Amazing Grace

So, wedding and moving planning are chugging along here with less than 2 weeks to go for both. Life has been pretty busy and stressful. I'm in my last week of work and trying to iron out as many details for our transitions as I can. Brendan is in his last week of Airborne School which means that he is learning to jump out of planes and will jump out of a plane 5 times this week... what a great thing to do 2 weeks before you get married! He leaves at about 3:00am and returns between 6 and 9 pm. On an average day, we are able to spend around 1 hour together because of Brendan's sleep schedule... which means that during that time I am most likely harassing him about the wedding or our move.

Something that's more important that all of those little things we have going on in our lives is that last weekend Brendan and I  got baptized at our church! We were both christened as infants in our childhood churches, but feel that we are called to be baptized as believers in the Gospel, which we weren't capable of being when we were infants. At the church we go to during a Baptism Sunday, a friend will read your testimony of God's grace in your life to the congregation and then you are fully immersed in water. Water baptism illustrates Jesus' death, burial and resurrection as well as the death of  our old sinful lives and of being raised to walk in newness of life in Christ. The submerged body represents death and burial and the body being raised up out of the water provides a picture of resurrection and new life.

While baptism does not "save" you, it is a public proclamation of your faith in Jesus and admission of your need for God's grace in your life.

     What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
    For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
    Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. Romans 6:1-14 ESV

 If God can forgive us, we then are called to forgive others

 I feel like it's important for me to be honest and say that doing life together again has had its challenges, and especially the last few weeks, we have needed to give each other grace. When two people come together, their own selfish wants sometimes get in the way and cause them to butt heads... add in the stress of what my Army friends and I call "reintegration" after periods of separation, wedding planning, and moving? Well you have yourself an equation for stress, and sometimes people's feelings get hurt.

There is a song that we sing in church called "Come Ye Sinners" and one of the lyrics says: "If you tarry until you're better you will never come at all." I've always liked that part of the song, it's encouraging to know that you cannot wait until you've "cleaned yourself up" to come to Christ and that no matter how battered and broken you are if you repent and believe, He will save you. Okay, its much more than encouraging. It's amazing.

I've always had a tough time forgiving people without holding onto some lingering grudge, but as I continue on my journey with the Lord, I realize how badly I need to begin forgiving and asking for forgiveness. God doesn't wait for us to make things right to give us grace, so if the Creator of the universe can forgive us without waiting for us to clean ourselves up, why do we constantly wait for apologies from the people we love? Christ has taught us that He is love and that through His love for us by His work on the cross, all our sins are forgiven... if that is the case for us with God, how can we not make it the case in our own lives with people that we love and forgive them even when they don't ask for it? How can we expect God to forgive us from turning away from Him, when we can't even forgive people for the minor things in life?

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. James 1:19-20 ESV

He Did More.

Brendan has passed the Florida Phase of Ranger School! He will be graduating and home on Friday!

If you would like to see his graduation, it is on Friday August 24th at Hurley Hill Training Area.. here is a map and more info

Best phone call ever!

Yesterday I waited from the moment my eyes opened in the morning until I resigned myself at 10:30pm to the possibility that Brendan wouldn't be able to call until Monday or Tuesday and decided I should try to get some sleep. As I was staring at the ceiling pretending to be tired, my phone rang from a Florida number I didn't know. The conversation went like this:

Me: Hello?
Caller: Oh hi Beeb
Me: Are you coming home yet?
Brendan: Yes

We talked for about 5 minutes about plans for graduation and how we were doing and then he had to go to let the other soldiers use the phone and I got busy letting our family and friends know that Brendan was coming home.

Facebook saved my sanity for letting the most people know

I am emotionally exhausted and overwhelmed.

Yesterday was probably the most emotionally trying day of my life so far. Before I heard from Brendan, my phone was going crazy with messages and calls of people wanting to know if I heard anything. While I appreciated their thoughts, every time my phone went off my heart skipped a beat and then dropped when I saw that it wasn't Brendan. I cried in Church, cried when I got home by myself, and by the time Brendan actually called, I was so exhausted that I couldn't even express any emotion. I mentioned in a previous post that right now I am stuck in two emotional planes: emotionally shut off or hysterically crying. Yesterday started with hysterical and ended with me being a zombie.

Today started the preparations for Brendan's homecoming... which includes: making sure the apartment is clean and the laundry room is ready to be destroyed, making the dogs look extra pretty, figuring out how to grocery shop for a malnourished man, and coordinating travel and graduation plans with family. I think I'm running on fumes right now.

I am just so excited to see Brendan that I can't shut my brain down. I feel the need to be in perpetual motion until the moment I see him or else I might explode. If I knew how to knit, I might have made about 10 blankets by now.

I was having conversation with one of my friends earlier and she could tell I was stressed and suggested that I take a break from everything I'm doing and just relax for a few hours... little did she know I had already planned out my entire day. Luckily, God had planned my day too and gave me the truth I needed to hear to still my restless heart.

After work, I went to a Bible study with some women from my church and they have been going through Romans. Today we looked at Romans 15: 1-13. Verse 13 really hit home for me and for what this season has brought to me.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. Romans 15:13 ESV

We talked about how we often associate God with hope and joy and belief, but it's very difficult for us as humans to find peace by putting our trust in the Lord. By nature I am a control freak, so when things are out of my control it's usually terrifying and stressful; But this passage does not say let God give you hope, Paul refers to Him as the God of hope. He is a God of restoration, He cuts off things in our life that will make us take simple paths, leaving us with nothing but our hope in God.

Later tonight, I had dinner with another girl from my church and in our conversation, we were talking about her boyfriend who completed Ranger School last month. She was telling me about this hat he gave her that had all of these scripture verses in it. She told me about one phrase he had written on the inside, it said "He did more".

How amazing is it that no matter what we do in our lives Jesus always did more?

...

I've sat here for 20 minutes trying to think of what to say to conclude this post and can't think of anything to say that is more important than the truth that Jesus did more. It's something that needs to be said and repeated every day, several times a day, perhaps even all day. The sinless One suffered and died for the sins of all who trust and believe in Him.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ² For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. ³ For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin,^[ he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Romans 8: 1-4

God has given me a place and rest that I can come to no matter what trials I am going through. I never have to travel far to get there because He always meets me right where I am; So as I wait for Brendan to come home I will be thankful to God for cutting off the simple paths that wouldn't have lead us into His everlasting grace.