Snow Day....

So today leaves me wondering how smart it was to plan a wedding in the winter in Indiana... When people start using the word blizzard a mere 8 weeks before your wedding you can't help, but ask yourself what you were thinking! Needless to say the weather prevented my day after Christmas shopping that I hoped to accomplish, but tomorrow is another day and that day will hopefully result in a dress for the flower girl. Now the plus side to the snow day is that I ended up getting the ring bearers bible together and the flower girls basket. So the day might not have resulted in the exact to do list being accomplished I had hoped for, but it was productive in its own way!

Finally....

Finally!!!!  I've made it past the 2 month mark. I've even made it past the 60 day mark.  Invitations are out and RSVP's have started to trickle in (or race in the instance of a few people trying to make theirs the first to be returned lol).  Rather than broad goals we're down to details such as order of service, do we have readings or do we forgo them?  After what seems like forever things are down to the last weeks.    I'm left with dress fittings rather than dress shopping.  When I look over the months since July I find I've changed so much!  I feel like I've grown from the experience.  Wedding planning the way Dustin and I chose to do it has brought us closer together.  We've learned a lot about each other and have grown individually and together as a couple.  I do have to say its a nice thing to be at a place where I actually get to enjoy the holidays.  No wedding stuff for me until next week and it's a wonderful feeling!  Well, I might have to look into that reading bit in my spare time to see if there is anything that catches my fancy, but no hard core planning until after Christmas!

And Still More Lessons in Faith....

I'm pretty sure God's trying to use the period around my wedding to test my faith and patience in every possible way...  It's been a while since I've posted and quite honestly it has been because I've been struggling with and making some of the hardest decisions I could possibly make.  I thought dating, having a relationship and getting engaged were big enough, but God seems to be determined to do things in big style for me right now since in addition to all of that I've had other changes going on as well.  I've officially joined the ranks of the unemployed.  Now interestingly enough it was by my own choice, but it was a choice I did not make easily.  I've mentioned in various posts about different parts of my life that have lead me to the moment of meeting Dustin and the events that followed, but tonight I find myself thinking about a request I made of God not long after my first visit to Mooresville Church of God.  I asked him to use me however he wanted.,  In the hours I spent sitting on my bed one night crying and struggling with what I was sure was the hardest decision I would ever make to leave a church and a church family I loved dearly to go to a church where I knew the grand total of one person and wasn't sure exactly where or how I would ever fit in or be accepted.  As I struggled with that thought I came to the point of realizing if this were what God was asking me to do I really had no choice.  I had to go.  The consequences of saying no and staying where I was when God wanted me elsewhere was a domino effect that I loved that church family too much to risk, but even more so I didn't want to live life in the Wilderness of No.  I'd been there before and it took me a while to recover from the last trip.  I look back on that four hour crying jag nearly 2 years ago as a turning point for me on a personal spiritual level.  It was a moment I can look back on and say with certainty my life changed in the moment I said yes.  The journey over the next year and a half was amazing, but I can't say that I expected the turn my life took in November.  You see I have this little habit of liking security and answers.  I like to see where I'm suppose to go and if I'm going to open a door to walk through it I want to know what's on the other side of it.  If I'm going to leave a job I want to know what I'm leaving it for.  I prefer a back up plan to the back up plan.  It makes me feel better.  I'm learning right now though that God doesn't exactly work that way.  He works in ways we can't even begin to comprehend.  So while Dustin and I had both been talking about what my career would look like after the wedding, I don't think either one of us was exactly expecting any job change to happen before the wedding took place, but happen it has.  Sometimes there comes a moment when you realize that the world around you has changed to a point it's not exactly what it was when you walked into it.  That's what happened to my job.  As much as I loved parts of it there were a lot of things changing and I wasn't the person that could do the job the way it needed to be done.  You know I've always thought it was awesome the way when God called Abraham packed up his house and left to go to a country the location of which he had no clue.  It was inspiring when the disciples left their nets and up and followed some stranger who walked past their place of business.  Personally, I'm thinking it looks a lot more glamorous in the Bible when I can read the end of the story whenever I want that says, Abraham did find his country, became father of a great nation and things turned out just fine in the end.  As for the disciples, well, it still somehow seems a little different being able to look at their story and see how the dots connect to make the bigger picture.  For me in the here and now it's been a little bit of a struggle.  I mean I know I'm doing what I'm suppose to.  I know God has lead me to the exact place I am right now, but that doesn't mean I don't question.  There is a part of me that is tempted on occasion to think.... I'm a nurse with ten years experience, I can get a job that pays well numerous places.  But IF I take matters in to my hands and find a job that suits my purposes of security and stability that I can see in the immediate future what blessings do I miss that God's trying to bring into this season of my life?  So I'm sure by now you're wondering how my current job situation pertains to my bride status....  Well, it pertains in the lessons God is sending my way through the freak out moments I have.  You see by making me plan a wedding at this time in my life He is giving my faith a tremendous work out!  It's teaching Dustin and I things about one another that we might not have had the opportunity to learn otherwise.  I find myself thinking a LOT about Romans 8:28:

 

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

 

Even in this season of my life that feels a little uncertain in the change taking place I do know that God has something awesome in store.  All I have to do is look at the stories I mentioned earlier to be reminded of that.  Somehow there's a part of me that is much more empathetic to Abraham's decision to pass Sarah off as his sister rather acknowledging her as his wife in a moment of human uncertainty at the outcome of a particular situation.  There is a part of me that understands in a very unique way now exactly how the disciples came to be out in their boats fishing in John 21.  The interesting thing I find in that particular story is that Jesus never rebukes them for "caving" to the need for some certainty.  Instead he takes the catch (which he made possible) and feeds them.  If you look at the book of Acts though you never see mention of those nets and boats again...  I'm understanding exactly what some of those very real people, who I always tended to look at as characters in a story before, were feeling in what we like to consider their moment of weakness.  Yes, Peter denied Jesus, Abraham fathered Ishmael and Jacob stole Esau's birthright, but I'm finding as I travel this path I'm on it's easy to doubt and question when you don't see exactly what is around the next bend in the road.  So I find myself in the middle of uncertainty holding to the verse I've claimed as my own.... 

 

"For I know the plans I have for you, delcares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."   -Jeremiah 29:11.

 

  The part of his plans I can see right now involve a wedding and Dustin.  The rest will fall into place in His time!