What is your Hope doing for you?

Throughout our life, we tend to misplace our hope often, and the trouble is, it’s hard to recognize this because frequently, we place our hope in good things.  We spend so much time making ourselves believe that we can complete ourselves that we take God out of the equation and replace Him with temporary hopes.

How many times in our lives have we rested our hopes on that next job promotion, just to get it and be happy for a little while and then sink back into the same funk we were in before we got the promotion? Or how often have we based our self-worth and hope on our marriage or relationships only to hit a bump in the road and feel crushed? Jobs and relationships are not bad things, they’re good things, but they’re not GOD things. 

  

Before I became a Christian, I spent my life searching for something that would make me happy. I have always suffered from anxiety and depression, and spent a lot of my life thinking that if I just had this one more thing, I’d be happier. I moved to New York City after college, got a great job, and had lots of friends, but I was still miserable. Then I met and fell in love with my husband Brendan, and things were temporarily better. After we moved to Georgia, the anxiety and depression came back. I often found myself crying and not able to understand why I could never just “be happy.”

While I was in Georgia, I met a friend who invited me to come to church with her and began talking to me about the living hope found through Jesus Christ. Things that didn’t make sense started to. I realized by putting my hope in temporary things, I was setting myself up for disappointment because the joy of these things faded.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. Ecclesiastes 3:11

I was reading through Ecclesiastes and this passage helped me to comprehend why we constantly have this sense of longing which can cause us to search for answers in places where they can’t be found. While God has given us the ability to see the beauty of the world, he has also put eternity into our hearts (a sense that life continues beyond this present existence and desire to understand all of life) while limiting our ability to actually do so.

In life, we tend to feel incomplete. People often say “there has to be more to life than this,” and there is. We are just looking in the wrong places for the wrong things to fill that void of eternity that we feel. I’ve tried to make my marriage fill it, setting myself up for failure and disappointment by expecting my husband to fill a role he was never meant to fill. While I love my husband, he cannot be the source of my hope and joy and the one thing to sustain me. That is God’s role.

The void that we all feel from time to time is God’s way of telling us, “this isn’t as good as it gets, I have what you’re longing for, place your hope in Me.” There is no perfect job, perfect relationship or amount of money that would be able to give us what God can. Putting our hope in God gives us the possibility of joy even on the worst days. It leaves us free to love, worship, hope, and anticipate eternity with Him knowing that it will be so much more wonderful than we could ever imagine. Hope in God is the only thing in life that will not fade or disappoint. 

New Beginnings

So, the two weeks following our wedding were very busy to put it mildly. On Monday we flew back to Georgia and began to pack up our apartment to get ready to leave for North Carolina on Friday. It was a bittersweet week. We both were excited to get settled down in North Carolina, but had really come to love Columbus, especially our church family.

On Wednesday we had our final community group meeting before we left, and as I took my seat in between Brendan and my friend Lyndsay, I looked around the room and felt a great sense of gratefulness, and loss at the same time. Having those two seemingly opposite feelings together is something that I had never truly experienced before. These feelings stayed throughout the meeting, and as they prayed over Brendan and me at the end of our time together, with tears streaming down my face, I found peace in the words our friends were saying. As they asked for God to go with us to North Carolina, I could feel His presence comforting me through my brothers and sisters in Christ.

Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you. Deuteronomy 31:6

By Friday morning (after a marathon of packing and cleaning until 3am) we were on the road to North Carolina. 

Our apartment looks so empty!!

We arrived by about 8pm and anxiously opened the door to our new home! That night we blew up our air mattress and planned our day for Saturday. The next day, we excitedly bought a bed, a couch, and a washer and dryer... all to be delivered Monday. Luckily Sunday we were able to pick up a kitchen table and chairs so we at least had somewhere to sit other than on the floor or air mattress! Monday, our stuff arrived and it was heaven... Until Tuesday. 

our new home!

Most of our furniture that we are using in our house and all of our wedding gifts were at my parent's house in Connecticut, so Tuesday morning we flew up to get it. We got to Connecticut at about 5pm and immediately loaded up the moving truck so we could get an early start the next morning. After loading 10,000 pounds of stuff and spending about 2 hours with my parents we went to sleep to make sure we were rested for our 12 hour drive the next day. Long story short, about 32 hours after we left North Carolina we were back again with a house full of things in a truck! Thursday we unpacked the truck and Friday at 2:00am we headed back to the airport to depart for a much needed honeymoon!!!

one item we brought from my parents house was a canoe, Brendan is obviously thrilled.

The Honeymoon!!

