Honesty.

I like to think. I like to assess. I like to figure out, ‘why?’ about myself and situations. I think that’s why I enjoyed Psychology so much in school, because it was always exploring the ‘whys’ of human behavior.

Sometimes this gets me into trouble. I overanalyze things rather than going with my gut, which occasionally leads me to do more harm than good. Though sometimes, my gut will do just the same.

This part of my nature causes me to generally be very in-tune with myself. I know when something is amiss in my physical or spiritual life. When I get that feeling, I think about it. I try to figure out what it is and where it’s coming from. But, sometimes it takes me a little while to put my finger on it.

For the past several weeks, I’ve been having some issues after we turn out the lights to go to sleep. That is the time of day when I am most susceptible to questioning, giving in, losing battles, getting discouraged, etc. and sometimes it keeps me up at night. Recently, my struggles have come so far that I actually feel physical repercussions of them. I feel weight in my chest, fear gripping me, helplessness, uncertainty, vulnerability. That’s new for me.

Sure I’ve felt all those things before, but not like this. I always felt them within the comfort of external things like: mom and dad downstairs if I need them, my roommate in the other bed if I need to talk, my analyzing brain, my husband right next to me. They could help me solve my problems.

One of the things the Lord has been teaching me this year is to forgo relying on those external things for my help in times of need and to rely fully on him. Not to downplay the importance of those relationships and the way the Lord uses them, but to emphasize that the Lord should be the first one that I run to.

But what if the Lord is what I’m afraid of? What if my understanding of Him has gotten so messed up that He’s not my place of comfort any more? What if my heart feels shriveled and dry and unable to be reassured?

The funny thing is, that’s just it. I don’t question my faith, I question the Lord’s faithfulness. I know that I believe in and love Jesus with my whole heart regardless of whether it feels shriveled or not. I know that. But what if he strikes me down.. what if when I die, I find out he’s not going to save me. He’s not going to save me because I wasn’t good enough, because actually, it does all depend on me.

Stop. Ok, how many times have you heard the gospel?

At least in the hundreds, and I love it every time.

Ok, so tell me how it goes..

We were created to be good, full, beautiful people. To commune wholly with our God and Father. To be close to him, to praise him in his nearness, to see him, sense him, to flawlessly love him. That’s how we were supposed to be. But, we couldn’t do it. In our fleshliness, we wanted what he had. We wanted to see and know and to be praised.

And we fell. The human race fell. We fell into blindness, helplessness, bondage, distance, death, sin. We fell into an uneasiness with a Holy God. We dirtied ourselves, tattered our clothes, starved and neglected ourselves, but still wanted to approach the King.

So he gave us some rules. We had to make up for our mistakes and follow his rules if we still wanted to meet with him. But it was really hard. Impossible. How could one person keep track of so many things? What if the priest made a mistake? Everyone else is relying on him, what if he does it wrong? But we need the Lord.

Then Jesus came. He came and showed us that we were even more in debt than we understood. It wasn’t just about following those rules on the outside, it was about following them on the inside, in our souls. Our very beings needed to know and understand these rules and their significance in order to make up for the mistakes we had made. And that is hopeless. Even more impossible than before.

But. We are not hopeless are we. We don’t have to be in bondage or blind or distant anymore. There is relief. That’s what Jesus did. He followed the rules perfectly with his entire being. He knew what it was to have fleshliness and he overcame it. He was stronger. He never once broke any of the rules. He remained in perfect communion with God from the confines of a fallen world.

And then, he did the unthinkable. He took his perfection and smeared it with our dirt. He wore our tattered clothes, he claimed our starvation and neglect as his own. By his choice. He allowed himself to suffer the blindness, helplessness, bondage, distance, death, sin that he never had to know. He never had to know it because he didn’t deserve it like we did. He didn’t earn a bit of that condemnation. But he took it. He took it all before a Holy God and said, ‘it is mine.’

His perfection wiped us clean. He made the most uneven, unfair, unbelievable trade the world has ever known. He paid our debt knowing fully we could give him nothing in return. It was free. Our debt is paid regardless of how many times we struggle with the same sin. It is paid no matter how much we get confused and fear the same Lord that is our salvation. It is paid no matter what. Forever.

That is what I believe. Jesus took my imperfection and gave me his perfection. I can stand before the King and be me, in all of my grime and muck, because the King’s Son, the true royalty, wants me to be there. He made it possible. He made it so I can know my God the way I was meant to, to be near him, to sense him, to love him. He made it so I can look forward to a day when I will do this flawlessly. When the entirety of creation will do this flawlessly.

And that is beautiful.

Remember? Remember how none of it ever depended on you?

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Let your fears be stilled and feel sweet relief. You cannot be good enough, I promise. You will always fail, just like me. The Lord is not going to strike me down and he’s not going to close the gates of Heaven on me because I wasn’t good enough. He knows I’m not good enough better than I do at one o’clock in the morning when I’m worrying about it. He knows that Jesus was good enough and that I have trusted Jesus to be good enough for me. And that Jesus, he is my life and breath and comfort, and he will bring me through and fill my shriveled heart.


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Love is in the air…

If you remember things that you have read in the past, (then you are not like me) you might remember that Ian and I celebrated our 3rd anniversary on a plane flying back to the UK with my brother. With the subsequent busy-ness of the weeks following, we never really celebrated or had much time to think about acknowledging our three years as an old married couple.

