I Want To Remember // Two Months of Marriage
I was asked yesterday if married life is as good as expected. I almost laughed. I had high expectations for enjoying being married to you, but it has far exceeded anything I could have expected and has been such a fun season of life. So here are a few things that I want to remember from the first two months of marriage.
I want to remember sitting at the Harmony breakfast enjoying the breeze and the most amazing pancakes in the entire world. I want to remember the nights you needed to sleep on your other side but still wanted to be close so you backed up until we were touching. I want to remember dreaming about going back to St. Lucia. I want to remember nights on the couch where you played xbox and I crafted (because some things don’t change). I want to remember double date nights. I want to remember mornings when we turned up the music and danced before work. I want to remember you getting home from a morning run only to sweep the kitchen floor. I want to remember decorating our first place – complete with shelves, pictures and your bike. I want to remember squirrels in the roof. I want to remember learning to understand each other – I now close the shower curtain and you now call the extra bedroom “the craft room”. I want to remember you having more shoes than me. I want to remember rescuing you from the trail after your tire popped and trying to find you through t-mobile’s spotty service. I want to remember being so excited for you to get home and never wanting to get out of the bed in the morning. I want to remember writing thank you cards with you. I want to remember late night drives to find our future house. I want to remember the smell of our room after you leave for work in the morning. I want to remember shopping trips and break time sodas. I want to remember our evenings of sleepy time tea and frozen chocolate covered bananas. I want to remember making insurance and retirement decisions at 23. I want to remember to be selfless and to remind myself that I’m not always right and when I don’t (because sometimes I won’t), that saying sorry is a must. I want to remember the way I feel every time you encourage me with my crafts and blog when I show you before we go to bed. I want to remember the day you became a blues fan. I want to remember the songs you sang to me and all the words you changed to fit my name. I want to remember every single moment of these past two months.
Tonight when I asked you what your favorite memories from the first two months of marriage are, you replied with, “Silly things like grocery shopping and making dinner together. I also love waking up next to you every morning. I’m just so happy that you’re my wife, you know?” Yep. I do, because I feel the same way about you being my husband.
Happy two month anniversary to the love of my life.
Making the Most of Monday
How often do we find ourselves patiently waiting for Friday only to realize that it’s Monday morning and we still have five entire days until we can sleep in again and enjoy a whole lot of doing nothing? I’ve heard it over and over again. Before I started working at my current job, I didn’t have two consecutive days off so the whole idea of a weekend feels like a new concept that I don’t want to take advantage of! So instead of dreading Monday, I like to be the most productive to set the standards for the entire rest of the week. So instead of dreading Monday, try one of these.
Prepare Start out the week by setting out clothes and preparing for one hour on Sunday night to prepare for the week ahead.
Be Early Monday’s are the most important day to be early. So go to sleep early on Sunday nights and wake up on Monday morning without pressing the snooze button. Try to get in your workout or get to work a few minutes earlier than normal so that you can be ready with emails and have meeting plans prepared!
Adjust the Way You Think Stop hating Mondays! Going into Monday with a negative attitude won’t help you have a good day! Instead, make Monday your new favorite day. Think of it as a fresh start – whatever happened last week is in the past! Take this time to set new goals and create a brand new to do list!
Take on Your Least Favorite Tasks Start your week off by completing the things you don’t like to do! This will make your life a little better during the rest of the week.
Catch Up I love catching up with my co-workers on Monday mornings! I try to make sure to go out of my way to encourage others to have good weeks by having a positive attitude! Check in with the people around you on Mondays to see how their weekend was!
Routine Having a plan on how you are going to go about your day will make it seem much smoother. This could mean laying out your calendar on Friday so that you know exactly what you will need to do on Monday.
Treat Yourself Kevin and I have been going to the grocery store on Sunday afternoons or Monday nights. The last couple of weeks, we have bought a little treat or a few stems of one of my favorite flower to display in the house – seeing them makes me so happy! (see above picture)
Really Rest During the weekend, we often over book ourselves since we have “nothing” going on. When we take these two days to actually rest up, it will help make our Monday’s less tired and more productive. To me, this looks a lot like saying no to overbooking and plans that aren’t actually things that fulfill my life.
Coffee and Music Pump your day up in any way you know how! Spend the commute to work dancing to your Friday playlist and drink coffee, if that’s what you’re into.
Gratitude Make a list of things in your life that you are thankful for. I do this a lot when I’m having a bad day and it always increases my spirit!
Happy Monday, friends!
Raw
I started writing this post last year. It was a time in my life where I had graduated college, didn’t have a job and had plenty of bills to pay. It was a hard time in my life, but I think it’s a time that A LOT of people go through – whether it’s right after college or after many years of being in the workforce. And either way, it’s not easy. BUT be encouraged, friends. It gets better. I finished it up today with where I currently am. Here’s my story.
I’ve started writing this post so many times. But it’s hard and normally I don’t do that kind of stuff. I brush it off and wait for it to pass but that is not how God is glorified. He is glorified in our hardest moments, the nitty gritty ones where we have to surrender to Him, completely. The ones where we wrongly question His sovereignty and His plan even though He continually prevails time and time again. I have been doing a Bible study with She Reads Truth and last night I read:
Have you ever asked for prayer simply because you could not pray on your own? Have you ever uttered “pray for me” and meant “pray instead of me, because I just can’t do it”?