Originally, we were unsure whether or not we would have the time or money to go on a honeymoon, so we didn’t book it until about a week before we left. Luckily, Brendan e-mailed a travel agent who we have used before and gave him our parameters for time and money.

IT WAS PERFECT. We flew into sunny Mexico on Friday and were greeted with cool towels and water bottles and driven in a private SUV to our resort. The resort was beautiful and the staff was great. We only left the resort one day to go to see the Mayan ruins at Tulum and snorkeling at Xel-Ha (totally worth the extra money!)  

It was an awesome opportunity for Brendan and I to take a little time out from the circus that has been our lives for the past year and just really spend some time together. We received Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon for a gift from a member of our community group and started making a point to read it together in the morning and evening.

 I had never fully understood why people took honeymoons until we did. This was really the only chance that we have had to connect without distractions from the outside world. Without cell phones, internet, friends, work and anything else to divert our attention, we were focused on each other. Although we see each other every day, there are always things that can get in our way from spending quality time together. I think that having this experience to revisit and to help us remember the important things. While we might not be able to go to Mexico every year, I’m considering having an off the grid weekend every year (if Brendan’s work would allow it).

our last night, and the only night we stayed up past 9pm... yes we are old!

before dinner one night

at the beach, steps away from our resort

overlooking the Mayan ruins of Tulum

New Beginnings 

After 5 days in paradise, we came home and began to get settled into our new life. It’s crazy to think that 14 months before, we were just getting settled in Georgia. This time it felt different though. As we unpacked the boxes I felt like we were unpacking a home instead of a house. As I put up framed photos of our friends from around the country, I felt nostalgic but not sad.

This is a new beginning for Brendan and I. A year ago our life was fine by most standards, but we did not know God. Now, although the road ahead won’t be easy, we know that He walks with us wherever we go, and we will withstand whatever may come through our faith and trust in Him.

 And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Ecclesiastes 4:12

The Wedding!

It finally happened! After planning, waiting, rescheduling, re-planning and waiting some more, our wedding was October 7, 2012!!!! What a wonderful day it was, God truly blessed us. The ceremony was wonderful and just what we wanted. We had decided that we wanted the ceremony to be less about the two of us and more about the Gospel being reflected in marriage, and hope that that truly was the focus.

We do!

Photo by Heather Colt

Even almost a month later, I am still so overwhelmed with joy that I don't know exactly what to write. I'll start off by giving you a summary of the week leading up to the wedding. I flew up the week before the wedding to put the finishing touches on all of our planning while Brendan began out-processing at Fort Benning. I got the most stressful thing out of the way first... making sure the wedding dress fit, luckily it did.

The rest of the week was really just full of doing little things to put some personal touches on the wedding and waiting (im)patiently for Brendan to arrive on Friday.

Some of my favorites things that we decided to do were: having our guests sign a bench instead of having a guest book. We have the bench at the foot of our bed now! We also had flip flops for people to change into for dancing, and we made the groomsmen some baskets with some socks, an engraved lighter, a cigar, and a little bottle of Jameson.

These are some signs and the gift baskets we made!

The forecast for our day all week was pretty gross with a 90% chance of rain and temperatures around 50 degrees... I was feeling a little discouraged because our venue was so beautiful that I was afraid our guests wouldn't be able to enjoy the outdoor space of the grounds. Even the morning of the wedding, the forecast still said rain for most of the day.

But luckily it held off!!

The church after the ceremony (photo by Hunter Beless)

Saber Arch (Photo by Hunter Beless)

And we were even to take some photos outside at the reception venue!!

Photo by Heather Colt

Photo by Heather Colt

Except for having a small issue with one missing bridesmaid bouquet which we realized right before we were supposed to leave the house, the day went off without a hitch! Walking down the aisle and seeing Brendan at the end of it with all my family and friends in that church was more beautiful and meaningful than I ever could have imagined.

The reception was wonderful!!! but way too short... I felt like I didn't have time to see everyone, especially my friends who I don't get to see on a regular basis. Honestly though, I just miss some of these friendships so much. The hardest part of being on the move so much the past year is getting used to doing life with people and then not having them be close by (or in the next room) anymore. Luckily when I see them, it's like no time has passed at all!

From top left: My Friend Carolina from NYC, my roommates from NYC, my Army Friends from everywhere, and my roommate Nicole from NYC

the reception, I wouldn't have wanted it any different

we decided to do cupcakes instead of a cake, they were amazing!

