Moving Toward the Goal

There is a lot going on in my life right now.

I'm getting married.
I'm buying my first home.
I'm working more than I'm doing anything else.
I'm transitioning into adulthood.

There really is a lot going on in my life right now...and I feel like I didn't plan any of it.


I mean, it's not like I didn't know it was coming, at least eventually. Three years ago I "knew" that at some point I would be out of college. I "knew" that at some point I would not think of my parent's house as my house. Three years ago I at least hoped that I would get married, that my life would change and move forward.  But none of this was intentional.  None of this came packaged in a five-year plan, with exponential growth figures and due dates and charts.

(It came without packages, boxes, and bags! Anybody?)

It just wasn't intentional.  And while I'm very glad that all of this is happening...I don't want to just fall into an unintentional, accidental life.  I LOVE what I've fallen into thus far, but believe you me, it is nothing short of the grace of God that has led me to this lovely puffy pillow stage of life that I'm at right now. I am incredibly blessed to have been allowed to unintentionally end up here. But it can't keep going on like this.  I don't want to just meander my way through life without purposefully moving toward and working for something. But how, you ask, am I going to change my ways?

To answer that question, let me take things back a few months.

My mother--ever dedicated (intentionally) to her duty to disciple her children--suggested last November that the two of us, along with two other ladies from our church, read a book that she had read in her younger years. It had made a significant impact on her walk with the Lord, and she hoped it might do the same again in her life, and also in ours.

The book was Anne Ortlund's Disciplines of the Beautiful Woman, the first of three in her larger volume, The Gentle Ways of the Beautiful Woman: A Practical Guide to Spiritual Beauty. Now, when I first saw this thing, I got a little nervous. It looked a little old, a little outdated, and a little bit written by someone who was way more wife-y than I am. And it is, all of those things. But that's not all. Once I cracked the cover, I had the pleasure of reading from the heart of a woman that I came to truly admire. 

At the heart of the book, it's theme really centered around discipline.  Ortlund executes the most mind blowing discipline I've ever heard of. She has in her wardrobe only twelve outfits, and she has each of those outfits listed out on pieces of papers that she keeps filed, so that she knows exactly what she owns, so that getting dressed in the morning takes only five minutes. 

Let's be clear about one thing...I will never be like that. 

I would, however, like to be more disciplined on a grander scale. Before she got into any suggestions about how we might discipline and organize our concrete lives, she introduced the idea of being disciplined in life on a grander scale. In our spiritual, mental, and social lives we ought to be disciplined. I can't re-write the book for you, so allow me to cut to the chase.  Per the suggestion of the author, I was moved to set forth lifelong purposes for my life, and then a set of yearly goals to see those purposes come about. 

Let me show you what I came up with...maybe it will better illuminate what I'm trying to say: 

Life Goals/Purposes--who I want to be

• A woman of God who leaves a legacy of faith and obedience
• A woman who can show herself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed, but who correctly handles the Word of Truth. 2 Timothy 2:15
• A biblical, supportive, submissive, disgustingly-in-love wife. My husband’s best friend and committed help meet.
• A mother who raises disciples.
• Successful at work/ a hard worker
• A woman committed to a life of ministry.
• A woman committed to self-betterment.

One-Year Goals--the steps I will take in 2012 to become who I want to be

• Read through the Bible (purposes 1&2)
• Meditate on/memorize one verse a week (purposes 1&2)
• Have a discipleship group (purposes 1&6)
• Read two books that will offer me biblical instruction (purpose 2)
• Get to & maintain a healthy physique, have an established routine for taking care of my body (purpose 3&7)
• Give intentional, focused effort on learning how to better care for, understand, befriend, and love Dan (purposes 1,3,&5)
• Read two books off of my list (purpose 7)
• Finish my B.A. (purposes 5&7)
• Get certified to teach (purposes 3,5,&7)
• Earn enough Jmarie profit to send two El Salvador teens to camp (purposes 1,5,6,&7)

Do you see how this list of goals differs from other lists? How this is not just a set of New Year's Resolutions? I really love this idea...that we ought to do certain things with an ultimate end point in line.  I love that each of the things on my list has at least one purpose behind it, driving me to become the person that I really want to be. 

I want to be intentional, and go through life purposefully. Thought I'd let you know. 

What do you think? Are you moving with purpose? What are you doing this year, this month, this week, today...to become the person you should be? 

The Rules of Engagement

Mimicking my last post, I will say again that it has been a long time since I've posted and that I deeply apologize. I am sure that all fourteen of my followers have been worried sick about me.

But please, cease your worrying.

I'm fine.

In fact, I'm better than fine. I'm engaged!

