true joy and happiness only comes from God.

So I guess that's where my musings come full circle. While I could turn the joy of Becca getting married into a pity party for myself I wont. I think that it is disrespectful to God when we complain about the place that He has us in life. He knows what's best for us and all the things that He puts us through, all the time He has us wait, it's all for a reason. And He loves us more than anyone else in the entire UNIVERSE! He only wants to love us and bless us and sometimes we can't see the blessing of things until we are looking back at them. Only then do we realize exactly what God had been doing through that time and we rejoice for all that He accomplished!

I am so amazed by God and the great things that He has been doing in my life. He has been creating in me a heart of complete and total surrender. For so long I held onto things that I thought would make my life happy. I distrusted God by holding onto those things and trying to work them out on my own when the whole time He was waiting for me to give them to Him so that He could work in my life. I was hindering the things that God wanted to do in my life and only when I cried out to Him for help, only when I got to the end of myself and didn't know how to continue on in my own wisdom did God shed light on the situation and release me from the things that were holding me back.

A band called Run Kid Run has a song titled "Freedom" and the lyrics say: All my chains I can't disengage no longer bound but here I stay. I scream "Father, please! I need rescuing! I need You and You alone" those lyrics are so powerful because that was my life. I was still living bound by chains that really had no control over me but I returned to them and allowed them to hold me back all the while being freed from them because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. I feel like so often we can continue to be controlled by fleshly desires and sin even though we have complete forgiveness and relief from it!

It's so wonderful though that God is always waiting patiently for us no matter how many times we stray away from Him! I can't even begin to comprehend that! I think of how many times I've rejected God, not really intentionally but it is rejection none-the-less, but God waits for us and He loves to bless us all the time! He wants to bless us! He doesn't need us, but He wants us! That is something to dwell on always! God is so wonderful and His love is like no other love on this earth! Just thinking about that makes it easy, easy, easy to sit here single and be happy, be content, and be completely in love with Him.

Praise!

I just want to say that I love how God prepares us for things before they happen! That has always been something that I really appreciate and I love that God loves us enough to equip us for the things that He is going to put us through. One of my favorites quotes is, "God wont bring us to something He can't carry us through"

This weekend was really tough for me with just thoughts and stuff and at the time I could not see how any of it could be good I just had to tell myself that it was going to be okay and that God had a reason for all the things He does. Then, hindsight being 20/20, I realized why God put me through it! It is so true that God works all things out for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28) because something happened today and because God had prepared my heart beforehand I was able to accept it without being hurt! I realized that the small amount of pain I had experienced this weekend was only so that I would be saved from excruciating heartache today and now I still have hope where, if God hadn't prepared my heart, I would have been left hopeless and heart broken. God is good!

So often when we're going through something hard it's easy to curse God for it or question why it is happening but God's thoughts are not our thoughts nor are His ways our ways and so we can't always see why He does things but I can say that Im glad He does things the way He does because my life would suck without Him! He prepares us and I am so glad for that!

Missions

I have always had a heart for international travel. I love experiencing new cultures and I really enjoy visiting new places. Sometimes I fear that I am far too sheltered in the life that I live right now and I am completely ignorant to the pain and suffering throughout the world. I want to touch the lives of people in this world and shine the light of Jesus to all people and all nations!

I talked with a friend the other day about my future and about ministry and missions work overseas and it really got me to thinking about what I'm going to do with my life. I've always loved the thought of traveling to different countries I but for me it has always been short term like a month here and there. But now I feel like God is calling me to the mission field long term! This is an extremely scary thing for me to think about because I am a total family person and hate the thought of being so far away from my family for such a long time but God has really worked on my heart!

I love how God understands that we are human and therefore he works with us where we are at. He knows that we fear even though He tells us not to, but even when we do He is there to comfort us and reassure us, and that is amazing! God has really been softening my heart towards long term missions to the point where I am ready to go wherever He sends me! I can even envision myself raising a family on foreign soil which wasn't really something that I envisioned before now so that is cool! I don't know when I will go or who I will go with or even if I will be alone.

I guess for me another scary thing is that I am super desiring a husband and a family of my own and it scares me to go out onto the mission field because I think that then it will be impossible for me to meet someone which is so not true! Another thing is that I hold onto the people who are here in Corvallis and I think that my absence will destroy all of the relationships I have created here which is also a total lie that needs to be debunked ASAP! I guess the thing I keep coming back to that totally soothes me is that if I remain in God's will for my life then I don't have to fear anything because I'm right where God wants me. And God knows the things that our hearts desire and He's even put them there for a reason and so I just need to have faith that God will give me the desires of my heart even if it's not necessarily the way that I envision it in my mind.

So basically I think that I'm supposed to teach English in an Asian country which is really exciting but I don't really know where to go from here. Now I need to figure out preparation to get to the point where I can go overseas and teach! I don't think I will be going next year but sometime soon! I definitely need the preparation period before I head out which is totally fine it's just tough to figure out how to prepare and everything! It's also scary because that means that the future is that much closer because I will be totally on my own in a completely different country! Ah! Scary but exciting at the same time. It will be awesome to see what God does in these next few months/years!

I think the only thing that I really hope I get is a companion to go with me! God has brought me to a point where I am willing to go alone if I need to but I really don't want to. I don't know if it's me just being a super baby about it but I just don't want to be lonely, so I ask for a companion and I really do think that God will raise one up for me. One thing that I can testify to is that God has always been faithful to raise up at least one good, close friend for me whenever I step out in faith alone to do things for Him and I believe He will continue to do it!... It makes me slightly impatient for a husband though because then I will have a companion for life! That will be awesome! :)