Top Ten of 2019

“Love will expand your horizons in ways you can't even imagine” (Shauna Niequist, Savor, p. 387).

(My top nine over from Instagram)

And here's the top ten posts from year 2019, arguably one of the best and most beautiful, yet hardest, and most life-changing years of my life:

God-Things and Dreams 
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Love 
Real Talk Marriage: One Month In 
Dear Daddy, I Still Love You 
What Cutting My Hair Taught Me About Belonging to Myself 
How We Had a Low Stress Wedding 
My First 10K 
Birthdays (Why and How to Celebrate) 
Our Most Used Kitchen Products (So Far) 
Wedding Day 

May God get the glory as I continue to write about life, love, marriage, and other stuff.

Here's to 2020!

Moments and Memories

I never thought I'd have a wedding day. And then I did. Marrying Chris was (and is!) such a blessing, but there are so many other God-things about the wedding weekend and wedding day that I want to remember:

1) Having my entire family back together again. Thanks little brother for majorly inconveniencing yourself with work in order to make it!

2) Having both my best friends in the same place at the same time. And on National Best Friend's Day, at that!

3) Saturday night family dinner. I was initially opposed to this, but seeing and spending time with maternal and paternal relatives before the wedding was such a blessing.

4) Not having to decorate, and being able to nap instead. I read some time ago in my Savor devotional that "what make[s] a wedding day perfect is...a bride and groom who are happy, connected, and present" (p. 165). The best gift I felt I could give Chris was an unfrazzled bride. Letting go of decorating and resting was one way I did this.

5) Our rehearsal dinner. One of our sweet friends and her cohorts decorated for us and put scriptures about love on each table. The decorations were both beautiful and meaningful.

6) Prayer at my girls' get together/bachelorette. My friends prayed the sweetest things over me and thanked God that they got to be part of my life for my long single season. The words they said and offered up were so encouraging. They gave me a ton of gifts, as well as a notebook with well wishes and a long list of fun questions for Chris and I to discuss on our honeymoon drive. Thanks, girls!

7) Singing "To God be the Glory" right before the ceremony. My Mom prayed for God's glory in the ceremony, and then we had more time to sign. Hearing my best friends, mom, and bridesmaids sing alongside me was probably the best moment outside the ceremony.

8) Having our niece and nephew as flower girl and ring bearer. They were the cutest! And they stood through the whole entire ceremony. Basically, they're rock stars!

9) Dismissing our guests row by row. It is still hard for me to remember everyone who attended our wedding, but I am so glad we at least got to see and greet them all as we dismissed them to the reception. This made us feel better about not being present for much of that time. We really wanted the reception to be for the guests and not us anyway.

There are many more moments and "God-things" from wedding weekend that I could probably share, but for now, this is a pretty good list.

Presence is My Gift to Jesus This Year

As I read my Savor devotional about the most important gifts the other morning, I thought about Christmas and what Jesus would want from me this year. The word that immediately came to mind was Presence. I want to be present this year. Present with Jesus. Present with my family and friends and loved ones. Present in the moment. 

I've been trying to cultivate little moments of presence and preparation for Christmas throughout the week, but it's hard. Life is busy. Work is busy. It seems like there are always a thousand things to do, but life is about choices and priorities. We can always make choices to prioritize what's important.

Jesus coming as a baby in a manger was about relationship. It was about God condescending to man to bring the light of a perfect baby into a dark, dark world. It was about Mary receiving what God had for her. It was about Mary's betrothed Joseph supporting her in what seemed like an impossible mission to raise the Son of God.

So in celebration of Christmas, I started trying to do one thing a day to cultivate celebration. (I've posted about that on Instagram.) Some things were little, like using a Christmas hot pad. 

Some were bigger, like an art project I did with a group at work and didn't necessarily want to finish, but did.

But what I tried, by God's grace, to prioritize were relationships and serving those around me: I got to make dinner for my family Saturday night. 

We slowed down to go for a walk to look at lights.

I've been trying to hold my schedule a little more loosely so that I have time to spend with people I love. 

As I consider Jesus coming into the world as the Light of lights, I realize that relationships are what really matter. May I be present in them for this season, and beyond, for the way I live my life daily is a year-long celebration of what Christ did for me by coming to earth at Christmas and then dying on the cross at Calvary.