We shop at Tesco for our groceries. When you shop at Tesco, if you have a clubcard, you get points every time you buy something (you earn a penny for every pound you spend). Those points add up and then you get sent vouchers every three months that you can use in a number of different ways. You can use them in the store with a direct exchange (so if you have GBP 5.00 of vouchers you can use that to buy yourself a large-ish chicken or 5 tubs of Tesco ice cream, for example), or if you go online there are all kind of special offers you can use them for that sometimes make your pounds go further.

One of the special offers is dinner vouchers for Bella Italia, an Italian restaurant that we have in town. If you exchange your Tesco vouchers for Bella Italia vouchers, you get to multiply your pound amount by 4!

So we decided to turn our 5 pound voucher into a 20 pound voucher and go out to Bella Italia for dinner to celebrate our three years together. Basically a free meal. Basically amazing. We are rewarded for buying groceries to feed ourselves.. nice.

So we got all gussied up


and headed out to ‘give it a go’ and see if our vouchers would work as seamlessly as it seemed they would. We asked about it right away because we are skeptical of such things since we didn’t read the fine print last time we went out for dinner.. And lo and behold, it was that easy! Yay! So we enjoyed a yummy meal and NEITHER of us ate chicken!! Here we are in great anticipation of our meal. This is like what our food sees when it looks at us (I was trying to be discrete with the camera :)



We both got seafood. We enjoy plentiful helpings of pasta, shrimpy, saucy goodness, as well as some amazing garlic breadsticks (although, every time I eat bread here, I always miss soft bread.. All the bread we’ve encountered with dinner here is ‘crusty’ if you know what I mean. Does anybody know where I can find soft dinner rolls?? Maybe I just need to make them. Where is that little dough boy when you need him..)



Our waitress was wonderful and dinner came out to a grand total of 28.45 including tip. That is pounds. Which means we just spent nearly $60 to eat at a restaurant similar to the Olive Garden, but without unlimited breadsticks and salad. For two of us. See?? See why we don’t eat out!? :) That’s why we’re grateful that we actually only paid 8.45 of that.. again.. nice.

Anyway. It is significant (and I believe very providential) that we ended up at an Olive Garden-esque restaurant because we had our first date EVER at an Olive Garden (after deciding Texas Roadhouse was far too noisy to have the deep discussions we needed to have about life, meaning, and significance… on the first date) and have gone to an Olive Garden to celebrate each anniversary thus far.

We enjoyed great conversation and walked down toward the beach after our lovely dinner. Unfortunately, I wussed out because it was FREEZING yesterday so we never made it all the way to the beach, but we enjoyed the sea air and sounds nonetheless (we love taking deep breaths outside). We got home to home-made brownies, ice cream, and DOPE!! My first ever time making dope by myself without the rest of my family. Whoa.

No, we are not a family of potheads. We do not have such skeletons in our closets. That is not why our parents chose to live so far back in the woods… We have this recipe for chocolate sauce that actually is probably better than dope if I had to guess, because it’s CHOCOLATE!! Yum! My grandpa made it and passed the recipe on to my dad, who passed it on to me a few weeks ago. And, we’ve always known it as dope. No one knows why. Right? Family? Does anyone know why? Regardless, it’s amazing and not like what you’ll expect it to be like, guaranteed. And I will make it for you if you come visit :)

So we enjoyed our brownies while we browsed a selection of movies to rent FROM THE COMFORT OF OUR COUCH! That’s right folks. The iTunes geniuses have made it so you can rent movies from iTunes and you get to keep them for 24 hrs. That is good stuff. We rented a movie called ‘Wristcutters: A Love Story’ from the comedy section. Sounds weird right?? Well, it did not disappoint. It was weird with a capital W-E-I-R-D!! I’m not sure what to think exactly, but I don’t think I would call it a comedy. I thought it approached suicide (constantly referred to as ‘off-ing yourself’ throughout the movie) too casually and didn’t do a good job at addressing some of the issues it could have addressed in a very thought-provoking way. It felt like the movie wanted to be kind of deep and meaning-of-life-ish, but just didn’t quite make it. I don’t know, maybe that’s what they intended. Maybe that’s why it was in the comedy section. I think this review sums it up well, “It's certainly melancholic, occasionally funny, and ultimately life-affirming. But overall, it feels as if writer-director Goran Dukic dropped a rather promising ball.” It seems like a good ‘let’s watch it and discuss’ movie, but definitely not a ‘let’s sit down and laugh and feel like we just had a really good time at the end’ movie.

So we had a good date night. And are still thankful for our three+ years together :)



p.s. Is it harmful to use makeup that might be almost 7 years old? I mean, because I have this friend.. And she was wondering.. because it still looks normal and works normally.. she wanted to know..


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Here's Sumpin Funny

Ian puckered out his lips real far... and then attempted to head-butt me.

'Lip Sumo Wrestling' he says..

oh boy.

Can you tell we haven't had much to report lately?? :)

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I just cut a chicken in half

yup. gross. really really gross.

see, it is these moments when i consider being a vegetarian.


then. i think about the goodness that will come from that cut in half chicken. and i remember how beans make me gag.

and i think. maybe next time...


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