If prayer is a picture of believers lifting one another before the Lord, then there are times I have been full-on carried. Not just walked beside or agreed with, but picked up from the pit and held high before the Lord, my spiritual self limp and lifeless, in need of the life-breath from my Savior. It’s a metaphor that sounds melodramatic until you’re in the thick of it, too spent to sigh another “please” or “amen”.
And maybe not having a full-time job wasn’t that bad, but the questions, assumptions and rejection letters built up. I had applied for over 40 jobs since I started looking and of those, I had only heard back from five (well, unless we are counting rejections too…but let’s not go there). I had whispered the words, “pray for this one” as I began applications and phone interviews.
Two years ago, I was prompted by God to change my major and I know that in following His plan for my life, He will be glorified. But still I waited. I began to wonder where God was and why I had even listened to him anyway. Maybe I should have just stuck with math and hopefully had a better outcome. Maybe I had heard Him wrong after all! A lot of self-doubt crept in.
When I finally got my interview a few months later, it felt like my only chance. And of course, I jumped at it. At first, I loved it but slowly I started to fall into the every day pace and the retail-type hours were really getting me down. I worked later in the day and didn’t have two consecutive days off. I realize that this is reality for a LOT of people, but it it bothered me enough to do something about it. So I did. I had a few friends who told me about how much they loved their jobs and that I should get on there. I was very interested and asked one friend forward my resume to the HR department. A few weeks later, I heard back that they wanted to have a casual conversation about the positions that they were hiring for. The week before our wedding, I was offered the job.
As soon as we got back from the honeymoon, I had my first day. We did all kinds of fun orientation type stuff and I just knew from the beginning that this is where I’m supposed to be. For the next few weeks, I spent all of my time in and out of the office studying for the big SAFE test so that I could become a Mortgage Loan Originator. I felt really great about it and had never studied harder for an exam.
It was during these weeks that I wrote the Be Still post. I wanted to remind myself that “The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still“. I knew that if it was God’s will for me to pass, I would. If not, I wouldn’t.
At the test, they wave a metal detector around you and it’s all pretty intense. But I went through the test question by question with a growing fear that I don’t know enough questions to get a passing score. I prayed. As I submitted it, I held my breath. A big fat “FAIL” showed up.
REALLY!? HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?
On the drive back home, all of the self doubt came flooding back. What would I do now? What if I lost my job? I thought this is where I was supposed to be. And mainly, how could I have studied for over 125 hours and still fail? I prayed. And I waited.
I got a call the next morning, they asked if I would be interested in another job in the company that did not require this license. YES YES YES. Of course. Like I said, even up to this point I completely thought that this was where I was supposed to be. And that’s when I realized. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be a loan originator at all. I ended up having an interview that very same day and was given the job on the spot.
I started Monday.
Maybe it’s humiliating and scary to post this for the entire world to see, but maybe it will encourage someone. Or maybe sometime in the future, I’ll need to come back to this again. To come back and remember that God is sovereign and His plan is good.
So, future me (and everyone else reading this), know that no matter what you are waiting for, expect it to be downright hard. It’s hard not to complain, to doubt and to worry but I’m learning that those things are harmful to yourself and to your testimony. You can’t be serving God fully if you are caught up on waiting around for the perfect job, the next phone call or an email reply. Instead, you need to pray hard and listen closely – God’s plan is always good.
Currently
Counting down days until the wedding…just 19 left to go! Hard to believe we are finally in the teens!
Enjoying having a tv with channels again…it’s been almost five years, guys!
Eating Harold’s doughnuts in Columbia for the first time ever (yum!).
Working on my long list of blog posts ideas that I wrote when I still didn’t have wifi at the new place.
Watching A Young Doctor’s Notebook on Netflix…Kevin and I love it because…Jon Hamm and Daniel Radcliffe (need I say more?).
Loving playing around with gelatos and paint in my journaling bible.
Trying out a 60mm prime lens and absolutely crushing on it…my next big purchase?!
Feeling inspired by this picture and blog post.
Counting the number of projects that I have going on right now (hint…it’s a lot).
Realizing that adventure is going to be the most challenging word yet.
Praying for the end of snowy weather until at least March 7.
Currently
reading // my bible every day this year (ha! good streak going) and all of my favorite blogs. i’m hoping to start paring down the blogs that i read. i’m learning as i go that i like to read ones that are very different from mine.
writing // in my journal and trying to keep track of daily adventures. so far so good. i have a lot of documenting that i want to do this year. let’s hope i can stick to it.
learning // about street shooting, a type of photography that my uncle is way into. seems really interesting, but so not my style…yet.
eating // random things in my fridge so that i don’t have to go grocery shopping. i’ve been driving back and forth between here and home a lot recently and keeping a stocked fridge basically just turns into throwing everything away.
wondering // how it became january so quickly! woah! didn’t i just graduate?!
adventuring // with kevin. today we went to check out a place that has potential to be our first place together and then we walked a bit of a trail talking about our options. i love how dedicated adventure he already is.
chatting // with best friends over breakfast
wearing // layers on layers because the weather is a joke. hopefully it will get it’s crap together by march.
planning // new projects to decorate our new place! any suggestions on organization or other fun DIYs?
what are you up to? i’d love to hear!