Welcome to Our Journey; May it be for our good and His glory!

Confession. I have been living vicariously through many of you "bloggers" for a long time...too long actually! I came up with my blog title long before I even got married 6 months ago. I had high hopes and aspirations of documenting everyday after Ryan and I said "I Do", but obviously that did not happen. And although this fact puts my blog off to an imperfect start, I am realizing more everyday that this is perfectly ok! 

I feel the need to bring to the surface my sinful motives that spring from my wicked flesh before you read on. There is a lot of pride that can creep up in me when thinking about starting this blog. For me, it's not that I NEED a super public outlet to get my creative thoughts out there for others to read.....I want it. I want you guys to read about what is going on in Ryan and I's life and be amazed at the "young godly couple with a super cute dog." I want you to think that we have it all together. I want you to (I dare to say because this really exposes my flesh) even be jealous. For all of those things really satisfy my flesh and make me swell up with pride. And after that happens, I am fully aware of what lengths I will go to and what excuses I will come up with to justify my pride. Trust me, it's ugly.

I know my wicked heart and I want to stay as far away from these thoughts as possible. That being said, I need my husband, readers, friends, and family, to keep me accountable. If you ever read my blog posts and see my pride bellowing in the wind, please call me out on it, because this has been a fear of mine since I first thought about actually starting a blog. It would be better for me not to have this creative outlet, then to create an opportunity for me to sin. Be patient with me, I am a recovering Pharisee. 

Ok, now that my sinful heart has been exposed and you are fully aware of the fallen creature that I am, let's get started on what I really long for this blog to be!

Ryan and I always seem to be in conversations about the future. We kind of feel temporarily stuck where we are. I mean "feeling stuck" in the least negative sense possible. We are super content and blessed to be exactly where we are. The Lord has blessed us with an amazing new church family (of which I plan to blog about in the near future), the most amazing small group on the planet (of which we fondly call "The Duffbags" and also of which I will hopefully blog about in the near future), an amazing dog (who will make a Wi-Fee debut in the future), amazing friends and family, etc. you get the picture. The reason we feel "stuck" quite honestly is that we can't move or do anything drastic until I finish pharmacy school in 1.5 years. Actually, I don't even know if I would call this "stuck," let's call it "transitional." We are in a transition. We are not completely satisfied where we are, in that our hearts are longing and dreaming of something else, but we are thankful for where we are and where we have come. We realize that not only is the Lord sovereign over where our lives are right now, but Scripture says we are not even promised tomorrow. (James 4:13-16)

All of that being said, my heart is to document our day to day lives for several reasons. I want to calm my "ancy" heart that always seems to be looking to future things by reflecting and finding joy in things that the Lord is doing in our lives right now. Secondly, I want to create a timeline to look back on later. Ryan and I have laid a "blank check" with our lives (meaning we are trying to hold loosely to the things of this world and ourselves, so that we might freely move, speak, give, go etc. to that which the Lord is leading us) before the Lord for him to use us, our time, our resources, etc. as He sees fit. We know this kind of reckless abandonment with our lives may seem foolish to our family, friends, and to the world in general, but to us as children of our great God, it is wisest way to live our lives. All through Scripture, we see that the end of God is His glory. "The reason being God is righteous. This means that he recognizes, welcomes, loves, and upholds with infinite jealousy and energy what is infinitely valuable, namely, the worth of God. God's righteous passion and delight is to display and uphold his infinitely valuable glory." (John Piper in "Let the Nations Be Glad")

Look at Isaiah 48:9-11:

For my name's sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise, I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it. for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.

Do ya see it? This text and literally thousands others throughout Scripture hammer home the centrality of God in His own heart. God's ultimate goal is to uphold and display the glory of His name. This is quite a different image than the meek and mild Jesus knocking on your heart's door, asking, no begging you to answer. His aim is Himself. For all of my southern gospel friends; When He was on the cross....you probably were NOT on His mind. Bringing glory to the Father and thus Himself is probably the overwhelming majority of what was on His mind, and while on the cross He created an opportunity for us to be righteous. Yes, righteous! We are righteous in that we no longer bear sin because of the perfect life of Christ that did not bear sin, but more than than we get to be righteous in that we bring great glory to the Father through our lives by denying ourselves. For some reason, this sounds nothing like the "Get Out of Hell Free Cards offered at the front of most church's altar calls. 

So, God is righteous and all would be well if we would acknowledge this fact and become righteous ourselves by repenting of our sin and accepting the life, death, and resurrection of Christ by faith through the work of the Holy Spirit as the means of making us righteous. But.....that is why we are called unrighteous. If God is righteous because He recognizes, welcomes, loves, and upholds, with infinite jealousy and energy what is infinitely valuable, namely, the worth of God. We are unrighteous because we do not recognize, welcome, love, and uphold His name and His worth as the highest of all. Just take one look at our sinful and unrighteous lives and you will see fallen creatures trying to recognize, welcome, love, and uphold our own name as Lord of all. We tried first in the garden and continue to try to be our own God; thus comes our unrighteousness.

How silly is it then to try and align your life around anything other than bringing great glory to the one true God. This is why we say we have laid a "blank check" on the table with our lives. We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God will continue to be righteous, which is bringing glory to Himself. If we are asking him to take full control of our lives, we know that he is going to position them in such a way that brings great glory to Himself. We find so much joy in our lives being counted as righteous, not by anything that we have done, but because we have given them over the righteous God of the universe. What a win-win situation!

So here we are, our lives given over to God for Him to use as He sees fit which we know will be for His glory. Now what? Well, I find myself asking that same question all the time. Now what? The decision to give up your life seems so ground-breaking, so earth shattering, surely everyday is full of crazy twists and turns and thick plots. I have really nothing great to report his morning besides that my husband gently woke me up this morning before work as he always does, prayed with me, he left, I sat in bed playing with my dog for a few minutes, mustered up the strength to get out of bed (not a morning person at all), poured some cereal and milk, slumped on the couch, spent some quiet time with the Lord, read a chapter in a book about being a godly wife, and well....began writing this post. Kind of mundane actually. But, I know that the Lord is gathering up all these details and small events in our lives and making them into something beautiful that I can't see right now, but I hope that by writing down details through many many weeks, will have a big and clear picture of where exactly the Lord has brought us and how He is getting great glory through our lives. 

So, that was a very long first post to describe to you that I am creating this blog to currently and prospectively remind Ryan and myself that our God is great and greatly to be praised, and if our stubborn hearts need more convincing, we can look back at this blog and see His timeline. Welcome to our journey. We are thankful that you care and ask for your prayers and support as we take our next step, which for me seems to be getting up from this couch, fixing some lunch, and going to tackle some household errands! Sounds death-defying to me:-)

I know you probably feel like I should have wrapped this thing up several paragraphs ago because I know I do, but just a few more things and of course, I could not end without a picture:-). I don't have a really great plan of how to catch you guys up on our lives and write for myself what the Lord has done in Ryan and I's lives over courtship, dating, engagement, marriage, etc., but I will probably just insert a few old with the new. Not sure. I apologize for the randomness of it all now! Ok here is the promised picture! 

Start of  our Journey together!