Strangers, already? I hope not!

It's been too long, have you missed me?

It feels like it was years ago since I last wrote. Since my last post God has continually pressed words to my fingertips. PTL! (I hope its the same case for you!) I am very excited to get back into the swing of sharing my thoughts with you, the are indeed the very conversations that I am having with God.

Here it goes....

Each day it seems like a friend of mine is getting married (okay not THAT many). I am very excited to grow in my marriage alongside these friends. In result of that, and studying a marriage book last spring(Marriage Takes More Than Love), I have lots of thoughts and prayers to share. Briefly, I jotted down tidbits that sum up these thoughts and prayers. They are lessons that I learned. I'll try to come back and blog a little more about each - I started out by blogging a bit about the first one. Enjoy! And please please share yours too!

(If you are not married, READ IT ANYWAYS, you never know whom you will encounter and what words God will need to share through you.)

Be intentional. My wedding day was just like any other day on the calendar. The sun rose and set. The hour hand made two complete rotations. The world carried on as normal. Yet it was especially special to me. Why? I would be crazy to credit pure luck or mere chance for producing such a marvelous day. To do so would deny the ten mile-long To Do list we conquered, the humble prayers we lamented, and the patient endurance we graciously received. Our wedding day will forever be special to us. We invested in that day, we were wholly committed to that day, and boy! did we harvested a mighty return on our investment.

At first, it was hard for me to accept that my wedding day and come and gone. Sometimes I longingly thought, “The wedding is over…now what?” While other times I excitedly proclaimed, “The wedding is over and we’re married!” After I moved past the wedding hype, I began to wonder how to best invest in my marriage. I found myself at a lost. I knew what I wanted, but didn’t know where to begin! It was hard for me to accept that my marriage was not even a year old. I wanted to share what fifty-year olds have! Naturally, I did what any bride would do, I stressed, planned, and delegated (poor Jon!).

Thanks be to God, he set my mind at ease. I embraced that my marriage was in full swing…right now, as is! It was new but would definitely span longer than 24 hours.  I didn’t long for the past or fret for the future, but lived presently. As I was, a newlywed, God called me to seize the moment, breathe life into my wedding vows, and add to those wedding pictures. With God’s help an ordinary day was transformed into an extraordinary day, and with God’s help an ordinary couple and will share an extraordinary life together.

Here are some more lessons God's taught me...

Mind your manners.

When your spouse is quiet or moody, just remember that not everything is about you.

Men get lost in a lot of words, but God’s word can pierce them through and through.

When your spouse tries especially hard to please you, take special care not to initially correct them.

Laugh often. Don’t even try to hold it in!

Tell God about his faults, tell your spouse about your prayers.

Make sure your spouse knows their the best.

Tell him “job well done!”

Flirt like lovers don’t tease like school children

Remember that there is much more to learn about your spouse

Pick your battles and battlegrounds wisely

The five-day challenge

From the richest to the poorest, no one would question that 3.5 billon, which is half the world’s population, is a HUGE number. However, we may not all (all 6.7 billion of us) as easily agree on the significance of two dollars. Why? …Because half the world’s population eats on less than two dollars a day.

Two dollars? …Sound like a lot? Not to me…Which is why I knew I needed to do the challenge.

The challenge: For five days, eat as half the world’s population eats—on less than two dollars a day. For me this meant that I ate a small bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, a small bowl of rice and beans for lunch and dinner, and drank only tap water…for five days.

Focusing on the needs of the under resourced is not new to me. I’ve seen the pictures, read the statistics, and witnessed the need (aiding it when I could). For two years (just before I moved to Deerfield) I worked in downtown San Antonio, just around the corner from the Alamo. Every weekday I walked passed homeless people. I learned to pack snacks for myself and for others. Helping others is not a foreign concept…feeling helpless and in need of life’s basic necessities was definitely a new experience.

 “How does a person who eats such a humble and meager meal understand God’s love? “ I asked myself many times last week. I also had to remind myself that this challenge was someone’s reality. As easily as I choose to eat rice and beans, I could choose to eat steak and potatoes.

The challenge allowed me to stand in solidarity with my church and men, women, and children who eat meager meals every day. It provided an opportunity stand to beside God and agree that these men, women, and children are worthy. They matter. Bibles verses like the Isaiah 58:6-7 and Matthew 25:35-36 came alive.

Does it matter? YES. We may not completely understand a need or be able to name who is in need, but that is okay. God knows the need and the name. He accepts fill-in-the-blank-prayers as eagerly as we accept blank checks. All he desires is a broken and contrite heart, someone who believes that the need is significant and the needed is worthy...someone with a heart that is humbly poured out.

 

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:

to loose the chains of injustice

   and untie the cords of the yoke,

to set the oppressed free

   and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry

   and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—

when you see the naked, to clothe them,

   and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? (Isaiah 58:6–7)

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. (Matthew 25:35–36)