My being better than fine due to my engagement is following the logic that since I am a woman, all I want out of life is to be married. Ergo, I am doing quite well. Marriage follows engagement. It's nice to know that all my desires have now been met, and that I've nothing more to want from life for the rest of my days...

All kidding aside, being engaged is great. However, I have to admit that I wasn't entirely prepared for it.  I'm not really the dreamed-about-my-wedding-since-I-could-walk type, so when I got that pretty little ring...I had no idea what to do next. Therefore, just in case any one of the fourteen of you ever has some perfect man put a ring on it and you find yourself questioning the next step, I give you:

The Rules of Engagement


(Like my fancy wordplay?)

Okay, here we go. Rule number...

1.) Say, "Yes." 
         Yup, it's the first step. Honestly, when he knelt down and popped the question, I was a little shocked. So much so, that it was not until several moments later I actually said yes.

             So, ladies, do the right thing. Get it settled right from the bat.

2.) Set a date...but not right away.
         Dan and I got engaged in Atlanta, and all we talked about the entire drive back to Michigan was dates. In fact, even before we got engaged we talked about dates.  Finally, we came to a conclusion, settling on a later weekend in May. But if you got our Save-the-Dates...

         Yeah. For those of you keeping track at home, the first weekend in June is not the same as a late weekend in May.  Because here's the thing about setting a date...there are a LOT of variables to think about. Consider, for instance, whether your wedding party will able to attend. In our case we had to think about a few other weddings (a cousin of mine got engaged the same week Dan and I did), several pregnancies (not mine, don't worry), graduation parties...and that's just for starters. After we had sent out our Save-the-Dates it occurred to me (via the critical "no's" of several owners of beautiful wedding venues) that we maybe would have benefited from checking for available dates at potential wedding venues before we finalized our decision.

3.) Don't take your ring off.

             Honestly, I did not know this. Apparently taking your engagement ring off (for any reason other than getting it appraised and/or cleaned) is a big no-no in the Rules of Engagement. The first time someone asked to see my ring, I took it off and held it out to her. She responded well...and yet it was very clear to me that I should never, ever do that again. 

4.) Don't freak out...this isn't really all about you.

            If you expect to talk about yourself and your wedding during your engagement...quit that. Your engagement is the opportunity that every other married woman has been waiting for--the one chance they have to talk about their wedding.  As soon as we made our wedding plans known, everyone else made their wedding plans known, even if it had happened thirty years ago. It seemed to me like every conversation started with, "Congratulations! At our wedding..."

           All cynicism aside, this is not a bad thing. It threw me off a little bit at first, but now that I'm used to it, I don't mind it at all. In fact, I don't blame them at all...if this same thing happened to them during their engagement, it's totally understandable. I can't wait until someone else gets engaged so that I can talk about my wedding. 

           Okay, NOW, all cynicism aside, it really isn't a bad thing. The heart behind this sharing of wedding successes and traumas is one that desires that a newly engaged couple learn from the past.  Why wouldn't I want to know where to get a great, bank-friendly dress, or where not to hire a DJ? After all, a wedding is only one day, but apparently it is one that is so chock-full of memories and lessons that it takes an entire lifetime to tell all the stories. Listen, and love it. 

5.) You will ignore your wedding timeline. 
           My future sister-in-law gave me a wedding planning book, my cousin gave me bridal magazines, and a friend referred Dan and I to a wedding website.  All three of these include detail wedding timelines--instructions and suggestions about when and how to get done all the things that are required for a wedding come together. On my wedding website timeline I have 150+ to-dos....and 45 of them are overdue. I'm optimistic, though. I think we will probably still get married.
          From what it sounds like, this happens to everyone. So I'm not going to freak out about it. I'm just going to enjoy being engaged.

 


          That is the best I can offer to anyone newly engaged.  I think it's a solid start, though.


Note: This will not become a wedding blog.  This is still a spot for me to come and muse, and it will remain that way.  The fact that I will be musing about my wedding from time to time over the next few months may lead to another wedding related post or two, but I'll stick around after I'm married, too. This is just what's currently on my mind. :)

El Salvador...the Update post.

So, it has been...

...way too long.

And I'm sorry.

I came here several times before to try and let you know how it all went down, I promise, I did, but...I just didn't know what to say.

Have you ever had a mountaintop experience?

I have. Actually, I've had several. Actually...I've had one particular mountaintop experience where I was literally on the top of a mountain.

see?

Just me and the besty, climbing rocks in CA. Four years ago...