Photo by Hunter Beless

Our wedding was the perfect way for us to begin our lives together surrounded and supported by our closest friends and family. Brendan had family who traveled all the way from Ireland, and his best man, Aaron traveled from Alaska. We had friends come from Maine, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, and everywhere in between. Every single person that was there is a blessing to us, and being able to have everyone that we hold so closely in our hearts together in the same room was amazing.

Our life together and marriage so far has been such a blessing, and my prayers are that we can continue to glorify God through our union.

Unicorns do not exist.

Okay, so I've been toying around with the idea of writing this post for a while. My friend Hunter pointed out to me about a month ago that I am slightly intolerant to people who are not realistic. Aside from the fact that something I actually have said is "Unicorns don't exist, why does everyone live in a world that they think that they do?", I think she noticed my tendencies during Brendan's time in Ranger School because I wasn't even cautiously optimistic in the few days surrounding when I would hear from him that he would be coming home soon. Some people saw this as being pessimistic or that I didn't believe in Brendan, neither of those are true, I believe in Brendan and I am generally a pretty positive person, but the bottom line was, I knew that it was the Army and anything could (and did) happen.I feel that the most important asset that a military spouse can have is realistic expectations of what your life is going to be like. This includes periods of separation, adjustments, possible injuries among loads of other things.

Since Brendan was commissioned in May 2011, we have spent our time at Fort Benning where he has been going through training. While there were still lots of periods of separation (he was gone for over half the time we were in Georgia), the training has allowed us time without the possibility of Brendan being deployed which gave me peace of mind.With Brendan and I getting ready to leave Fort Benning and head to a deploy-able unit, I have begun to realize that having a realistic view of what awaits us in the future will be even more important than it was before.

 

The Pink Elephants in The Room

There's something I have started referring to as the "Forbidden D's" because there is never a good time to discuss them, but they seem to always sit in the corner of the room with us like a big pink elephant neither one of us wants to acknowledge. These two words are Deployment and Death.

Let's start out with the less heavy word: Deployment. We no longer live in a time where it would be realistic to assume that Brendan won't be deployed at some point without a high possibility of being completely crushed. As it stands right now, in December Brendan's unit will assume a role which will put them on stand-by for rapid deployment with as little as 2 hours notice. He tells me that he feels it's not likely that he would have to deploy that quickly, but I am guarding my heart and preparing for that possibility. The reality of Brendan coming home from work one day and saying, "I'm deploying, I have to report in 2 hours," is something that I don't think I will ever actually be prepared for... but understanding the possibility and accepting it is the only way I can cope with it if it actually happens. Deployments are something that came with the package of falling in love with Brendan, and we will make it through these deployments. There's this photo I've seen floating around Facebook from some of my friends that says : "I just love deployments!" Said no military spouse, ever. - I think that quote about sums it up. No military spouse enjoys deployments, but they endure them anyways.

Onto the real pink elephant... Death. I think that part of the reason Brendan and I never discuss the possibilities of deployments is because it's an easy transition into talking about the what-ifs that come with that conversation, the big one being "What if you die?" The fact is, that's a possibility. There is nothing I can say to ease my mind about that and nothing Brendan can say that would make that possibility any easier for me. The only thing that comforts me is that I'm not scared of where Brendan is going, I know he will spend eternity with Our Father whenever he is called, and that God will give me the grace I need to cope with that if he calls Brendan too soon.

    I lift up my eyes to the hills.
        From where does my help come?
    My help comes from the LORD,
        who made heaven and earth.
    He will not let your foot be moved;
        he who keeps you will not slumber.
    Behold, he who keeps Israel
        will neither slumber nor sleep.
    The LORD is your keeper;
        the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
    The sun shall not strike you by day,
        nor the moon by night.
    The LORD will keep you from all evil;
        he will keep your life.
    The LORD will keep
        your going out and your coming in
        from this time forth and forevermore.
Psalm 121 ESV

 The Dance

Sometimes it feels like Brendan and I dance around these subjects. There are moments when I know that both of us are thinking about these things but neither one of us wants to actually say the words out loud, and he will reach over and squeeze my hand or give me a kiss. I've come to the realization that that kiss or hand squeeze is much more comforting than any words that either one of us could come up with. He knows that he has my support no matter what comes to pass.

I know that our faith in God will pull us through any circumstances we are given even if we don't see the purpose at that time. There will come a time when Brendan and I will have to breach these subjects but it's not yet, and when that time comes the words will be jumbled and become unimportant in the grand scheme of things. The only thing I think I'll need to hear is "I love you and we will make it".

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

The Best Intentions

This post is long overdue and I apologize, but I have been spending all of my free time with this guy!

Ranger School graduation was so much fun, and we were thankful to be able to share it with our families, and local friends who took time out of their busy lives to come to the ceremony. We were so thankful and overwhelmed. If you have never been to a Ranger School Graduation and find yourself in Columbus, GA on a Friday, check and see if one is going on because it's pretty interesting.

My Mother and Brendan's Parents

Members of our Community Group from Crosspointe

Our friends Dustin and Alyssa

Life has been so much brighter having Brendan back, but it has been crazy! The weekend after his graduation, we spent time with his parents who had driven in from Indiana, the next week was spent working (me) and catching up on being in the real world (Brendan).

Last weekend we took a drive up to Fayetteville, NC to check out houses since are preparing to moving there within about a month. I'm excited to move to a place that we will be staying for a long period of time, but am also nervous about leaving the life I've made here. I've especially been anxious about finding a good church to get involved with, but luckily our friends here have given us phone numbers of people that they know in our area. The pessimistic side of me is concerned that we will never find as many wonderful people as we have in Columbus, but I know that God does all things for the good of his people and already has plans for us once we move.

On our way back, we drove over to Savannah, GA where I got to spend some quality time with one of my best friends Moira. Moira and I have known each other for 6 years and her husband happens to be a Captain in the Army. Whenever I'm confused about anything military, I call her. I also call her to talk about how much we love Harry Potter and New York City. I was blessed that she was stationed at Fort Benning for the first 6 months that we were here, I'm pretty positive I would have driven myself crazy if she wasn't here. I'd never been to Savannah and was so excited to go and explore... Moira and I both read the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and it was so amazing to see all of the places the author wrote about!  I can't wait to go back, I love history and old cities so I am probably going to read every book I can get my hands on about Savannah in preparation for my next trip!

 

Enjoying a stroll on a VERY warm day

Preparations

It's now getting into crunch time as far as wedding planning goes, and it seems that my brain is constantly sending off little sparks of more things that I have to do. On top of preparing for our wedding, we are also preparing to move to our next duty station within the same week or so as the wedding. Needless to say it's time for us to get organized.

As we prepare to do all of these things, I have been feeling the need to constantly remind myself what the important things are. The wedding will happen either way, and we will move, but I find myself placing more value in preparing for these things than in preparing myself for our actual marriage.

This week we went over to our church and met with our pastor to talk about having a gospel centered marriage and what it looks like. Marriage in the way that God intended it to be is a mirror of the Gospel. As a reminder to ourselves, being that as humans we are forgetful, Brendan and I have "Ephesians 5" engraved on the inside of our wedding bands. This verse has been so helpful for us in our walk with the Lord because it spells out how God expects us to love. A few months ago, our church did a lecture series through the book of Ephesians and the sermon on this text really convicted Brendan and I and what our thoughts and expectations of marriage looked like in our own life.

 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”  This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.  However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Ephesians 5:22-33 ESV

The center of this passage and of Biblical marriage in general is self-sacrifice. My friend Hunter describes it as dying to yourself so your partner can live. I understand that many people might not see this as romantic or something that can make someone happy, but marriage is about sanctification much more than happiness.

     And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:
    “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
    “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
    “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
    “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
    “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
    “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
    “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
    “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
    “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Matthew 5:2-12 ESV

When Jesus gave his Sermon on the Mount, he did not say "Blessed are those who pursue happiness above all else." He said "Blessed are those who mourn...who thirst for righteousness". So often in modern culture we see people walk away from marriage or other things in pursuit of happiness. In our own lives we put the most effort into the things that will give us the most happiness. Happiness, which is a thing that is good, has turned into an idol.. Happiness is fleeting. There will be days, even years, that are hard and may seem impossible, but if we pursue happiness instead of a relationship with God, it is idolatry.

The thought of letting go of all of my selfish wants to serve my husband scares me. I struggle with selfishness on a daily basis, I find myself valuing the things in my life based on what will make me happiest. Then I remember Christ. When faced with pain and suffering, he chose death on the cross to save the church, His bride, from her sins. He gave his life in order to save the souls of those who put their trust in Jesus Christ.

The Best Intentions

Almost everyone who has ever gotten married had the best intentions when they entered into marriage. They wanted to make their spouse the happiest person in the whole entire world! I have that intention too, but life tends to trip you up along the way. Things get hard, speed bumps begin to look like Mt. Everest. We are humans, train-wrecks, selfish and dissatisfied, and without the truth of the Gospel and the grace of God we would be hopeless.

Even the best of intentions don't always pan out. We mess up, and without the foundation of understanding why God created marriage, we're lost.