Anyway, the mountaintop. A mountaintop experience is something beyond memorable.  You certainly will remember it for the rest of your life, but it is so much more than that. It changes who you are, how you think, what you do. It's something that you have to work for, it includes the grueling climb and the glorious view from the top...and the let-down and release of having to walk yourself back down to flat land. It is specific, and definitely your very own--someone else may have climbed a mountain before, but they did not climb what you climbed, or how you climbed. They did not see what you saw. Your mountaintop experience is your very own...and that makes it dreadfully precious.

It also makes it dreadfully difficult to talk about.

My trip to El Salvador was certainly a mountaintop experience.  I spent two weeks in Zacatecoluca, El Salvador, at a Palabra de Vida camp facility.  During the weekdays, our team went into public schools and performed skits and songs for the student body.

 

After that we were allowed to go into the classrooms with a translator to present the Gospel on a more intimate basis. 

I could give you details...so many details...and the names of team members, and of the schools, and stories and jokes about our time there...but I could not do it justice. I could try to reproduce the situations and moments that meant the most to me, the times when I knew I was learning, when I knew I was climbing...

But you still wouldn't be on my mountain.

The big stuff, the stuff that has to be shared, that which must be shared in order that it really gets fleshed out, that will come out in later posts. You can pretty much count on it. There are things that I have got to write about...so I will. I won't do it here, now, because I would be writing forever. And you would be reading forever.

Here's what you should know right now, though:

We were able to share the gospel with over five thousand people.

Over two thousand of them claimed to accept Christ as their Savior.

I've never before been more struck with how unworthy I am to be involved in the work of sharing the Gospel.
Neither have I been more aware of the fact that sharing the Gospel is the only work in which I should really be involved. That's my identity. It should be, anyway.

I'm not a numbers person, at all. I'm a cynic by nature, and who knows what people are really thinking or committing to when they make commitments.
That being said, though, those numbers rocked my world.

It was my mountaintop. 

Thanks for taking part in it (if you did...). Thanks for praying, thanks for supporting....Thank you. It changed my life. 

And again...sorry it took so long.

El Salvador: Part IV

For those of you who are praying for my team and me as we acclimate to the environment in El Salvador...
















...stop it right now.















!















Just kidding. Mostly. The thing is, we're not in quite in El Salvador yet. Yes, I know, I can hear the shock in your voices now:



"What?! All this time we've been praying for the safety of your flight on the twenty-fifth, praying for a welcome reception that day, praying for you to go to El Salvador!!!"



Well now, my shocked prayer warriors, take heart. Everything is fine. It's just behind. We got to the airport yesterday just in time to be told that our flight had been cancelled. After a moment or two of scratching our heads about what to do next, our team gathered together for a word of prayer, and then left it to our fearless leader to....fearlessly lead.







After a little broken English, a little broken Spanish, a little more confusion, and a little more prayer, we gave all fourteen of our passports to a little lady with a nametag on a lanyard, and hopped on a shuttle to the Hampton Inn.


Yup. Just gave her our passports.  Some things just don't make sense unless you're following God. 



The airline (Taca) put everyone from the flight up in the hotel for the night, gave us vouchers for dinner yesterday and lunch today, gave us a $200 voucher in case we had any luggage that was overweight, and put us on a flight for five o'clock today. 




On the busride to the Inn, Miss Fay and I were able to talk with a lady named Roxanna.  She is going to visit her family in El Salvador.  She was struck by Miss Fay's testimony of having a son who is a missionary in Indonesia.  Who would let their children be so far away for so long?  Someone who knows that God's love and glory is worth it.

The restaurant we ate at, a Colombian joint "Patacon," had incredible food, and an opportunity for me to use a little of my Spanish.

The beds and showers at the hotel are....awesome.


The experience as a whole? One to chalk up as a win, I think.

Praise de Lord.



Is there a lesson to be learned here? Oh yeah. All kinds of lessons.  Let's list them, shall we?

1.) The best thing to do in a crisis situation where one is traveling internationally is to give your passport to a stranger as soon as possible.
2.) Stressfully powering your way to get what you want/need does not always work...we can probably say that it's generally unneccessary. And that's because...
3.) God is in control.
4.) Matching t-shirts and good attitudes are a great testimony for Christ.
5.) The mission field involves every moment, every day. There's no need to wait until you hit foreign soil to testify of God's importance to you.




Alright, so some of that is a little facetious in nature (you can sort out which parts) but the moral of the story is: God wins.  Our plans and schedule are all in his hands.  The extra night of sleep here provided some much needed energy and rest for members of the group who have been feeling a little under the weather. 

"He's got the whole world...in his hands..."



I have greatly exceeded the fifteen-minute limit on the "Business Center" computers in the lobby of the hotel, so that's all I'll write for now. 

Hoping to write again soon! Pray for us. :)